Sunday, June 17, 2001
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So far we have discussions of politics and the theory of the state:
Politics and the State
- Tim Loeb on regulation and the Two Parties
- Richard Sherbourne asks about Imperium
- David Hecht on the uses of the State
- Mike Juergens on fragmentation of power
- Robert Bruce Thompson on Libertarianism
- Mark Thompson on regulations
- Harry Erwin on Imperial Perquisites
- R Dobbins replies, hates Van Gogh, and condemns us as a nation of whiners
- Mr. Erwin adds:
- Mark Gosdin on Oklahoma and the fragmentation of power.
- Jim Dodd on centralization, and must things get worse?
- Trent Telenko on bombing Iraq and Georgie Ann Geyer's column
- Steve Hastings on tent sizes: what is a libertarian?
- Jessica Mulligan with a cynical view of Iraq bombing
- Steve Schaper asks about Federalism and the 14th
- Scott Kitterman on intervention in Kosovo and Bosnia
- Mike Juergens on self government
- R Dobbins on human nature
- Jones on flaws in sectionalism
- Dobbins asks me about Republicans and Education
- Richard Martin warns me against being a fool
- Mr. Dobbins asks for my philosophical autobiography
- Talin asks was Marx right?
- Mr. Juergens replies: on eschatology and gnosticism
- And Mr. Juergens responds to my small empennage...
Dear Jerry:
Your recent woes with the power management "features" of your machines leads nicely into a short rant on regulation, Democrats versus Republicans, and why the best regulation is the least regulation. Basically, as you note, power management doesn't work awfully well, and the power saved is negligible. Another prime example of this sort of idiocy is the "water saver" toilets which are now, by law, the only kind you can purchase new in the US. Three different plumbers in two states have assured me that most people are unhappy with these items, flush more than once to compensate, and thus use MORE water than if they had the regular "water-wasting" fixture installed.
Democrats want to save us from ourselves, manage our behavior, and "save" our resources... the power management "features" in computers are direct outgrowths of the Jimmy Carter administration and all the regulations passed during those (phony) "energy crisis" days.
The Republican approach is 180 degrees different: we say, "find more!" Proven energy reserves today are three times what they were in the 70's, I've read. Oil drilling and extraction technology and efficiency has increased many fold, spurred by greater demand and (until lately) better pricing. The free market works, and civilization advances this way.
End of rant. What I really wrote to say is that I've ordered a new book, yet to be released, on building your own PC. According to the blurb it details BOTH a Slot 1 and a Socket 7 build, and hopefully offers some analysis of the plusses and minuses of each system. I'll let you know more when I know more.
Happy New Year!
All the best--
Tim Loeb
PS: Any news on the truck front???
I wish it were that simple, but in my experience we have The Stupid Party and the Nanny Party. Democrats want to run everything and everyone and in the extreme believe, as some did, that their being in charge is so important that they are justified in using "any means necessary" as with the odd fund raising practices Carville advocated for the 1996 election. The Republicans on the other hand say they want deregulation and devolution to smaller government, then go ahead and invent Americans With Disabilities, OSHA, and a flood of intrusions; often serve as tax collectors for the Democrats; and when they do get in seem more concerned with tax breaks for ADM and general corporate welfare schemes than anything else. They're also good at shooting themselves in the shins and thighs, foot shots being too easy.
I say this having been a Republican Party county chairman in 1964 and being more or less affiliated with the Republican Party ever since.
If I could start a political party it would enforce the Voting Rights Act and otherwise leave nearly everything except foreign policy to the states. Abortion? Leave it to the states. Louisiana and Maryland would forbid it, Missouri would regulate it, California would make it compulsory, and most people would then live under laws to which they had consented. Consent of the governed was Jefferson's argument for the derivation of just power of government, and it is certainly a good one; but to have consent of the governed on all but a few issues, you need to make the scope of government as small as possible.
But so far as I can see, both parties really want to make Washington the Imperial City which runs everyone's lives, and if the Republicans are in any hurry to get those stupid "flush twice or endure the consequences" toilets out of out lives I haven't noticed. Demonrats may create silly rules, but unless there's something in it for big corporations the Republidiots don't seem to do anything about repealing them, nor about cutting taxes either.
The other problem is that the best people don't want to govern. Republicans find government distasteful, meaning that the best who do share the Republican philosophy don't want to be in government. The result is what John Podhoretz said about the Bush White House: the Bushies didn't have ideologies, they had mortgages. With Democrats you get people who genuinely think it is a Good Thing to mind other people's business, and who think that is so important that almost anything they do is justified so they can get the power to do it. Then of course there are simple crooks in both major parties.
I would marginally rather have Republicans, but I'd really rather have neither, and I suspect that the Republican Party of today is much like the Whig Party in the period prior to the Civil War.
I'm still looking for the right truck, but I find I am working on my fiction more and worrying about replacing Bronc less. When I get a book done I will just go buy something.
==
A few comments:
1. This is a good idea,
2. The Tim Loeb letter and your reply tell us exactly why Hillary Clinton is a much better Democrat than her hubby (see her proposed medical care reform act if you need more proof).
3. I hate to quibble, but I think empiracally that the free market had little to do w/ the increase in demonstrated oil reserves, unless one counts the elimination of the USSR as a product of the free market. Seems to me that Caspian oil (a broad term) which is now exploitable thanks to RR, George, &; Bill is the largest part of the increase.
4. The real problem with obtaining consent of the governed for a minimalist set of governances is that subsets of the governed have such radically different desires for what the set should consist of. Non CC Republicans probably would include full flow toilets. (BTW, I never thought I’ld see a black market in toilets, but it seems to exist). CC Repubs certainly would include abortion restrictions and prayer required/allowed in schools on the list. Labor Dems certainly want Gov’t to get out of the way of their labor organization efforts, even if that includes a little coercion from time to time. I think you get the point.
5. The above is the real fear I have for the future of this country, although Imperium runs a close second. Political fragmentation seems to be the order of the day in the world, we have avoided that with a fairly rigid two party system. Interesting history, if you are curious, is the path of Poland from God knows how many parties, including a small Beer Lovers Party that actually got a few seats, to the current three umbrella parties. As long as our legal/political system can force movement to commonality by requiring it as the price of admission, we are probably OK. When that ability fails, we are in trouble. The Supreme Court has been troubled by this in recent years (see the Arkansas Public Broadcasting candidate exclusion case &; the Minnesota ballot access cases of recent vintage). Our political process, with the high dollar cost of admission these days may prove to be a bulwark. Hard to win if you cannot raise the $ to be visible. The national parties sure have fundraising down to a science. I wonder if Jesse Ventura is a step along the road or merely a curious footnote, especially given his unique fund raising methods. BTW, HHH III came in third in that election.
End of thoughts, have a good January
Richard Sherburne Jr.
Your observations aren't a lot different from mine: as I have said before, the way I would handle most of those problems is LEAVE IT TO THE STATES. Conservatives begin with the view that not only is everything not possible, but you're lucky to accomplish anything. Government can do some good, but its main function is to PREVENT HARM and leave as much as possible to more local and spontaneous effort. Tocqueville observed that in the United States much that was governmental in Europe was private and done by "the associations", meaning churches and charitable organizations, Optimists and Odd Fellows and Moose Lodges and Masons and Kiwanis and Rotary International and-- but you get the idea.
I can't stop labor violence in Chicago, and the labor rules in Chicago seem odd to me: I recall Robert Tinney wasn't allowed to hang his own cover art pictures in the BYTE booth there; instead a fat man with a cigar had to hang them, and he took about ten minutes per picture. The result was that COMDEX moved to Atlanta; it's back to Chicago now, but perhaps there are different rules? My point being that I would not try a Federal Law to stop that sort of nonsense. If Chicago wants to play those games it is NOT MY BUSINESS and if I dislike that sort of thing enough I won't live there. (I don't live there, although I find it a pretty and surprisingly well run city, at least every time I have visited there.) That reminds me I have a bunch of pictures from last Spring Comdex including those taken as I walked from downtown to the convention hall; a sort of photo-essay. I need to get them up; BYTE collapsed about the time I came home with them. Oh. Well.
I agree that keeping the scope of government short is not going to solve all problems. Nothing else. But in the struggle between order and liberty I find that KEEP IT LOCAL and LEAVE IT TO THE STATES at least makes for a lot of different kind of places and thus more likely I'll find one I like.
Stay well.
===
Main body subject States and State Systems
David G.D. Hecht
David_Hecht@msn.com
Dear Dr. Pournelle:
I thought I would take the liberty of taking your critique of Virginia Postrel’s The Future and Its Enemies a step further. As you point out, states exist because they have been, on the whole, a successful form of human organization. But in fact, not only have states been successful, but a particular kind of state and state system have emerged as the dominant mode of human organization in the last thousand years or so.
As Charles Tilly points out in Coercion, Capital, and European States, up to five hundred years ago there was a vast range of types of human organization at the state or quasi-state level. These ranged from minuscule manorial domains to continent-sized empires, and in some cases were not even geographically based (such as the various nomadic peoples). Nor was "nationality" (a modern concept) or its earlier antecedents, common language or religion, the only basis for states: there were commercial empires such as those of Genoa and Venice, and the dynastic empire of the Habsburgs, as well as the more modern, military type, such as the Ottomans.
Beginning in the sixteenth century the modern nation-state has emerged, and has grown to be the dominant form of political organization not only in Europe, but everywhere, including places such as sub-Saharan Africa where it existed, at best, in an attenuated form before the arrival of the Europeans. One must conclude that it is the most efficient form of organization for doing what it does best—namely, protecting its citizens (or subjects) from both external and internal aggression, and in creating a space in which behavior is made somewhat predictable through law.
