Archives for September 2005

I was intrigued by the Politics Test I took yesterday, on several counts:

1. My own brother made some comment, like, "I laughed when it pegged you as an anarchist." But I am an anarchist, for fifteen years now. "Oh."
2. Whoever designed it has a reasonable grasp of what we individualists call "anarco-individualism," "anarco-capitalism," "free-market anarchy," etc.
3. More interesting than #2 is that the predominant tradition of "anarchy" throughout history has been communist and totalitarian (aye, ironic, eh?). In other words, the vast majority of "anarchists," historically speaking, would come out somewhere in the totalitarian quadrant of that test.

The reason for #3 is trivially simple: The only way to prevent the "twin tyrannies" of private property and capital accumulation is through the tyranny of a totalitarian state. But try arguing that with an anarco-syndicalist. It’s not like the, uh, USSR, illustrates my point, or anything.

Here’s another thing: You could spend the rest of your life in alt.society.anarchy reading the hundreds of thousands of posts there over the last 15+ years, and you would likely not get the clarity of what I’m talking about with regard to anarchy as you could from a brief time at Wikipedia. The defining paragraph doesn’t really do a bad job, either.

The term means "being without rule", and is derived from the Latin word anarchia, from Aristotle‘s Greek term αναρχία (αν an- "without" plus αρχία arkhia
meaning "command" or "rule"). Based on this etymology, anarchists are
typically described as rejecting all forms of rule or domination,
including all instances of enforced or representational government and
any concept of the State,
and instead favouring social relations that are voluntarily and freely
established among individuals. While not all anarchists accept this
definition, this is the sense in which the term is commonly used in
everyday speech.

So, historically, those who have called themselves "anarchists" have really misnamed themselves and have conflated the tyrannical force of the state with the validly earned authority of property owners, capitalists, and employers.

What I thought I’d do, for fun, is take the 49 questions of the Politics Test and cover them here, in four parts.

1. The government should subsidize struggling museums, theaters, and artists.

Strongly Disagree.

The only way the government can do that is to take money from people who are otherwise unwilling to provide it (stealing). These places are "struggling" because unlike the hundreds of gainfully occupied business establishments you’ll pass by on your way home tonight, these places can’t seem to provide enough of, or the right kinds of, or the right mix of values that enough people will trade for in order for them to at least break even (forget profit, even). If you enjoy the sorts of art and displays that don’t enjoy huge appeal, then, by all means, support them. Do your level best to convince others to support them. I wouldn’t think of stopping you, even if you happen to think that pictures of Christ submerged in urine are just dandy.

2. I am troubled by the eroding distinction between entertainment and marketing.

Strongly Disagree.

I take the questions to mean: shouldn’t the state step in, establish, and enforce some standards? Of course not. I believe in freedom, after all. And, I happen to think that the pinnacle of entertainment-in-advertising, the Super Bowl commercials, are just grand. In fact, personally, truth be told, it’s usually my main reason for trying to catch the big match when I can (unless the 49ers are playing). If you don’t enjoy that, I’m not going to argue, and I’m certainly not going to force you to watch. I’ve stated the principle (freedom), but on a practical level, I am inundated with commercial solicitations and I’ve found my own ways to filter them out. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be exposed to them at all — so I appreciate that some go to such efforts to entice me to take a closer look.

3. Protesters cause more good than harm.

Strongly Agree.

Of course, "good," and "harm" ought to be defined, but I’ll stipulate to the practical limitations inherent in such a test. The fact is that I find the cause celebre of public protestations to be a steaming pile of bullshit 99% of the time. This means that I, with my more conventional values, ought to be perfectly safe. The principle, here, is freedom, applied to speech. The question is a trick, really. The good, as I would define it, is in the exercise of such freedom in and of itself. That means: whether a protestation advocates for values I love or hate, I love the freedom inherent in the exercise even more. I’m reminded of one of my favorite lines from film, The People vs. Larry Flint: "If free speech can protect a scumbag like me, because I’m the worst, then it can protect all of you."

4. A person cannot be truly spiritual without regularly attending church or temple.

Strongly Disagree.

This is a politics test, so the question is, I think, trying to get at one’s likely position with regard to church and state. But spirituality is a much broader topic than the monotheism of the Christian faith. I find secular humanists to be "spiritual" in the sense that they can be awed by the human condition and potential that’s so much more than glandular squirts of certain chemical compounds. Church is one way in which people attempt to access a sense of life that’s more than the DNA they’re composed of.

