Nothing I will say here is novel, but some things that have been said many times before need to be said again and again. And unfortunately, I am too much of a coward to say them to the people nearest to me.
After I left my parents' church, my mom asked me if I'm saved. The easiest answer is yes, when I was four I asked Jesus into my heart, and thanks to eternal security I'm under the Blood no matter what I do. But that answer is misleading. If I really wanted to state my beliefs about salvation, I would have explained why I think the Evangelical view of salvation is - to put it politely - problematic, and - to put it bluntly - morally bankrupt.
In a nutshell, the Evangelical view of salvation is: (1) all humans inevitably commit sin, (2) the just penalty for any sin is eternity in hell fire, (3) Jesus paid the price for all sin by dying on the cross, but (4) no one is covered by that payment unless they somehow ask for that coverage.
I have no problem with (1). I am a firm believer in sin nature - not only of human beings, but of the biological order in general. My problem is with (2). It implies we can be owned by someone (or somethree?) else.
When you own something, you have the morally justifiable right to do with it as you please. Unless of course, you're renting or borrowing, in which case your ownership exists by the permission of the proprietor, who really owns it and has the ultimate right to do with it as he pleases (though the government likes to pretend that it is the ultimate owner of everything).
According to Evangelicalism, the pre-mortem individual is renting or borrowing himself from God, who ultimately and rightfully owns everything and everyone. Upon your death, immediate jurisdiction over you returns to God, who - according to Evangelicalism - may rightfully do to you whatever pleases Him. If it were God's pleasure that all the dead be sent to a holding facility where they have to recompense for their misdeeds as a condition for being released into paradise, then God could have designed things that way. But according to the Evangelical, He didn't. And He didn't need to.
The kind of justice that God chose is the condemnation of everyone who committed any sin to an eternity in hell fire. If you are under the Blood, or too young to talk, you are an exception. By default, everyone who is old enough to talk is condemned. Everyone who lives a completely normal and wholesome life without praying the Sinner's Prayer is condemned to an eternity in hell fire. Their completely normal and wholesome life included white lies, lustful thoughts, some unwarranted anger, etc., which were not covered by the Blood and which earn damnation. Even the boy whose only sin was to glance down his teacher's blouse when she bent over his desk is damned. If he dies before asking Jesus into his heart, he goes to hell - for looking down his teacher's blouse. According to the Evangelical, this is the policy that God chose to enact. And He has the right to choose this policy rather than another.
If God has a right to do to a soul one thing and not another, then He owns it. This amounts to property in humans. It's more extreme than a plantation owner deciding whether you'll pick cotton in the field or dust furniture in the house.
I've heard some people use Lockean slavery/punishment theory to justify God's right to damn souls. The Lockean theory is this: if A aggresses against B, then B has a degree of rights over A. If A makes an attempt on B's life, B has complete property rights over A, and may confine him indefinitely, put him through forced labor, or kill him. According to "Lockean Evangelicalism" (sorry I don't have a better term for it yet), God has rightful jurisdiction over human souls because humans aggress against God by sinning against Him. There are two big problems with this.
For one thing, the victim's rights over the aggressor are proportional to the severity of the aggression. You only have the right to do something drastic to somebody if they did or were going to do something drastic to you. It's very hard for my fallible human mind to imagine how an infinitely powerful, beautiful, majestic, everlasting and unchanging God can be harmed at all, much less be so drastically harmed by someone that He has the right to retaliate as drastically as damning them to an eternity in hell fire.
For another, what is and isn't aggression is completely up to God to decide, since Evangelicalism defines sin exactly as whatever offends God. If God commands that everyone's heads be covered with tea cozies while in church, and a guy's tea cozy falls off, then that man displeased God, and thereby aggressed against Him. At the moment the man's kippah fell off his head, the title to his soul transferred from him to God (if it wasn't already transferred). If God gains complete and ultimate ownership over people's souls by merely being offended by them, then this isn't any different from God completely and ultimately owning everybody in the first place.
There's no beating around the bush. Evangelical soteriology assumes a justification of slavery. It claims that God has a right to treat souls in the severest way imaginable, and that it is only by God's Grace (that is, His discretion) that some are spared such abuse. He has rights over you whether or not you give them, and the only thing you can do to be dealt with lightly is to perform such-n-such action that He demands, which - luckily for everyone - is a little prayer that can be recited in less than a minute. Too bad this prayer doesn't occur to everyone spontaneously.
All this would have been much shorter had I written "God doesn't exist, there is no heaven, and there is no hell." But that doesn't convey what I think is most important to say. Religion is at its core a matter of right. It is not a matter of fact. One of the reasons I rarely call myself an atheist is that those who do call themselves atheists spend so much time and energy talking about natural selection, laws of physics, and the scientific method, it's as if they would immediately become born-again Christians and faithfully attend fundamental Baptist churches if God reveals His existence to them. Atheists who spend all their time on Science vs. Supernatural ignore that there are moral issues to be addressed. My bone to pick with conventional Christians isn't God's supposed existence. It's God's supposed authority. And until we pick apart the issue of God's supposed right to do things to us, we leave open the idea that someone may rightfully do things to us against our consent.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Mischaracterizations of Anarchism
Recent news of Michael Badnarik's heart attack prompted both my best wishes for his speedy and complete recovery and some musings about common misperceptions about anarchism.