It would be interesting to see what, if any, explanation the "Big-L" Libertarians have for this. One of the reasons I, though of somewhat libertarian sympathies, could never be a full-fledged "Big-L" Libertarian, is that I understand that humans like to be organized into communities of mutual interest for their protection. As Larry Niven so elegantly makes clear in "Cloak of Anarchy," the alternative to a government-provided rule of law is not anarchy, but feudalism: spontaneous order, certainly, but not of the type I imagine most Libertarians would prefer.
Yours very respectfully,
David G.D. Hecht
You voice my concerns. One thing that bothers me is that when Libertarians get together, they reserve most of their insults for Conservatives, who they see as the "real" enemy; not socialists and communists. I have often wondered why, but if you were to take a statistical survey of cruel libertarian jokes, you would find significantly more directed at conservatives than at anyone else.
Ordered liberty is the goal we all want. Some want more order, some more liberty, and since that is a matter of taste, it seems to me that different communities will have different solutions; and ought to. Some LIKE a wide open town, with prostitutes openly marketing their wares, and free pornography distributed in kiosks including outside schools. Others do not; and I fail to see either view must be universal and triumph everywhere. I do not see that is my business to reform the Las Vegas Strip, any more than I see why Las Vegas voters ought to have a say in what is and is not displayed outside Carpenter Avenue school in Studio City.
The self-evident axioms of the Declaration were that people are endowed by their Creator with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which meant in effect not to be enslaved or enserfed and to have the right to own property acquired by what were generally considered 'honest' means. Even those propositions are not really self-evident, and clearly did not apply to black slaves (although Washington was sufficiently concerned to manumit his slaves on his death). "To secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Those seem to me the most powerful words of the Declaration, and were expounded in another way when Adams said that in these United States "we believe each man is the best judge of his own interest."
The impulse to live free vs. live in a civilized society: the conflict between order and liberty; is eternal. In a society of angels we wouldn't need government. Heaven and Hell are both rumored to be absolute Monarchies. Here, when government is gone, the warlords take over. Rule of Law and Right of Property are SOCIAL rights, and really mean "If you violate my rights, though you be stronger than I am, I have a powerful friend in the local sheriff and who will bring my his men at arms and if need be will organize my neighbors in a posse to avenge me, cast you off my property, and restore to me what is my own." Without that kind of assurance, your rights are no more than what you can persuade the local power to give you.
And that is what is wrong with what's happening in this country now. We don't have a rule of law, we have so many laws that if all were enforced impartially we would every one of us be ruined by fines, or in jail, or both. And we know this.
And that is what is frightening, and I see no clear path out of it.
From: Mike Juergens (mikejuer@netnitco.net)
Dave Hecht notes the ubiquity of the Nation State, and says "One must conclude that it is the most efficient form of organization for doing what it does best—namely, protecting its citizens (or subjects) from both external and internal aggression."
Actually, I would conclude something rather different: that it is the most efficient form of organization for protecting The Government from both internal and external aggression. By contrast, I expect the EU, as a trans-national civil-service empire, to fall down when a significant external threat shows up, unless and until a super-Bismarck shows up to unify the whole thing into a big nation. And that would be a much bigger challenge than unifying Germany was, especially since mass-media seems to be waning as a culture-homogenizing influence.
If our concern is not with the welfare of the government, but with the Constitution Preamble goals, then we have two simultaneous problems: the growth of federal government ascendancy over the states, and the wide corruption of the whole polity. Division of powers is still working on the federal level, and it's the only reason we have any liberty left, but all three branches agree on the notion that the Feds rule. The only way I see that changing is if the nation actually fragments--which may happen in the future if the cultural bonds that define the U.S. as a nation continue to weaken.
The tide of corruption will turn in the long run because good people, when they can identify each other, can multiply their power through cooperation much more easily than bad people. Basically, they can trust each other. The long run may take a while, of course.
--Mike J.
Mr. Heinlein thought much as you do: that the actual fragmentation of the United States would be necessary in order to preserve much in the way of liberty. The problem with an enormous and powerful nation state is that "offices" -- positions of power -- are TOO powerful. Mary Beard has pointed out that this is what happened to old Rome. When political offices become literally the mastership of the world, they attract the worst sorts of people, those who WANT that kind of power. That leads to all kinds of sharp practices, some of which are not only unethical but unlawful, and that leads to holding on to political office as the only means to escape jail or execution. We may not have seen that yet -- Nixon had the good grace to resign, although he was only charged with abusing power by having looked at ONE FBI file -- but I am certain I will live long enough to see it.
Power will always exist. The only "remedy" to power is to fragment it. Fragmentation of power leads to locally unjust results. States Rights were used to justify suppression of blacks; after a while this became intolerable. My remedy for that would have been carefully designed Voting Rights Acts vigorously enforced: Congress has the explicit right to see that no state deprives any citizen of the equal protection of the laws. Indeed, had I been in charge in the 60's I would have passed an Amendment: "No state shall by reason of race, religion, or any other reason other than conviction of a felony, deprive any citizen of the equal protection of the laws, and this time we really mean it." I don't even mean that frivolously.
Libertarians want to destroy power. While I could wish them success in that goal, I'd like to learn telepathy and teleportation, too, and I think that more likely than that you can simply get rid of power. The best you can do, I think, is fragment power, divide it among power centers each jealous of what it has. Depend on it, that will produce injustices both real and fancied, but at least the scope of the injustice is smaller, and escapable. The notion that a large and wealthy republic can exist without powerful institutions to protect it from barbarians and the lawless is bizarre: as George Orwell once said, anyone who believes that "must be an intellectual. No ordinary person could believe such nonsense."
How many armored divisions does Arabia need to stop Saddam Hussein? None. The market will take care of it…
==
Robert Bruce Thompson [mailto:thompson@ttgnet.com]
Subject: Libertarians
<<Libertarians want to destroy power. >>
Not hardly. I think I can speak with some authority about the Libertarian Party, given that I was at one time the Finance Vice Chairman of the Libertarian National Committee, and worked full-time for the LP during the 1980 presidential campaign.
Most mainstream Libertarians feel pretty much as you do on most if not all issues. Most Libertarians/libertarians concede that government is a necessary evil, but simply want to restrict it to the smallest possible size and scope. In fact, if I didn't know that you identified yourself as a Conservative, I'd guess from your writings that you were a small-llibertarian, if not a card-carrying Libertarian. Your willingness to live-and-let-live is more characteristic of libertarians than Conservatives.
I guess my point is that labels are meaningless. You might consider yourself a Conservative, and I might consider myself a libertarian, and one of my friends might consider himself a Liberal. But the point is that all of us pretty much agree on the important stuff--personal freedom, minimizing the size and intrusiveness of government, etc.--and disagree strongly with the bunch that are currently running things. I think our similarities are much more important than our differences. Reasonable men can, after all, disagree about the best means to an end.
But I'd much rather have you for a neighbor than many others I know, including some who label themselves libertarians.
Bob
Robert Bruce Thompson
thompson@ttgnet.com
http://www.ttgnet.com
Labels have uses: they make it easier to have serious conversations. Of course that can be abused, but the ability to make discriminations and groupings and such like is important. See Richard Weaver on LIFE WITHOUT PREJUDICE as an example. (Oddly enough Amazon doesn't show Weaver's Life Without Prejudice, but they do have Visions of Order.)
You weren't at the recent Reason banquet where the butt of EVERY joke was a conservative. I did not then understand nor do I now. Sure, if I lived among no one but the people at that banquet we would need few laws and fewer police; but the day before just outside the hotel where that banquet happened, a German tourist was murdered by a gangsta because the German didn't speak enough English to realize he was being robbed. Who had the freedom there?
My difference with those people is that I don't think you can make every place on earth 'free' nor do I think Mrs. Grundy in the next town is my enemy. She wants censorship, maybe even of my books. OK by me, if she'll confine her efforts to her township: and she will, until someone says that no, that is a national power, after which she will want to get control of the national government.
That's what I mean by destroy power. People will mind each other's business. The only question is how far that extends. I want to keep it small. Every libertarian I have ever met is horrified if I say that I don't mind if my books are banned in Boston, and then gives me a sly wink thinking I am after publicity. David Friedman is at least consistent in most of his views, which makes him a fairly lonely guy… But the alternative to letting Boston ban books is that it becomes a national power, at first negatively exercised to prevent anyone else from doing it, then comes some egregious snuff movie or child pornography and then you have a postal inspector mailing illegal kiddie porn in order to get a warrant to break in and search (and yes, that happened). And soon you have a national power that is far worse than Mrs. Grundy. Me, I wasn’t harmed when Mr. Binford in Memphis wouldn't let Memphis pictures show Jane Russell in The Outlaw. I'd rather that than what we're getting, with overblown national powers.
You cannot DESTROY POWER. You can fragment it so that locals are jealous of what they have and fight to keep "higher" levels of government from pre-empting them. And that is as it should be. As it should be.
As far as I am concerned the original Establishment Clause was right: if Virginia wanted to collect taxes to support the Anglican Church and Massachussetts wanted the same for Congregationalism (and both did when the Constitution was adopted) that is FINE WITH ME. I may argue against California establishing Buddhism or Taoism or whatever damn fool thing my fellow Californians may try, but I won't say they have no RIGHT to do it; juat that I wish they wouldn't and they may regret it.
I do not think you can abolish government powers, and most libertarians do seem to want to. Like you, I find most of them convenient neighbors (although the chap who asserts a right to set up a slaughterhouse next door to me isn't what I call a good neighbor if he DOES it…)
===
Speaking of regulation by government:
I work for a fairly large church which completed a remodeling/addition in ‘95. Not only do the water-saving toilets need multiple flushes, but we have more toilet clogs in a year than all of the 30+ years of the building’s existence put together. There’s a better system on the market, but it’s more expensive and uses pressure, so the toilets can’t be retrofitted.
