For fear of the guilty

Some decades ago I remember reading a story or set of stories in Analog magazine that had as its basis a very interesting question:  if becoming a criminal had a genetic basis what would we do as a society?

The set-up was that every individual convicted of a pre-meditated, violent or crime of passion had a few genes in common, without exception.  No one that did not have those genes was convicted for those crimes, although crimes of oversight and accident did include them.  The overall population that had this set of genes in society was of a given percent, approximately 25 to 30%, but that only indicated a genetic predisposition to committing crimes, not a certainty of it.

Legally this has ramifications for criminal suspects: if a violent crime has happened you can cross off those without the predisposition and you are left with those who have it.  But that does not help if an accident or other mishap that has no intention behind it and is purely by chance or lack of skill yields a violent seeming crime.  Thus examining crimes means exhausting all the ways that non-intentional circumstances could yield the crime as well as looking at all the intentional ways, and while the intentional would have a limited number of people to check off, the non-intentional still has the entire population of those with and without the predisposition that need checking out.

Taken a step further what would this mean for employment?  Would you want individuals with such a predisposition in National Security positions?  As police officers?  Would you vote for someone with that predisposition?  Would there be changes to, say, life insurance or health insurance coverage rates due to this?  What would finding out that you had this predisposition or not do to your outlook on life?

Always we would need to remember that, like a disease, a predisposition towards something does not mean that the individual will manifest that disease.  Indeed the percentage of society with the predisposition indicates that the majority of those with it do not ever manifest criminal behavior and that there is a component of criminality beyond mere genetics.  If any steps were taken to limit the rights and freedoms of this minority, that crosses all races, classes and social strata, then those restrictions would only be upon those who WERE able to control their genetic predisposition and would have no effect upon those in which the entire condition is already in sway.

That would be punishing the innocent in fear of the guilty.

Of course we would never do that... would we?

In the wake of individuals attempting to bring down aircraft, we have come upon a situation in which our TSA has both 'succeeded' in failing to stop individuals with a predisposition and full indications of willingness to kill themselves to kill others from boarding a civilian aircraft.  Later it is admitted that the system 'failed' and measures will be taken to 'correct' that failure.  From that we can step to Christopher Hitchens at Slate on 28 DEC 2009 (h/t: Instapundit) talking about what will be done to try and stop such 'failures' again (boldface is mine):

So that's now more or less the routine for the guilty. (I am not making any presumption of innocence concerning Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.) But flick your eye across the page, or down it, and you will instantly see a different imperative for the innocent. "New Restrictions Quickly Added for Travelers," reads the inevitable headline just below the report on the notoriety of Abdulmutallab, whose own father had been sufficiently alarmed to report his son to the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, some time ago. (By the way, I make a safe prediction: Nobody in that embassy or anywhere else in our national security system will lose his or her job as a consequence of this most recent disgrace.)

[..]

Why do we fail to detect or defeat the guilty, and why do we do so well at collective punishment of the innocent? The answer to the first question is: Because we can't—or won't. The answer to the second question is: Because we can. The fault here is not just with our endlessly incompetent security services, who give the benefit of the doubt to people who should have been arrested long ago or at least had their visas and travel rights revoked. It is also with a public opinion that sheepishly bleats to be made to "feel safe." The demand to satisfy that sad illusion can be met with relative ease if you pay enough people to stand around and stare significantly at the citizens' toothpaste. My impression as a frequent traveler is that intelligent Americans fail to protest at this inanity in case it is they who attract attention and end up on a no-fly list instead. Perfect.

Those who abide by the law, indeed who are NOT a threat to any flight, are required for the 'safety' of air travel to no longer carry with them the things that would allow a plane to be brought down.  And those who DO abide by that are the innocent, not the guilty who will find other and more ingenious ways WITHIN a set of restrictions to do as they will.  Which will, of course, bring more restrictions on the innocent because the guilty have no need to follow any law or rule or restriction.  Nothing we do will stop those seeking to bring down aircraft, merely require them to be smart enough to outwit a delimited set of rules, procedures, techniques or otherwise use human engineering to get around them.  When a commenter at another site tried to make light of a 'firecracker' (the first report of the incident) and that it wasn't dangerous, I knew I was dealing with a fool: with a bit of ingenuity, a few allowed carry-on items, and decent placement using the materials that are perfectly allowable and 'safe', I could readily identify a few places where a 'firecracker' could damage an aircraft enough to disable it in-flight.  Anyone with an ounce of sense can figure that out, and yet the concept of the regulations making us 'safer' is an illusion that some will cleave to unto death due to over-regulation.  Human ingenuity trumps technology and regulations time and time again.