In a debate at Drexel University with Stefan Molyneux (I prefer the audio recording over the video, just cause the audio records more of the debate), Badnarik defended the existence of a minimal state on the grounds that we need recourse to defend ourselves and our property rights, among a few other things. He seemed to argue that without government there wouldn't be any shared notion of legitimate force or property or any social life whatsoever. Part of this is a misunderstanding of government, and some of it could have been that he was using the wrong words; but a lot of it is due to a misperception of anarchism that anarchists themselves are not guiltless in propagating. Below I'll go through some mischaracterizations that I hear almost every time I see someone react to anarchist ideas.
1. That anarchism demands everyone be hermits. No, anarchism does not demand that everyone wander off into the hills, build their own shacks, grow their own potatoes, and interact with other humans only for the purpose of procreating. Granted, some anarchists do that. And a few actually have espoused ideas similar to that. Some might have said we shouldn't even procreate. But as a set of political ideas, anarchism demands only that humans interact without violating each other's sovereignty; it does not condemn interaction outright. And if you think about it, anarchism is really pro-interaction. It condemns any threat or use of violence that prevents people from peacefully interacting with each other.
2. That anarchism demands non-resistance. It is true that if you are an all-out pacifist who believes that any force is morally reprehensible, then you have to be an anarchist. But anarchism as a set of political ideas does not condemn all force outright. What it condemns outright is the initiation of force, threat, or fraud. The anarchist's dogma is individual sovereignty (or at least, this is the individualist anarchist's dogma). Since you are entitled to remain whole against the intrusions of others onto your person and justly-acquired property, you have the right to use discriminate and proportionate force to maintain your control over what is yours. Granted, anarchists would condemn just about every modern war they could think of, and maybe every ancient war too, since almost every war involves the death and deprivation of noncombatants. But this is a far cry from "Thou shalt and may only persuade the rapist to stop raping thy daughter, and thou art a criminal if thou offend the dignity of the rapist by intervening in any way more physical than persuasion or distraction." This misunderstanding isn't helped much by the fact that many anti-war people who aren't practitioners of non-resistance still call themselves pacifists.
3. That anarchism means homemade bombs. This is a funny one, because libertarian anarchism can justify some acts that fit the dictionary definition of terrorism (and while we're on the dictionary definition, what is government but the organized use or threat of force against persons or their property to compel those persons or others to adhere to some politcal agenda?). You have the right to destroy the property of someone who actively aggresses against the property of others. The mere fact that the government bans it and calls it "terrorism" is irrelevant to whether you have a right to do it. And you have the right to kill people who are actively murdering others, or are presently making a living by murdering others. The mere fact that the government will most surely send you (or someone it confuses for you) to the gurney is irrelevant to whether you have the right to do it. I myself think that any violence that the establishment can put a spin on is very unwise, since it gives anarchism a bad name and provokes a retaliation that would further restrict liberty. But besides terrorism's imprudence, a lot of anarchist terrorism actually was illegitimate by libertarian anarchist standards. Some of Ted Kaczynski's projects caused the deaths of people who were flat out innocent, and it's very hard for me to imagine why Garfield deserved to die. If we look at anarchism as a set of ideas that demand the complete liberty of every individual over his or her own body and his or her own affairs, then a lot of "propaganda by the deed" doesn't even deserve to be called anarchist. It should instead be branded as the authoritarianism that it is.
4. That anarchism is anti-family. Well, it depends on what you call "family". If by "family" you mean a father's supposed right to beat his kids, lie to them to impel subservience, mutilate their bodies without their say-so, lock them in their rooms, and hunt them down and drag them back when they run away with express intent to not be under such authority, then yes - anarchism is very anti-family. But if by "family" you mean a father's right to pull his kid away from a hot stove, then no. Anarchists have a wide range of opinion on this, but those anarchists who have their ideological feet on the ground recognize that a parent has the right to restrict his or her very young child's movement in order to protect that kid from immanent harm. Parental authority becomes purely contractual, though, once the kid gets old enough to make his or her own decisions. What age that is is where all the disagreement happens.
5. That anarchism means debauchery. True, there are some anarchists that fervently exercise their right to wallow in their own vomit. But none of them would consider it an enforceable duty (unless, maybe, wallowing in one's own vomit were the prescribed restitution for some criminal wrongdoing, in which case I would still deny that it's enforceable). Most of the anarchists whose material I've viewed online (which I confess are overwhelmingly individualist anarchists) embrace some kind of egoist personal morality, where they abstain from any act they perceive to go against their rational self-interest. That would include unsupervised binge drinking, other kinds of substance abuse, unprotected sex, some other kinds of sexual promiscuity, and basically anything else that would likely have undesireable consequences. But that's a personal morality - it's about what you should and shouldn't do to yourself. It isn't about what you should and shouldn't do to others, which is primarily what anarchism is concerned with. All that anarchism demands regarding debauchery is that you let those enjoying it to continue enjoying it, and that you not force it onto those who don't want to partake. Whether you yourself should partake is an issue that anarchism as a set of political ideas just doesn't address.
