The Courtship of Eddie's Ideology

Given the way politics have been drifting
in the direction of NeoConservatism
and NeoFeudalism, I think Edmund Burke himself
would consider crossing the aisle.

I get excited when I stumble across something that appeals to my own confirmation bias.... I mean, my nuanced, principled and well-founded view of our social, economic and political landscapes. Nice Guy Eddie brings the heat...

Since I don't let an ideology do my thinking for me, I don't really care what positions fall under which label. I really, just DON'T CARE. I'm not trying to Liberal here, I'm just trying to be RIGHT. (As in "correct," not "wing.") And the way I see our modern discourse going, there are really only two groups:

One is very strictly and narrowly defined, and I've written about them here here here and here, for example. And to be with this crowd, you must accept EVERY bit of Dogma, even the ones that contradict other ones, you must swallow every lie, accept every bit of obviously questionable evidence, and utterly reject ANY evidence or argument to the contrary of ANY point. What's more you must accuse your opponents of committing all of the sins you do, and you must HATE them, because they are out to destroy this country. You must believe in your own perfection and the perfection of your positions and that you have a mandate from God that justifies this belief. At worst, the weakest in this camp merely keep quiet, fail to criticise the big-talkers, and silently tell themselves that it will all, somehow be OK, since at least the OTHER GUY'S not winning. 

Then they're are people who can't abide this kind of insanity. And almost regardless of what positions they actually hold, the people in the first camp call them "Liberals" and demonize them.
So, from my POV, there are really on two school's of thought: Radical, Right-Wing Reactionary Authoritarianism... ...and those who reject it.


They have robbed the words "conservative" and "liberal" of any real meaning. Not that I care... I don't really buy into labels... ...which apparently makes me a Liberal.

This is rather what I was thinking when I wrote Crossing the Aisle in Defense of the the Social Contract over at Politicususa..

...[T]hey founded both a nation and established a Constitution that was, indeed, a codified social contract, remarkably well-annotated as to it’s intent, as perfect as the times permitted and designed to allow amendments as times and and need required. It was a recognition that the individual was the foundation of and the entire rationale for the state, that all justice and all rationale for governance flowed from them.  When that essential truth is lost, when position and power depend upon the whims of a foreign court or personal fortunes, there is no such thing as liberty;  merely degrees of licence, of increasing expense and exclusivity.

Granted, these ideas were indeed Liberal.  Scandalously so. But that was more than 200 years ago and in general, it has worked out well. The principles of the American Revolution – it’s foundational ideas – have taken root worldwide, and not so much due to might, but due to the fact that it works. And as a person of reflexively conservative nature, I assert:“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

All that is required is the acceptance that all people are of inherent worth, that each is due individual respect from their peers and their governments and that each person is to be presumed, unless otherwise demonstrated, capable of moral agency, and that the principle duty of government is in fact to safeguard and expand that liberty.

I once thought this to be the great common understanding of Conservatism. For that document is foundational to the social compact that is the United States. The principles it’s based in are basic to what every other Conservative who does not dismiss the Enlightenment as a brief aberration are the essence of Western Civilization. The rule of law, the concept of the inalienable rights of man and, yes, a sharp separation between Church and State, lest the two be come one thing that serves neither end at all well. That, if you might recall, casting back on most of human history, is a nearly unavoidable  conclusion.

At any rate, if a Social Contract is Liberal while ditching the Constitution and the New Deal is Conservative – I guess it’s time for me to cross the Aisle.

 There's been a good deal of musing online about what truly is meant by freedom and liberty. As the Tea Party sorts quite reasonably point out, the whole movement was started by Libertarians. And whatever you may feel about Libertarians in general, it is indisputable that Libertarianism places a great deal of emphasis on individual liberty. An excerpt from this wonderful article, Conservatives v. Libertarians: the debate over judicial activism divides former allies, illustrates the tensions within what often seems to be a monolith of "No."

One of the first libertarians to challenge the conservatives' pro-government stance was the political scientist Stephen Macedo, who wrote a short book for the Cato Institute in 1986 with the provocative title The New Right v. The Constitution. Macedo argued that Bork, Meese, and their allies had turned the American system on its head. As he put it, "When conservatives like Bork treat rights as islands surrounded by a sea of government powers, they precisely reverse the view of the Founders as enshrined in the Constitution, wherein government powers are limited and specified and rendered as islands surrounded by a sea of individual rights."


It would be difficult to overstate the role that the Cato Institute has played in critiquing Bork's majoritarian conservatism and in pushing the conservative legal movement in a more libertarian direction. In addition to publishing Macedo's book and producing numerous widely read articles and studies, Cato hosted a seminal October 1984 conference devoted to the topic of "Economic Liberties and the Constitution" Among the participants were the University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein, who argued that the judiciary should play an active role in defending economic liberty (much as it did in Lochner), and Antonin Scalia, then a federal appeals court judge, who advanced the Borkean view that the courts should defer to the political branches on such matters. "The Supreme Court decisions rejecting substantive due process in the economic field are clear, unequivocal and current," Scalia declared. He added that "in my view the position the Supreme Court has arrived at is good--or at least that the suggestion that it change its position is even worse."


In response, Epstein argued that under the Scalia-Bork interpretation, "it is up to Congress and the states to determine the limitations of their own power--which, of course, totally subverts the original constitutional arrangement of limited government." The Scalia-Bork view, Epstein said, ignores the Constitution's "many broad and powerful clauses designed to limit the jurisdiction of both federal and state governments," such as the Commerce Clause, which authorizes Congress to "regulate commerce ... among the several states." He said the Borkeans also ignore clauses "designed to limit what the states and the federal government can do within the scope of their admitted power," such as the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause, which says private property may not be taken for public use without "just compensation," and the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause (on which Lochner relied) and Privileges or Immunities Clause, which says states may not "abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens." Taking those provisions seriously, Epstein argued, requires "some movement in the direction of judicial activism" on behalf of economic rights.


This debate brought the conservative-libertarian divide into the spotlight. "That's why the conference was so important as a benchmark," Roger Pilon says. "For the first time, libertarians threw down the gauntlet."

Now, of course economic liberty is an important concept. But economic liberty is not the only form of liberty; indeed, if it's restricted only to the concepts of income and property, it essentially defines most people as being relatively un-free. This is why more left-leaning Libertarians take the seemingly surprising step of supporting collectively-funded, single payer health-care and indeed, something along the lines of a Guaranteed Annual Income. After all, if you do believe that economic freedom is fundamental - then obviously it must cost something to ensure.


The thing that these policies reflect is not any particular bias in favor the poor and disadvantaged, but rather the idea that Liberty is a social good, that enabling people to make a wider degree of choices will tend to ensure that more people will tend to make better ones and that regardless of your philosophy of poverty and it's origins, and inarguably, there are associated costs to society that are utterly unavoidable. Policy simply changes the way in which society will be impacted by the poor.


So you can either pay the poor to be somewhat less impoverished, in a way that also eliminates entire administrative functions designed to target and support depressed local economies, or you can take a more punitive approach - and end up paying far more in terms of urban blight, policing costs, survival - level crime and gang activity that exists to resist and replace an adverserial govenment that sees the poor as a problem to be contained, rather than as citizens with rights.


