The other day my dad, a guy named Bill, and I sat in on an Animal Law class at Cal. A lawyer from Peta was the guest lecturer, and she showed us footage of mistreatment at a pig farm. One of the things in the video was a worker telling another guy how he deals with stubborn sows. If she doesn’t move when he wants her to move, he takes the prod and shoves it up her anus. She always moves then. The lawyer called this a reference to “sexual assault”. But why call it sexual? What makes the forceful penetration of one orifice a sexual assault, and the forceful penetration of another orifice a non-sexual assault? Would it still be a sexual assault if a guy shoves a stick in a sow’s mouth? After all, oral can be just as sexual as anal. Should we include any other orifices besides the vagina, anus, and mouth? I can’t help remembering the sadistic curiosity that plagued me when I was a kid, when I took twigs and probed the insides of cats’ ears.
Really, any use of any body part can be sexual, if it’s done with a sexual drive. But shoving a stick up a pig’s backside to get it to move is not an act fueled by sexual drive. Maybe it’s fueled by a vicious hunger to dominate that is connected with other visceral drives, but this drive itself isn’t a sexual drive. A man can, acting under a sick urge to see others in pain, kidnap a girl, tie her to a post, and whip her. Maybe he likes the sight of blood, so he makes her wear a white dress, or strips her down to her panties, or to her skin. But his use of her body wouldn’t be a sexual use (and, assuming he lacks her consent, ab-use) unless it sexually stimulates or gratifies him. Merely using an organ that some would occasionally use for sex does not constitute a sexual act. And the forceful penetration of an orifice that some would penetrate for sexual pleasure, is not everywhere and in all cases a sexual assault.
Anyway, why should we care whether an act is sexual or not? What makes sexual assault wrong is not that it’s sexual, but that it’s assault. We don’t have to be calling abuses “sexual” for them to seem as abusive as they actually are. Whether a man gets a boner when he shoves a stick up somebody else’s anus isn’t exactly relevant. What matters is whether he has their consent. And it is this factor that we’ve been paying too little attention to. Western culture has for too long obsessed over whether an act is sexual, and has called both consensual and non-consensual acts “abuse” on the mere grounds that they have something to do with sex. And in this obsession western culture has let pass a whole host of humiliations and abuses that aren’t motivated by sexual desire. So it’s okay for a man to drag his daughter to those well-intentioned sadists in white jackets who we call “pediatricians”, who’ll make her take off all her clothes, touch her all over, and even pierce her with iron rods, and it’s okay to confine her for hours on end in those dayprisons we call “schools”, but it’s not okay at all when she lifts her skirt to a friend.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The Unconstitutionality of the Pledge
Sometime near the beginning of my senior year at UCSD, I found a table on Library Walk for College Republicans and asked when their next meeting was. I decided to attend at least one meeting, since after all, I am a registered Republican, and in a handful of issues I am very, very conservative. I was also a Ron Paul supporter, and I was anxious to know how well the mainstream right was progressing in issues like war and political authority.
So I arrived on the night they were meeting, and the very first thing we did after reorganizing the chairs to form a big circle was to stand and face a flag that a man had pulled from his bag, put our right hands over our hearts, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I myself abstained from placing my hand over my heart and from saying a single word of the pledge, though I did stand out of some combination of respect and fear.
There are some words in the Pledge of Allegiance that I have a moral opposition to. Granted, I am a little put off by the phrase "under God". Does it mean that God chose this nation to be better than all the others? Does it mean that everything our leaders do happens to be condoned by God? Does it mean that acceptance of God's authority necessitates acceptance of the U.S. government's authority? Does it mean that we all have a national duty to worship a Biblical God? But that isn't what bothers me most. I can live with a little religious ambiguity. What bothers me most, and what I find to be inconsistent with both the United States Constitution and fundamental moral principles, is the phrase "On Nation, Indivisible".
The Right to Secede is a basic human right that belongs not just to the states, but to counties and cities within the states, to neighborhoods and to households, and to mere individuals. It was the Right to Secede that our forefathers claimed when they wrote: "it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another". The Declaration of Independence was in every sense a declaration of the right to secede. When a man insists that we are bound perpetually in union with "one nation, indivisible", he denies the very principle on which our nation is supposed to have been founded. He basically says that we should stay loyal to the government no matter how high its taxes, unnecessary its wars, or brutal its so-called "justice".
The U.S. Constitution puts no limit on the states' or the people's Right to Secede, and so we can infer from the Tenth Amendment that the Right to Secede, which the Constitution does not prohibit to the states, is reserved for the states or the people. The Right to Secede is then a Constitutional right. Any law or government action prohibiting secession simply because it is secession is a denial of a Constitutional freedom, and any statement in denial of the Right to Secede is a statement in denial of the Constitution. Of course, the Constitution doesn't have any moral authority anyway, but it is nice to see statists trapped in their own words. If they are patriots, then surely they love "freedom" and the Constitution. If they love those two things, then surely they must give the Constitution the meaning that is most conducive to freedom. And if they do that, then they must acknowledge that no body of people is bound for all eternity to bow to some organization that calls itself "the United States Government".
Individual Sovereignty, Free Association, and the Inalienability of Will are three fundamental moral principles that undergird (or at least, they SHOULD undergird) our laws. It wouldn't make much sense to say on the one hand that every one of us is endowed with certain inalienable rights, among them Liberty, while on the other hand saying that a man is bound to stay in a relationship that he no longer wants to be in. A man who no longer wants to attend the Catholic Church shouldn't be forced to attend it. A woman who no longer wants to live with or have sex with her husband shouldn't be forced to live with or have sex with him. The bottom line is that we shouldn't be forced to do things that we don't want to do, even if we used to like doing them, and to force a man to do something he no longer wants to do is to make a slave of him. The fact that a man used to love his government is no reason to force him to continue paying his taxes, or to obey other laws that he finds abhorrent or intrusive. Today, many people are forced to go along with and pay for things they don't approve of. "Political rape" is a good word for it. And it is this rape that self-styled "patriots" defend when they cover their hearts and say "One Nation, Indivisible".
So I arrived on the night they were meeting, and the very first thing we did after reorganizing the chairs to form a big circle was to stand and face a flag that a man had pulled from his bag, put our right hands over our hearts, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. I myself abstained from placing my hand over my heart and from saying a single word of the pledge, though I did stand out of some combination of respect and fear.