6. That anarchism demands total chaos. Only if you march in the streets with revolutionary Marxists. Do read 1 and 3 again.
7. That anarchism is anti-religion. I am one of the few anarchists who readily admits that anarchism is a religion. It has its own scriptures, liturgy, prophets, and saints. Like any other religion, it has schisms between denominations. And like any other religion, it upholds a set of ideas which it supposes to be the Fundamentals on which everything else in that sphere must stand (yes, anarchists are fundamentalist libertarians). Saying that anarchism is anti-religion is like saying that apple pie is un-American. And there's no reason anarchists can't be bi-sect-ual. There are numerous Christian anarchists, there are some Buddhist anarchists, some anarchists find inspiration in the Tao Te Ching, a denomination of Hinduism was propagated in America by an anarchist missionary, there's at least one Muslim anarchist, the list could go on. So no - anarchism is not, never was, never will be, and cannot possibly be anti-religion. A noticeable number of anarchists, though, display anti-God sentiments which can be connected to their anti-authoritarian views. And there's nothing anti-religion about that.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Of Course God is a Jew...
The other day I posted as my Facebook status this mildly derisive note:
"Of course God is a Jew. How else would you explain Him choosing the Jews as the superior race? Surely, you don't think God's an American Evangelical Christian!"
After one member of the Christian Republican Party of Kentucky *liked* it, and a libertarian-conservative mourned that he knows "lots of people who actually really do", a friend of mine who watches Glenn Beck as fervently as I read LRC started a conversation which turned into a debate on Zionism, nationalism, and the state. Below is the transcript of those wall posts.
Post-Bush Neocon: Well if God is Jesus, and vis versa, than didn't God separate the line between Jews and Gentiles when He died on the cross for all of mankind?
Me: I'm not sure I know what you're trying to say here.
Post-Bush Neocon: Nothing.. just that while we always hear how Jews are the chosen people, is it wrong to say that is no longer the case since Jesus died for all of mankind, jew and gentile?
Sorry.. I know your comment was probably strictly meant for humor, but it was something that popped into my head anyways.
Me: No yeah, that's a noble way for a Christian to view it.
The comment was meant as a jab at Christians who use their religion to justify what amounts to Jewish supremacism.
Post-Bush Neocon: Ahhhhh....I don't know if I've ever met a Christian who viewed Jews as the supreme race. I can't speak for others, but for myself, I've always viewed them as God's original chosen people, but when Jesus died on the cross, that line of supremacy vanished. Maybe this is why Jews don't believe Jesus was the real Messiah?
However, if this is also in regards to the land that God promised his "chosen people", well if you believe scripture, than yes, the palestinians need to back off, as that land was meant for the Jews. And even if you don't believe that, well Britain owned the land anyways, and split it up between the Jews and Palestinians. Palestinians didn't like this, and started a war and allied with most of the middle east. Israel kicked their butt and everyone else, and kept the land they conquered. That alone gives them the right to defend what they deem as their land today.
Me: If you believe the Israelites' chosenness makes it okay for the State of Israel to run non-Jewish people off land that their families lived and worked on for decades, to bulldoze their houses and chop down their orchards, to divert water away from their fields and villages and towards new neighborhoods built exclusively for Jews, to build walls with checkpoints that the non-Jewish subjects can only pass with work permits that are conspicuously hard to get, to inflict embargos and steep tariffs that dry up the flow of goods into the non-Jewish territories, to set up blockades cutting off access to even basic nutrition, to put on military galavants that result in the deaths of countless non-Jewish men, women, and children, and in the face of all this subjugation of non-jews, to make Israeli citizenship infinitely easy for any Jew to get and much much harder for anyone else to get, then you use religion to justify Jewish supremacy. Not to mention whether you believe the Israelites' chosenness means Americans have to hand over their tax dollars to the State of Israel no matter how severely it abuses its non-Jewish subjects. I don't know whether chosenness actually does justify all those things - I'll leave that to be figured out by someone who actually believes in chosenness.
Post-Bush Neocon: I get what you're saying, but can you answer me this? Why should Palestinians be allowed any rights at all, being that they forfeited those rights when they lost in a war they started? I mean, it's land that the Jews defended and conquered fair and square (seriously, I mean, the Palestinians practically had the entire middle east allied with them, and Israel stood alone). Why shouldn't they have the right to do what's best for their people first? Isn't that what any state or country should do? Have THEIR people's interests first before all others? I mean, that's why you're against policing the world, right? Instead of policing, we should just focus our energy on ourselves and the many areas we need work, instead of wasting our resources on others. Isn't that your belief? Why should it be any different for Israel?
Me: Palestinians should be allowed rights because each of them is a distinct individual with natural sovereignty over him or herself. Whether "they" started the 1948 war is irrelevant. Let's be honest about that war - MY DAD was a toddler back then. Most of the people we're talking about weren't even conceived yet. They didn't forfeit their rights simply by having the same ethnic background and geographic origin as the soldiers who fought in a war that happened more than half a century ago (and if their rights are forfeited that way, then so are the rights of all today's Egyptians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Lebanese, and Syrians, since all 5 of those states fought for the Palestinians in that war). To treat today's Palestinians as if they did forfeit their rights that way is to treat people according to what group they're stuck in, and not according to their own merit. That sounds a lot like racism to me. Actually, no, in this case it *is* racism.