Instead of doing the smart thing, the right thing, and the proper thing, which is to restrict air travel to those suspected of having an inclination to be lawless and suicidal aboard flights due to a delimited religious outlook we, instead, punish the entire traveling public.  Those who scoff at the loss of liberty due to regulation are the first to use this famous quote encouraging their fellow citizens to give up yet more of their liberty for the security of the officious Mother State:

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer (1706 - 1790)

Of our essential liberties is also the expectation that we will be considered innocent until proven guilty of a crime as CITIZENS of the Nation.  Those who are not citizens, who give reason for us to suspect them of harboring hatred unto killing against our Nation and our citizens are not afforded that liberty for our own security so that we CAN be afforded that liberty.  All men are created equal, and yet that is an acknowledgement by our background as a society and we can and must recognize that not all societies are willing to see the self-evident truths when presented with them.  As a Nation and a people we must have the right to differentiate between those in humanity that recognize and abide by the self-evident truths and those who do not do so.  Yet, when those who do not do so have made it abundantly clear that they will not, that they will threaten us, that they will do anything to harm our Nation and citizens, the first people we turn to for restrictions are the law abiding citizens who have done no wrong.

That is because a 'Politically Correct' view of the world is one that fears, deeply so, those who are guilty and will do anything to try and appease those men who manifest none of the civilized understandings of liberty and rights with kind words and punish those that actually call those people as they are.  For fear of the guilty, even to the point of not wanting to restrict the guilty or keep the convicted in JAILS, the PC view attempts to appease them and restrict any thoughts that might be had about wanting to protect ourselves by actually naming and identifying those who are guilty.  That does not bring greater harmony between cultures, but disdain upon those who will not uphold their own culture because they are afraid to do so for offending those who can and will resort to repression and violence to get their way in the world.  As we have seen no law or regulation will stop those intent on killing us and when seconds count the police are just minutes away.  The system only 'works' when individuals not PART of the system save THEMSELVES from the systemic failure of not wanting to name and restrict those who seek to do us harm.

Remember: you can only punish the law abiding innocent as they are both law abiding and innocent, and when you complain about the system you become one of the guilty.

Next up in the annals of punishing the innocent comes this from SayUncle and Knoxnews on 29 DEC 2009 (h/t: Instapundit):

The gun control group headed by Michael Bloomberg presented to President Obama a Blueprint for Federal Action on Illegal Guns. Some folks sent a FOIA request and received a copy of the document. And it's pretty telling. The focus doesn't seem to target illegal guns but all guns and gun owners, including banning the importation of ammo and "non-sporting" firearms. The plan consists of items that are administrative and regulatory in nature and, therefore, don't require legislative action.

There are individuals in the US that actually utilize 'non-sporting' firearms, and these are firearms used for self-defense.  What is even more interesting is that said firearms range across many decades, through World Wars and have both military and civilian counter-parts that are extremely difficult to check out.  If you are a collector of military surplus rifles or handguns, then you become a target of such regulations, and yet it is perfectly legal and lawful to do so both as a registered collector and as a private citizen who just enjoys collecting said firearms.  These firearms range across the last century and include a multitude of manufacturers, variations, and types of weapons.  It is with difficulty that an individual can find out if a handgun purchased with, say, Waffen marks was utilized in the German military or civilian market after 1939.  Even more interesting is that such a handgun used a round fully available to modern self-defense pistols.  Indeed, collecting old cartridges, like stamp collecting, is a fascinating hobby and past-time that harms no one and actually USING those cartridges destroys the value of them.  Going one step further to highly available military surplus rounds that WERE made for military weapons, how do you distinguish between them and 'civilian' rounds?  Yes you need an 'expert'.

Joy, oh, rapture!

Military surplus guns, especially those that have come out of storage packed in cosmoline from the old USSR and its satellite countries are often cheap.  Cleaning out the cosmoline is a non-trivial task.  The largest supplies are of the old bolt-action Mosin-Nagants with wooden stocks and a bayonet, typified by a long barrel and are quite heavy.  Of even more interest is the ammunition leaves behind a corrosive salt when you get the old military surplus ammo, thus requiring constant care and attention from the owner so that the weapon is not degraded by using it.  These are not weapons that any criminal will want: heavy, bulky, hard to hide, slow rate of fire.  If you want something lethal, easy to hide and with rapid fire or high lethality you get a handgun or you illegally saw off a shotgun.