This is an excellent illustration of the term "inalienable rights" and a practical application of what a "well armed militia" is and was understood to be when the Second Amendment to the US Constitution was crafted. An inalienable right is something that a government may not rightfully nor meaningfully forbid, for there is no legitimate, practical nor cost-effective means of doing so. A law that will cause tension and conflict to the degree that it is enforced, with those it is enforced against, is not just law.


If people are oppressed or feel threatened, they will band together and will strike out at the perceived threat if they must, or to the degree they may, subvert and evade it's effect, generally at the price of far more social cost than that which the law was said to address, with the additional effect that widespread disrespect for the law will undermine the rule of law itself.


Therefore, it's to be understood that the very first principle of good government is to not startle the citizens, nor make them feel that they are regarded in a fundamentally different way than their neighbours, on the other side of the tracks.


Quite aside from "right and wrong" or "right and left," the founders understood that this was the very sort of thing that led to a situation that precluded any meaningful governance at all.


I've referred to the current strain of public policy in the US (and distressingly, in Canada) as "The Galligher School"

Even if every single thing D.A.R.E. and the various "drug warriors" said about slippery slopes and inappropriateness for medical use were factual (a matter of some considerable dispute between those who care more than I, one way or the other), the unregulated consequences predicted by the pearl-clutching nannies would still be less severe than the current state of affairs.

This is leaving aside the entire question as to whether people should be "permitted" to use drugs - since it's clearly failed to change drug usage in any detectable way, it's my presumption that the war is exactly what it seems to be - an ongoing war against people, and that the violence and repression is not a means to an end, it is the entire point.

I refer to it as the "Bigger Hammer" theory of governance. If things don't go as you desire, if people don't behave as you think they should, pull out your  biggest hammer and hit them as hard as you can. I'm quite certain I've referred to it as the Gallagher School of Public Policy. I had no actual idea at the time that it is also Gallagher's idea of Public Policy. Go figure.

So like I said above, the whole point is to smash shit. That's the whole act. Smash shit, say something viciously stupid, and the audience laughs nervously. Confuse that with approval, and carry on.

Arguably, that could be described as what the situation is, in the Untied States - an evident lack of meaningful, effective government, at vast expense, to contrary ends, with no respect for either the economic or personal liberties of any person. And I do honor the Tea Party folks for initially recognizing the issue... but at the moment, their reflexive policy is not political, it is cultural. And their culture - akin to many on the Left, like the Black Bloc - is to simply smash shit they don't like.


I'm a Canadian. I believe that when Ronald Regan popularized the idea that "government is the enemy", that government was unable to help people - well, it was in many ways true. But that's not an inherent problem. It's  a problem in regard to structure, education, regulation and training. It's a confusion about goals, and a long standing and perverse idea that the purpose of government is to fuck with this group of individuals in order to benefit either the largest number of other individuals, or a small number of wealthy ones.


Both ideals are wrong - aside from the morality of it; aside from the principles, or the Constitutionality. Look around you. See the effects on the people you know, the places you travel, the way things were 20 years ago compared to how they are today. These ideas are wrong because they do not work.

Maddow & Henke: Cronkite's heir highlights next Buckley?

I had pretty much given up on finding a sane conservative perspective for my blogroll. Hell, I'd pretty much given up on the idea of calling myself what I am, an ethical anti-authoritarian, centrist pragmatist who's policy stance is always in favor of enhancing the practical freedoms and opportunities of the individual or that is to say, an actual Libertarian.

I have strong principles, but to paraphrase Issac Asimov, I try never to let my morality get in the way of doing the right thing. Indeed, I've considerably revised my moral views over the years based on the frequency of collisions between Morality and Reality.

One of the greatest problems of the Right (at this point in history) is a smugly moralistic worldview that tends to sharply restrict their ability to even notice, much less recognize situations in which there might be some complexity involved.

I've battled clinical depression my entire life, and I'm here to tell you (remarkably enough) that that degree of black and white thinking I've come to recognize as symptomatic is no virtue. It makes it quite impossible to make rational, reasonable or even sane decisions. When the medication takes effect and that mental state lifts - it can be embarrassing to look back at what one thought, said and did. Suddenly the color returns and one's life may well be seen as an offensive composition. It rather depends on who's been handing you the crayons, you see.


Now, that's a picture that speaks 10,000 words - and not one of them is worth listening to. And yet - and this is a non-partisan failing - we do. We give these people oxygen, when the only appropriate response is shunning. It's certainly tempting to point, laugh and mock - and I've done more than my share of it. It has it's place, should someone who's viewpoints are generally within the boundries of "arguable" and "sane" commit a correctable lapse. But when we get in the range of Glenn Beck Stupid, the only appropriate response is to stop listening and supporting such speech. Pointedly. En Masse.

That's not "censorship," it's self-preservation. That degree of paranoid stupidity can be contagious. To refer to Papa Heinlein, it's like strong drink; it can cause you to shoot at tax-collectors - and miss.

Refreshingly enough, this is what Jon Henke is saying as a public Conservative, on Rachel Maddow's show. Maddow is a proud left-progressive. I rather think she'd vote NDP up here.

So, two people with philosophies that are about as distinct from each other as can be imagined, having a civil, intelligent and informative conversation.

Entirely refreshing. And it led me to read more of Henke. One bit seemed worth sharing immediately, as an exemplar.

Jon Henke writes at The Next Right.

Megan McArdle has previously postulated Jane's Law.

Jane's Law: The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.

I think it's a good generalization about very broad political dynamics. Thinking about that this weekend, I came up with the following psychological spectrum. People tend towards the left side of the spectrum when it comes to allies; towards the right side of the spectrum when it comes to opponents.

Cognitive biases are a natural human tendency and none of us (including me) are immune to them. It is useful to be aware of the problem.

Two things I like about this. First, he is unashamed of being seen using intellectual tools in public, and second, he's capable of writing short. The second impresses me in particular, I am envious, and I shall be including him in my missing Conservative blogroll.

You may have noticed a complete absence of any links to Conservative sources. The reason for that is, I've been disappointed by the public voices of the Right. If I rely on them for information, references, facts or insights, I run the stark risk of being publicly embarrassed for having said something absurd, untrue, or both. So, over the years, I've dropped them, one by one.

You might wonder why that risk doesn't occur from the Left. It does, of course - but it's possible to avoid, because while there are sites you have to be careful of, there are plenty of sites that present the raw facts first and draw their conclusions from there. And sadly, there's very little need for the left to misrepresent the positions, policies, character or criminality of much of the Right. The plain truth is damnation enough.

It's depressing, but currently, there is far more concern on the Left for the mechanics of getting things Right. And those who are not, or who prefer to hear what they want rather than what is - I treat them exactly the same as I treat their counterparts on the Right. I ignore them.

We are extremely fortunate that the wingnuttery of the Right has not been met with equal fanaticism on the left - for if that had been the case, the United States might well be the midst of a literal, armed civil war.

But as of this moment, the sane people of the left are the ones articulating the issues, and for want of an alternate, also serving (rather badly) in Opposition to themselves.

Sadly, what sane people who remain on the Right are very, very lonely. They must be encouraged, for without the voices of traditional, prudent, sane conservatism, we are impoverished of an extremely valuable perspective on life and politics.

Bleeding Heart Libertarian by webcarve

Basement Bunker Libertarians

First fruits of getting the Blogrolls working - snorting coffee through my nose.