This is a problem with states in general. Yes, it is the very nature of every government to lump people into different groups and raise up one to dominate the other. This is one of the main reasons I'm an anarchist. There is no individual or group of individuals whose status entitles them to hold privileges over the bodies and property of others. Those rights that belong naturally to one rightfully belong naturally to everyone else. For government to act against one group out of the interests of another is to violate the law of equal liberty. I should say that I'm an American Firster only in rhetoric. True, I think U.S. tax dollars can be better spent at home than on foreign tyrannies; but I really think there shouldn't be taxes.
Post-Bush Neocon: Ok...well while I'm all for rights of the Individual, I believe certain rights are only to be given to citizens of a state. I say this because whether you like it or not, people only work well together in unity. It's why this multiculturism crap in the US is tearing us apart because you have people who aren't assimilating to the American culture, and want to change our way of living to some of the socialist third world crap they came from. So, the path to citizenship is a must, because you then weed out those who won't assimilate (not perfect, but no system is). I mean, if we all believed one system of government, and one world religion, and had the same family values, maybe you could pull your ideas off....But I gotta say, I'm a bit surprised on how Utopian your ideas sound.
So, perhaps you can elaborate for me? What do you consider as individual's rights when it comes to property? Should an illegal mexican that crosses our border and breaks our laws be entitled to buy land? Should an individual be entitled to free healthcare (certainly there are those that view that as a natural born right)? You see where I'm going with this? Better yet, do you believe at all in citizenship rights vs. individual rights, and if so, what would the differences between the two be?
Me: Before we get to my anarchism, let's put together some of the things you said. You think that even some of the most basic rights depend on membership in a state, and that people just don't have these rights if they aren't members. Would you go so far as saying that people don't even have the right to live if they aren't citizens?
You also said, in effect, that it's okay to kill children who were born on the wrong side of a fence, since by being born on that side of the fence they inherited their predecessors' guilt. You said that after initially denying knowledge of any Christians who believe in Jewish supremacy. I doubt you can explain how your belief in the Jewish State's supposed right to kill and rob non-Jews doesn't make you a Jewish supremacist.
You don't have to be an anarchist to believe in individual liberty. Anarchism is just the logical consequence of classical liberalism, and I don't expect all of my acquaintances to be anarchist political theorists. I do, however, expect all my acquaintances to believe that it's murder to kill people who aren't killing anyone else. Now, on to anarchism.
A free society would have no distinction between citizen and non-citizen. This doesn't mean government-provided healthcare for everyone. Like the Leftists, you confuse positive and negative rights. Positive rights are rights to force other people who haven't aggressed against you to do things for you or give things to you. Those generally don't exist. Negative rights are rights to be left alone - your rights to not be killed, beaten, kidnapped, stolen from, etc. So when I say your rights don't depend on citizenship, I'm not saying that illegal immigrants are entitled to every government service that citizens and legal residents get. No one's entitled to profit off theft. I'm only saying that your rights to life, liberty, and property shouldn't depend on which side of a fence you were born on. When you say that people should go through some special procedure for government to not have the license to kidnap them, seize their property, and throw them out of the country, you're saying people's right to be left alone doesn't naturally exist and instead has to be bought.
If you want to read more on governance based on individual rights, here's a link to loads of essays. http://libertariannation.org/b/bibhome.htm
"Of course God is a Jew. How else would you explain Him choosing the Jews as the superior race? Surely, you don't think God's an American Evangelical Christian!"
After one member of the Christian Republican Party of Kentucky *liked* it, and a libertarian-conservative mourned that he knows "lots of people who actually really do", a friend of mine who watches Glenn Beck as fervently as I read LRC started a conversation which turned into a debate on Zionism, nationalism, and the state. Below is the transcript of those wall posts.
Post-Bush Neocon: Well if God is Jesus, and vis versa, than didn't God separate the line between Jews and Gentiles when He died on the cross for all of mankind?
Me: I'm not sure I know what you're trying to say here.
Post-Bush Neocon: Nothing.. just that while we always hear how Jews are the chosen people, is it wrong to say that is no longer the case since Jesus died for all of mankind, jew and gentile?
Sorry.. I know your comment was probably strictly meant for humor, but it was something that popped into my head anyways.
Me: No yeah, that's a noble way for a Christian to view it.
The comment was meant as a jab at Christians who use their religion to justify what amounts to Jewish supremacism.
Post-Bush Neocon: Ahhhhh....I don't know if I've ever met a Christian who viewed Jews as the supreme race. I can't speak for others, but for myself, I've always viewed them as God's original chosen people, but when Jesus died on the cross, that line of supremacy vanished. Maybe this is why Jews don't believe Jesus was the real Messiah?
However, if this is also in regards to the land that God promised his "chosen people", well if you believe scripture, than yes, the palestinians need to back off, as that land was meant for the Jews. And even if you don't believe that, well Britain owned the land anyways, and split it up between the Jews and Palestinians. Palestinians didn't like this, and started a war and allied with most of the middle east. Israel kicked their butt and everyone else, and kept the land they conquered. That alone gives them the right to defend what they deem as their land today.