5. Something like the theory of Natural Selection explains why some people are homeless.

Strongly Agree.

I think this one’s designed to elicit a knee-jerk reaction from religious people who don’t know or understand the theory. On the other hand, I don’t know that natural selection really explains anything of the sort. What I do think is that poverty and irresponsibility tend to beget poverty and irresponsibility. There are exceptions, and anyone can escape any time they want, but when people  behave like animals, then natural selection, a theory that explains non-conscious reproductive selection, is probably as good as any for predicting the most likely outcome.

6. If countries like France are unwilling to cooperate with our military plans, we should treat them as enemies.

Strongly Disagree.

You have to accept the collectivist premise to really answer this question either way. This question is probably looking to identify those with a jingoist sense of nationalism. Individuals, regardless of national origin, should judge and treat all others as individuals, according to their own values. But, given the premise of the question, if you pretend that America is an individual and France is an individual, why would you treat someone as a enemy (qua enemy of the state) because they don’t see things your way? You may wish to disassociate yourself, but that is a far cry from treating them as an enemy, by which I mean: someone you might consider preemptive attack based on their likely threat to you.

7. I feel guilty when I shop at a large national chain.

Strongly Disagree.

Oh God, no. Even if I might not like the quality and service as much as something more exclusive, I’ve got to admire their prowess in distributing so many values to so many people at such low prices. The real answer here is that the large national chains are just exercising their right to invest and use their capital as they see fit, and you, as an employee or customer, can freely associate or not associate. It’s all very voluntary. Of course, I condemn any national chain — or anyone else for that matter — that uses the state to get subsidies for themselves, such as the use of eminent domain.

8. Social justice should be the foundation of any economic system.

Strongly Disagree.

The problem, here again, is that you’re asked to accept the premise that there ought to be "an economic system," by which is meant: a state system of economic manipulation. I believe in free trade, which means: down to the very commodity or debt instrument that traders mutually agree to use as a medium of exchange.  I agree with Ayn Rand: "Capitalism is the separation of the state and economics." As far as "social justice" goes, this is just a euphemism for the idea the state ought to play Robbin Hood and establish force-backed economies that steal from some to give to others in the name of "justice," which, of course is a gross inversion and perversion of both morality and reason. Theft can never form the basis of doing justice.

9. People shouldn’t be allowed to have children they can’t provide for.

Strongly Disagree.

I wish that people would be responsible enough to not have children until they can reasonably provide for them. But I wish a lot of things for people. The bottom line is that no matter how stupid I think some people behave, I have no right and no basis to force them to do anything except to leave me alone. And if I have no such right, then neither does anyone else. And if none of us have such a right, individually, there is no way we magically acquire such moral sanction by forming ourselves into a mob. Of course, if people have children and then neglect or abuse them, then there exists moral authority to intervene, if necessary, though every effort must be made to protect and respect people’s rights.

10. I would defend my property with lethal force.

Agree.

Greg Swann disagrees, but that may come down to the way we interpret the question. I agree that it would generally be disproportionate to kill someone for stealing your car, for example, but what if your life, as nearly as you can tell, depends on your car? So, I’m agreeing, but not strongly. Of course, I have a right to engage lethal force to defend my life, and there I strongly agree. But to great extent, our lives, as we know them, depend on and are all entwined with our property. Stealing some of my stuff isn’t going to diminish my life enough to kill someone over, but there is a line, somewhere, where my life becomes not my life, anymore.

11. The world would be better if there were no huge corporations, just small businesses.

Strongly Disagree.

But I’ll bet you don’t know why I disagree. Even if I hated huge corporations, I’d still strongly disagree, because the only way to not have huge corporations is to use the force of the state to prevent them, such as communists do. And if the state was so oppressive as to do that, the world would surely be a worse place all around, even if you happened to enjoy there not being any huge corporations. It’s easy to advocate "freedom" when all you mean is that people are free to do what you’d like them to do. But what freedom is, really, is a recognition of where your right to action with respect to others, ends.

OK, next up with be questions 12-22. Probably sometime tonight.

Update: Here’s Part II.

Update: See my 4-part series of commentary covering each question of this test.