There are some words in the Pledge of Allegiance that I have a moral opposition to. Granted, I am a little put off by the phrase "under God". Does it mean that God chose this nation to be better than all the others? Does it mean that everything our leaders do happens to be condoned by God? Does it mean that acceptance of God's authority necessitates acceptance of the U.S. government's authority? Does it mean that we all have a national duty to worship a Biblical God? But that isn't what bothers me most. I can live with a little religious ambiguity. What bothers me most, and what I find to be inconsistent with both the United States Constitution and fundamental moral principles, is the phrase "On Nation, Indivisible".
The Right to Secede is a basic human right that belongs not just to the states, but to counties and cities within the states, to neighborhoods and to households, and to mere individuals. It was the Right to Secede that our forefathers claimed when they wrote: "it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another". The Declaration of Independence was in every sense a declaration of the right to secede. When a man insists that we are bound perpetually in union with "one nation, indivisible", he denies the very principle on which our nation is supposed to have been founded. He basically says that we should stay loyal to the government no matter how high its taxes, unnecessary its wars, or brutal its so-called "justice".
The U.S. Constitution puts no limit on the states' or the people's Right to Secede, and so we can infer from the Tenth Amendment that the Right to Secede, which the Constitution does not prohibit to the states, is reserved for the states or the people. The Right to Secede is then a Constitutional right. Any law or government action prohibiting secession simply because it is secession is a denial of a Constitutional freedom, and any statement in denial of the Right to Secede is a statement in denial of the Constitution. Of course, the Constitution doesn't have any moral authority anyway, but it is nice to see statists trapped in their own words. If they are patriots, then surely they love "freedom" and the Constitution. If they love those two things, then surely they must give the Constitution the meaning that is most conducive to freedom. And if they do that, then they must acknowledge that no body of people is bound for all eternity to bow to some organization that calls itself "the United States Government".
Individual Sovereignty, Free Association, and the Inalienability of Will are three fundamental moral principles that undergird (or at least, they SHOULD undergird) our laws. It wouldn't make much sense to say on the one hand that every one of us is endowed with certain inalienable rights, among them Liberty, while on the other hand saying that a man is bound to stay in a relationship that he no longer wants to be in. A man who no longer wants to attend the Catholic Church shouldn't be forced to attend it. A woman who no longer wants to live with or have sex with her husband shouldn't be forced to live with or have sex with him. The bottom line is that we shouldn't be forced to do things that we don't want to do, even if we used to like doing them, and to force a man to do something he no longer wants to do is to make a slave of him. The fact that a man used to love his government is no reason to force him to continue paying his taxes, or to obey other laws that he finds abhorrent or intrusive. Today, many people are forced to go along with and pay for things they don't approve of. "Political rape" is a good word for it. And it is this rape that self-styled "patriots" defend when they cover their hearts and say "One Nation, Indivisible".
Monday, March 16, 2009
Legal Tender, the Fed, and Fractional Reserve Banking
I am no economist, and I never pretend to be, but my simple understanding of the economy and my firm beliefs in individual sovereignty are enough fuel for me to blow up whenever I hear someone defend legal tender, or the Federal Reserve, or fractional reserve banking. These three institutions necessarily are aggressions against the individual. They cannot exist without someone being forced or defrauded into accepting something that they would not otherwise accept. You don't need an intricate understanding of stocks, hedge funds, sub-prime mortgages, liquidity, credit expansion, etc. to be able to understand that the main institutions in the U.S. economy are fundamentally immoral. All you need to know is how the main players in our economy depend on the initiation of force or the misrepresentation of fact, and that's what I'll try to show in this post.
Fractional Reserve Banking
Present practices in bank lending are necessarily fraudulent in that they give multiple people exclusive control over the same things. Let's say that you have a thousand dollars in a savings account (yes, that's not much, but that's all that some students have left when they graduate with loads of debt and no job). The bank takes nine hundred of those dollars (the reserve ratio is only 10%) and lends them out to other people, to be spent at those debtors' will. So when your $1,000 are supposedly in the bank, $900 of it is in other people's accounts, or, when they withdraw some of it, in their pockets. Nine hundred of your dollars are BOTH yours and other peoples', and they are BOTH in your account and in theirs.
There's nothing wrong with accumulating wealth by lending through a bank. It would be perfectly legitimate for a bank to accept and loan out some of your money on the express condition that you not make a big withdrawal until such-n-such date, by which time all or most of the debt would have been repayed into your account with interest. Under such a scheme, the ownership of the money is clear. It belongs to you, you're allowing someone else use it for a period of time, during which you cannot use it, after which it will be given back to you. Someone is allowed to use something that belongs to someone else, but no two people are given exclusive control over the same thing. Conventional banking is different. What typically happens is you put some money in the bank, and any time you want you can take some of it out. They might charge you extra for taking too much out, but you're still free to take it out whenever you want, as if it actually is sitting right there in your account waiting for your warm touch. And so whenever you want, you do go to the ATM and pull out as much of your money as you need to meet your expenses, and the other debtors go to the ATM and pull out as much of "their" money as they need to meet their expenses.
Let's suppose that you need alot of money right now, and so you take out 900 of your $1,000. You then have 900 of your $1,000 in your pocket. BUT SOMEONE ELSE ALSO HAS 900 OF YOUR $1,000. After you deposited your $1,000 into your savings account, your bank loaned $900 of it to another guy. So that other guy has $900 in a savings account. But he's not the only one who's keeping nine-tenths of someone else's money and calling it his. After that $900 was put into his account, $810 of it was loaned to another debtor. And after that $810 was loaned to that other debtor, $729 of it was loaned to somebody else, etc. So WHO HAS YOUR MONEY? And who does it belong to? You supposedly have it right there in your pocket, but loads of other people also have loads of your money in their accounts and in their pockets too!
No two people can have exclusive ownership over the same thing. The car that your parents own and let you drive is not yours to sell. Maybe you can have joint ownership of the car with your parents. But the car is not BOTH yours to sell AND your dad's to sell. And you can't drive it to Stanford at the same time that your dad's driving it to Berkeley. Fractional reserve banking is the practice of making money BOTH yours AND somebody else's. Suppose you were to rent a car from a car rental company, with the understanding that the car is yours to use until such and such date, and then you were to find out that the car is ALSO rented by another man with the understanding that it is ALSO HIS to use until the very same date. Wouldn't you feel ripped off? What word besides fraud can describe such a practice? Intentionally renting the same car to two different people at the same time is rightfully called fraud; but lending the same money to many different people is called bank lending.