Me: If you believe the Israelites' chosenness makes it okay for the State of Israel to run non-Jewish people off land that their families lived and worked on for decades, to bulldoze their houses and chop down their orchards, to divert water away from their fields and villages and towards new neighborhoods built exclusively for Jews, to build walls with checkpoints that the non-Jewish subjects can only pass with work permits that are conspicuously hard to get, to inflict embargos and steep tariffs that dry up the flow of goods into the non-Jewish territories, to set up blockades cutting off access to even basic nutrition, to put on military galavants that result in the deaths of countless non-Jewish men, women, and children, and in the face of all this subjugation of non-jews, to make Israeli citizenship infinitely easy for any Jew to get and much much harder for anyone else to get, then you use religion to justify Jewish supremacy. Not to mention whether you believe the Israelites' chosenness means Americans have to hand over their tax dollars to the State of Israel no matter how severely it abuses its non-Jewish subjects. I don't know whether chosenness actually does justify all those things - I'll leave that to be figured out by someone who actually believes in chosenness.
Post-Bush Neocon: I get what you're saying, but can you answer me this? Why should Palestinians be allowed any rights at all, being that they forfeited those rights when they lost in a war they started? I mean, it's land that the Jews defended and conquered fair and square (seriously, I mean, the Palestinians practically had the entire middle east allied with them, and Israel stood alone). Why shouldn't they have the right to do what's best for their people first? Isn't that what any state or country should do? Have THEIR people's interests first before all others? I mean, that's why you're against policing the world, right? Instead of policing, we should just focus our energy on ourselves and the many areas we need work, instead of wasting our resources on others. Isn't that your belief? Why should it be any different for Israel?
Me: Palestinians should be allowed rights because each of them is a distinct individual with natural sovereignty over him or herself. Whether "they" started the 1948 war is irrelevant. Let's be honest about that war - MY DAD was a toddler back then. Most of the people we're talking about weren't even conceived yet. They didn't forfeit their rights simply by having the same ethnic background and geographic origin as the soldiers who fought in a war that happened more than half a century ago (and if their rights are forfeited that way, then so are the rights of all today's Egyptians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Lebanese, and Syrians, since all 5 of those states fought for the Palestinians in that war). To treat today's Palestinians as if they did forfeit their rights that way is to treat people according to what group they're stuck in, and not according to their own merit. That sounds a lot like racism to me. Actually, no, in this case it *is* racism.
This is a problem with states in general. Yes, it is the very nature of every government to lump people into different groups and raise up one to dominate the other. This is one of the main reasons I'm an anarchist. There is no individual or group of individuals whose status entitles them to hold privileges over the bodies and property of others. Those rights that belong naturally to one rightfully belong naturally to everyone else. For government to act against one group out of the interests of another is to violate the law of equal liberty. I should say that I'm an American Firster only in rhetoric. True, I think U.S. tax dollars can be better spent at home than on foreign tyrannies; but I really think there shouldn't be taxes.
Post-Bush Neocon: Ok...well while I'm all for rights of the Individual, I believe certain rights are only to be given to citizens of a state. I say this because whether you like it or not, people only work well together in unity. It's why this multiculturism crap in the US is tearing us apart because you have people who aren't assimilating to the American culture, and want to change our way of living to some of the socialist third world crap they came from. So, the path to citizenship is a must, because you then weed out those who won't assimilate (not perfect, but no system is). I mean, if we all believed one system of government, and one world religion, and had the same family values, maybe you could pull your ideas off....But I gotta say, I'm a bit surprised on how Utopian your ideas sound.
So, perhaps you can elaborate for me? What do you consider as individual's rights when it comes to property? Should an illegal mexican that crosses our border and breaks our laws be entitled to buy land? Should an individual be entitled to free healthcare (certainly there are those that view that as a natural born right)? You see where I'm going with this? Better yet, do you believe at all in citizenship rights vs. individual rights, and if so, what would the differences between the two be?
Me: Before we get to my anarchism, let's put together some of the things you said. You think that even some of the most basic rights depend on membership in a state, and that people just don't have these rights if they aren't members. Would you go so far as saying that people don't even have the right to live if they aren't citizens?
You also said, in effect, that it's okay to kill children who were born on the wrong side of a fence, since by being born on that side of the fence they inherited their predecessors' guilt. You said that after initially denying knowledge of any Christians who believe in Jewish supremacy. I doubt you can explain how your belief in the Jewish State's supposed right to kill and rob non-Jews doesn't make you a Jewish supremacist.
You don't have to be an anarchist to believe in individual liberty. Anarchism is just the logical consequence of classical liberalism, and I don't expect all of my acquaintances to be anarchist political theorists. I do, however, expect all my acquaintances to believe that it's murder to kill people who aren't killing anyone else. Now, on to anarchism.