The plumbers had to install plastic insulators on the sink drains, apparently to keep people from being burned. (By the outside of the DRAIN pipe?) Another regulation limits the temperature of the hot water, probably to the same end.
When we had to dig up our old fuel tank, the remaining fuel oil, which could have been pumped out and sold to anyone burning #2 fuel oil, had to be treated as hazardous waste. Essentially, this means burning it in a bituminous plant. This grody smelly old tank then had to be hauled to a hazardous waste facility, which is good, but the hauler had to paint a bunch of things on the end to identify the tank, its contents, etc., all of which makes sense, but the last thing to be painted on the tank, in letters the size of which was specified by the regulations, was the phrase "NO FOOD" (!)
I wonder where that came from. Did someone really attempt to store food in a fuel-oil tank? If so, would painted words stop him?
Mark Thompson [jomath@mctcnet.net]
Of course it is not merely government that indulges in such madness. Note that your power lawnmower now warns you to keep your hands and feet from beneath it while it is running. The question becomes, how large is the set of people who (1) do not know it is dangerous to put hands and feet beneath a running power lawnmower, (2) can read English, (3) will heed the warning having read it? If there is one person in that set I would be astonished. Yet grown people put those warnings on the lawnmowers. I recall doing a graduate paper on such silliness in England; this was in about 1958, and my fellow students in the seminar simply would not believe that England had and put up with such stupid regulations as a definition of "a jelly", to wit, "to be a jelly it must --" and proceeded to tell how to make Jello, then the tests of how fissiparous the Jello was after 2 hours of setting; etc. No one would believe it, but it was in fact true there and then: and we have worse here and now.
But the net effect of all this is to make criminals of us all: we are ALL guilty of transgressing some regulation, and thus we are all left alone through the generosity of our state and federal employees, who in theory work for us but who will turn on us with rigorous enforcement of the laws should we seriously threaten them in their places. The Inspector who enforces the "NO FOOD" sign on an old oil tank must after all be employed and eventually pensioned off, and it is no fair suggesting that neither he nor his job is important.
==
From an open letter to the Washington Post (copy sent to me):
Another viewpoint on the last two days of the Van Gogh Exhibition.
On Saturday, I took two of my sons into Washington, DC, to see the Van Gogh exhibit. The museum had indicated they had about 2000 tickets for the general public, so we had been planning to go. We arrived early (7:30 AM) and got in line, party number 318 in line, to be exact, to wait for the 10 AM opening. It was cold, and some people had to be taken away in ambulances. We never got in. We left at noon, when they told everyone outside (about 1000 parties in line) to go home and come back on Sunday. Less than 200 parties got in all day...
What happened? First, the Clintons visited early in the morning. Apparently, the White House staff were able to sign up for tickets, and a lot of them stayed in the museum after the Presidential party left at 9:30. So it opened an hour late. Then, too, a lot of people had gotten advance tickets and decided to use them on Saturday. They really only had about 600 tickets for the hoi polloi, and the scalpers were at the head of the line. After they got theirs, we were told to go home. Most people went quietly.
Harry Erwin, Internet:
herwin@gmu.edu, Web Page: http://mason.gmu.edu/~herwin Senior Software Analyst supporting the FAA, PhD candidate in computational neuroscience—modeling how bats echolocate—and lecturer for CS 211 (data structures and advanced C++).But since we have become the Chief Peacekeepers for the World in the New World Order, surely some deference must be shown to the Commander in Chief, and some concessions made? I am not being sarcastic: a Republic has a President who is not above the rest of us; but no one has consulted the people of Bosnia, or those bombed in Baghdad, or even in Kuwait (other than the Royalists who own the land); and when we enforce the decrees of the New World Order, we cease to act as a Republic, and our Commander in Chief rises far above being President of a self-governing people. It is a price all of us must pay if we wish to be the Superpower above all others. We mustn't be surprised at these costs.
Roland Dobbins [rdobbins@hawaii.rr.com]
1. Anyone who wishes to see a special exhibition at one of the Smithsonian museums may obtain advance tickets. You just have to call ahead. Every time they held one while I was living in the D.C. area (seven years, just moved to Hawaii a year ago), this fact was repeated over and over again in the newspaper. And they always tell you to call ahead, even if you have advance tickets, in order to ensure what hours the public will be given access on any particular day. The tickets are ‘free’, in that you don’t pay for them directly, but, rather, through taxes (in itself a worthy subject for debate).
2. It’s not a sign of ‘imperium’ that the President of the United States be granted a semi-private viewing. While I despise the current occupant of the office, security concerns dictate that you can’t have a mob scene in the museum if the President chooses to pay a visit.
3. In my opinion, anyone who voluntarily queues up in order to be subjected to the works of Vincent van Gogh deserves whatever he gets. Van Gogh is dreadful; I’ve seen third-graders with more artistic ability. I am disgusted to learn that my tax dollars are spent in order to further promote such trash.
So, Mr. Erwin failed to make use of publicly-available information in order to plan his jaunt; he magnified his error by showing little or no understanding of security concerns for VIPs; and his taste in art is, at best, questionable.
The tragedy eludes me.
From my perspective, one of the greatest problems facing our society is the fact that people simply aren’t willing to take responsibility for their own well-being. We are a nation of whiners; I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the people who were turned away from the exhibit file multimillion-dollar lawsuits against the Smithsonian for causing them mental anguish, or some other such nonsense.
The culture of complaint we’ve fostered naturally gave rise to a nanny state - what else could we have expected?
Roland Dobbins <
rdobbins@hawaii.rr.com> // 808.351.6110 voiceNull, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane and empty of meaning for all time.
-- Pope Innocent X, on the Treaty of Westphalia, 1648
No one I know including me would begrudge the President a private showing, although in fact many Presidents including Mr. Truman did not insist on such. Truman used to walk the streets of Washington, and after the armed attack on Blair House (where he was staying while the White House was being refurbished) continued to do so; when berated by the Secret Service for taking risks he said "It comes with the job." The Imperial aspects come when the private and personal staff take perks denied to ordinary citizens.
You will note that the institution told people how many places would be available without prior appointments. I am not myself familiar with Washington practice here, and in fact I have never gone early to stand in a line in my life for anything, but surely an institution is required to keep its word?
It is one thing to be concerned with the security of the Chief Executive although if one travels with a large entourage I would have thought that one requirement is to give up spontaneity: if you intend to travel with a bit entourage you make appointments, and do not deceive the public into believing that the facility is available to ordinary citizens when you are there. But all that aside, why is the White House Staff privileged to remain after the President is gone? Clearly because the status of courtiers has been conferred on them; and this is an Imperial, not a republican, device. Republics do not confer special status on staffers; or shouldn't, in any event. Civil Servants and political appointees work for the people, not the other way around. Now I agree: we have long passed that point. We have courtiers. But should we rejoice in this?
It is my understanding that the Smithsonian is not the same as the National Museum of Arts, and the dependence of those institutions on tax money is more complex than you seem to believe; but in any event it is certainly Constitutional. The Congress governs the District of Columbia directly and has all the powers and sovereignty there that the States have. It is within the power of Congress to establish a National Opera and fund it with taxes, so long as it is located in the District. I question the constitutional authority to have a National Endowment of the Arts which funds activities OUTSIDE the District, but making the National Capital a place of beauty and culture was certainly within the intentions of the Framers and the understanding of those who adopted the Philadelphia Constitution.
As to your opinion of Van Gogh, I don't intend to discuss it, for I suspect neither you nor I have any special right to an opinion on the subject. My art criticism is largely of the "I know what I like" variety despite my having taken a couple of art history courses during my undergraduate career, and having been required to read and digest Tolstoy's essays on art (worth reading if tough sledding; and strongly opinionated; Tolstoy thought Wagner a great humbug and the Ring Cycle "counterfeit art", views I don’t share but I can appreciate given his premises.) But whether or not Van Gogh is a great artist, Congress is certainly within its rights to stage exhibitions of his work within the District of Columbia.
You certainly read more into the letter than I do regarding the temperament of the American people. I read it as saying that vile courtiers are usurping the rights of the public; and I agreed with that.
About a year ago, there was an issue of New Republic with a drawing of a pair of fat cats on the cover. The lead article was about just those class distinctions and how they are becoming more prevalent in our society. The economists claim that a highly productive society has to be stratified, with high status leaders having a critical role in mobilizing resources, but I tend to agree with Lew Binford in my deep distrust of ‘big men’.
It’s amazing to see politicians believing history has no relevance. It’s an incredible blindness. One of the Republican members of the House has claimed that the Clinton impeachment trial is the most important case in the history of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, but my eldest son, the medieval historian, tory, genealogist, and royalist, laughs. He indicates that the Anglo-Saxons would not have let things go this far. Either someone would have been poisoned by now, the President’s judicial champion would have killed ‘the Hammer’, or the barons would have sorted things out with swords. Even restricting the discussion to modern English history brings to mind the trial of Charles I. (There happens to be a _reason_ the British royals are generally opposed to capital punishment.) That judicial murder permanently discredited the Commonwealth and its policies. Clinton, despite being the imperial president, is small potatoes. And he’s lucky—the penalty for being impeached and convicted in Lords used to be death.
On the other hand, in English history, the real purpose of impeachment was to remove a man from office who had lost public support—unsuccessful impeachment attempts almost always led to a political purge of the group behind the impeachment. And ‘the King can do no wrong’.
Meanwhile us little people keep our heads down and ensure that the real business of government goes on—planes fly, borders are guarded, and the North Koreans and Iraqis stay quiet.