In the good old days, when forcing people to answer for other people's malpractice wasn't smiled on, banks that borrowed and lent frivolously went under. Any time a bubble burst people would run to the banks, crowd around the tellers, and pull out all their money once they got to the window. Since only a small fraction of the money was in reserve, there wasn't enough of it to go around, and only those who got to the window first would get their money. You would be lucky if you were one of these. But if you weren't, you would find in the most sobering manner that what you thought was your money isn't there. And where'd it go? Into the pockets of those who got to the window before you did. Banks that kept too little money in reserve naturally went bankrupt. Those who call for more financial regulation correctly point out that bank runs wouldn't be a problem if banks weren't so careless about lending money. But the fundamental problem isn't that banks are borrowing and lending a lot of money; the problem is that banks are comitting fraud by giving the same money to different people and saying that it belongs to all of them at the same time. That's why -- SURPRISE! -- banks ran out of money when a lot of it was pulled out at once.
Back in those good old days, a bank could continue the fraud of fractional reserve banking only so long as the amount of money withdrawn remained below the reserve ratio (that is, so long as there wasn't a bank run). Today, however, a lovely mechanism has been set up to prevent a bank from going broke should there be any run, and so the fraud could be committed to a greater degree and for a much longer period of time, at the risk of individual depositors and the economy in general.
The Federal Reserve
When a bank starts running out of money and still needs to give more money out, it tries to get a loan from another bank. But banks can't lend any money to each other when they're all in the same predicament (and they typically are in the same predicament when they've all been running the same scam). Enter the Lender of Last Resort. WaMu doesn't have enough money to pay its depositors? No problem! The Great Lender will lend it as much money as it needs to meet its depositors' demands! Now WaMu has enough money to pay the depositors when they want their money back, and plenty left over to make more loans. And there's virtually no need to worry about the bank being unable to pay its debt to the Great Lender -- the loan was made at a very very VERY low interest rate, so the bank doesn't have to be prudish about the loans it makes to other debtors. With all this money, the bank is able to pay you your $1,000 should you for some reason demand it, the other guy his $900 should he for some reason want to borrow it, another guy his $810 should he for some reason want to borrow it, etc., all of this coming from the $1,000 you originally deposited. Since there's an unnaturally large amount of money rolling around, it's unnaturally easy to get a loan. Since it's unnaturally easy to get a loan, economic growth accelerates at an unnatural rate (and it's unnaturally easy to get loans for bad business ideas). This is the "stimulus" that Obama, Bernanke, et.al. sing about. Expand the monetary supply so that a lot of people get a head rush and buy a lot of stuff that they wouldn't buy if it weren't for a central bank propping up that fraudulent scheme called fractional reserve banking.
Central banking encourages runaway spending not just by private banks and private individuals, but also by government. When the government doesn't have enough money to fund its current programs, it borrows the needed amount from the Fed. The debt is passed on to future tax-payers, who are forced to pay these taxes that are levied onto them without any representation.
Besides propping up the fraud of fractional reserve banking and the unfair taxation of the young, central banking has another downside -- inflation. When the increase in the monetary supply is greater than the increase in goods, the value of the monetary unit (in our case the U.S. dollar) drops. You get too many dollars chasing too few loaves of bread. The $1,000 you put in your account four years ago is worth a lot less than it does now, even with accrued interest. You simply can't live off the money that you save, and any hope you had of climbing the socio-economic ladder is dimmer than it was before. Older people are unable to pay for their medicine, and poorer people can only pray that their wages rise fast enough to catch up with the rising cost of living.
Do note that there's nothing immoral about inflation per se. An alternative currency backed solely by silver (which would be a wonderful thing) would naturally devalue when a lot of silver is discovered at once. The supply of silver dollars would increase faster than would the supply of other goods, and so there would still be too many dollars chasing too few loaves of bread. The difference between this inflation and the inflation caused by the Fed, though, is that no one is forced to use the silver dollars, while everyone in the U.S. is forced to use the U.S. dollar. The people are forced to use a currency which the central planners can inflate whenever and however much they want.
Legal Tender
Competition and freedom of exchange are still popular catch-phrases in our semi-free market. But we all know that certain industries are not open to competition and free exchange. Banking is one of these industries. If we were allowed complete economic freedom, we would be free to demand repayment of our loans in the currencies that we want. But we aren't allowed such freedom. We are forced, by the state (which is a monopoly of violence), to accept payment of loans in Federal Reserve Notes. Government has effectively put a gun to lenders' and savers' heads and said "accept repayment in our currency, OR ELSE." Since we aren't allowed to demand repayment in any currency besides the U.S. dollar, we are bound to save and lend in the U.S. dollar. And since the U.S. dollar is the only currency available to us, there is no incentive for those in charge of maintaining it to regard its value. They can print as much of it as they want, without the fear that we would change all our money in the bank to a different currency.
Since the U.S. dollar is legal tender, we aren't allowed to print our own currencies to compete with it. And since there isn't any competition, we are subjected to a monetary unit whose value can drop as low as the Fed wants it to. This would not happen in a free market of currencies. No bank that constantly debases its currency would be able to last if it had to compete with banks that had more stable currencies.
Legal tender is the root of all economic woe. Without it there would be no cheap credit that results from the deliberate expansion of the money supply, and since bad ventures would be allowed to flop, there would be much less malinvestment. Without it there would be no Federal Reserve, since money can't be dumped into the market without depositors being forced to accept their savings in Federal Reserve notes. Without it the beast of fractional reserve banking would be tamed. Banks that reserve only a fraction of their deposits would have to compete with other banks that back all their demand deposits with 100% reserves, and accrue interest on savings through time deposits and not demand deposits.
Fractional Reserve Banking
Present practices in bank lending are necessarily fraudulent in that they give multiple people exclusive control over the same things. Let's say that you have a thousand dollars in a savings account (yes, that's not much, but that's all that some students have left when they graduate with loads of debt and no job). The bank takes nine hundred of those dollars (the reserve ratio is only 10%) and lends them out to other people, to be spent at those debtors' will. So when your $1,000 are supposedly in the bank, $900 of it is in other people's accounts, or, when they withdraw some of it, in their pockets. Nine hundred of your dollars are BOTH yours and other peoples', and they are BOTH in your account and in theirs.