Now bump that up to modern weapons that are semi-automatic, like the M-1 Garand... wait, that's still WWII, but an accredited rifle for the Civilian Marksmanship Program.  Thus it is both collectible and teaches skills of accuracy, even though it was a military weapon of WWII.  If you move to the modern semi-auto equivalent of the M-16, which is the AR-15, you have yet another weapon that can get good accuracy, have decent stopping power and have widely available civilian cartridges for it.  Just as you can purchase civilian made cartridges for the Mosin-Nagant you can also do that for the M-1 Garand and the AR-15 as they are popular cartridge types for both civilian and military uses.  Indeed you cannot define the difference between a 'military' bolt action or semi-automatic rifle and a 'sporting' version of the exact, same rifle.  Why?  An individual can change stocks to re-purpose the firearm for different uses, so that a Mosin-Nagant may be in its original wooden stock for display and then put into a fiberglass modern stock for use at the range.  The same goes for the M-1 Garand and AR-15: you cannot distinguish between a 'sporterized' version of one and its non-sporting version.

Yes 'sporterized' is a recognized term for firearms because people have been doing that with military weapons throughout the 20th century, dating back before WWI, and a 'sporterized' version of a military weapon is part of its own, unique class of that weapon.  Amazing, no?  A few modifications and you go from 'military' or non-sporting firearm to 'sporting' firearm.  And there is no functional difference in the nature of the firearm, itself, just in the outer housing.  Prohibited one moment, allowed the next.

That brings us to handgun hunting, a sport that is gaining in wide popularity these days.  One of the heaviest calibers that can be used for this in a semi-automatic pistol is the 50 Action Express, which is a 50 caliber pistol round.  That is a sporting weapon, for all of it being a handgun.  Any law or regulation that tries to stop the use of the 50 AE round, which is civilian and sporting in nature, then makes one of the most powerful handguns on the planet available while stopping older, lighter and less lethal firearms from history.  In one go everyone is made 'safer' by permitting 'sporting'  firearms for handgun hunting while stopping the use of lighter caliber self-defense pistols that can date back to 1897 that have a military origin.  And the moment you try to change the regulations to 'make things safer' you end up creating more loopholes, more problems and all to the end of not doing a damned thing about those who are obtaining illegal weapons for their own use.

And just how many criminals actually USE older military surplus weapons and ammo?  How about civilian self-defense handguns?  There is no functional way to tell between a self-defense handgun in the hands of a law abiding citizen and one in the hands of a criminal.  And heaven forbid you attempt to distinguish based ON THE USER!  Can't do that!  It might require 'profiling'.

Yes I am taking such thinking to extremes, but it has a point: how will this in any way, shape or form stop those willing to break the law from getting their hands on such weapons and utilizing them?  This has not worked in Great Britain and in Mumbai one of the most pertinent statements from an eyewitness is wishing that they could have been armed so as to stop the attackers.  By restricting or attempting to outlaw handguns the innocent are made less safe and the criminals have nothing to fear, and can safely intimidate the unarmed.  Since the banning of handguns in the UK the police there have had to up-arm and armor themselves against criminals willing and able to deploy fully automatic weapons as they know no civilian will STOP THEM.  That is how you get an officious, lethal and over-armed police for a Police State: you make civilians easy targets for criminals.

Yet your essential liberty of self-defense, the positive liberty of war that we do not give to the State, is threatened by the State that does not trust its own people to behave in a civil manner towards each other, fears criminals and then sees fit to disarm the people.  When you are threatened in such a State your life is determined in seconds, and the police will spend some hours writing up the report of your death due to criminals who have no problem violating civil society and civil law to work their ends.

The State could, of course, seek the illegal venues that  provide such weapons to criminals... but, really, it is much easier to repress the law abiding than go after the criminals.

It is easier to punish and make weak the law abiding and strengthen those who will not abide by the law by punishing the innocent.

That is what you get when you feel the regulations make you 'safe' and you trade away your liberty for that temporary feeling of safety.  Mind you the safety isn't even temporary, just an illusion of safety given by self-deception.

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Other roads

From 07 DEC 2009 Rasmussen Reports:

Running under the Tea Party brand may be better in congressional races than being a Republican.