Harry Erwin, Internet:
herwin@gmu.edu, Web Page: http://mason.gmu.edu/~herwin Senior Software Analyst supporting the FAA, PhD candidate in computational neuroscience—modeling how bats echolocate—and lecturer for CS 211 (data structures and advanced C++).Well said.
On Monday you said: "You cannot DESTROY POWER. You can fragment it so that local are jealous of what they have and fight to keep "higher" levels of government from pre-empting them." I’d like to offer my home state, Oklahoma, and it’s populist inspired Constitution as an example of this put into practice.
The Oklahoma Constitution was written in 1906 -07, and defines offices of the State and Counties down to a clerical level. There are 77 Counties in Oklahoma and with a population of less than 3 million (Two large cities, Oklahoma City and Tulsa account for over half of that.) there are some Counties with _very few people_ in them. Despite this, each County must have a certain structure, with officials and their pay defined by the State Constitution. This system has resisted all efforts to change it, specifically to simplify the structure or reduce the number of Counties.
In Oklahoma, the County Officials Associations wield a tremendous amount of influence in the State Legislature. This Power can only be used if the Officials cooperate, most of the time that _does not_ happen. Rather each official fiercely guards his/her powers within each County.
It’s only when threatened as a whole that cooperation prevails.
The end result of all of this is that in my home County (Bryan, named after Populist hero William Jennings Bryan.) most of the rural roads are paved, while very few are in the County where I currently live. This keeps life in Oklahoma interesting, to say the least.
Mark Gosdin
I never said that localism couldn't be abused. All government will be abused. All power will be abused. Lord Acton was absolutely correct in his "History of Freedom in Antiquity": Power corrupts. Absolute Power corrupts absolutely. Until the Warren Court got into the act, in the US most states had one legislative house structured so that each assemblyman represented about the same number of people, but each Senator represented a fixed territory without regard to how many inhabitants it had. In California that meant in effect that Southern California could not rob Northern California of all its water in order to grow cotton and Christmas trees in the Mojave Desert. Once the Supreme Court got in the act and decided the Framers were wrong and the Constitution forbade states to be organized as they had for 200 years, we got government by pure numbers. The results have been interesting, from the destruction of the best school system in the world to a kind of water grab madness with huge OPEN aqueducts crossing the state to lose water to evaporation so that wealthy farmers in formerly arid areas can get cheap water to enormous income taxes which largely feed a bureaucracy dedicated to its own existence.
You cannot destroy power. You can fragment it. But once it has been consolidated it is very difficult to fragment it again. As we are learning in California and in the United States.
==
I spent 22 years in the military, most of the time assuming I was keeping America free through foreign deployments. When I finally retired 15 years ago and started looking around California and the US, I found that much of what I was fighting against in other lands had been put in place here by the federal government, various state governments and our local governments. Where once we had a national government of modest scope and size, not we have an oligarchy of elected politicians, their appointed mandarins and the bloated bureaucracies.
I ask anyone over about the age of 50 to think about their life growing up and going to school, and compare that to what goes on in those environments today. Whatever area you look into, you will find some government creature regulating existence. If an individual objects, the full power of the government will be employed. As the Japanese culture operates, any nail that sticks up will be hammered down. I am amazed at the number of people I meet who work for these anti-freedom government entities without the slightest understanding that they are assisting at their own hangings.
I do what I can. I always vote, I write letters to politicos and to the newspaper (I am oftern published in the San Diego Union-Tribune and sometimes in the LA Times ltrs to the ed section). I vote against all money bills, against any sitting judge, and for any measure that will complicate the lives of the mandarins and bureaucrats.
Nowadays I am active in the right to keep and bear arms arena, and practice individual combat with handgun, rifle and shotgun (thank you Jeff Cooper for the training).
I agree with Heinlein that things will have to get much worse before they can get better.
JimDodd [jimdodd@tcubed.net]
San Diego
It is one thing to agree with Mr. Heinlein that things will have to get much worse before they get better (whatever we mean by that), and another to go about making or allowing things to get worse. Your time in the military prevented worse, and you may be proud of that. The Seventy Years War was real, the threat not merely to the US but to freedom as an institution in this world was real, and even Arthur Schlesinger understood that at one time. (Americans for Democratic Action was originally very much an anti-communist organization, with a record to be proud of.)
I have considerable quarrel with those who believe that the best way to make things better is first to make them worse. That may or may not have been the proper way in Ireland, but the Irish case was a clear cut case of conquest and rule by absentee landlords. We don't have that here. We elect our masters. They are masters none the less, but we are not a conquered people, occupied by Hessians.
The mechanisms for self-correction are built into the US Constitution; what is required now is citizen awareness of what we once had, and what we could have again; and a desire for self government. If enough of the citizen middle class desires cheap self government once again, we shall have it.
But make no mistake, self government is trouble; it is one reason that it is small, because it is trouble to do it ourselves. Many believe they can hire it out, and when they do they sometimes find they have hired masters.
In the days when the Vikings and the Magyars ravaged the remains of the old Roman and Holy Roman civilizations, feudalism was nearly the only choice: to resist required a full time cavalry army, and such an army couldn't be kept in one place because the transportation infra-structure had broken down. Feudalism, with each district supporting a man at arms and apprentices and mounts, was about all you could do; but of course the penalty for giving all armed might to the local knight was that the local knight soon assumed all other powers, including the low and middle justice, and often the high justice as well. Resistance to those who had a monopoly of arms meant death. And the king claimed droits de seignieur…
Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson were agreed, the only way of freedom was that "each man should be armed", and much of the enforcement of government must be entrusted to the citizens, not to paid officials. But that again is WORK, and TROUBLE, and many would prefer to hire professionals. Worse, of course, is that the paid professionals will, after a while, try to convince everyone that only they can protect the population, and the population should remain helpless, unable to protect itself, trusting in those who do bear arms.
That gives power to the local constable that perhaps he should not have. All power corrupts. Absolute power…
Stay well. Keep the faith. God does look after fools, drunks, and the United States of America. Of course He does demand that we help out.
===
Georgie Ann Geyer had a Dec 1998 column that made a very good case that this strike on Iraq was not driven by Impeachment. The timing of the deployments of the carriers and the heavy bombers was set up months ago. Long before Impeachment was seriously expected. Since August 1998, we had all the policy reasons we needed to blast Saddam when he started to diddle with the UNSCOM weapons of mass destruction inspections.
That does not mean that the timing was not influenced by Impeachment. After all, we could have struck in November 1998. The thing to remember is that politicians never do anything for just one reason. They do it for several.
The real reason for the strikes is that the Clinton Administration lacked the will to enforce the Inspections or overthrow Saddam. Which amount to the same thing. When you get right down to it.
Striking as we did means that the Clinton Administration will not be blamed or called weak for the collapse of the Inspection Regime.
Trent J. Telenko [trent_telenko@hotmail.com]
I have long been an admirer of Geegee, and was overjoyed to meet her in Moscow in 1989; and of course she's right in that the strike machinery had to be in place. On the other hand, you will note that we bombarded Sudan and the camp in Afghanistan on precisely the proper day to crowd one set of testimony out of the papers, and Operation Free Willie went off at another convenient time. The UN Inspection team had been having problems for a long time, and we had as much justification for bombarding Saddam two weeks before as we did on the day it happened. As you say, politicians seldom do things for just one reason.
My real problem with all this is that we spent a billion dollars, and so far as I can see, what we got was what we didn't want. We made Saddam a hero in the region, we saw to it that the UNSCOM team will never return to Iraq, and we gave a bunch of excuses to break the economic blockade to people who wanted to break that blockade in the first place. I have yet to have anyone tell me what we did get for our billion. Certainly we didn't weaken Saddam's hold on Iraq.
===
The tent of the libertarians is a big one. The defining principle of libertarianism is the belief that government should only act to prevent force and fraud: laws against murder and embezzlement are fine, armed forces to defend the nation are fine, but laws against prostitution, drugs, etc. are not okay. A prostitute uses neither force nor fraud to earn her money; drugs, as long as they are correctly labelled ("Cocaine 30% pure" or whatever) do not involve force or fraud; and so on.
But because this is such a simple idea, and the tent is so big, there are big disagreements among libertarians about many important things. Some libertarians, the "anarcho-capitalists", believe that government is totally unnecessary, and a free market can solve all problems (*including* national defense). Others, like me, think we do need a (small) government. Some libertarians think that abortion is murder, and thus a legitimate thing for government to make illegal; others think that early abortion is something between a woman and her doctor, entirely outside the province of government.
The fundamental problem we have is that most people aren’t happy with granting liberty to other people: they want liberty for themselves, but they want others to be regulated. Take the intersection of all the regulations people want for others, and you get our current laws. (Combined, of course, with large amounts of bureaucracy as regulations are added and added.) Most people who disapprove of drugs want them made illegal. Most people who don’t like prostitution want it to be illegal. And so on.
I know someone who, disgusted with both the Republican and Democratic candidates, literally voted for the TM party rather than the Libertarians. (I forget the correct name for this party, but they were the ones recommending Transcendental Meditation as the solution to all the problems confronting government.) I despair that the party of Freedom is having such a hard time selling the idea. Our country was born because people were willing to fight and die for freedom, and now people don’t think enough of the idea even to cast a vote for it. That, or else the Libertarian party just can’t get people to believe that liberty is possible again.
I have one idea that I think would result in a big improvement in government: abolish automatic witholding... require each taxpayer to write a check and send it in once each month, for the full amount of his taxes. (Was it you who said "Be grateful you aren’t getting all the government you are paying for"? A classic line.)
My other favorite idea is to require each and every law to have a sunset date of no more than 5 years. If we can keep the Congress busy re-passing the laws against murder and rape, they might never get around to outlawing secure encryption or requiring people to paint "NO FOOD" on oil tanks.