There's nothing wrong with accumulating wealth by lending through a bank. It would be perfectly legitimate for a bank to accept and loan out some of your money on the express condition that you not make a big withdrawal until such-n-such date, by which time all or most of the debt would have been repayed into your account with interest. Under such a scheme, the ownership of the money is clear. It belongs to you, you're allowing someone else use it for a period of time, during which you cannot use it, after which it will be given back to you. Someone is allowed to use something that belongs to someone else, but no two people are given exclusive control over the same thing. Conventional banking is different. What typically happens is you put some money in the bank, and any time you want you can take some of it out. They might charge you extra for taking too much out, but you're still free to take it out whenever you want, as if it actually is sitting right there in your account waiting for your warm touch. And so whenever you want, you do go to the ATM and pull out as much of your money as you need to meet your expenses, and the other debtors go to the ATM and pull out as much of "their" money as they need to meet their expenses.
Let's suppose that you need alot of money right now, and so you take out 900 of your $1,000. You then have 900 of your $1,000 in your pocket. BUT SOMEONE ELSE ALSO HAS 900 OF YOUR $1,000. After you deposited your $1,000 into your savings account, your bank loaned $900 of it to another guy. So that other guy has $900 in a savings account. But he's not the only one who's keeping nine-tenths of someone else's money and calling it his. After that $900 was put into his account, $810 of it was loaned to another debtor. And after that $810 was loaned to that other debtor, $729 of it was loaned to somebody else, etc. So WHO HAS YOUR MONEY? And who does it belong to? You supposedly have it right there in your pocket, but loads of other people also have loads of your money in their accounts and in their pockets too!
No two people can have exclusive ownership over the same thing. The car that your parents own and let you drive is not yours to sell. Maybe you can have joint ownership of the car with your parents. But the car is not BOTH yours to sell AND your dad's to sell. And you can't drive it to Stanford at the same time that your dad's driving it to Berkeley. Fractional reserve banking is the practice of making money BOTH yours AND somebody else's. Suppose you were to rent a car from a car rental company, with the understanding that the car is yours to use until such and such date, and then you were to find out that the car is ALSO rented by another man with the understanding that it is ALSO HIS to use until the very same date. Wouldn't you feel ripped off? What word besides fraud can describe such a practice? Intentionally renting the same car to two different people at the same time is rightfully called fraud; but lending the same money to many different people is called bank lending.
In the good old days, when forcing people to answer for other people's malpractice wasn't smiled on, banks that borrowed and lent frivolously went under. Any time a bubble burst people would run to the banks, crowd around the tellers, and pull out all their money once they got to the window. Since only a small fraction of the money was in reserve, there wasn't enough of it to go around, and only those who got to the window first would get their money. You would be lucky if you were one of these. But if you weren't, you would find in the most sobering manner that what you thought was your money isn't there. And where'd it go? Into the pockets of those who got to the window before you did. Banks that kept too little money in reserve naturally went bankrupt. Those who call for more financial regulation correctly point out that bank runs wouldn't be a problem if banks weren't so careless about lending money. But the fundamental problem isn't that banks are borrowing and lending a lot of money; the problem is that banks are comitting fraud by giving the same money to different people and saying that it belongs to all of them at the same time. That's why -- SURPRISE! -- banks ran out of money when a lot of it was pulled out at once.
Back in those good old days, a bank could continue the fraud of fractional reserve banking only so long as the amount of money withdrawn remained below the reserve ratio (that is, so long as there wasn't a bank run). Today, however, a lovely mechanism has been set up to prevent a bank from going broke should there be any run, and so the fraud could be committed to a greater degree and for a much longer period of time, at the risk of individual depositors and the economy in general.
The Federal Reserve
When a bank starts running out of money and still needs to give more money out, it tries to get a loan from another bank. But banks can't lend any money to each other when they're all in the same predicament (and they typically are in the same predicament when they've all been running the same scam). Enter the Lender of Last Resort. WaMu doesn't have enough money to pay its depositors? No problem! The Great Lender will lend it as much money as it needs to meet its depositors' demands! Now WaMu has enough money to pay the depositors when they want their money back, and plenty left over to make more loans. And there's virtually no need to worry about the bank being unable to pay its debt to the Great Lender -- the loan was made at a very very VERY low interest rate, so the bank doesn't have to be prudish about the loans it makes to other debtors. With all this money, the bank is able to pay you your $1,000 should you for some reason demand it, the other guy his $900 should he for some reason want to borrow it, another guy his $810 should he for some reason want to borrow it, etc., all of this coming from the $1,000 you originally deposited. Since there's an unnaturally large amount of money rolling around, it's unnaturally easy to get a loan. Since it's unnaturally easy to get a loan, economic growth accelerates at an unnatural rate (and it's unnaturally easy to get loans for bad business ideas). This is the "stimulus" that Obama, Bernanke, et.al. sing about. Expand the monetary supply so that a lot of people get a head rush and buy a lot of stuff that they wouldn't buy if it weren't for a central bank propping up that fraudulent scheme called fractional reserve banking.
Central banking encourages runaway spending not just by private banks and private individuals, but also by government. When the government doesn't have enough money to fund its current programs, it borrows the needed amount from the Fed. The debt is passed on to future tax-payers, who are forced to pay these taxes that are levied onto them without any representation.
Besides propping up the fraud of fractional reserve banking and the unfair taxation of the young, central banking has another downside -- inflation. When the increase in the monetary supply is greater than the increase in goods, the value of the monetary unit (in our case the U.S. dollar) drops. You get too many dollars chasing too few loaves of bread. The $1,000 you put in your account four years ago is worth a lot less than it does now, even with accrued interest. You simply can't live off the money that you save, and any hope you had of climbing the socio-economic ladder is dimmer than it was before. Older people are unable to pay for their medicine, and poorer people can only pray that their wages rise fast enough to catch up with the rising cost of living.
Do note that there's nothing immoral about inflation per se. An alternative currency backed solely by silver (which would be a wonderful thing) would naturally devalue when a lot of silver is discovered at once. The supply of silver dollars would increase faster than would the supply of other goods, and so there would still be too many dollars chasing too few loaves of bread. The difference between this inflation and the inflation caused by the Fed, though, is that no one is forced to use the silver dollars, while everyone in the U.S. is forced to use the U.S. dollar. The people are forced to use a currency which the central planners can inflate whenever and however much they want.