A free society would have no distinction between citizen and non-citizen. This doesn't mean government-provided healthcare for everyone. Like the Leftists, you confuse positive and negative rights. Positive rights are rights to force other people who haven't aggressed against you to do things for you or give things to you. Those generally don't exist. Negative rights are rights to be left alone - your rights to not be killed, beaten, kidnapped, stolen from, etc. So when I say your rights don't depend on citizenship, I'm not saying that illegal immigrants are entitled to every government service that citizens and legal residents get. No one's entitled to profit off theft. I'm only saying that your rights to life, liberty, and property shouldn't depend on which side of a fence you were born on. When you say that people should go through some special procedure for government to not have the license to kidnap them, seize their property, and throw them out of the country, you're saying people's right to be left alone doesn't naturally exist and instead has to be bought.
If you want to read more on governance based on individual rights, here's a link to loads of essays. http://libertariannation.org/b/bibhome.htm
Monday, November 23, 2009
What I think of Metal Coins
It's not that my dad hates Asians. He just thinks there's a scientific reason Asian houses keep getting burgled - everyone knows they keep precious objects at home.
This is why I'm very reluctant to get buttloads of gold and silver coins. Representing that much value with an object that small and that easy to loose would make me go crazy - Treasure of the Sierra Madre-type crazy. Add to that my inborn love for anything shiny and diskoid, and you get a real-life Shylock.
My dad has a friend who likes to give me advice whenever he's around, and once he gave me advice on how to store my hard assets. I'm to get a safe that's so heavy it's immobile, and if I can't dish out enough money for that I'm to find a discrete place in the back yard where I can burry my gold watchs, necklaces, and coins.
This must be one of the reasons "right"-libertarians are uber-gun-lovers. God forbid a common burglar stumble upon half their life savings. I'm not saying that fecetiously. I sincerely would feel heartache for anyone who lost their booty to a thief.
Isn't this what banks are supposed to be for in the first place? You'd think the market demand for secure places to keep precious objects would produce a lucrative way to delegate the safekeeping of my metals. But alas, we are screwed yet again.
If I get a deposit box in a bank to keep my coins in, I'd basically be renting storage with armed guards. My coins won't get much more valuable than inflation would make them, since I won't be making interest off of them. Paying a regular fee while not earning interest = loss.
Thanks to legal tender, you can't bank in gold. If you make a loan in gold, your debtor's only obliged to pay you back in that inflationary currency we're all trying to cushion ourselves against, and you're obliged to accept it. Sure, you can save all the gold you want; you just can't earn the interest on it to pay the cost of someone else keeping it safe.
Now, since you can't bank in gold, you can't use it as a monetary unit. If the coin is to be money, you have to be able to buy little things with it. Unless you can make a silver coin small enough to worth $1.50, you'll have to be able to cary receipts that represent that small amount of metal. And since no one banks in gold, those receipts don't exist.
If you can't lend in it and you can't buy in it, well then why think of it as an alternative currency? Maybe soon we'll see the emergence of a (probably black market) bank where people earn interest in metal off the loans they make in metal. Or maybe it already exists and I just haven't heard of it yet. If you know of it, or if you can convince me that keeping metal in a deposit box can increase the "real" value of my stuff, please tell me cause I really want to know.
And besides - I have no income and I'm paying off my student debt. I can't be buying metal when Wachovia owns my soul. Gold and silver coins' virtue is their ability to preserve a general amount of wealth over a long period of time, and due to the present circumstances my mind's set on the very opposite of that.
This is why I'm very reluctant to get buttloads of gold and silver coins. Representing that much value with an object that small and that easy to loose would make me go crazy - Treasure of the Sierra Madre-type crazy. Add to that my inborn love for anything shiny and diskoid, and you get a real-life Shylock.
My dad has a friend who likes to give me advice whenever he's around, and once he gave me advice on how to store my hard assets. I'm to get a safe that's so heavy it's immobile, and if I can't dish out enough money for that I'm to find a discrete place in the back yard where I can burry my gold watchs, necklaces, and coins.
This must be one of the reasons "right"-libertarians are uber-gun-lovers. God forbid a common burglar stumble upon half their life savings. I'm not saying that fecetiously. I sincerely would feel heartache for anyone who lost their booty to a thief.
Isn't this what banks are supposed to be for in the first place? You'd think the market demand for secure places to keep precious objects would produce a lucrative way to delegate the safekeeping of my metals. But alas, we are screwed yet again.
If I get a deposit box in a bank to keep my coins in, I'd basically be renting storage with armed guards. My coins won't get much more valuable than inflation would make them, since I won't be making interest off of them. Paying a regular fee while not earning interest = loss.
Thanks to legal tender, you can't bank in gold. If you make a loan in gold, your debtor's only obliged to pay you back in that inflationary currency we're all trying to cushion ourselves against, and you're obliged to accept it. Sure, you can save all the gold you want; you just can't earn the interest on it to pay the cost of someone else keeping it safe.
Now, since you can't bank in gold, you can't use it as a monetary unit. If the coin is to be money, you have to be able to buy little things with it. Unless you can make a silver coin small enough to worth $1.50, you'll have to be able to cary receipts that represent that small amount of metal. And since no one banks in gold, those receipts don't exist.