In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Tea Party comes out on top. Thirty-three percent (33%) prefer the Tea Party candidate, and 30% are undecided. Twenty-five percent (25%) would vote for a Democrat, and just 12% prefer the GOP.

Among Republican voters, 39% say they’d vote for the GOP candidate, but 33% favor the Tea Party option.

For this survey, the respondents were asked to assume that the Tea Party movement organized as a new political party. In practical terms, it is unlikely that a true third-party option would perform as well as the polling data indicates. The rules of the election process—written by Republicans and Democrats--provide substantial advantages for the two established major parties. The more conventional route in the United States is for a potential third-party force to overtake one of the existing parties.

From The Jacksonian Party : The Third Party Outlines

In either of these, a successful inclusion of disaffected Republican and Democratic individuals would yield a Republican Party below its current standings (now 32-33% dropping to 26-27%) and a Democratic Party changed either slightly or greatly depending on disaffection levels (now 35% approx. dropping to 32% to 23%)

Thus in a Robust Scenario of 50% disaffected the new political atmosphere would be:

3rd Party - 34-44%

Democratic Party - 23-32%

Republican Party - 26-27%

On the Lean Scenario of 10% disaffected for a new political party, the atmosphere would be:

Democratic Party - 23-32%

Republican Party - 26-27%

3rd Party - 14-24%

That last is telling as it is almost EXACTLY what Ross Perot did: peel off parts from the existing two parties and have almost NO outreach to the politically disaffected.  His Reform Party didn't last because of party brand loyalty and lack of vigor inside the party, due to it having a hierarchical structure with Ross Perotism as its nebulous basis.

Both of these scenarios place 'independents' in their role of following overall voting proportions, as is currently the case.  Independents don't vote as a group, currently, and more closely follow overall party affiliation on a proportional basis, so that would continue to be the case with a 3rd Party.  Independents would be attracted just as equally in that direction as the overall percentage of the population is.  No one can craft an 'independent' based platform without trying to address the already existing 'leanings' of independents.

In my previous analysis the idea is to move to those who don't vote as the beginning of a new party.  If you are to have a party you must bring in voters from that non-voting plurality (nearly 49%) and get them to vote not only during Presidential election years, but the Congressional elections every two years.  Depending on the percentage of people that can be brought in the voting dynamics change.  The two scenarios I gave are the Robust one (getting 50% of non-voters to vote) and the Lean one (only 10% of non-voters come in to vote).   Also noted is that 'Independents' tend to break out along party lines as there are only two parties, and that when a third party is introduced 'Independents' will then break in a tripartite fashion.  What comes out of this is that when non-voters or 'Independents' move to a new standard, they have the effect of changing the 'Independent' voting ratio.  Thus two factors are at play when Tea Parties are considered:

First - Changing the voting proportion.  With the current set-up the voter pool is roughly three parts of equal size: Democrats, Republicans and Independents.  That means a minor change between the two parties changes the Independent's affiliation, so that a mere 35 to 34 margin of D:R can lead to the 51:49 era or the 'Red/Blue' divide of States along party lines.  When affiliation with three parties is considered (D:R:T) and you go to 35:34:20 you are at 89% of voting leaving just 11% to be split so you get 39:38:23, which would mean that 'Red/Blue' America vanishes.  With a third choice and Independents falling out proportionately, an era of 'bi-partisanship' ends: a third party that kept to a small government platform and did NOT compromise, while a minority, would demonstrate that the other two parties were either in collusion (i.e. 'bi-partisanship' against the third party) or unwilling to compromise THEIR power structure so as to reduce government (via the number of agencies, regulations, personnel, legal coverage, etc.).  A small, hard-line party that is able to garner 20% of the vote becomes a palpable threat to the 'two party system'.  At just above Ross Perot's best showing, 15%, a distributed third party WITHOUT a party structure but WITH shared goals and ideals has an impact on the two party system even if they never form an actual party but can whittle away at districts that tend to get progressive representatives when the district is not progressive.  The lesson of NY-23 is clear: you can go from nowhere to 45% of the vote in one month by doing this and forcing the two parties to show their actual affiliation against the plurality principles of the district.  The trendline had been set and the deadline beat it.