The Politics Test

Update: See my 4-part series of commentary covering each question of this test.

In a comment to my post on "Intelligent Design," yesterday, I’m reminded of Project Steve.

NCSE’s "Project Steve" is a tongue-in-cheek parody of a long-standing creationist tradition
of amassing lists of "scientists who doubt evolution" or "scientists who dissent from Darwinism."

Creationists draw up these lists to convince the public that evolution is somehow being rejected
by scientists, that it is a "theory in crisis." Most members of the public lack sufficient contact
with the scientific community to know that this claim is totally unfounded. NCSE has been exhorted
by its members to compile a list of thousands of scientists affirming the validity of the theory of
evolution, but although we easily could have done so, we have resisted such pressure. We did not
wish to mislead the public into thinking that scientific issues are decided by who has
the longer list of scientists!

Project Steve mocks this practice with a bit of humor, and because "Steves" are only about 1%
of scientists, it incidentally makes the point that tens of thousands of scientists support
evolution.

As of September 28, there are 628 scientists named Steve who support the following statement:

Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the
biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in
favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry.
Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes
of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution
occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its
occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically
irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited
to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of
our nation’s public schools.

Now, of course, I have no dog in the fight between what should and should not be taught in public schools. Any moral sanction I grant to public schools is to individual teachers and principals who do a good job. Period. And I know some. I don’t support stealing in the form of taxation for any cause. So, all schools should be private schools.

Still, whether public or private, if you’re going to call it science class, then it’s science you ought to be teaching, not fairy tales.

I’ve been sitting on this this scathing critique of "Intelligent Design" by conservative John Derbyshire for at least a few weeks, but hadn’t gotten sufficient motivation to post it.

This is Bush at his muddle-headed worst, conferring all the authority
of the presidency on the teaching of pseudoscience in science classes.
Why stop with Intelligent Design (the theory that life on earth has
developed by a series of supernatural miracles performed by the God of
the Christian Bible, for which it is pointless to seek any naturalistic
explanation)? Why not teach the little ones astrology? Lysenkoism?
Orgonomy? Dianetics? Reflexology? Dowsing and radiesthesia? Forteanism?
Velikovskianism? Lawsonomy? Secrets of the Great Pyramid? ESP and
psychokinesis? Atlantis and Lemuria? The hollow-earth theory? Does the
president have any idea, does he have any idea,
how many varieties of pseudoscientific flapdoodle there are in the
world? If you are going to teach one, why not teach the rest? Shouldn’t
all sides be "properly taught"? To give our kids, you know, a
rounded picture? Has the president scrutinized Velikovsky’s theories?
Can he refute them? Can you?

And every buncombe theory — every one of those species of twaddle that
I listed — has, or at some point had, as many adherents as Intelligent
Design. The hollow-earth theory was taken up by the Nazis and taught,
as the Hohlweltlehre, in German schools. It still has a
following in Germany today. Velikovsky’s theories — he believed that
Jupiter gave birth to a giant comet which, after passing close to earth
and causing the miracles of the Book of Exodus, settled down as the
planet Venus — were immensely popular in the 1950s and generated heated
controversy, with angry accusations by the Velikovskians that they were
being shut out by closed-minded orthodox astronomers determined to
protect their turf, etc., etc. Lysenkoism was state doctrine in
Stalin’s Russia and was taught at the most prestigious universities.
Expressing skepticism about it could get you shot. (Likewise with the
bizarre linguistic theories of Stalin’s protégé N.Y. Marr, who believed
that every word in every human language derived from one of four basic
elements, pronounced "sal," "ber," "yon," and "rosh." I tell you, the
house of pseudoscience has many, many mansions.) Dianetics was
rebranded as Scientology and is now a great force in the land — try
criticizing it, and you’ll find out.

Do yourself the service of reading the whole thing.

I dunno; It’s discouraging, at times. On the one hand, we see such evidence that we live in an explicable universe that operates according to perfectly natural and definable laws; yet most people choose to adopt the stupidity disease of mysticism, and really, display little evidence that they have any greater grasp of reality than does a common cargo cult.

Other individualists often chide me for being so hard on the religious. I really don’t get that. They’ll take up all sorts of time in onslaught of the left and their religion of the omnipotent state, but don’t seem quite so nearly to mind the insane fantasies promulgated by the mainstream religions, as well as the born-again nutbars on the right.