If you can't lend in it and you can't buy in it, well then why think of it as an alternative currency? Maybe soon we'll see the emergence of a (probably black market) bank where people earn interest in metal off the loans they make in metal. Or maybe it already exists and I just haven't heard of it yet. If you know of it, or if you can convince me that keeping metal in a deposit box can increase the "real" value of my stuff, please tell me cause I really want to know.
And besides - I have no income and I'm paying off my student debt. I can't be buying metal when Wachovia owns my soul. Gold and silver coins' virtue is their ability to preserve a general amount of wealth over a long period of time, and due to the present circumstances my mind's set on the very opposite of that.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, R.I.P.
Roger Roots's essay at LRC shows how the American "Justice" system didn't work out perfectly for the Rosenbergs. Ethel might have been completely innocent. The evidence incriminating her was perjured - in the trial, witnesses against her said that she typed up notes on goings-on in Los Alamos, but at the grand jury hearing one of the witnesses admitted to typing up those notes herself. Had the transcripts for the grand jury hearing been openly available, the testimony against Ethel would have been noticed as bad testimony. But alas, jury transcripts are secret because we have to respect "jury secrecy", which - believe it or not - used to exist to protect the jury against undue influence from the prosecutors. We weren't able to learn all of the truth until the transcripts were released just now, more than 50 years after the trial (and, needless to say, too late to save the Rosenbergs).
Now, even if Ethel did write up those notes, and even if the information Julius conveyed to the Russians actually were designs for the A-bomb, the trial and execution still seems completely unjust. I don't believe in capital punishment, but even if it is justifiable to kill murderers confined after the act, what are we left with? A right to kill people who murdered in the past. If no one was murdered, there is no murder to punish, and an execution is totally uncalled for.
How many Americans died from a Soviet nuclear attack? Zero. So how many Americans did the Rosenbergs murder by conveying information on the A-bomb to the Soviets? Zero.
There is a phrase that used to be quite important in the American legal system, which roughly means "Show me the body."* Now it is hard to show a cadavre that's been nuked, but obviously no one here got nuked. Had our courts had a diligent interpretation of that phrase "show me the body", the Rosenbergs might not have been executed for a crime that resulted in no one's death.
________________________________________
*Actually, the "body" referred to in the phrase habeas corpus is the living body of the petitioning prisoner, not the dead body of the victim. I'm just being poetic here.
Now, even if Ethel did write up those notes, and even if the information Julius conveyed to the Russians actually were designs for the A-bomb, the trial and execution still seems completely unjust. I don't believe in capital punishment, but even if it is justifiable to kill murderers confined after the act, what are we left with? A right to kill people who murdered in the past. If no one was murdered, there is no murder to punish, and an execution is totally uncalled for.
How many Americans died from a Soviet nuclear attack? Zero. So how many Americans did the Rosenbergs murder by conveying information on the A-bomb to the Soviets? Zero.
There is a phrase that used to be quite important in the American legal system, which roughly means "Show me the body."* Now it is hard to show a cadavre that's been nuked, but obviously no one here got nuked. Had our courts had a diligent interpretation of that phrase "show me the body", the Rosenbergs might not have been executed for a crime that resulted in no one's death.
________________________________________
*Actually, the "body" referred to in the phrase habeas corpus is the living body of the petitioning prisoner, not the dead body of the victim. I'm just being poetic here.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Non-Theistic Religions aren't necessarily Atheist Religions
A theistic religion is a religion that gives center stage to something or someone we can call "God". The stage might be the role of Creator or Sustainer or Most Intimate Chum (or it might be all of those) but whatever the role is, it's the most important one. And God, however you define it, is going to occupy that role.
A non-theistic religion is a religion that does not give center stage to anyone we can call "God". This doesn't mean, though, that the believers reject belief in God and all gods. It just means that non-physical beings don't take center stage.
Let's look at a list of non-theistic religions. There's Buddhism, Jainism, Daoism, Confucianism, a few others that I won't list here, and others that I don't remember. Followers of each of the four that I list have accepted the existence of at least ghosts. Both Buddhism and Jainism accept the existence of pretty much all Hindu gods.
If you go to the Jain temple in Milpitas, you'll see a shrine to Dhurga and a couple other Hindu gods. This isn't a belief in a symbolic god; it's belief in actual beings who watch over earthly affairs and intervene to protect the temples and the people who worship in them. Jains wouldn't reject the existence of Jesus or God, either. They just think, as do many Buddhists, that every single soul is subject to Samsara - that is, being reborn and treated according to how ethical you act. The Jewish God has yet to die, and when He does, he will be reborn into a position that reflects how justly he ruled as God. He may have to live hundreds, or thousands, or millions more times before he can attain moksha.
The ones who get most of the adoration in a Jain temple are a set of 24 ancient religious leaders who attained moksha and now do absolutely nothing but sit blissfully and peacefully (that's what you do in Nirvana). Worshipping them is more like honoring someone for adhering to a very strict ethical path, than worshipping any kind of God or god - you don't get favors from or have any personal relationship with these ones. We can say that it's really the path itself that's being worshipped. Center stage, then, isn't really occupied by anyone.
But though no God or gods take center stage in Jainism, Jainism can't be called atheist according to today's meaning of the word. Atheists, as understood today, reject all supra-empirical reality - if you can't prove it, they don't believe it. Jains and most Buddhists, though, believe in supraempirical reality.