Second - Changing the voting pool size.  This also changes proportion but in a subtler way: by bringing in those who have been disenchanted with their franchise as they can't get people who represent them.  An influx of the disenchanted by any degree changes the proportions along the Robust/Lean options I presented earlier.  House districts that are 'safe' with a 53:46 margin see that leading trend drop with even a 15% influx to 46:40:14.  When you go from a straight percent to having to renormalize to a higher amount, in this case moving from 100 to 115, the previous percentages shift to accommodate the new normal.  In this case there needs to be NO adjustment to the prior incumbent parties, just new people walking in forming a third party and contesting the previous staid elections.  By increasing the pool of voters and having them committed to a third party or alternative voting arrangement, what had once been 'safe' seats become, at an instant, plurality seats only.  Mentally this is so because a majority win (53:46) seems much more robust than the plurality case (46:40).  Yet that very change is a POSITIVE feedback to the third party members in that THEY did this, they entered into the fray and changed the cozy arrangement that had been set up between the two parties for 'safe' districts.  While 46% is still a 'win' it is not a 'safe' win and indicates weakness in the two larger pluralities that can be exploited by a lean and hungry third party.  By entering the system you change its behavior, a well known fact of quantum mechanics but also true of any other system that has a new independent variable added.  This is one of the most powerful of messages that can be sent to a voter: you do have an impact on things.

After Rasmussen Reports examines the break-outs of how existing party members view Tea Parties, there is a striking paragraph that bears examination:

Forty-one percent (41%) of all voters nationwide say Republicans and Democrats are so much alike that a new party is needed to represent the American people. Republicans are evenly divided on this question, while Democrats overwhelmingly disagree. However, among those not affiliated with either major party, 60% agree that a new party is needed, and only 25% disagree. Men are far more likely than women to believe a new party is needed.

That 60% Independents is an astounding figure as it would have to encompass all of those who split for the current two parties in elections, and yet when given this question on the need for a new party, 2/3 of Independents agree with the proposition.  If broken down into equal thirds for the voting population between D:R:I (and they are not but it is a rough approximation), then 60% of 1/3 is nearly 20% of the entire voting population that favors a third party.  The remaining 21% must come from the other 2/3 and as the D is indicated as substantially lower a proposed breakout of 5:16:20 then looks proportionately right.  This is via first route analysis of changing proportions within a set sized voting population, which is not the case in America as it has been a declining turnout by proportion, even with adding on 8 million citizens of voting age every 4 years.

Continuing on first route analysis, the 5% that derives from the Democratic party, which is given an equal third, becomes 15-16% of the entire party voting base.  This falls a bit above my projected faction of 'Blue Dogs' and PUMAs, but not unreasonably so given ANY moderate disaffection within the Democratic Party.  These were the hard to convince Democrats during the Presidential election that either held their noses and voted or did not vote.  This segment is populated by Fiscally Conservative 'Blue Dogs' (Midwestern States south of the Great Lakes) and the followers of Hillary Clinton who had a strong showing throughout the old party base zones in Appalachia, and even such places as Texas.  This level of dissatisfaction points to problems in the Democratic Party that can properly be characterized as Big City vs Small Town and Rural.  This represents the Old Jacksonians who are still staying with the party up to 2008, and are the final stalwarts of that traditional power base for the Democratic Party.  I agree with Walter Russell Mead's analysis that the majority of Jacksonians (the New Jacksonians or Crab Grass Jacksonians) have generally drifted from the Democratic Party between the mid-1960's to present.  This old line of government not endangering the common working man, leaving him be and not interfering with his life may be the last of their kind and they have stayed by their beliefs even as all the 'good' programs by the Democratic Party (Federal Reserve, SSN, Medicare, FHA, Fannie, Freddie, CRA, etc.) have turned out to put the picnic far too close to the outhouse so that now the picnic gets ants and flies.  A move to support a third party would be an attempt to fumigate the outhouse and move the picnic a good, far way away from it while the toxins die down.  When the corruption of our government services puts the common working man at risk from political cronies, the time to do something may well be coming, leaving the Progressives and others Social Liberals to have the party which will no longer be able to claim any conservative basis.