Personally, I also like the idea that only the people who actually pay taxes get to vote. It’s shockingly anti-democratic, but it seems fair to me: those who pay the piper should get to call the tune, and those who don’t pay should not be allowed to vote for bread and circuses. I’m sure there is something really bad about this idea that I haven’t considered yet, but the current system isn’t working all that well either.
Good health to you.
--
Steve R. Hastings "Vita est"
steve@hastings.org http://www.blarg.net/~steveha
Well, the tent is no so large as you think; but I do thank you for a concise statement of principles.
The fact is, though, I don't agree. I see no reason whatever why a community should not have laws against prostitution, so long as most of the inhabitants think that a good idea. I have a great quarrel with the War on Drugs, but largely because it is FEDERAL: absent a new Amendment similar to the 18th, I do not think Congress has any power to make possession or use of drugs illegal outside areas it directly controls such as military bases, and the District of Columbia. Importation they can forbid; carrying across state lines they can forbid; but possession and use within a state? How can that be a Federal crime.
The states on the other hand have full power to make war on drugs if they so choose. Some will. Some will not. Some will forbid drugs, and for all I know California may make using them compulsory. So be it: those are matters of state sovereignty.
Libertarians seem to want not merely to live in the kind of place they want to be in, with no zoning laws and no laws against gambling and prostitution and drugs, but to impose that kind of government on everyone else; and that is simply wrong.
Now mind you, I probably would prefer a society run by strict libertarian principles to Mrs. Grundy, blue laws, Sunday closing, movie censorship, and bans on smoking in public places. On the other hand, I rather like quiet and I have lived in places run by Mrs. Grundy and I didn't much mind; sure I liked it better than Las Vegas, for instance.
The problem, it seems to me, is that we don't really know what is the good society, and it may well be there is no such thing: there are many good societies, and the problems come from making people who should be in one of those live in another.
Which is why, over the years, I keep coming back to Federalism and the Philadelphia Constitution, which gave plenty of sovereign power to the states, reserved limited areas in which the Federal Government would be entirely sovereign, and trusted to local good sense to build communities in which 'consent of the governed' was the main principle.
And to this day I think consent of the governed as good a justification for state power as any; and if most of my neighbors want to ban streetwalking prostitutes and whore houses, I see no reason why they should not be able to do so. Of course this does mean Mrs. Grundy may have to put up with an even bawdier bawdy house over across the county line where all the people who don't like her community moved; even with neon lights for the Chicken Ranch; but that's the price she pays for keeping the Chicken Ranch away from her neighborhood.
As to the rest, sunset laws, requiring drug dealers to sell what they offer and not defraud honest junkies with oregano for pot, and getting rid of withholding so that people have to write checks to the government, I've nothing against any of that. It won't happen, but I'd like most of those proposals if they did. I'd even go for making employees write a check to the government as a condition of receiving their pay check: that way they'd have to think about how much was withheld. But it won't happen.
We get the government we deserve, I fear.
Friday, January 8, 1999
I have a horrid suspicion that the recent attack on Iraq served its purpose admirably. What I cynically fear is that we - and our allies in the Middle East - received exactly what we wanted for our $1 billion: the continued existence of a convenient, readily available punching bag and boogie-man.
This Administration has shown itself as perfectly willing to adventure abroad and use our military as a foreign political tool, with alarming frequency and generally little forethought to the military consequences. However, there are currently few foreign enemies that the press or public perceives as a "good war" or a righteous target. North Korea is being uncooperatively quiet. Bosnia is a mess that no one wants to get further mired in. Even the attempt to hurt a terrorist chieftain turned out to be an embarrassing sucker play - which may, as you pointed out, have served a purpose by driving inconvenient headlines from the front page. Having Saddam around to occasionally kick in the pants lets the politicos project an image of power and constant threat.
The message is clear: See, we don't have to actually invade, we can just pound your infrastructure into dust. This produces an interesting light show for the cameras, much like the one produced by the Wizard of Oz for Dorothy and her friends. Like Dorothy and her friends, however, we are urged to ignore the man behind the curtain. Should we peek behind it, we might find a frightened, impotent man frantically pulling levers, attempting to keep the façade of dangerous power intact.
Saddam's continued existence also serves our Arabian allies well, as a threat to keep the population in line. Iraq's border nations certainly remember Kuwait and Desert Storm. As they don't want to build up a large standing military themselves (they can be so inconveniently difficult to control), it suits them to have America use its treasure on the miscreant.
They also frown on any suggestion that the US or a coalition should go in and take out Saddam militarily; who knows that they might not be next? Let's face it; there is little for most Americans to admire about the political structure of our Arabian allies. They certainly wouldn't want to set a precedent of using foreign allies to replace leaders in the area.
If one buys into this outlook, it seems certain that Saddam is going to be kept politically alive for some time to come.
This kind of tactic has been used many times to promote an imperial perquisite to strike abroad. With the US spending more time and treasure to play the world's policeman, it would not be difficult for those in power to convince themselves that it was a necessary tactic.
A cynical view, to be certain and I hope to hell I'm wrong.
Jessica Mulligan
http://www.gamebytes.com/bthTOC.htm
I can't prove you wrong, but I suspect that you see conspiracy where I see muddling along, doing this and that. I think we have no real policy; that the military advisors to the President go along because they don't really know what else to do; and we then try to justify things afterwards. We now say we were using intercepted conversations to choose targets. Given that we were suckered in Sedan and Afghanistan by people who knew we were listening, and given that Saddam is no so stupid as we apparently wish, it is interesting that this announcement is followed by "of course we can't confirm the results." They're floundering. Saddam is no weaker, and in many ways he is stronger.
He may be convenient as a bogey man to pound on, a convenient victim. If so, that is quite a sad thing for the United States, and even more tragic for the average inhabitant of Baghdad, who gets to be a target so that we can enjoy light shows.
I would have thought that killing people was a serious business, but it seems that now it is not.
===
Dear Jerry,
Just read your response to Steve Hastings, and agreed with it, as far as it went. But I think you left out something. Different laws in different areas for social or moral issues are fine, and I agree wholeheartedly that the people who live in a community should be able to set the standards of public behavior in that community. But we need to add that for that to have a chance of happening, we have to have a bedrock of political rights that are standard and inviolate throughout the country.
Before you can advocate legalizing gambling, drugs, prostitution, or writing science fiction, you have to have the political rights to speak, petition the government, and be secure in your person and property. You’ve mentioned on several occasions your belief that the Federal Government should restrict itself to defense and foreign policy, and enforcement of the Voting Rights act. I think that unless you amend that to include enforcement of the Bill of Rights you could find yourself secure in the right to vote for whatever the people in charge of printing the ballot will let you vote for.
But what Bill of Rights? The original was intended to act as a limit on FEDERAL power; your individual rights in the states are contained in state constitutions, most of which do have quite stringent restrictions and rights, but which differ from state to state. Do not forget: the original First Amendment was thought to guarantee each state the right to ESTABLISH A RELIGION if it so wanted, and indeed most had established churches at the time; the establishments were abolished by state legislatures, not by Congress or the US Supreme Court.
What I say is that your insistence on some minimum package of basic rights ends up nationalizing everything.
While I am on this subject, let me deal with the absurd notion imputed to me by some that I believe there is anything magic about 50% plus one; of course there is no magic in that number. It's merely a way to settle a close matter. But in the real world, it is seldom that a slim majority imposes something onerous on the losers; censorship of movies, for instance. In the real world, votes tend to be weighed in that those who feel great passion for an issue are the ones who work to get their will, while those who don't much care go along with the result. When you have diametric views held with great passion, as we do with the abortion issue, you have the potential for violent settlements; and I contend that it is precisely in those issues that you ought to live and let live, let those who feel strongly have their way, but in their local areas. Of course that means some migration; but migration is better than war.
The Swiss had their last religious war not long after our Civil War Between The States, and it was settled by forced migrations and the division of a canton into two half cantons. That is I think the civilized way to settle issues held very strongly. Now, of course, I doubt you can get any Christian sects to take their religion so strongly as to go to war over the brand of Christian confession in their community; but it has not always been so, and when it comes to issues like abortion we are closer to the old passions.
People, I think, should live under laws they consent to; which means to me, when there are strong differences on what we consent to, the breaking up of jurisdictions. There are issues on which I might feel strongly enough to move; there are many more in which I would simply put up with what my neighbors decided.
Certainly there needs to be a minimum of civility within the country, but the notion that there is some basic package of rights that ALL must enjoy no matter what the locals believe is the ruin of the nation, because as soon as we get away from the very obvious we find we have no real agreement. Some feel passionately that there must be no property tax not voted in by the property holders, those without property being excluded from the vote; others think the opposite; and as late as 1960 there were places where property taxes were voted on only by property owners. The it was discovered that for 200 years we were denying the propertyless the right to vote taxes they would never pay, and the courts imposed the change; for the worse, I think.
Imposing rules from above even in the name of fair play is often a d dubious achievement.
==
The discussion of the Constitution and the extent of federal writ is interesting. I just finished a novel by a co-author of Tom Clancey’s, and one of its many ‘interesting’ statements is that the 14th ammendment eliminated the federal structure of the union by creating national citizenship and demoting the several States to mere provinces.
I had thought that what it did was make the rights a citizen of a State enjoyed, and the protection of its laws transitive to the other States in the federal union.
What is correct?\
Steve Schaper [sschaper@uswest.net]
Come now, that begs the question. The legislative history is unclear: certainly some of the Radical Republicans wanted to abolish the States, but it's also clear that most of those who ratifies the 14th Amendment did not: and even if they had, they gave CONGRESS powers, not the COURTS. The great explosion of fresh new rights came from Courts after Congress refused to turn the states into administrative districts.