Legal Tender
Competition and freedom of exchange are still popular catch-phrases in our semi-free market. But we all know that certain industries are not open to competition and free exchange. Banking is one of these industries. If we were allowed complete economic freedom, we would be free to demand repayment of our loans in the currencies that we want. But we aren't allowed such freedom. We are forced, by the state (which is a monopoly of violence), to accept payment of loans in Federal Reserve Notes. Government has effectively put a gun to lenders' and savers' heads and said "accept repayment in our currency, OR ELSE." Since we aren't allowed to demand repayment in any currency besides the U.S. dollar, we are bound to save and lend in the U.S. dollar. And since the U.S. dollar is the only currency available to us, there is no incentive for those in charge of maintaining it to regard its value. They can print as much of it as they want, without the fear that we would change all our money in the bank to a different currency.
Since the U.S. dollar is legal tender, we aren't allowed to print our own currencies to compete with it. And since there isn't any competition, we are subjected to a monetary unit whose value can drop as low as the Fed wants it to. This would not happen in a free market of currencies. No bank that constantly debases its currency would be able to last if it had to compete with banks that had more stable currencies.
Legal tender is the root of all economic woe. Without it there would be no cheap credit that results from the deliberate expansion of the money supply, and since bad ventures would be allowed to flop, there would be much less malinvestment. Without it there would be no Federal Reserve, since money can't be dumped into the market without depositors being forced to accept their savings in Federal Reserve notes. Without it the beast of fractional reserve banking would be tamed. Banks that reserve only a fraction of their deposits would have to compete with other banks that back all their demand deposits with 100% reserves, and accrue interest on savings through time deposits and not demand deposits.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
That Tyrant Lincoln
Lincoln’s War of Northern Aggression cannot be justified by the statist pipe dream that he “freed the slaves”. Lincoln did not end slavery. He did not abolish compulsory servitude. He universalized it when he instituted the draft. If we are to respect and uphold the individual’s right to own oneself, then we must respect this right in the means, and not just the ends. If a man should not be forced to pick cotton, then neither should he be forced to carry a gun. No talk of “sacrifice for liberty” can justify compulsory military service or civilian deaths. No one can abolish compulsory servitude by forcing a man to serve in the military. No one can abolish property in humans by shelling towns, leveling whole cities, and treating residents like commodities that can be spent. No one can rightfully force another to sacrifice. The individual should be allowed to choose whether to sacrifice, and which objects and to what degree to sacrifice. This is implied by the principle of Individual Sovereignty. Lincoln did not respect this principle. He compelled men to serve in the military and he ordered actions which resulted in numerous civilian deaths. For this he is not just a slave master, but a mass murderer.
Neither can Lincoln’s War of Northern Aggression be justified by any talk of “preserving the Union”. That very principle which demands the abolition of slavery (Individual Sovereignty) also demands the right to secede. If a man should be allowed to choose whether and for whom to work, then he should also be allowed to choose whether and by whom to be governed. If we do not wish to be ruled by the government over us, we should be allowed to declare ourselves independent of it without giving up our land or leaving the country. To vindicate “preserving the Union” is really to vindicate government’s claim to ownership of your property, your body, and your life. The Union is not some venerable institution for our emancipation; it is a machine for the subjugation of the individual. No one who speaks accurately of freedom can praise Lincoln’s war to preserve the Union.
Neither can Lincoln’s War of Northern Aggression be justified by any talk of “preserving the Union”. That very principle which demands the abolition of slavery (Individual Sovereignty) also demands the right to secede. If a man should be allowed to choose whether and for whom to work, then he should also be allowed to choose whether and by whom to be governed. If we do not wish to be ruled by the government over us, we should be allowed to declare ourselves independent of it without giving up our land or leaving the country. To vindicate “preserving the Union” is really to vindicate government’s claim to ownership of your property, your body, and your life. The Union is not some venerable institution for our emancipation; it is a machine for the subjugation of the individual. No one who speaks accurately of freedom can praise Lincoln’s war to preserve the Union.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
How Many Anarchists Does it Take to Screw in a Lightbulb?
This scenario came to me late Friday night, and at that time I imagined it to be a colorful portrayal of anarchism.
Q: How many anarchists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: They won't. No number of anarchists will act in concert to screw in a lightbulb. Of any given number of anarchists, at least half will question by what authority they are required to screw in the lightbulb. Some will refuse out of practicality (they just don't think they need a lightbulb there), others out of the mere desire to disobey any will other than one's own. At least one person will stand up and offer to screw it in by herself if the others pay her to, but she will get shouted down by people who question the authenticity of her anarchism and accuse her of trying to impose a system of exchange in order to profit off of others. A substantial number of them will wonder aloud whether the act of screwing in a lightbulb gives assent to the existence of government-created and government-sustained monopolies like power utilities, and then they will speculate on how the absence of a monopoly of violence would affect the provision of services like electricity and sewer. After a couple hours of lively discussion, they all will realize that the gas and electric bill is left unpaid for the same reasons the lightbulb is left unscrewed, and that since they don't have any power they may as well not screw in the lightbulb.
The above scenario is really a better portrayal of the divergence of anarchisms than a portrayal of an anarchist society. Rather than descend into a ghetto of slackers, a society based on self-ownership and free association would be marked by innovation and responsibility. I first gave anarchism a serious look after reading sections of Practical Anarchy by Stefan Molyneux. Molyneux's anarchism is based on the wholly-libertarian maxim of complete sovereignty of the individual in every aspect of his or her life, including complete economic freedom.
I was convinced of the moral necessity of individualist anarchism while reading "No Treason" by Lysander Spooner. (Hear a reading of No Treason #IV part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, etc., to part 20.) Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty is an easier and more zoomed-out read. The individualist argument for anarchism is basically this: (1) it is immoral to force a non-agressing individual to make any transaction against his or her will, (2) the state is that entity which by definition compels individuals regardless of their will to patronize its public services, and so (3) the very existence of the state is immoral.
Also see Hoppe, "On the Impossibility of Limited Government".
Btw, Happy Dead Tyrants' Day.
Q: How many anarchists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: They won't. No number of anarchists will act in concert to screw in a lightbulb. Of any given number of anarchists, at least half will question by what authority they are required to screw in the lightbulb. Some will refuse out of practicality (they just don't think they need a lightbulb there), others out of the mere desire to disobey any will other than one's own. At least one person will stand up and offer to screw it in by herself if the others pay her to, but she will get shouted down by people who question the authenticity of her anarchism and accuse her of trying to impose a system of exchange in order to profit off of others. A substantial number of them will wonder aloud whether the act of screwing in a lightbulb gives assent to the existence of government-created and government-sustained monopolies like power utilities, and then they will speculate on how the absence of a monopoly of violence would affect the provision of services like electricity and sewer. After a couple hours of lively discussion, they all will realize that the gas and electric bill is left unpaid for the same reasons the lightbulb is left unscrewed, and that since they don't have any power they may as well not screw in the lightbulb.