For the Republican party that 16% they contribute is worrying as it is nearly 48-49% of the entire party which jibes with the 70% favorability for Tea Parties seen intra-party.  My previous analysis of the Republican Party examined its main breakouts via internals and that amount of favorability is also shocking when you consider that the 70% of the party members are favorable to a Tea Party and 48-49% would support the formation of a third party, that is over 70% of the disaffected willing to support a Third Party formation.  Within the factions inside the Republican Party one would suspect the LEAST favorable are the MilCons/NeoCons as a third party would disrupt the Nation's ability to get a consensus via majority on the stance of the Nation for self-defense.  With that said, if there is Jacksonian support for a Tea Party system arrangement (formal or informal) then that flips as Jacksonians are anything BUT anti-military or anti-defense.  Yet even with that this would not be a huge draw for MilCons.  FiCons or Fiscal Conservatives make up a large section of the party and, thusly, are the most dissatisfied with the free-spending going on by Republicans during the 1990's and up to 2004.  The overwhelming bulk of support is probably from this section within the Republican Party as they have had the most promises to them since 1980 and the least amount delivered.  Being fiscally conservative does NOT mean running progressive budgets with huge outlays, but actually cutting spending and the size of the government for that to happen.  Third in the mix are the SoCons or Social Conservatives.  Within SoCons there is a strong break between the Religious and the Traditionalists, and that is the break between Social Progressivism residing with the Religious SoCons and the older system of Traditional government hewing to the Founders and their emplacement of a Westphalian system.  Here a break between the SoCons would seem to be the breaking point of the party: is this a Religiously Conservative party willing to put forward government in a nurturing role or a Traditionally Conservative Westphalian party that understands the deep reasons we recognize the ability of individuals to do good without the interference of government?

That is a stark view of what the existing two parties could look like if a third party or Tea Party stands up, formally or informally.  As this is the Lean Scenario, it leaves a huge aftermath behind it, even with being just that.

The Democratic Party, cut off from any conservative base (social or fiscal) becomes isolated and more progressive, liberal and trenchant trying to hang on to old popularity but seeing its voting base become almost entirely urban.  That is the party of Big City Machines and Machine Politics writ large: it is a party that makes the current level of corruption and political pay-offs seem minor in comparison.  Because of that the party becomes more insular, less able to handle outside concepts and less competitive outside of those urban enclaves.  The party that started with the Gentleman Farmer and Rural Jeffersonian will have transformed itself completely into Big City Machines unable to support the ventures of the common man or farmer for anything.  Yet for all of that it can STILL garner between 23-32% of the vote Nation-wide, although its support in rural and even some suburban areas will fall to barely discernable.

The Republican Party becomes a Religiously Conservative but Governmentally Progressive party with many MilCons left due to the National nature of the party.  Fiscal Conservatives would only be a voice where Traditionalists and FiCons can work together to support the proposition that the most religiously accommodating government is one that has NO SAY in religion and does not dictate morals to the country.  Even governing from the old idea of fiscal conservatism, that of managing the growth of government, would wither inside the party.  Still that base of Christian Conservatives, MilCons/NeoCons and FiCon remainder places the party at a firm 26-27% core that will only see decline if the morality of the party suffers ANY.  If members feel they have to leave due to current marital or sexual problems, that becomes the 'litmus test' for candidates so that the party can retain its hold on the electorate.  This will get some rural and suburban backing, but shows an overall retreat of the party from Urban settings save for social works.  Government would be an expansive affair looking towards some common defense but be willing to replace the Church and individual good works with the power of the State.  The party of Free Soil becomes the party of Societal Statism dictating to the people from the State.

A formal or informal Tea Party is a different beast, although it hews to the old 'No Taxation Without Representation', small government, fiscal conservatism and both New and Old Jacksonians.  This is a party of liberty, freedom from government, defending the Nation, and allowing the individual the greatest free play of rights possible while ensuring that government does not destroy the economy.  It is a party of trenchant anti-Statism backed up by the personal liberty to say 'NO'.  At 14-24% it does NOT have to present great new things for government to do, in fact it need only keep on saying that the government does far too much, costs too much, creates too many divisions in society, taxes the hell out of us, and can't even chase down a bunch of overseas terrorists with the greatest military machine on the planet.  This is not a party of 2-year olds, but a measured and reasoned response to the excesses of the 20th century and the unwillingness to continue them.  Because it has Traditionalists and 'Blue Dogs' affiliated with it, there is a much stronger showing in the margins of Cities than Republicans have.  It is a party that contests against the Republicans in Small Towns and rural settings, and against the Democrats in the Suburbs.  Core concepts of less government, lower taxation, more liberty for the common man and railing against the stench of crony politics in both parties means this is not a 'reform' party to either of the two existing parties and is, indeed, a response to them.  It is a party where 'affirmative action' is budget cuts and repealing of government power so that individuals can act affirmatively without running afoul of overgrown regulations and taxation.  It is a party of devout Federalism and returning usurped power at the Federal level back to the States and local governments and getting the National government the hell out of the way.  There is no social program that is so good it can't be cut, no support for big business that can't be sheared and no support for the poor that is not better done locally via giving full tax breaks for charitable donations and letting the people decide how best to tend the poor, sick and elderly.  It is not the party of 'No' although it would end up saying that a lot.  It is a party of sound fundamentals that run contrary to Statism at all levels, just as its followers support it at all levels to do that.