What the Courts did not do was their clear duty; I have often said we ought to have a new Amendment that says exactly what the old does about "equal protection of the laws" and adds the phrase "and this time we really mean it."
Clearly if one assumes there is no Federal Union then one either gives up or starts the American Republican Army. But surely it is not universally held that the States no longer matter and These United States are merely one more sad example of plebiscitory democracy?
===
I guess it depends on how far you take the concept of being a friend of liberty everywhere. While the KLA is certainly not a democratic group, not being murdered by your government is a fairly basic liberty. If you say it’s not our problem, then you’ve defacto decided that the Serbs are free to do what they will in Kosovo.
The predominant cultural heritage of the US is European. I tend to think of the US as a European nation even though we are geographically separated. As a result, I think liberty in Europe is of a greater interest to us than that in some of the other places you’ve listed. That said, I’m no fan of respression anywhere. If there were something we could do to help those people that represented a reasonable expenditure of blood and treasure to accomplish then we ought to seriously consider trying.
Yugoslovia is one area where I particularly feel I have a right to comment. In 1992, I was in the Navy and forward deployed in the Mediterranean. As the bloodshed ramped up in Croatia and Bosnia-Hertsogovina, I thought at the time that what was going on was evil enough that I was willing to take some risk of being personally killed to help stop it.
Scott Kitterman
I would not stop you from volunteering to go to Albania, but I certainly do not believe that righting all the wrongs of the world is the business of the government of the United States. We are not prepared to Do Anything about, for instance, repression in Tibet, or the Taliban in Afghanistan, or ethnic cleansing in parts of the former USSR; why, then, are we to have a peculiar obligation in Kosovo, where, incidentally, the Serbian claim is similar to but stronger than is, say, the Jewish claim to most of what is now Israel. Moreover, I don't think all virtue is on one side: I know that in Bosnia the Serbs were framed for some actions taken by others. You are dealing with an area that has had blood feuds since literally the time of Alexander the Great; when he was 15 or so Phillip sent Alexander and one of the experience generals to deal with insurrection and unrest in what is now Bosnia. But even if you postulate that all right is on one side, and the situation is clear, I question why it is our business as a nation. If the notion is that we can do something and therefore should and must, does this not lead to endless interventions?
If Congress wants to declare war on someone over there, who should it be? And absent that, is not the danger to the Constitution greater than any good that can come of all this?
But I realize I am hardly in a majority; apparently things are so good here, that we must go spread our good will everywhere, as the French in 1796 carried Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternite on the points of their bayonets throughout Europe.
And with our bayonets we will do what Alexander the Great and all since him could not do, bring peace to the Balkans.
Tuesday, January 12, 1999
Responding to Roland Dobbins, you wrote:
>must it [the U.S.] become imperial simply because the people no longer know what self government is
That makes me wonder how many people reading this page share an idea of what self-government is. People are always invoking self-government as a wonderful thing we are losing, but what is it? It can’t be everyone in their own log cabin running their own self-sufficient life on their own freehold. Nor is it everyone going down to the Town Meeting and voting on everything. But surely it is more than "some of us vote in a government and then we all do as we’re told."
My own idea is it means something like "The Government at all levels believes it exists to serve the interests of the governed, not its own, and if it doesn’t act accordingly the constituents replace it." The last part is crucial, or else the first part is sure to go away.
Mike Juergens
<
mikejuer@netnitco.net>We hold these truths to be self evident… "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…"
Consent being, in my view, as wide as possible, meaning that as many people as possible live under laws they choose for themselves and see to their enforcement for themselves. Abortion is the best test on this I know: for some it is murder and a society that allows it is not worth living in. For others it is an intolerable intrusion on a woman's rights to control her own life. These are not reconcilable views.
Yet there are women who consent to laws forbidding them abortions, and there are men demanding that women be given the 'right of choice'. The only way both can live under laws they consent to is to have two different sets of laws in different places. Keeping the scope of government as limited as possible allows self government. Trying to make nation wide laws on important issues insures that many will live under laws they hate, and will require large enforcement organizations, which themselves become a reason for more laws for them to enforce; and you don't get self-government. Or so I would think.
It has been pointed out to me that there are many issues, and consent to one is not consent to all: those with strong views on abortion have strong views on other matters, and a pro-abortion community might well have in it those who don't care for other laws adopted by their fellow citizens. I can only wonder that anyone would find that surprising.
Of course there are also clusters: those with strong views against abortion will tend to have strong views against murder in general, and will often look to government to be friendly to religion; even to apply to the society some of the prohibitions and requirements derived from religion.
"And that," says an otherwise intelligent person, "can lead to the Inquisition," as if there were any community likely to form in the United States that would in fact bring in a Grand Inquisitor. If we spend our time looking for the worst that can happen given local government, and ignore what has already happened with the national government, then we have a conversation good for an evening around a campfire but hardly a serious discussion. It was not the local sheriff who burned out the Carmel compound at Waco.The time to fear local government is when it is too powerful; not when it is so weak that the local coroner is not allowed to examine the site of the death of some 80 people, and the scene is bulldozed lest anyone find evidence that the official story is wrong.
When it is time to fear the Holy Inquisition I will join in the opposition, but I think that is the least of my fears at this moment. Or is there anyone who believes that in this world we can implement perfection, and with one mighty act solve our problems once and for all?
==
Roland Dobbins [rdobbins@hawaii.rr.com]
Subject: The fatal flaw?
I don’t think human nature has changed very much in the last few thousand years, and my reading of history tends to confirm this. Most people have always been relatively ignorant, shortsighted, and greedy, most of the time. In despotic states, feudal states, and totalitarian states, this doesn’t much matter, as those who are ruthless, cunning, and intelligent will rise to the top and will work to preserve their own self-interest, which in practice means preserving the state; the education of the peasants or lack thereof is of little consequence. Most of the people who have ever lived have been peasants under one or another of these forms of government.
Knowledge is power, and those who wish to obtain power, and retain it, have a strong motivation to obtain knowledge. I don’t mean those who acquire knowledge for its own sake, such as scientists, inventors, etc., but those who tend to bankroll the scientists and inventors, and put their works to use. Knowledge of history is necessary both to those who seek military conquest and those who wish to maintain control of the state, else they are likely to repeat the mistakes of others who have come before them.
In a republic, however, all are presumed to be equal to the task of having informed opinions concerning the nature of their government. This is not only desirable, but is absolutely necessary to the proper functioning of a republic. Otherwise, the republic becomes less representative, and power is exercised only by those relatively small numbers of people who bother to obtain at least a smattering of education.
The ascendancy of pseudo-intellectualism then becomes possible because it’s easier to obtain enough of a smattering of an education to -sound-knowledgeable than to truly devote oneself to learning; if most of the citizens of the republic are ignorant, they will mistake pseudo-intellectualism for gravitas, and grant power to those who are, in truth, unqualified for its exercise. In turn, these pseudo-intellectuals will enact ill-considered policies because they do not possess the requisite knowledge to accurately gauge the effects of those policies.
Or the pseudo-intellectuals will simply act out of pecuniary interest, because they are by definition the sort of people who value appearance over substance, and are motivated by mere selfishness, rather than by enlightened self-interest. Whether through malice or incompetence, the integrity of the state is corrupted, and the populace become demoralized. They turn inwards, and when they bother to exercise their franchise, it is simply to choose the lesser of evils, rather than a considered attempt to make a positive statement on the merits of the various competing political philosophies of the candidates or the merits of the issues in question.
In any given election, there may well be no truly qualified candidates or meritorious issues to be decided, because they are all pseudo-intellectuals or the product of pseudo-intellectuals. It is a self-reinforcing trend.
The distractions of the modern age are at least a part of the problem. Abraham Lincoln taught himself geometry in his spare time, reading Euclid by lamplight at the end of a hard day’s labor. Would he have done so if he’d been presented with the option of going to the cinema, or watching a sitcom on television, rather than wrestling with proofs and theorems? Perhaps. But we are not all Abraham Lincolns, and too often choose the path of least resistance. And because of the relative prosperity of even the poorest among us, these distractions are available to all.
This may be the fatal flaw in our system of governance. A republic does not require a population of geniuses to sustain it, but when a majority of the franchised populace exhibit intellectual laziness, not to mention a preoccupation with the contemporary analogues of bread and circuses, a republic loses the one thing which is vital to its perpetuation - the informed oversight of the body politic. In any government composed of men, the only anodyne to the inherent flaws of men (selfishness, greed, ignorance, etc.) is the constant vigilance of others so as to prevent the usurpation of power by those whose have failed to rise above their baser instincts.
In this, we have failed mightily. And at the current juncture, it is doubtful whether there is much which can be done to remedy the situation absent a total collapse of our government, which is unlikely, and would bring its own problems. The only practical course of action is for those who care about these issues - enough that they’ve bothered to learn something about them - to try as best they can to fight the good fight, within the realm of civil society.
A holding action, at best.
Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@hawaii.rr.com>
You have said little that wasn’t said at the Constitutional Debates, and it is all true, now as well as then. "Dr. Franklin, have you given us a monarchy or a republic?" "A republic, Madam, if you can keep it." We did keep it for a long time.
I have a bit higher opinion of the mass of my fellow citizens than you; I think most, given a social order in which integrity is not punished, and what we would have in my youth called virtue is rewarded, will respond by being fairly virtuous, and having some measure or integrity. Today's society takes reward against the innocent, and the institutions of the social order are used to destroy the order itself. What, were there lynchings earlier in this century? Then let us transfer the power to Washington, where we will protect the people from such horrors. Now, let's have a war on drugs, because prison construction firms have stocks selling at 50 times earnings, and we need to keep the prison population up. And of course being jailed for ingesting cocaine is far less horrid than being ridden out of town on a rail, or being whipped, or…
In a theoretical search for perfection we generally set up institutions that destroy the possibility of anything short of perfection; and the perfection seems more elusive than ever. So has it been. So will it be.