For one thing, Jains believe that the souls of their 24 Tirthankaras are sitting peacefully in Nirvana. That is just as much a belief in the "superantural" (I don't like using that word) as the belief that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father. (Buddhists don't believe that Buddha exists, because if he is Buddha then he attained Nirvana, and Buddha himself defined Nirvana as the annihilation of the self.)
Also, Jains (and most Buddhists too) believe that each one of us who isn't going to attain moksha in this life is going to be reborn in a future life. This is just as supra-empirical as the belief that those who are saved go to heaven after they die. There's no way we can possibly prove that any one of us was someone else in a past life. And so, an atheist would reject belief in reincarnation for the same reason he would reject belief in heaven and hell.
To be a properly atheist religion, the belief system can't have any room for any thing whose existence can't be proven. God, Nirvana, Karma (as understood by Jains, which is as heavy dust particles that cling to your soul when you sin and literally weigh you down so that you're reborn as a lower life form), and rebirth all have to go out the window for the religion to be an atheist religion.
Three religions immediately come to mind when I think of atheist religions: Objectivism, LaVeyan Satanism (which can be described as Objectivism with robes and candles), and Marxism. All three of these reject God and all supernatural phenomena. Each one of them is a religion because each one of them is dogmatic - they're just not dogmatic about God (or rather, they're dogmatic about him not existing).
There are other atheist religions. There's atheist Judaism and atheist Christianity, and if it hasn't already come about, sooner or later there's going to be atheist Islam. There used to be an all-out atheist school of Hinduism called Carvaka, and from what I see there's at least one person today who identifies with that school. If there are others who share their Hindu and atheist beliefs with that blogger, then Carvaka is risen from the dead.
A non-theistic religion is a religion that does not give center stage to anyone we can call "God". This doesn't mean, though, that the believers reject belief in God and all gods. It just means that non-physical beings don't take center stage.
Let's look at a list of non-theistic religions. There's Buddhism, Jainism, Daoism, Confucianism, a few others that I won't list here, and others that I don't remember. Followers of each of the four that I list have accepted the existence of at least ghosts. Both Buddhism and Jainism accept the existence of pretty much all Hindu gods.
If you go to the Jain temple in Milpitas, you'll see a shrine to Dhurga and a couple other Hindu gods. This isn't a belief in a symbolic god; it's belief in actual beings who watch over earthly affairs and intervene to protect the temples and the people who worship in them. Jains wouldn't reject the existence of Jesus or God, either. They just think, as do many Buddhists, that every single soul is subject to Samsara - that is, being reborn and treated according to how ethical you act. The Jewish God has yet to die, and when He does, he will be reborn into a position that reflects how justly he ruled as God. He may have to live hundreds, or thousands, or millions more times before he can attain moksha.
The ones who get most of the adoration in a Jain temple are a set of 24 ancient religious leaders who attained moksha and now do absolutely nothing but sit blissfully and peacefully (that's what you do in Nirvana). Worshipping them is more like honoring someone for adhering to a very strict ethical path, than worshipping any kind of God or god - you don't get favors from or have any personal relationship with these ones. We can say that it's really the path itself that's being worshipped. Center stage, then, isn't really occupied by anyone.
But though no God or gods take center stage in Jainism, Jainism can't be called atheist according to today's meaning of the word. Atheists, as understood today, reject all supra-empirical reality - if you can't prove it, they don't believe it. Jains and most Buddhists, though, believe in supraempirical reality.
For one thing, Jains believe that the souls of their 24 Tirthankaras are sitting peacefully in Nirvana. That is just as much a belief in the "superantural" (I don't like using that word) as the belief that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father. (Buddhists don't believe that Buddha exists, because if he is Buddha then he attained Nirvana, and Buddha himself defined Nirvana as the annihilation of the self.)
Also, Jains (and most Buddhists too) believe that each one of us who isn't going to attain moksha in this life is going to be reborn in a future life. This is just as supra-empirical as the belief that those who are saved go to heaven after they die. There's no way we can possibly prove that any one of us was someone else in a past life. And so, an atheist would reject belief in reincarnation for the same reason he would reject belief in heaven and hell.
To be a properly atheist religion, the belief system can't have any room for any thing whose existence can't be proven. God, Nirvana, Karma (as understood by Jains, which is as heavy dust particles that cling to your soul when you sin and literally weigh you down so that you're reborn as a lower life form), and rebirth all have to go out the window for the religion to be an atheist religion.
Three religions immediately come to mind when I think of atheist religions: Objectivism, LaVeyan Satanism (which can be described as Objectivism with robes and candles), and Marxism. All three of these reject God and all supernatural phenomena. Each one of them is a religion because each one of them is dogmatic - they're just not dogmatic about God (or rather, they're dogmatic about him not existing).
There are other atheist religions. There's atheist Judaism and atheist Christianity, and if it hasn't already come about, sooner or later there's going to be atheist Islam. There used to be an all-out atheist school of Hinduism called Carvaka, and from what I see there's at least one person today who identifies with that school. If there are others who share their Hindu and atheist beliefs with that blogger, then Carvaka is risen from the dead.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
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.