The above scenario is really a better portrayal of the divergence of anarchisms than a portrayal of an anarchist society. Rather than descend into a ghetto of slackers, a society based on self-ownership and free association would be marked by innovation and responsibility. I first gave anarchism a serious look after reading sections of Practical Anarchy by Stefan Molyneux. Molyneux's anarchism is based on the wholly-libertarian maxim of complete sovereignty of the individual in every aspect of his or her life, including complete economic freedom.
I was convinced of the moral necessity of individualist anarchism while reading "No Treason" by Lysander Spooner. (Hear a reading of No Treason #IV part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, etc., to part 20.) Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty is an easier and more zoomed-out read. The individualist argument for anarchism is basically this: (1) it is immoral to force a non-agressing individual to make any transaction against his or her will, (2) the state is that entity which by definition compels individuals regardless of their will to patronize its public services, and so (3) the very existence of the state is immoral.
Also see Hoppe, "On the Impossibility of Limited Government".
Btw, Happy Dead Tyrants' Day.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Parlor Organs
It's after midnight and I'm waiting to get tired enough to be able to fall asleep so I could wake up early tomorrow and go to the Community Legal Service in EPA where I'll be volunteering. Maybe I shouldn't be stimulating myself if I want to go to sleep, but whatever. I'll write something here anyway. I decided to do something different and write something recreational instead of ideological. After all, my ideology is all about amusement.
I've been recovering from my weekend galavant in SD, where I spent time with three of the people I love most. Out of random curiosity this afternoon I looked up "parlor organ" on youtube (my great uncle wrote about memories of Aunt Cese playing a parlor organ) and came across numerous videos of people playing their parlor organs, most often called reed organs, harmoniums, and pump organs. They're kinda like big harmonicas with keyboards and bellows that you have to pump with your feet, and at first glance they look just like upright pianos. They're not as versatile as electronic organs, but this might be the thing that attracts me to them. Reed organists seem to respect the instrument. They know its limitations, and they know what it can do, and so they play music that is most fit for that instrument. And it's music that I like. Toned-down, somber music which, if ever uplifting, is so only with a ray of hope. Old hymns and chorals are popular. Silly things could be played on them too, and that's okay. My favorite three so far are here, here, and here. My favorite version of "Abide With Me" is here. What's very difficult to do with a reed organ is play that blasphemous roar that cathedral organists seem to find aurally pleasing. That stuff that's like Liszt with all the pointless broken chords and pointless runs. And that noise in the cathedrals never sounds full and rich anyway. It sounds like a series of belches interspersed with drawn out trills. Reed organ music, on the other hand, is humble, rich, and comforting. It is music I would want to hear while on mushrooms. It sounds like a thick blanket around your shoulders, flickers of a silent horror film, and kisses from a cuddle buddy.
It has been speculated that the reed organ declined in popularity partly due to a lack of original composition for it. Though there may have been a lack of original composition for the instrument, it can't be said that the instrument has no niche. Any day-long browse on youtube can show that the reed organ is fit for a particular kind of music, that those who enjoy playing the instrument know what this kind of music is, and that this kind of music can be relished.
I've been recovering from my weekend galavant in SD, where I spent time with three of the people I love most. Out of random curiosity this afternoon I looked up "parlor organ" on youtube (my great uncle wrote about memories of Aunt Cese playing a parlor organ) and came across numerous videos of people playing their parlor organs, most often called reed organs, harmoniums, and pump organs. They're kinda like big harmonicas with keyboards and bellows that you have to pump with your feet, and at first glance they look just like upright pianos. They're not as versatile as electronic organs, but this might be the thing that attracts me to them. Reed organists seem to respect the instrument. They know its limitations, and they know what it can do, and so they play music that is most fit for that instrument. And it's music that I like. Toned-down, somber music which, if ever uplifting, is so only with a ray of hope. Old hymns and chorals are popular. Silly things could be played on them too, and that's okay. My favorite three so far are here, here, and here. My favorite version of "Abide With Me" is here. What's very difficult to do with a reed organ is play that blasphemous roar that cathedral organists seem to find aurally pleasing. That stuff that's like Liszt with all the pointless broken chords and pointless runs. And that noise in the cathedrals never sounds full and rich anyway. It sounds like a series of belches interspersed with drawn out trills. Reed organ music, on the other hand, is humble, rich, and comforting. It is music I would want to hear while on mushrooms. It sounds like a thick blanket around your shoulders, flickers of a silent horror film, and kisses from a cuddle buddy.
It has been speculated that the reed organ declined in popularity partly due to a lack of original composition for it. Though there may have been a lack of original composition for the instrument, it can't be said that the instrument has no niche. Any day-long browse on youtube can show that the reed organ is fit for a particular kind of music, that those who enjoy playing the instrument know what this kind of music is, and that this kind of music can be relished.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Antony Flew’s Deism, and Other Theologies
This note isn’t written to be my final verdict on the formerly-atheist philosopher Antony Flew. I haven’t yet read his last book (in fact, I haven’t read any of his books) and so I am not able to say for sure what I think about his conversion from atheism to deism. I can say that I have read a little ABOUT his book, and so I can give an opinion on his thoughts as expressed by someone other than him. If my impression of his deism is correct, then Flew makes the same mistake that many other theologians make in supposing God’s benevolence.
My criticism of Antony Flew’s deism refers to one paragraph of a review published by the Evangelical Philosophical Society. This paragraph reads:
In "Open to Omnipotence" (chapter 10), Flew summarizes that his case for God's existence centers on three philosophical items - the origin of the laws of nature, the organization of life, and the origin of life. What about the problem of evil? Flew states that this is a separate question, but he had two chief options - an Aristotelian God who does not interfere in the world or the free-will defense. He prefers the former, especially since he thinks the latter relies on special revelation (156). [End quote]
According to Flew and other deists, the problem of evil can be resolved by supposing that God only CREATED the world and that he does not control every single detail in it. Since God doesn’t control every single detail, he can’t be blamed for the evil that happens in the world. He does not oversee every single event, and so he cannot be responsible in the way that a negligent proprietor is liable. And he does not intervene to bring about pain and suffering, so he cannot be guilty in the way a criminal is. According to deists, God is a laissez-faire God, and so he is blameless and worthy of praise despite the existence of evil.