But worse, as gaining power becomes more attractive, the more likely there will be those who will pay any price to gain it. My local sheriff's corruption affects me, but not you; corruption in the Federal Agencies gets to us all. And which is easier to correct?
The secret is that there is no perfection in government, and those who seek it are doomed to disappointment; sometimes the disappointments lead to a horrible form of cynicism. "If those people don't seem I am trying to help them, and they continue to be corrupt, then--"
And I think we are going through that now; but soon we won't have disillusioned perfectionists, we will have frank power seekers pretending to be perfectionists.
We have sown the wind. And with our schools in the shape they are in, I don't know how we get out of the box we are putting ourselves into. Getting local control of schools would go a long way to settling the problems, but we do not seem likely to have even that any time soon.
"A republic, Madam, if you can keep it."
Thursday, January 14, 1999
Dear Jerry,
At several points in these letters you have discussed a kind of society where each community would choose its basic laws. The example you discuss is abortion. You suggest that if different areas were allowed to make their own judgments about these matters people would tend to gravitate toward areas where their chosen vices were legal. I agree with this, I think it can already be seen when it comes to local taxes, public school quality, and other fairly peripheral issues. When it comes to a ‘weighty’ issue like abortion however, why would say Utah be content to allow Colorado to pursue a course it believes to be evil?
We have already given the sectional theory a fairly good workout in our history. I am of course talking primarily about slavery. The whites (and to a lesser extent the free blacks) in the North had very little concern personally about slavery. The concern for fundamental human rights impelled many to support either the restriction of slavery to regions where it already existed or to push for its abolition. Abortion is either murder or it isn’t, and on this issue there can be little compromise between the two positions. Under any sort of federal government, what is to stop regions from imposing their will on less influential areas?
Respectfully.
Richard K. Jones
Bur precisely so: to carry what you are saying to conclusion is to say there can be no issues on which mankind is divided and about which we feel strongly. There shall be no toleration.
It was so in the Thirty Years War: the Holy Roman Empire could not exist half Catholic and Half Protestant. Nor could Lutheran tolerate Calvinist. There had to be separate nations, full sovereignty, as the only possible protection for the Truth. Divisions over language could spark similar feelings.
The Swiss managed, after their own civil wars, but also after watching half of Europe burn in the Thirty Years War, to tolerate each other; to band together as Swiss, though some were Catholic and some Lutheran and some Calvinist, some French, some German, some Italian, and some spoke Rhaeto-Roman; and make it stick. Today we cannot conceive of war over a confession of religion.
Or can we? Salman Rushdie might disagree. As might some Israelis and Arabs and Palestinians, Hindus, Sikhs, Moslems…
Of course it is difficult to tolerate the intolerable; but it is much easier to do so if the intolerable is across the river or across a state line; it is much easier to say "I hate what those infidels do in Sarantum, but I have no control over that place; at least we here in Taranara live as God intended us to."
Perhaps not, in which case there are but two possibilities: everyone is forcibly converted to one view, or there are no views over which we feel so strongly that we must fight. We know from history that confederations of peoples with strongly opposed views have existed for generations. The alternative is persecution, which his the route we are choosing. Consent of the governed is a better path. Or so I think.
==
If I understand you correctly, your main point is that the educational system is the crux of the problem. Your position is that because we have useless schools, we’re not getting an educated citizenry; they lack both the knowledge and the critical thinking skills necessary to the reasoned execution of their responsibilities as citizens.
I agree with you, up to a point. But I think the problem is deeper than that. While I am not a perfectionist, I am certainly disillusioned, and the more I ponder this issue, the more depressed I become.
We’re in the situation of having to build the tools to build the tools required to produce an informed citizenry. And I don’t think that most of the current crop of citizens have the interest or the ability to contemplate anything beyond the plot-twists of their favorite sitcoms.
Upon achieving a majority in the House in 1994, several prominent Republicans openly discussed the possibility of abolishing the federal Department of Education, and were promptly pilloried for even considering such a move. Why? Because the media were (and are) overwhelmingly in favor of centralized education, the representatives in question lacked the articulation to overcome the media bias, and the public were so engrossed in ‘Seinfeld’ and the like that they couldn’t be bothered to consider the issue on its merits, letting the media do their thinking for them.
This is a threefold failure, but the root of the problem is the indifference of the public. Look at the percentage of eligible voters who actually bother to exercise their franchise - it’s something on the order of 40% or less. Lack of education and critical thinking skills are certainly part of the problem, but I think complacency and laziness are the main culprits.
It’s easier to be complacent and lazy than ever before, in the main because of the industry and energetic efforts of the relatively small number of people in our country who are driven to do things like improve agricultural methods, invent new consumer goods, lessen the costs production and distribution, and develop captivating, but ultimately meaningless, visual spectacles for television. If you don’t have to work very hard to provide even the basic necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter, are you going to be motivated to expend effort in contemplating something as seemingly abstruse as educational policy?
Some will be, but the majority are not. Is the unexamined life worth living? The modern answer appears to be, "Yes, as long as I have my dishwasher, dryer, and the ‘X-Files’, with a couple of Big Macs included in the deal."
From my perspective, this is the biggest difference between contemporary times and the formative years of your generation, to which my parents also belong. The average middle-class householder during your youth still had to do a lot of work, relatively speaking, in order to have three square meals a day; television wasn’t considered a substitute for family conversation (there’s a fundamental difference between gathering together to listen to a radio play, which requires some imagination on the part of the listeners, and slouching on the sofa watching a typical TV action/adventure series, which leaves nothing to the imagination and thus requires no effort to absorb). You didn’t have pocket calculators which you were allowed to bring to class in lieu of learning how to derive square roots.
And you certainly didn’t have the Internet, where you could do a few keyword searches, rapidly plagiarize some obscure material from various Web sites, and unblushingly present the results as a term-paper.
I don’t even own a television; I find it too distracting. Even though I have no interest in about 95% of what passes for even "educational" programming, I would find my eye drawn to the screen, and, before I knew it, I’d spent three hours in front of the tube with nothing worthwhile to show for the experience. The problem with television programming today isn’t poor quality - it’s that the production values are so high that one i s drawn in by the spectacle, even though the content is either nonexistent or obviously patent nonsense.
Television is a big part of the problem, in my opinion. Its negative effects cannot be overestimated. I would outlaw it, if I could.
My main point here is that convenience seems to be the goal of contemporary America. Taking an active role in matters of public policy is decidedly inconvenient, unless you’re writing your elected representatives to explain how cutting a subsidy to a favored group - of which you yourself coincidentally happen to be a member - would be comparable to genocide, killing baby seals, and chopping down the rainforest (which used to be known as "the jungle", in the era before political correctness became de rigueur).
Or unless you’re scheming to become one of those elected representatives, so as to have the opportunity to be asked on MTV whether you prefer boxers, or briefs. And to then leave comely White House interns in no doubt as to your choice of undergarments. Or cigars.
I don’t see a way out of the box, either.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Dobbins <
rdobbins@hawaii.rr.com> // 808.351.6110 voiceNull, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane and empty of meaning for all time.
-- Pope Innocent X, on the Treaty of Westphalia, 1648
Oh, I'm not so sure I see a way out either, but I'm at an age when it's unlikely I can do much about it anyway. But then when I was your age we saw no way out of nuclear war either. The difference between conservatives and other political views including libertarian is that we are convinced -- I would say know in our bones -- that there IS no final, once and for all, organization, solution, mechanism, or any other remedy; that one does the best one can, and doesn't expect too much; that salvation is individual. "The sins you do two by two you must pay for one by one." One gets through as best one can.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, but then eternal vigilance is the price of darned near anything worth having. There really is progress, but we do fall back in one area when we advance in another. We have made great technological progress but at the price of other cultural matters; now it's time to be less concerned about matters economic, for we have enough goods; it's time to look to matters of the spirit, and I fear thatneither the economists nor the free market will of great help here.
As to the Republicans solving our problems, probably not. Most Republicans are, after all, second raters, people who went into government because they didn't have much else they could do well. The very philosophy of the conservative sees government service as a burden preferably to be left to others. Many of the best do just that. The Republicans abandoned their principles, and the election of '98 when more Republicans stayed home than voted showed that you can't beat something with nothing; if you stand for nothing, are willing to fight for nothing, then those who have something to offer will be able to rally more support than you will. I can hope the Republicans learned that lesson, but I doubt they did.
Yes, we need to abolish the Federal Department of Education, and preferably the ones in the various States as well; let education be the concern of local school boards composed of and elected by those who have children in the schools, who are among those who pay the taxes to support those schools. That is called self government, and of all the places to try it, I would say education is the best to start.
Sunday, January 17, 1999
One of the things I’ve noticed about people in general, and a great number of notable personages in the fields of science, politics, and literature specifically, is the tendency of many during their early lives to actively reject the tenets of organized religion - or indeed any suggestion of a universal moral order not grounded firmly on strictly secular principles - only to make an about-face in later life. The norm seems to be the youthful embrasure of a radical leftist political philosophy as a sort of secular religion, followed by a gradual evolution over the years into, if not conservatism and traditional religion, at least an ameloriated form of more mainstream political liberalism and a genuine interest in questions of spirituality.
Einstein was a member of this latter group, as was Tolstoy.