I make no distinctions. From the religion of communism on the left, to the whacked-out fundamentalism on the right that interprets all of the Bible literally, and everything in-between, it’s all very fundamentally the same. There are no important distinctions to make in the context of what’s real vs. ‘the second coming of cargo.’

It’s like trying to make distinctions between Santa Claus, qua entity, and the Easter Bunny.

This, people, is at the very root of every single individual and social problem — every single one. It is the conscious and willing behavior of attempting to create reality in one’s own mind, in spite of a lack of any real evidence in support, and even more often, in stark contradiction to facts already well established.

The human mind is designed to perceive and integrate reality, not to create it. An honest individual’s success in life is directly tied to his or her ability to accurately integrate reality and take action accordingly. Those who don’t increasingly lead diminished lives, most often as the prey of the dishonest and criminal minded (powercrats, religious leaders, self-appointed advocates, environmentalists, "health" nuts, etc.). Those criminally minded parasites live off of the unearned money, power, and sex generated by the plethora of mystical illusions held in the hearts of men. Ironically, these parasites are the very ones instrumental in creating, propagating and perpetuating all of the fantasies and illusions in which humankind trusts and believes.

Here’s a story that just about everyone in the world will tell you is "tragic." There is an element of tragedy, of course, but there’s not a bit of moral authority to it.

A party before the University of Central Florida football home opener
turned deadly Saturday when an Orlando police officer shot and killed
an undercover university police officer working with state agents to
stop illegal drinking.

You’ll need to read the whole story to really get what I’m getting at. And you might check this out as well, particularly the open letter from the university president.

Now, tell me where it is in that news story or the open letter that addresses what might happen to you if you pull a gun on people who aren’t harming anyone and who are minding their own business — before you came along, that is. In fact, what should you think and what action should you take in such circumstances?

These were college kids; drinking, just like virtually all college kids do. Business as usual. Rite of passage. Someone comes up and pulls a gun on you. And, no, I’m not going to make meaningless distinctions between uniformed or plain clothes. If someone pulls a gun on you for suspected "under-age" drinking, then they’re not only fucking nuts, but they’re a grave danger and risk to you and you have no basis whatsoever to believe that any subsequent actions on their part will be responsible and rational.

The fact is: the late officer, Mario Jenkins, has no moral high ground to stand on. Did he deserve to die? Perhaps not, at least not in the sense that he intended mortal harm to anyone. He at least deserved to be stripped of all responsibilities that place a loaded weapon in his hands in the name of the "public," and he deserved to be beaten to a bloody pulp for pulling a gun on a bunch of drinking college kids. What he does not deserve is any sort of moral sanction for his behavior.

I am gratified about one aspect, though. In this insane War on America, conducted by the jackbooted thugs that has made its way even to the college campus security force by now, it’s usually the innocent that get victimized, such as with the frequent breaking down the door and storm trooping the "wrong house" at 4 a.m. In this case, at least, if someone has to die, I’m sure a lot happier to see it be the aggressors, and by that, I mean: the cops.

Now, I can see the idiot comments and emails already:

<weeny voice> "but he didn’t pull the gun until they resisted." </weeny voice>

Maybe; maybe not. Irrelevant, either way. See here. And, oh, by the way, it’s not like this sort of thing is an isolated case. Guess in which totalitarian military police state this little soirée took place, and when you watch the video, do take note of the sounds of helicopters during this full military assault on partying kids.

I know that people think I probably take some pleasure in this. I only take pleasure in the fact that I’m able, in some small way, to expose such utter and contemptible evil. America is a great country, with lots of opportunity still. In fact, 95% of my time is spent doing positive things that improve my life and the lives of those I love; and it’s spent in pursuit of the things I love. I’m not going to let any of this get in my way, as long as I can help it. At the same time, people need to know.

The institutions — and the people who run them — that are upheld as the core of American goodness and trustworthiness are rotten to the core. You see, the thing is, everyone who can really positively benefit themselves and the ones they love is already doing so, and either earning a good living at it, or getting rich at it. Those who can’t, or won’t, or who hate those who do and those who are, are the sociopaths increasingly populating the institutions that make life and death decisions concerning our futures.

(tip off: Joshua Holmes)