If you keep emailing me, the mockery will continue

Andrew Sullivan continues to send his minions to attempt to annoy me to death. He fails to understand that this is Pandagon, and we are professionals at the art of pointless blog warring. He also fails to understand that I know cartoonists who also consider the entire existence of the Cheeto-munching moral and intellectual midgets that drive the continued popularity of Ayn Rand novels to be as hilarious as I do. You can click them to get the full size.

August’s take on libertarians.

Harrmumph. As a Libertarian, I must take slight exception. I wish both critics and cricised would stop confusing Libertarianism with Malignant Narcisissm. I know, I know, there's that whole pile of Ayn Rand to confuse the issue. But in point of fact, John Galt was an arsonist who betrayed the interests of his client and tried to justify it to himself. The fact that Rand portrays him as a hero speaks a great deal about her, and a great deal more about the ethics of those who point to Galt as an example of Principle.

I was particularly amused by this one comment - as often is the case, I find the comments to be as good or better as the original - and I do so envy such blessings...

I actually think this whole thing is wonderful fun; I hope Amanda continues forever. I really, really like the No True Scotsman supporters who take such furious umbrage that Amanda uses “libertarian” in the way it de facto means instead of the way that (according to them) it de jure means. Heh.

Essie Elephant on 04/30 at 01:04 PM

As a conscious, de jure Libertarian; and antiauthoritarian to the very core of my being - I have more than once observed that in terms of outcomes - the greatest individual Liberty for the greatest number - Canada is a FAR more Libertarian country than the United States.

You see - and you will find this point made in core libertarian writings - liberty requires social infrastructure in order to ensure basic, common wants; otherwise those wants and needs can be and WILL be used by the minority against the majority to reduce them to a state of permanent serfdom.

Unless you can afford to say "take this job and shove it," you are not free. Arguably, it should not be a trivial step, without consequence, but it absolutely MUST be possible - or you are not living in a free society.

Likewise, there must be robust regulations and vigilant guardians watching over the markets and the commons, so that - well, so that what is happening in economic terms in the US and Europe, does not happen. And in Canada, that is the case. Canada has not abandoned regulatory oversight of critical industries in order to pander to would be Madoffs and Enrons and the result is more - not less - economic opportunity and practical liberty for more people.

But US Libertarians are of the opinion that Liberty is the same as License. It is a movement of the self-indulgent, those who cry that "I have mine, and you are a luser who deserves nothing from me."

This of course denies reality - that all persons who succeed in life to any degree are aided in this success by the entire matrix of society and it's infrastructure - benefited by education, libraries, early learning opportunities, the Internet, access to government funded research data, materials science developed at public universities, transportation networks funded by taxpayers by one means of social investment or another - in other words, they were free to act to their own benefit - and the consequent benefit of others - because their society affirmatively invested in and agressively defends that individual liberty.

People who think that living in a mountan-top bunker stocked with five years of food, water and ammunition is the ultimate expression of Liberty are, sadly, idiots. They are as restricted in their practical opportunities as any person languishing in a medium-security prison. Furthermore, they are institutionalizing their children with their various ignorance initiatives. But I digress.

Liberty is for everyone, with opportunity as broadly spread, and with a dedication to the eradication of the serfdom of poverty, or it's simply a chaotic struggle for dominance on a winner-take-all basis.

There is never any way of predicting who will win such a struggle - but having high motivation for a better life, and the grim reality of having little or nothing left to lose - has been a consistent factor in throwing out the old bastards and throwing in the new.

Real libertarians believe that taking the profit OUT of authoritarianism and putting it into advancing the total amount of collective cussedness and amused tolerance of The Other is the only route to a truly free, open and Libertarian culture.

And if this be Socialism, make the most of it.

Breaking News! Senators Did their Jobs

There's an aphorism about politics that I haven't seen cited often the last few decades in regard to Politics, Umurikin Style; that "politics is the art of compromise." That's a trend that I've seen mirrored in Canadian politics. Well, whether it was in regard to the "fierce urgency of now" as communicated by Obama's televised ass-kicking, or whether it was due to the overwhelming lack of support for Republican threats to have a temper tantrum and hold their breath until they turned blue - nonetheless, apparently sanity prevailed, and the Senate passed the Stimulus bill.

That is to say, they did their job in a timely manner, after properly debating the issues. Well, they debated the issues as they saw them; what snippets I've seen showed me that our leadership doesn't have much of a grasp of economics. Much of the Republican rhetoric reminded me of the late and unlamented William Proxmyer - I honestly don't know which party he belonged to - who made his career on ridiculing programs he did not understand, and pretending to not understand programs he didn't like.

Of course, there's stupid things to be found in any budget - but the bleating often was about things that actually made some sense, if you believe that government has a proper role in society, in regards to investigation and regulation. For instance, some idiot was wittering on about the horror of giving the Social Security Administration money for new computers. Well, you know, it's getting hard to find Cobol programmers these days, and they just don't make parts for those keypunch machines any more.

Yep, I just ridiculed the critic with about the same information level as the senator in question. It's pretty easy. OTOH, he has a staff and gets paid a couple hundred thousand a year to have a duly deliberated viewpoint. I'm a blogger sitting in my living room. I don't feel that he should be living up to the standards generally expected of "Pajamas Media" bloggers.

Anyway, sanity prevailed, without a complete split along partisan lines. Perhaps it was due to the loud hint that if they got with the program, the economy might rebound in time for the 2010 elections. Perhaps it was due to howls of outrage communicated by phone, email, fax and paper to republicans threatening to obstruct the bill. If so, it only penetrated three skulls - but that was enough, and what are elections for.

But I was struck by the "breaking news" that Congress had done it's job.

Meanwhile, like the first tender shoots of spring, like the rays of a new dawn, I'm starting to notice Liberals and Progressives actually speaking Liberally and Progressively. In other words, they are now able to start advocating the batshit things that they want to see, as opposed to pointing out the bullshit we have all been wading through.

William Kunstler has been reliable and adept at pointing out the wrongs of neoconservatism and the evils of predatory supply side, trickle down, unregulated kleptocracy. But his visions of positive change do not comfort me, or strike me as being (thank god) particularly likely.

If this nation wants to survive without an intense political convulsion, there's a lot we can do, but none of it is being voiced in any corner of Washington at this time. We have to get off of petro-agriculture and grow our food locally, at a smaller scale, with more people working on it and fewer machines. This is an enormous project, which implies change in everything from property allocation to farming methods to new social relations. But if we don't focus on it right away, a lot of Americans will end up starving, and rather soon. We have to rebuild the railroad system in the US, and electrify it, and make it every bit as good as the system we once had that was the envy of the world. If we don't get started on this right away, we're screwed. We will have tremendous trouble moving people and goods around this continent-sized nation. We have to reactivate our small towns and cities because the metroplexes are going to fail at their current scale of operation. We have to prepare for manufacturing at a much smaller (and local) scale than the scale represented by General Motors.

Actually - I should temper this with a loud caveat; I'm making the assumption here that he sees this return to Mayberry as being an inherent good, and sees no potential issues with people being forced of necessity to live in contained, localized political units, where they must go along to get along.