There notable exceptions such as Gladstone, Ibsen, William Jennings Bryan, and Tony Blair, who fuse their spiritual faith with their leftist political principles. And there are those who remain secularist throughout their lives such as Gibbon, Bertrand Russell, Eric Hobsbawm (not dead yet, but unlikely to change his views at this late date), and the irrepressible H.L. Mencken.
But in general, the majority of those who make a political and spiritual change during their lifetimes seem to go from left to right, from active atheism to organized religion.
Some part of the religious aspect of this phenomenon may be attributable to an increasing awareness of mortality as age progresses, and the natural desire to find some ultimate purpose in the shadow of an ultimately finite lifespan. However, amongst those who have spoken of their personal philosophical journeys, from C.S. Lewis to Churchill to Paul Johnson to Solszhenitsyn, the acceptance of religion in particular seems both profound and genuine.
For some it was a gradual process, for others a single flash of revelatory insight, yet the end results were generally the same.
Regarding those who have lived public lives, this process of change may be traced in both their works and their actions. A number have focused on their evolving philosophies in their writings; others do not address these issues directly, but by implication. In speculative literature, Andrew Greeley, C.S. Lewis and Dan Simmons (_Hyperion_, _The Fall of Hyperion_, _Endymion_, _The Rise of Endymion_) come to mind in the former category. While I personally do not share Simmons’ reverence for Teilhard, he certainly writes about it in a captivating and entertaining way.
You have not chosen to overtly discuss your own philsophical evolution in your fiction, as far as I can determine. Rather, you have used your work as a vehicle for indirectly illuminating certain philosophical tenets which you feel for various reasons should be considered by the reader, in both positive and negative lights. In your nonfiction writings you have alluded to an early flirtation with serious leftism - presumably also including disaffection with religion - in contrast to your later conservatism and religious faith.
Would you be willing to discuss this subject in a public forum? It is of interest to me personally because of my own shift from leftism to conservatism, and from atheism to Christianity. This issue also has broader implications for civilization as a whole.
Quite apart from the metaphysics of the question, the case can be made that civil society does not function well in the absence of faith, and that unadulterated secularism almost inevitably leads to disaster, as with the Soviet experiment. I would be interested to learn your views in this area, if you have any, in addition to any exposition of your personal experience which you would care to elucidate.
-------------------------------
Roland Dobbins <
rdobbins@hawaii.rr.com> // 808.351.6110 voice"Whenever I hear Schroedinger’s cat mentioned, I reach for my gun."
-- Hermann Goering
One day I'll do my memoirs. Meanwhile I'll continue as you say pointing out things people might want to be aware of. I certainly agree with you that societies without some kind of reverence have historically not been viable; if there is no fountain of justice, justice is often abandoned.
I call myself conservative, but I do not mean by that what many mean. I was certainly a Cold Warrior, and in that era what Whittaker Chambers called "A man of the right" but that was war; and the Seventy Years War being over, we can all take stock of who we are and where we are. We made, and I supported, terrible compromises in the basic free society in order to fight the Seventy Years War. Some of those compromises were demanded by the left as a condition of their not making common cause with the national enemy, or as a condition of allowing the Cold War to be prosecuted. In particular many of the concessions to national social power were made in order to get the budget to fight the War. The "National Defense Education Act" comes to mind as an example; it made Federal Aid to Education the norm, and put the educrats into our schools.
My 'conservative' philosophy boils down to a disinclination to make the scope of government any larger than it needs to be, and to a dedication to the concept of checks and balances. I don't think you can abolish power; once called into being it exists. You can fragment it, and if you fragment it properly each piece defends itself against losing what it has, and thus creates interstices in which freedom can reside. I use censorship as my example: I really don't care if my local community censors the books in the book stores and the movies in the movie houses. I would argue that they should do that lightly if at all, but I don't argue the right; but I would strenuously oppose a Federal censorship. I note that we are getting, in the form of anti-racism and political correctness, what amounts to a Federal censorship, and that it will not be long before someone discovers that anti-feminine writings, or writing about IQ, violate Civil Rights; so that we will get a national censorship that requires us to have pornography in the news vending machines next to the schools, but forbids Huckleberry Finn to be in the school library. I wish I were being flippant, but I suspect I will see this condition in my lifetime.
But enough: I merely want it clear that my brand of 'conservative' isn't easily described or easily labeled, and certainly is not naïve support of any political figure I know of.
As to religion, yes, I had a long Odyssey from my father's Unitarianism through Catholicism through various brands of historicist atheism to my present position which is nearly indistinguishable from C. S. Lewis and for many of the same reasons. If I needed a one word description of my position it would be "Thomist"; like St. Thomas I do not believe we can dispense with either reason or revelation, and if the two appear to be in conflict the defect is likely to be in our understanding. Of course that may be simple fear: a universe that is no more than a dance of the atoms, without purpose, is terrifying.
Thanks for asking.
Wednesday January 20, 1999
It’s my opinion that the current business model of United Airlines (employee-owned company) and many Silicon Valley startups with their employee stock plans are a far finer realization of the ideals of Marx than anything that was ever done in Russia or China.
This is not to say that everything Marx advocated is correct, or even palatable. However, I think that the "bad example" set by the totalitarian so-called "communist" states has given Marx a far worse name than he deserves.
Marx also said that the capitalist state would wither away due to it’s own internal contradictions. I believe that this is also true, if you define "capitalism" to be the flavor that was prevalent in Marx’s day;
It’s just that the withering process has been so slow that few have really noticed it. We still call the US a "capitalist" country even though it is far less so than it once was. Whether that be a good or ill thing on the whole I don’t know.
Many of Marx’s other predictions and analyses have turned out to be on target; Perhaps it is time for a reinterpretation of his work?
--
Talin (Talin@ACM.org) Talin’s third law:
http://www.sylvantech.com/~talin "Politeness doesn’t scale."
I am off to AAAS tomorrow, and no time to discuss this except to point out that a few correct predictions don't validate a whole system of analysis. I leave the rest to the readers…
==
SUBJECT: Talin’s call for a reexamination of Marxism
Charlie Brown, exasperated the he never got any respect, exclaimed "I’m going to be elected President someday, then you’ll all be sorry!"
I think a similar impulse is at the root of Marxism. Marx and Engels created a vast analytical framework for the purpose of explaining why they and their friends should rule the world, as opposed to the existing class of rich and powerful. It’s an intellectual utopia, a vast elaboration on the theme of a poet’s daydream to "grasp the sorry scheme of things entire," and "remold it nearer to the heart’s desire." The main point is that the dreamer gets to do the remolding.
Starting with the irrational idea that the dreamer is capable of such grasping and remolding, Marxism builds a logical structure in service of the dream. Some parts are indeed cogent—there are valid humanitarian criticisms of Capitalism. Marxism, of course, is hardly unique in making them. Other parts, like the labor theory of value, are silly. All of it is best understood as rationalization for an already-desired revolution, a rationalization that stays with us as an intellectual monkey trap. The perennial allure of gnostic revolution: YOU can grasp the SORRY scheme entire! YOU can remold it. Here’s what you need to know….
This gnostic empowerment attracts needy egos yearning for power they don’t have (which is why the current scheme is so sorry). And power is promised is nothing less than the dictatorship of the proletariat. ‘Dictatorship of who?’ one should ask. As Gandalf said to Saruman, "Only one may wear the ring at a time; you needn’t trouble to say ‘we’."
All of this has little to do with United Airlines employees owning the stock of their company. That, of course, is Capitalism! Employees, like everyone, can own things, and Lo, it is good to own stock, and extra good to own the stock of your employer. This hardly compares to common societal ownership (the Marxist theoretical end-state), let alone to Party ownership (the Marxist reality).
The response of the rest of the Peanuts gang to Charlie Brown’s promise/threat was "I’ll say we will!" And the world has indeed been sorry whenever Marxist gnostic revolutionaries attained power--usually sorry to the tune of megadeaths. The problem isn’t that they weren’t doing Marxism right. The flaw is inherent in the very essence of revolution. The human clay must be roughly used whenever an ego, having grasped great power, seeks to "remold it nearer to the heart’s desire."
Mike Juergens
mikejuer@netnitco.net
Don't let them immanentize the eschaton!
Sunday, January 24, 1999
>Don't let them immanentize the eschaton!
Well, of course I had to zoom off on the web and try to find out what that odd phrase means. It seems to be a slogan largely used by folks who play with Magick and Chaos, and so highly appropriate to be quoted at Choas Manor. Usually, the THEM is emphasized.
A tentative translation is "Don't let THEM bring to subjective awareness that which the entire universe will become at the end of time." And I certainly agree we'd never want THEM to do THAT!
Mike J.
It's actually from years ago and another life. Eric Vogelin had a lot to say about Gnostics. The essence of gnosticism is that knowledge is all power: the power eventually to bring about the fulfillment of the very purpose of the universe; in a word, to "immanentize", which is to say to bring into real time, the purpose and destiny of the universe, which can conveniently be called "the eschaton" although that is not very good English (or Greek).
So the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists (ISI), which for a number of good reasons became the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which was for years the primary organization providing philosophical stuffing to the battle against gnosticism (and particularly the brand of gnosticism that became Communism) at one point brought out the "EVSS": the Eric Vogelin Sweat Shirt, which had a picture of Vogelin and the slogan "Don't let THEM immanentize the eschaton". Wearing it, or even knowing what it meant, marked you as a particular kind of person, and was supposed to immunize the wearer against gnosticism.
Underneath the jokes there were some fairly serious thoughts. Still are. No one ever said you couldn't have fun while battling Gnostics. Gnosticism is in fact the characteristic heresy of the age, manifesting itself everywhere, so much so that almost no one knows what it is. It masks itself as a form of rationalism, but underneath it are some very irrational assumptions that are never examined. And enough of that for a while….