One criticism that might be leveled against Flew’s deism is that Flew’s laissez-faire defense of God fails, since Flew attributes to God qualities that are not laissez-faire in the least bit. Flew supposes that God is or can be omnipotent, and that he intervened not just to create the universe but also to create life (or at least that is my impression of what I read about his book). If God is or can be omnipotent, and if he intervened to create life in the world, then surely he must be able to intervene to create or prevent atrocities. I cannot put my name next to this criticism, since I don’t know exactly what Flew believes about how God could have created life. Many deists believe God laid out a kind of blueprint for life and everything else before he created the world, and then after the moment of creation stepped back and watched everything unfold. If that is Flew’s idea of how God created life, then Flew’s God would not have intervened in the world to create life, and the God imagined here would still be laissez-faire. In that case, the laissez-faire defense would still hold. But any view of creation which shows God acting in the world after the very first moment of the world’s existence presents an intervening God, and is not covered by the laissez-faire defense.
My criticism of Flew’s deism, and of conventional theology, can be introduced in a few questions. Why suppose that God is good? Why can’t God be a little bad? Or despicable? Why can’t the Creator of this world be seen as someone who gets stimulated by studying the effects of evil that he brings into the world? Why can’t God be a mad scientist, or a tyrant?
Classical deists suppose that the Creator must be a good God because the world he created is good. But why say that nature is good? From what I see, nature is a mixed bag. I’m glad I exist. I’m glad there are pleasures that I can enjoy. I’m distraught that I won’t live forever. I’m disgusted that the world progresses through a system that involves the expenditure of weaker organisms. I’m disgusted that many animals can’t live without killing and eating other animals. If that really is what God intended, then God designed a world that involves the premature and violent deaths of countless beings. Maybe God saw this blueprint as the necessary method to create human beings and to bring about the joy of being in communion with humans. Or maybe God saw it as the only way to get the thrill of a creative act. If that is the case, then God is a violent utilitarian who causes the violent deaths of numerous non-aggressors in order bring about some “greater good”. A God like this isn’t faultless. Intelligent, yes, but not faultless.
It is one thing to say that God exists. It is another to say that God is good, or that God cannot have committed actions that brought about the bad things. Do my parents exist? Yes. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my parents. But can you say that my parents are faultless? Of course not. The fact that a being exists is completely irrelevant when it comes to that being’s praiseworthiness.
I get the impression that most theologians try to justify the Creator because they want to justify the world. They want to be able to embrace the world in its entirety. They don’t want to stand back and point out parts of it that they detest. It’s okay to not embrace every aspect of a thing. I can say that I love my parents. But that doesn’t mean that I think they’re faultless. I can embrace them without condoning my dad’s almost physical addiction to erudite radio and television programming, or my mom’s complete inability to watch a movie. I don’t have to pretend that my dad ever spends a minute in the car not listening to KPFA or BBC news or KCBS or NPR, or that he has no itch to watch book talks and press conferences and Congressional Committee hearings on C-SPAN, or that his complete submersion in those things is justified as a necessary means to a just end. Just as I can love my parents while knowing that some things about them are ridiculous, so too can I love things about the world while knowing that parts of it are inherently flawed.
I also get the impression that when theologians finally do admit that the world is inherently flawed, they rummage about for something that they CAN say is perfect and benevolent, something that they CAN look at with awe and adoration and consider as their “source” or beginning. They desperately want something to identify with their own existence and call perfectly good, because they want to justify their own world. So they call God perfectly good, and insist that anything that isn’t good must not have been done by God. “September 11th? Couldn’t have been God! God is perfectly good! What kind of God would ordain planes filled with civilians to be slammed into office buildings at the busiest time of the workday?” This is like the Nazi Holocaust-denier exclaiming: “The Fuhrer couldn’t have done that! That’s despicable! No civilized leader would order the systematic slaughter of European Jews, fags, and Gypsies!” Or like the big-sparkly-eyed college student wearing those pathetic shirts emblazoned with the mottos “Hope” and “Change” saying: “Obama murder civilians in Afghanistan? Can’t be so! His Excellency LOVES brown-skinned impoverished children living in stone shacks in the mountains of south-central Asia! He would NEVER bomb civilian targets! Obama bought out by the state-capitalist elite? Not so! Obama stands for Change! Obama sign laws selling my generation into debt slavery? Never! Obama believes in equal opportunity and self-determination!”
Deism happens when a theologian looks at the implications of conventional theology and says: “Well THAT’s a mean kind of God. I don’t want to believe in THAT kind of God. I want to believe in a God who can’t be held responsible for the bad things in the world.” It’s like when the Holocaust-denier says “Well that’s a BAD Hitler. I don’t want to believe in a bad Hitler, I want to believe in a GOOD Hitler.” And when the hope-riddled college student says “I don’t want to believe in a Keynesian trickle-down Obama, I want to believe in an Obama who stands for Change.” Or when the all-American historian says: “I don’t want to believe in a Lincoln who took control of the printing press, imprisoned journalists and editors who spoke against him, completely did away with habeas corpus, put ‘problematic’ judges under house arrest, ignored the rulings of the Supreme Court, forced men by threat of imprisonment to join the army and fight in a war where whole cities were flattened and civilians randomly executed, and funded that war by inflating a currency that a whole nation was forced to accept. I want to believe in a kind and somber man who was born in a log cabin and who fought to free the slaves.”
Deism is denial. Rather than change one’s opinion of a being to accord with morality, it changes the very definition of that being to fit morality. WHAT IF God turns out to be something other than our Footsteps on the Beach and Lily of the Valley and In the Garden sun-drenched paintings show him as? If it is a fact that God does some horrendous things in the world, then we would all be fools to insist that God can’t possibly intervene to punish nations or do other harsh things. We would be living on the canvass of pretty paintings, denying that anything but soft glows and gentle curves exists.
My criticism of Antony Flew’s deism refers to one paragraph of a review published by the Evangelical Philosophical Society. This paragraph reads:
In "Open to Omnipotence" (chapter 10), Flew summarizes that his case for God's existence centers on three philosophical items - the origin of the laws of nature, the organization of life, and the origin of life. What about the problem of evil? Flew states that this is a separate question, but he had two chief options - an Aristotelian God who does not interfere in the world or the free-will defense. He prefers the former, especially since he thinks the latter relies on special revelation (156). [End quote]
According to Flew and other deists, the problem of evil can be resolved by supposing that God only CREATED the world and that he does not control every single detail in it. Since God doesn’t control every single detail, he can’t be blamed for the evil that happens in the world. He does not oversee every single event, and so he cannot be responsible in the way that a negligent proprietor is liable. And he does not intervene to bring about pain and suffering, so he cannot be guilty in the way a criminal is. According to deists, God is a laissez-faire God, and so he is blameless and worthy of praise despite the existence of evil.