I've noticed that the main difference between conservatives and liberals in terms of public and social policy is what parts of my life they wish to interfere with, what particular liberties they wish to restrict; nobody speaks for the idea that perhaps, just perhaps, we could trust people to mind their own business for the most part, on the stunningly obvious basis of fact - mostly they do, and mostly they manage well enough.

They tend to manage better when mechanisms and resources exist with the aim of helping people make better choices, they tend to manage a lot less well when politics interferes with natural rights and common sense - the War on Drugs and the proliferation of private prisons speaks volumes about that. In other words, we have enslaved a vast number of human beings for reasons that strike me, and many others, as extremely dubious, and at horrendous price to the taxpayer in terms of economic impact and in terms of coarsening our culture.

We DO need to encourage all of the things Kunstler advocates. But we cannot afford to simply accept that the necessity for a new system of economics mandates a socialist form of authoritarianism to replace the current crop of self-anointed authorities.

We need to embrace and encourage the ideal of individual responsiblity. And by that, I mean, equipping people while they are very young to be able to think for themselves. Without that, the idea of "individual responsibility" is simply code for "you are responsible for doing what I tell you to do," the sense in which we have become accustomed to hearing it.

But in fact and in practice, while all the above Kunstler refers to will come about, they will come about as much from preference as of necessity. Just as no-body likes being forced to stay in one place, neither do they particularly long to be forced to commute. Further, there are technical solutions coming down the pike which will add MORE choices to our lives - not fewer choices.

You see, I prefer sourcing Leftist thinkers for their ability to see and articulate what is wrong with a status quo, and to an extent, trust them to point out a sheaf of choices. But it's wise to remember that the Lefts and Rights have an overriding common faith in their own suitability to tell people what to do, they tend to be Authoritarians to one degree or another; President Obama being no exception to that.

I'm an anti-authoritarian, politically. I call myself a "libertarian," but my primary issues are ethics and authority abuse. I hope for and see a future in which the necessity for authoritarian structures is reduced - simply one of many viable ways of organizing like-minded people in tasks of common value.

What I see is the obvious necessity and inevitability of political and social structure decentralizing itself - as Koestler seems to be implying - but also becoming even more connective. In other words, a world in which small groups of people are connected robustly into a vast, world wide web.

The Project for a New American Peonage

It seems a bit narcissistic to reference my own words, but 'twas a long post and this point may have gotten lost in the underbrush.

Graphictruth: My Muted Obamamania: "Reality is not optional in Politics. We have had far too much post-modern bullshit, and quite frankly, it's making ME want to cling to the hard cold reality that a handgun represents. A gun is simple, understandable and comforting in times of trouble - even when it's an utterly useless comfort. Even when you know perfectly well that your troubles are not ones that can be dismissed with 'a whiff of grape-shot' or rightfully blamed on the symptoms of malfeasance and greed, such as outsourcing and illegal immigration.

We have the right to expect leaders who understand that it's their job to keep things from getting to such a point where we start to think wistfully about deploying Occam's Machine-Gun."

And there's another point in there that I wanted to sharpen a bit more.

We do have a right to be bitter about the results of being exploited and pandered to for political gain as a substitute for actual competent, compassionate and intelligently conservative management of our interests on our behalf. Hell, conservative voters have completely given up on the idea of government or their taxes bringing them any benefit - so long as it benefits nobody else, and so long as their frustrations are expressed in making the rubble jump somewhere far away.

But it's not enough, and it's certainly not worth three four dollar gasoline and milk at $3.50 when your wages have been stagnant for a decade or two.

"You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." I think P.T. Barnum said that, and such philosophies were the root of an amazing and improbable fortune.

Now, let me conflate this with something I learned at my father's knee - he being a traveling salesman - was that the only way to sell was to totally convince yourself that what you were saying was true. The more dubious the proposition, the more skill it took to do that.

Of course, an honest person would look at this and think, "well, that's easy enough, don't sell things people won't want and don't need."

But look around you. Or just turn to the Home Shopping Network for a minute or two, and you will realize that they are not selling you the crappy cheap bauble or appliance of dubious utility, but rather a "lifestyle," a sense of security, of prosperity, of entitlement; of belonging to an "in group."

Do not think for a moment that those feelings deliberately raised in your hind-brain and attached to your choices in shopping, fashion, entertainment or politics are in any way genuine. It's a scam, and I can tell you that, because as I said, I learned to do this at my father's knee.

Now, the beauty of this from the viewpoint of our supposed Lords and Masters is that if we are indebting ourselves for a sense of false community with an an illusion prosperity and security, we will never actually build real communities that can provide real prosperity and security.

For instance - five families can individually go broke trying to maintain a cardboard McMansion apiece - or they could pool their skills, labor and buying power to build five real solid houses that would be more suited to each and far more valuable in the long run. If you want to learn all you need to know to do this - spend some time volunteering for Habitat for Humanity.

A substantial something - a solid home, a paid-off vehicle, a meaningful job doing what you would do anyway - is a far valuable than any appearance of prosperity built on debt, even if it seems like you are "less prosperous." And when this choice puts money in the bank at interest, you have options that no wage-slave can even imagine.

This is so obvious that it hardly bears mentioning, and yet somehow we trip over something that is even more basic. Our need for community is such a powerful thing that it can completely override our self interest and make us fools for slavers and demagogues.

Even unreasonably well-paying jobs and tremendously important and meaningful careers may have a huge downside. If it places great stress on you either because of it's nature or because you absolutely hate doing it, you are actually converting your health into money - at a net loss. The same is true for jobs that have unavoidable health consequences or irreducible risks. If you are investing your future well-being into maintaining a paycheck-to-paycheck "lifestyle," you are freakin' hosed.

That is the mass delusion we have bought into - that it's better to go into debt to have new shiny crap than something that does what you need with total reliability, and that it is sensible to buy into a community on the condition that you continue to pay into it month by month with either money or labor.

A real community gives an unconditional crap about you; will take care of you if you are ill and raise your children if you die. A real community will not need to refer to a contract to do the right thing in either case because at the most basic, a community is an extended family, composed of individuals who depend upon one another and who know precisely to what degree, in what ways and with what resources each other individual may be presumed upon at need.

These ARE "Traditional Family Values." It has nothing to do with gay marriage, patriarchal structures, religious choice or morality. It's all about shared trust and mutual self-interest; whatever works to that end is Good, and whatever gets in the way of that is Bad.

Right now, there's an awful lot of Bad getting in the way of applying those values to practical outcomes.

It would be tragic enough if our fixation upon shiny trinkets and false profits (pun intended) were merely a common delusion of individuals - but in fact it's infested our government and our entire leadership class. Indeed, I rather imagine that there are quite a few people living "the good life" in "hunt country" with all the trappings of old money that are in fact leveraged to the eyeballs, to the point where any questions raised about ethical choices merely provokes bitter laughter.

Far too many of us have found that we are in situations where, seemingly, we have lost the option of even WISHING to be ethical people living blameless and productive lives. Even our religions have become mechanisms for shifting blame; if they had to rely on the good will of honest people, they would certainly be unable to support their institutional selves at the level of luxury and influence to which they have become accustomed.

But it's never too late to make a choice. The answer to all councils of despair and accommodation is this; YOU may not be able to "make a difference" if that effort depends on other people changing their lives and making choices you think they should make. If you wish to bring about a positive change in your life and the lives around you, change your life. Don't try to force others to change for your benefit - it's rude and it never works.

Enticements succeed where even naked force will fail, which is why capitalism and the free market is such a powerful idea - one that persists in spite of all attempts to co-opt it's power for the benefit of plutocrats and Party Members.

This is where I return to the example of five families building five homes, or five businesses, or five cars - or any such obviously mutually beneficial thing. Am I advocating socialism or some sort of Commune? Hell, no! It's pure Capitalism with direct conversion of sweat into equity.

Realize that it's always most profitable to get a direct benefit from your own effort. The use of money to pay for labor always translates into doing more work than you would have had to do. Ideally, you wish to trade labor for labor, not labor for money. But in order to do that effectively, there must be a large enough talent pool. Money is only a means to that end, as is credit. This is the point that both doctrinaire Capitalists and Communists miss to the point that they make practical forms of economic co-operation with either emphasis impossible in practice.

Money is simply stored labor. Labor is a form of capital, then. The more skilled the labor, the more valuable it is - but only if it can be applied to create real and persistent assets. Some types of labor do not produce "real" assets that are of direct value, they are "intangibles," such as art, music, literature, but they are also the things that make our lives livable and keep us entertained while our hands are busy.

Both are tools that you need, but should try to avoid using to avoid minor inconveniences and slight frustrations.

The real key here is when you work at a job in our current economy while using the proceeds of that job to service debt and "maintain a lifestyle," you are not free. You are a serf - tied to a job by means of debt. This is all the more true if your medical coverage depends upon that job.

This is a very damn expensive way to provide medical care, since it divides the risk pool into many shallow puddles, and indeed, quite a few corporations are whining about the huge expense and the need for universal health care.

But in fact, the price is rather low, compared to the thugs, dogs and fences that would otherwise be required to maintain a captive work-force.

So, here's my question: "Who are you working for?" Look at your budget, look at your real assets - the ones that you truly own. Look at your savings and future security. Look at your access to health care.

Are you, in fact free? Run the numbers. If you cannot afford to just say "shove it" and walk away from your job, you are not free and you cannot meaningfully call yourself a free citizen.

The most fundamental reason why the Franchise was first limited to free white property owners is that Free White Property owners were the only people economically independant enough to be contrary as a matter of principle.

The ideal of a proper government is to expand the meaningful franchise - which means expanding that degree of liberty as widely as possible.

Right now, the average person cannot afford principles. You probably cannot say "no" to outrageous presumptions, whether it be uncompensated overtime, sexual harassment or committing acts you know to be immoral, illegal or just plain stupid. You cannot insist on either doing the job right, or not at all. And these days, it's becoming iffy as to whether or not you even have the "right" to insist on being paid.

Let's go back to those five families. Consider all the capital they would build up by working together to provide comfortable homes for themselves. At some point, about the time college comes around, they have solidly feathered physical nests and money in the bank. One or more of those children is probably well-suited for a career in medicine. Doesn't it make sense to pool together to put one or two through medical school in return for a promise from that person to provide primary care to all five families? Hm. And a business degree or two might come in handy...

Of course the shiny new professionals will need things to do and places to do them ... so while those kids are in school, the families literally build a practice, and now, from the start of bare earth and sweat, we are on our way to building real wealth, because again, rent is simply money down the drain. If rent is to be paid, it should be paid TO the enterprise, not come out of it.

These are real old-fashioned family values. Me first, family second, clan third and country last - because each of those things depends on all needs of the more basic unit being fulfilled fully and first. Anything less than that is, in fact, a hidden debt or a concealed tax.

If you are sacrificing yourself for your family, your job, your cause or your nation, you literally have the cart before the horse, for none of those things will do all that well if the foundation of them - the individuals such as you - are not properly rewarded and fulfilled in doing so.

Real freedom requires that we invest in the freedom of others.

The invisible hand is caught in a reacharound.

Lets see what that invisible hand is up to today | hell's handmaiden: "The story, the day the music died, is a sad tale of corporate shenanagins and consumer pain. Read the article and ask yourself, “Where exactly is that invisible hand in all of this?”

The answer I’d like to propose is that it doesn’t exist. It isn’t there, not in the way that most of your hard right free market proponents need it to be. Ponder. I’m going to leave it at that for now, though if you wondering why I claim to not bash Smith but only the right wing twits who never read him: Smith “made it clear in his writings that quite considerable structure was required in society before the invisible hand mechanism could work efficiently.” The twits tend to forget that ‘considerable social structure’ part and head straight for ‘get the government the hell out of everything’ thus creating what I like to think of as a government so minimal that it stops working."

As I've dryly noted here and there, now and again, I'm a great believer in the free market. And some day I'd like to try it for myself to see how it works.

In fact, Smith was pretty firm on that, that considerable "market intervention" was required to keep the market from being "cornered." Proponents of "lazez-fair" regulation see no problem with that - or apparently milk and gas hitting the four dollar mark.

There can be no individual liberty if we are reduced to slavery in effect by economic means. And that has always been the preferred option - serfs are ever so much easier to maintain than slaves. Worse yet, one has legal obligations toward slaves.

So, as a libertarian, I'm pro choice (as the gag goes, on everything), pro fair trade, pro social justice, pro infrastructure, pro just-big-enough-government and pro REAL , fair and free markets.

The closest thing that we have ever had is the Web, by the by, and you can tell that the Faux Libertarians are doing their damnedest to turn it all into AOHell.

Isn't it odd that in order to be that sort of Libertarian, you have to both deny your own individuality while also denying the possibility that individual definitions of value and reward might apply?

At this point you may wonder why I don't just call myself a Liberal and be done with it. Re-read the above paragraph and substitute the word "liberal."

Having the wrong thing done unto me for the wrong reasons under the delusion that it's possible to meaningfully calculate "the greatest good of the greatest number" in most areas of social policy leads inevitably to the struggle over the right to choose what "blessings" we will receive.

Oddly, it seems that the same people who decry regulation - are all too willing to advise "prudent" intervention when Liberals are in power.

Bleeding Heart Libertarianism

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I confess freely that I might be accurately described as a "bleeding heart libertarian."

I honestly believe that it is an objective good to care about my fellow man, his health, her welfare, their socioeconomic outcomes. But unlike a liberal, I will not try to convince either you or myself that is a purely altruistic concern, or that you should put their welfare before your own.

I believe that because I believe it to be rather obvious that my personal welfare and that of my neighbors and fellows are inextricably entangled, and that the only sure way to ensure my rights and to meet my needs is to be rather insistent about theirs not being infringed.

Indeed, I would much rather be loud and obnoxious about trespasses against others than against myself. It means I can meet the enemy on the ground of my own choosing. My tender concern here is better advised by Sun Tsu than by Mother Theresa, frankly.

Liberty is in many ways a paradoxical concept. Frankly, liberty is made possible by choices and most of our choices are made possible by infrastructure and agreements made, held and maintained in common, which, unavoidably, are enforced by regulations by one means or another; in secular societies, short of truly unreasonable expectations of one's fellow man, that regulation and infrastructure is provided by and overseen by government; a body which in my view of libertarian philosophy is the "trusted third party" in any exchange of value.