One criticism that might be leveled against Flew’s deism is that Flew’s laissez-faire defense of God fails, since Flew attributes to God qualities that are not laissez-faire in the least bit. Flew supposes that God is or can be omnipotent, and that he intervened not just to create the universe but also to create life (or at least that is my impression of what I read about his book). If God is or can be omnipotent, and if he intervened to create life in the world, then surely he must be able to intervene to create or prevent atrocities. I cannot put my name next to this criticism, since I don’t know exactly what Flew believes about how God could have created life. Many deists believe God laid out a kind of blueprint for life and everything else before he created the world, and then after the moment of creation stepped back and watched everything unfold. If that is Flew’s idea of how God created life, then Flew’s God would not have intervened in the world to create life, and the God imagined here would still be laissez-faire. In that case, the laissez-faire defense would still hold. But any view of creation which shows God acting in the world after the very first moment of the world’s existence presents an intervening God, and is not covered by the laissez-faire defense.
My criticism of Flew’s deism, and of conventional theology, can be introduced in a few questions. Why suppose that God is good? Why can’t God be a little bad? Or despicable? Why can’t the Creator of this world be seen as someone who gets stimulated by studying the effects of evil that he brings into the world? Why can’t God be a mad scientist, or a tyrant?
Classical deists suppose that the Creator must be a good God because the world he created is good. But why say that nature is good? From what I see, nature is a mixed bag. I’m glad I exist. I’m glad there are pleasures that I can enjoy. I’m distraught that I won’t live forever. I’m disgusted that the world progresses through a system that involves the expenditure of weaker organisms. I’m disgusted that many animals can’t live without killing and eating other animals. If that really is what God intended, then God designed a world that involves the premature and violent deaths of countless beings. Maybe God saw this blueprint as the necessary method to create human beings and to bring about the joy of being in communion with humans. Or maybe God saw it as the only way to get the thrill of a creative act. If that is the case, then God is a violent utilitarian who causes the violent deaths of numerous non-aggressors in order bring about some “greater good”. A God like this isn’t faultless. Intelligent, yes, but not faultless.
It is one thing to say that God exists. It is another to say that God is good, or that God cannot have committed actions that brought about the bad things. Do my parents exist? Yes. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my parents. But can you say that my parents are faultless? Of course not. The fact that a being exists is completely irrelevant when it comes to that being’s praiseworthiness.
I get the impression that most theologians try to justify the Creator because they want to justify the world. They want to be able to embrace the world in its entirety. They don’t want to stand back and point out parts of it that they detest. It’s okay to not embrace every aspect of a thing. I can say that I love my parents. But that doesn’t mean that I think they’re faultless. I can embrace them without condoning my dad’s almost physical addiction to erudite radio and television programming, or my mom’s complete inability to watch a movie. I don’t have to pretend that my dad ever spends a minute in the car not listening to KPFA or BBC news or KCBS or NPR, or that he has no itch to watch book talks and press conferences and Congressional Committee hearings on C-SPAN, or that his complete submersion in those things is justified as a necessary means to a just end. Just as I can love my parents while knowing that some things about them are ridiculous, so too can I love things about the world while knowing that parts of it are inherently flawed.
I also get the impression that when theologians finally do admit that the world is inherently flawed, they rummage about for something that they CAN say is perfect and benevolent, something that they CAN look at with awe and adoration and consider as their “source” or beginning. They desperately want something to identify with their own existence and call perfectly good, because they want to justify their own world. So they call God perfectly good, and insist that anything that isn’t good must not have been done by God. “September 11th? Couldn’t have been God! God is perfectly good! What kind of God would ordain planes filled with civilians to be slammed into office buildings at the busiest time of the workday?” This is like the Nazi Holocaust-denier exclaiming: “The Fuhrer couldn’t have done that! That’s despicable! No civilized leader would order the systematic slaughter of European Jews, fags, and Gypsies!” Or like the big-sparkly-eyed college student wearing those pathetic shirts emblazoned with the mottos “Hope” and “Change” saying: “Obama murder civilians in Afghanistan? Can’t be so! His Excellency LOVES brown-skinned impoverished children living in stone shacks in the mountains of south-central Asia! He would NEVER bomb civilian targets! Obama bought out by the state-capitalist elite? Not so! Obama stands for Change! Obama sign laws selling my generation into debt slavery? Never! Obama believes in equal opportunity and self-determination!”
Deism happens when a theologian looks at the implications of conventional theology and says: “Well THAT’s a mean kind of God. I don’t want to believe in THAT kind of God. I want to believe in a God who can’t be held responsible for the bad things in the world.” It’s like when the Holocaust-denier says “Well that’s a BAD Hitler. I don’t want to believe in a bad Hitler, I want to believe in a GOOD Hitler.” And when the hope-riddled college student says “I don’t want to believe in a Keynesian trickle-down Obama, I want to believe in an Obama who stands for Change.” Or when the all-American historian says: “I don’t want to believe in a Lincoln who took control of the printing press, imprisoned journalists and editors who spoke against him, completely did away with habeas corpus, put ‘problematic’ judges under house arrest, ignored the rulings of the Supreme Court, forced men by threat of imprisonment to join the army and fight in a war where whole cities were flattened and civilians randomly executed, and funded that war by inflating a currency that a whole nation was forced to accept. I want to believe in a kind and somber man who was born in a log cabin and who fought to free the slaves.”
Deism is denial. Rather than change one’s opinion of a being to accord with morality, it changes the very definition of that being to fit morality. WHAT IF God turns out to be something other than our Footsteps on the Beach and Lily of the Valley and In the Garden sun-drenched paintings show him as? If it is a fact that God does some horrendous things in the world, then we would all be fools to insist that God can’t possibly intervene to punish nations or do other harsh things. We would be living on the canvass of pretty paintings, denying that anything but soft glows and gentle curves exists.
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About Me
- Isaiah
- I am a part-time philosopher and a former immigration paralegal with a BA in philosophy and a paralegal certificate from UC San Diego.