As a Libertarian, I believe in a free market, by which I mean a market in which all persons are able to participate on an equal footing, trading what they have for what they wish at a fair rate of exchange so that everyone involved feels as if they got the better end of the deal. If that sounds like an idealized and highly simplified description of capitalism, it is. It's also, you may note, an idealized description of Communism, in that it really is "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs." If you ignore the ugly black Marx on the idea, it's pretty much the definition of a fair trade within a properly regulated free market. "I do this, I need that. You have that, and you need this." It works fine, every day in every small town in North America - though of course none would call it Socialist, much less Communist.

(There may be a lesson in this as to what happens when you try to make common sense compulsory, inasmuch as those who see the need pretty obviously have none to begin with and are therefor bound to fail by definition.)

Nonetheless, left to their own devices, and without the advantage of the information provided them by Limbaugh and various free-lance parasites of the left and the right, the idea that co-operation is a lot easier and a lot better and for damn sure cheaper than conflict is pretty obvious.

Communism and Capitalism as philosophies useful for the exploitation of others assume that "needs" are a negotiable, or subject to the definition of others. A cynical, free market, second-amendment absolutist like I realizes that the only way in which MY actual needs are negotiable or definable to YOUR advantage is this - if you get in the way of my needs, how much damage are you prepared to suffer and inflict before one of us meets their needs over the dead body of the other

Civilization is a means of meeting basic needs without violence, and even more importantly, without the overhead of having to prepare to defend against it on a routine basis. Any political philosophy (and depressingly, that seems to be all of them, including the political party disguised as the Southern Baptist Conference) that willfully denies this reality will sooner or later experience some form of hot lead enema, and is therefore by definition worth less to any sensible being considerably less than the powder required to blow them to hell. It's a bitterly obvious truth that the usual response to this clearly obvious calculation is to artificially inflate the price of powder, rather than the real worth of the philosopher.

I don't know about you, but I have a very basic need to avoid hot lead enemas. Therefore, at the most basic level, I try my best to arrange things so that meeting MY needs does not require denying others having their needs met. Aside from being a Libertarian, I'm a lazy bastard, and I don't want to work that hard just to break even. And that, folks, is what zero-sum politics is, a situation in which a consistant break-even would be the only rational strategy - except that, of course, the cost of being in the game in the first place makes break-even strategies impossible. The only way to truly win, then, is to create conditions in which all the other suckers in the game lose.

Unless you are smart enough to realize that it's stupid to play that game. And frankly, you don't have to be all that smart to realize that, or to choose to play a non-zero-sum game.

As someone who does not let dogma and wishful thinking blind him to reality, I observe and argue that an "unregulated free market" is a contradiction in terms. Sooner rather than later, someone will realize that by cheating they will gain an advantage. This means that everyone else must play dirty - or not play at all. So now we DO have regulation - and it sucks. Further, that means that the ultimate question of who prospers is not the person who brings the best product, service or idea to the table, but the person who is able to use force most effectively to reduce the options of others.

Virtual though this force is, it cannot be argued that it is in any effective sense different in outcome than a fist to the face or a gun to the head. This, then, brings the ideal of "lazez-faire Capitalism" into focus as being an inherent violation of the Libertarian ideal of "non-initiation of force," because in Lazez-fair Capitalism, the winner is determined by who uses their force first and most effectively. Whether or not this exception is well understood or admitted by libertarians to my "right," it is nonetheless an obvious thing - and it brings an obvious libertarian response to the fore.

"The fact that you act as if you have the right to use force against me to gain my co-operation entitles me to use such tactics and such means of evasion, retaliation or subversion as I think best, without consideration of the consequences to you or yours."

Civilization developed, to explore a third option; the attractive possibility of banding together, hunting down the cheatin' bastards and prevent them by such means seem expedient from ever doing that again. After all, a rogue war-lord or President is no less dangerous than a rogue cougar. It could easily be argued that he's a lot MORE dangerous - a rogue cougar can kill only one person at a time, and won't kill more than they actually need to eat.

This cannot be said of George Bush.

Or, in all fairness, of Bill Clinton; who's record in terms of the use of military force for political advantage is only better in terms of having a lower body count.

That pretty much sums up the social and political climate we live in at the moment. Charitably, it is a clusterfuck. And I have to say, some of the worst offenders in terms of justifying the underpinnings of this particular clusterfuck are my fellow Libertarians.

The problem, of course, is that most self-described Libertarians are no more libertarian than most people who call themselves conservatives are Conservative. They are, indeed, as genuinely rare as Democrats that actually value the exercise of democracy. That is to say, only to the extent that the the philosophy enables them to play a zero-sum game at the expense of their fellows. No person who truly values liberty can in consonance deny it to others save when those others confuse liberty with the license to prey upon others. Then, those that value liberty should view those persons for what they truly are - their most personal and immediate enemies, who will have to be dealt with, sooner or later, by one means or another.

Because we, as a people, are lazy, short sighted, intemperate, selfish, uninformed and more than willing to allow ourselves to be shat upon in the name of "a little security," we have come to accept, somehow, that we deserve no better leaders than we have.

After all, we would have to choose to be worthy - to expect of ourselves standards that would allow us to hold our leaders to them without feeling like total asses.

So we live in a culture - using the term in the loosest sense - where a "libertarian" values his liberty in comparison and by means of denying as much liberty to others as they can manage, where a "democrat" values democracy only to the extent where it can be contrived to achieve predetermined conclusions, and where "republicans" are terrified of the consequences of permitting the election of representative representatives from the states to the Grand Old Republic.

Our political leaders can only compare themselves favorably, it seems, to televangelists, in terms of living up to the terms of their implied contracts with their social constituents. Certainly polls agree that in general, that's our opinion of them. But then, while having adulterous affairs with the vulnerable and under-aged may be no great recommendation for higher office, it is not a disqualification by definition.

But we accept that standard in our moral leadership, while proudly proclaiming, "This is a Christian Nation." Well, yeah, by THOSE standards!

It seems the more "Christian" you wish to be seen to be, the more likely it is that you are actively guilty of something that should disqualify you from being christian by definition.. Well, people get the leaders they deserve; and the church has no immunity in that respect. Pardon me if I cordially refuse to follow your leaders, political or moral.

You could contract a social disease that way, as one of the better possible outcomes.

Goodness, we have come to a point in our culture where we have begun to reasonably suspect that those who most deride drug usage use drugs by definition, that those who moralize the loudest against sexual misconduct are perps by definition and worst of all, even so cynically believing and accepting this truism as having far more truth to it than it should - we have yet to punish those most conspicuously guilty of such outrages in any significant way.

Well, folks. I don't think it's particularly prideful of me to say that I'm an exception, and to the extent possible I try to hold others accountable to an acceptable standard of behavior that is nonetheless more forgiving than what I expect of myself.

And that, folks, is what makes both civilization AND a decent degree of individual freedom possible at all - the expectation that we will each first govern ourselves, that we will ensure that we, at least, are not examples of what we should most despise - and therefore not be shy of expecting the same of those who think themselves qualified to lead and worthy of being an example to others.

"Evil flourishes when good men do nothing." -Edmund Burke

Well, that should be good men and women - and not because I'm being politically correct. It's because I'm pointing out that we should expect twice the response that Burke could.

I ask of you, my good fellows of all genders; how deep does it have to get before you decide to start doing something about the evil seeping into your life?

"What can I do" is a stupid response. Noticing, pointing, and grabbing either a virtual mop or a virtual rifle is what is required. If it's gotten to the point where it's grown teeth and is attempting to eat your children - such as the evil of this war most certainly is - it's due to you and your failure as a citizen, just as it is mine. Let us at least try to act before the virtual must become actual, and our only choices are reduced to which end of the gun we are on.

This IS a Republic, with a Constitution, with rights taken with blood and thunder from the cold dead hands of people no worse than those occupying Washington right now. How ELSE could it be? And how could you possibly defend the right to expect anything better at this point in time?

I am a bleeding-heart Libertarian, and I would GREATLY prefer not to suffer so. I hate seeing the rights of my fellows and their economic options reduced by those too greedy and stupid to realize that they are twirling their mustaches in glee on their way to their own private Armageddon, the place of decision where the only decision left to the great majority will be which of that most arrogant, foolish and careless minority will first to go up against that wall. The fact that they undoubtedly deserve such an outcome does not make me willing to pay the price of enforcing it. I would much rather that enough were dragged kicking and screaming into the light by their moral and intellectual betters - that would be you - to make a difference.

It's a damn foolish thing to get between a free person and their needs. The only thing more foolish is to think that standing anywhere NEAR such a fool is an insurable position. Our Museums of History are littered with the shattered artifacts that sort of fool bought to commemorate their "victory" over those they thought sufficiently oppressed. But then, perhaps that is why our dear social betters are so resistant to the funding of those museums. Denial comes in many forms, does it not?

A Standing O for LifeLock.

I just had a look at LifeLock, those "This is my real social security number" people. Frankly - and probably like you - I assumed that it was a stunt, and what was said in bold red at the top was completely negated with the small print at the bottom.

Come to think of it, it's damn depressing how complacent we have become in accepting as a given that any service we get from any corporation should be written as "Service*".

Now that I think of it, it's a little embarrassing to realize that it took the promise of $12.00 from a trusted third party to even get me to look, but I plead 40 years of disappointment in my fellow man as my reason.

Fortunately for them, their actual cost will be two dollars, for ten of those promised dollars will pay for my first month of their service.

Why? Well, you don't often read advertising copy like this:

If your Identity is stolen while you are a member of LifeLock, we're going to do whatever it takes to recover your good name. If you need lawyers, we're going to hire the best we can find. If you need investigators, accountants, case managers, whatever, they're yours. If you lose money as a result of the theft, we're going to give it back to you.

We will do whatever it takes to help you recover your good name and we will spend up to $1,000,000 to do it.

We don't think you will see a guarantee like this anywhere else from any other company. If you do, let us know because we'd like to do business with them. There isn't much fine print in our Guarantee. To see the details, click here.

Any half-decent lawyer will tell you the reason why you should never ever EVER write something as direct and unqualified as this. You WILL have to live up to those words in court, and they will bury you in frightening examples of the consequences of unwise and unguarded words costing businesses hundreds and thousands of words.

One of the examples I remember most clearly from my journalism and advertising courses is the case of a car dealer who promised that during his "Jungle Madness" sale, you could drive away in a new car for "just a thousand bananas."

Sure enough, someone showed up with a lawyer and one thousand fresh, golden, LITERAL Chiquitas.

They were very over-ripe bananas by the time his lawyer was sent from court by a laughing judge and a snickering jury, but that just added fruit flies to injury.

Speaking of contractual language, I'm in violation of the terms of the agreement by being clear about this being a paid post within the post and it would be technically possible for them to refuse to pay, or request a re-write. You see, they didn't want me to call attention to the fact they paid me to do this - no doubt because they are as cynical as I am for pretty much the same reasons.

It's tempting to gloss over the fact that it took the smell of money to get me to write this - but I'd prefer to be honest, and use the risk of not being paid to underline what is my real reason for going so far beyond the 200 words requested. This, you see, is no longer about that.

These are the sort of people you should absolutely do business with, even if you don't absolutely need to. And I'm not embarrassed at all to be seen doing business with people like this. Hell, if they write employment contracts and job descriptions like they do websites, they might actually be the sort of people I'd be willing to work for.

That advertising copy above is the reason. They have deliberately created conditions they will have to live up to.

That lack of weasel-wording, the complete absence of equivocation, the blunt promise of "Whatever it takes, up to a million bucks" is damn refreshing.

If you believe in the idea of the free market, as I do, and believe that it absolutely depends on people who are not just willing, but absolutely determined to play fair, then you need to sweeten the pot for them. You have to choose to deal with people who are willing to stand by their word, live up to their obligations and go the extra mile. You also have to start expecting that standard from everyone else, with no excuses.

Putting binding promises into one's advertising copy inspires in me ten thousand times the deep warm fuzzies that can be derived from a kiloton of adhesive imitation chrome fish.

The promise implied by a chrome fish over the door of a place of business is one that cannot be enforced in a temporal court of law, one not even as impressive as membership in the BBB.

Todd Davis - well I don't know what or who else he believes in - but he surely does believe in the sort of fish you could fry in front of the ninth circuit court and it's a big enough fish to feed a multitude.

I can count on the fingers of one thumb the number of times I've had the legitimate opportunity to say something as nice as this about anything regarding the economy or the practices of American business institutions. I've gotten so damn jaded and cynical, so bleak and depressed that frankly it's become difficult to blog.

What started out as a five minute, money-making chore turned out to take a couple hours of utterly blissful wordsmithing and the high point of my day. And that, Mr. 457-55-5462, is worth ten bucks to me. Hell, it's worth twelve.

I would love to be able to write a story like this every week, and have every word be true and as heartfelt as these. I'm rubbing your nose in the fact that AT THE MOST, I was paid $12.00, in response to the obvious rhetorical question.

My skills are for sale, my my good name is not. Even if it WAS, it would take a minimum of five more decimal places plus benefits, a golden parachute and a pension to compromise my virginity in that respect.

One should should set one's price high enough that it discourages temptation. And I'm afraid that many "persons of significance" have lowered the bar to a point where even minimal standards make a decent assessment of self worth seem positively inflationary.

But it's nice to be recognized for a job done well and honestly. One of the few ways I'm sure something I've said has been read and appreciated is the sound of virtual coin clinking into my PayPal account. Money, as Robert Heinlein said, is the sincerest form of applause.

And by that means and in the same spirit I am suggesting to you that you give Lifelock a standing ovation. "Pour le encouragur le autres"

That's not "relativism," it's sociopathy

Hell's Handmaiden has dipped into the reality stream and come up with a net full of three-legged tadpoles...

Honestly, it is the first round of freshman, mostly, college papers I’ve seen in years. The subject is relativism. ...

Of the papers I’ve seen so far easily one in ten contains assertions in support of ethical relativism. Some of them contain quite strong assertions in favor of it. What is even more bizarre is that most of these defenders of relativism defend individual relativism, not cultural, and most tow the same basic line– that we can’t decide who is right or wrong so we just act how we feel like and, effectively, settle things by force.

Gee, I wonder where they got that idea. The news, perhaps?

I'd love to quote some of these papers but that would be wrong. I’m not even going to identify the school or the class title or the section number… or even the damned state. But ya know what? If I did quote from these papers, these damned relativists would be telling me that I shouldn’t have done so– telling me that my decision was wrong.!

Arghhh…..

I’d love to walk into that class and tell them that I’d posted every single paper online, complete with sarcasm, ridicule and whatever other snark I can manage. It isn’t that I’d actually like to do it. I’d just like to tell them that I’d done it and then listen to the whines of “that’s just not right” and “that’s wrong, man” and “you violated this or that principle or something”. Then I’d explain that if in fact they are relativists– individual relativists– as they argued in their papers then I am justified in posting their papers online. I am justified for no other reason than simply that I felt like it was the right thing to do.

I think I can put my thumb on the issue here. And while I can blame them for being purblind idiots for falling into this particular ethical trap, it's not like there wasn't a path beaten for them by many people, presumably older and wiser, who clearly chose not to know better.

The issue is not so much the idea that "right and wrong" are relative to the individual, the culture and the situation. All of these things are quite correct, and if you don't pay attention to whether or not the situation alters cases, you can easily end up doing the worst possible thing for all the "right" reasons. So the importance of the concept itself cannot be sufficiently stressed. The problem is that there still is a right and a wrong, a good and a bad, a useful and useless that in all but a few (and pretty darned obvious) cases that is external to any individual metric of good and bad.

You must always consider the consequences of your actions in regard to others, because if those consequences affect others in a negative or harmful way, they will surely hold you to account, if they can. Nor does obscuring the connection between you and the consequence of your action serve to make unethical actions ethical. It merely means you are putting an ethical debt onto your line of Karmic Credit, so to speak.

Or if you prefer, you are tempting Murphy.

There are few better expressions of individualistic moral relativism than the Wiccan Rede; "An it harm none, do as ye will."

That's the trick, of course, and that's the nub of this fallacy; it's not a question of "relativism," it's the manifestly and clinically stupid idea that one has the inherent right to do anything one desires... and get away with it!

I've blogged about this many times from many different angles, so I can happilly choose between good and best. My comments policy contains my most succinct statement of my understanding of this issue.

One problem in our nation is that Democrats and other Liberals are still acting as if the current situation in the United States were a political issue, one that arose due to politics and one that can be addressed in that manner. I'm afraid Glenn believes that as well. It's not. It's about cheats, liars and outright traitors in office and in positions of influence who are willing to do and say anything to achieve their ends.

This attitude - supposedly expressed by Newt Gingrich, as told to Bill Clinton as "But if we didn't cheat, we couldn't win" is cancerous. If you have to cheat to win, you don't deserve it and you aren't qualified to have it. All around us we see the results of what happens when cheaters lie and steal their way into power. Aside from the ethics, aside from the illegalities, aside from whatever possibly treasonous and certainly contemptible alliances with offshore oil interests there may be - they have no qualifications other than a lifetime spent lying, cheating and stealing.

These qualities are fit only for ruling a fantasy-land of self-delusion. they not apply well to real situations with real concerns. For instance, while you can lie yourself into a war, you cannot cheat your way to a victorious resolution. You can say "we are winning' every day, but the truth will speak louder than you. You can assert that "things are getting better in New Orleans", but a quick email to anyone there will put the lie to it.

Republicans - and by this I specifically include most of all their basement dwelling, Pajamas Media funded cheerleaders - are like the barking dog chasing the car. We now see what happens when the fool dog catches it.

The whole point to relativistic moral visions is to minimize blowback more than legalistic approaches can, not to pretend that it does not exist and cannot occur to you!

Of course, if one discounts the importance of consequence that do not happen personally, dramatically and immediately, it's possible to evolve an ethic - such as realpolitik - which will lead to short term advantage at the price of long term, indirect consequences.

Situational ethics (a distinctly Christian expression of Consequentialism, which is in itself an evolution of Utilitarianism) is used by many persons who's basic ethos comes from Sunday School to determine whether or not a particular moral truism actually does apply in this particular case; I and other ethical thinkers observe that it's not a replacement for those truisms.

Truisms are truisms because they are mostly true, most of the time.

All of these various ethical philosophies state that it is the outcome of an action that matters, rather than the choice of a particular action, or the inherent virtue or lack in the person. I would argue further that consequences - the observable outcome of a particular choice - is all that we have to objectively determine how "good" or "bad" a particular set of assumptions and choices were.*

If you wish a Christian summation of that - there is the parable of the fig tree, which is as succinct a summation of this principle as can be imagined. According to the parable, it matters not at all whether the fig tree is beautiful or ugly - if it's fruit is bitter and useless, it should be cut down, because it's wasting both space, cultivation efforts and nutrients to produce nothing of value.

Christ Himself was arguably a Utilitarian ethicist.

However - and this is a rather LARGE "however" - Situational ethics, moral relativism, however you wish to refer the idea, and whatever particular flavor you prefer - work only when you apply them to the truism like the fine-tuning knob on an old TV.

The idea is to ensure that the basic principle is applied with accuracy to the situation - not to arbitrarily decide that a small difference amounts to a total distinction.

The basis for a legalistic approach to morality and ethics is as follows, that a rigid application of The Law will tend to produce more beautiful trees with sweeter fruit, on the whole, if the assumptions made by those who set the law in place were accurate.

Therefore, it's important to regularly examine and critique the assumptions made by those who set The Law in place, and to compare their predictions of outcome to actual, provable outcome.

EG: No Child Left Behind, the Patriot Act, etc. Clearly, the stated intents of a law do not always play out in practice, even given the assumption that the authority imposing the law was truthful in stating their intent.

Now, having said that, it should also be said that if you don't understand the intent of a moral or legal diktat, you probably should not try to futz about with it. But I've never had much patience with folks who blindly follow rules simply because they are posted on a wall. ANYone could have put them there, for whatever reason, not excluding the possibility of a practical joke.

So I've always felt it important to examine rules, laws, morals and ethical standards to see what the intended outcome is. This will reveal many cases where the intent is good, but the rule is stupid, or that the rule or law was created for malicious, bigoted or dishonest reasons, and such rules should only be followed as written if Massa is watching. :P

Any general guide to proper behavior has an obvious problem; first, that it's a general guide, and there will be some exceptional cases where applying the guide as if it were an inarguable rule will result in more harm than taking a different, possibly "immoral" course of action. That reality is often used as a reason to toss out all moral truisms as invalid - but that simply leaves one without anywhere to even start an ethical analysis or behave in a way that predictably results in "golden rule" standards of behavior.

Morals - valid, well tested, culturally appropriate morals - are ideally the best first approximation and hopefully the best reflexive choice, and the obvious the starting point to evaluating the best course of action whenever you have time to think about a choice in depth.

Simply stated, a "moral code" is a set of ethical equations that have been generalized within a cultural matrix over a wide assortment of individual cases over a span of time, so that in general one does not have to deeply consider every single choice of action.

But such a moral code must provably result in better outcomes than some other set of morals or competitive ethos. And when such a code even arguably, much less provably results in worse outcomes than none, from any reasonable standpoint, that "moral code" is unethical, and practicing it for oneself is immoral, much less attempting to impose it upon others as a cultural and legal standard.
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*I reject any moral or ethical equasion that has a scope greater than that of a particular person that depends on supposed, faith-based consequences, such as "you'll go to hell" or "Eris hates personal organizers."

Choose that for yourself, if you must, if you think an arbitrary and unprovable consequence is more important than provable and direct consequences - but do not expect others to forgive or forget actions you take based on such unprovable assumptions.

tag: ethics, morality, christian, moral relativism, situational ethics, consequentialism, utilitarianism, blowback