And if a third party can bring IN any of the current disaffected, their power is magnified by doing so.  The existing two parties have had four decades to stem that tide and have not succeeded.  Getting the current voting disaffected is not enough: any third party must reach out to the self-disenfranchised and give them a positive reason TO vote.  Republicans and Democrats have failed miserably at that, and any third party that can get any success will crack the two party system wide open.  Unlike Ross Perot and John Anderson the current social movement of Tea Parties is not fixated on a star figure, but on getting things done.  That is so vexing to the current media and political elites that they cannot deal with that fact.  The political elites, as seen in Rasmussen Reports, are in denial as their salad days would come to a harsh end if there is a third party:

Among the Political Class, not a single respondent picked the Tea Party candidate.

It is they who lose if there is a third party as it is a repudiation of their elite status.

It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.

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If you could make a science of society

What would a science of society look like?

This may seem a rather odd question, but it is one that has been knocking around with me for awhile. We talk of liberty, freedom and equality as subjects, things we do, and as objects, things we desire, and yet they must have a positive value to us for us to value them so highly in both regards. What are these things and how does our society allow us to manifest them in the way we do? And just how strong are they? What are their limits?

We have many works that examine these things from the theoretical or hypothetical side, that is as descriptive works, but very few of the empirical sort, that is placing actual numbers and definitions to these things to allow for measurements to be derived. If you do hand-waving and theory then you are working out definitions, but definitions that measure nothing or are relative in nature only, leave little to work with when trying to find out the magnitude of interactions. With that said, measurements and their attached meanings derive from definitions, and so that is the place to start.

From die.net, the Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) definition of liberty:

liberty

n 1: immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority: political independence [syn: autonomy]

2: freedom of choice: "liberty of opinion"; "liberty of worship"; "liberty--perfect liberty--to think or feel or do just as one pleases"; "at liberty to choose whatever occupation one wishes"

3: personal freedom from servitude or confinement or oppression

4: leave granted to a sailor or naval officer [syn: shore leave]

5: an act of undue intimacy [syn: familiarity, impropriety, indecorum]

When we think of liberty we most commonly think of 1-3, that concept of being free from servitude or the arbitrary exercise of authority over us, and the ability to use freedom to make choices. Having liberty, then, is the free will exercise of one's ability to choose to do certain activities or think without restraint.

Again from die.net, same source, this on freedom:

freedom

n 1: the condition of being free; the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints

2: immunity from an obligation or duty [syn: exemption]

When we have liberty available to us, we are free. When we are not permitted liberty we are not free and are not in a state of freedom.

Once again, same source and die.net to help, this time equality:

equality

n 1: the quality of being the same in quantity or measure or value or status [ant: inequality]

2: a state of being essentially equal or equivalent: "on a par with the best" [syn: equivalence, par]

For us this is the concept of equality within society, of no man having more or less privilege than any other man. Thus our concept of being treated equally under the law is one that we enshrine and when we move from equal treatment we no longer treat individuals as equals.

The base state of man is to have perfect liberty, perfect freedom and perfect equality.

That is the state of man without any restraint upon him, with perfect ability to do anything with impunity save for the direct repercussions of the act itself. In that state all men are equal, save for differences in size, strength and cunning. There are no bonds upon man in this state of being, no holds upon him, no accountability save the direct and immediate sort. In its purest form this is man in the State of Nature and answering only to Natural Law.

Here I will use Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England at the Harvard Law School Library (attributed to Henry of Bratton) as the basic guide for our understanding of Natural Law:

What natural law is.

[019] 21Natural law is defined in many ways. It may first be said to denote a certain
[020] instinctive impulse arising out of animate nature by which individual living things
[021] are led to act in certain ways. Hence it is thus defined: Natural law is that which
[022] nature, that is, God himself, taught all living things. The word ‘quod’ is then in
[023] the accusative case and the word ‘natura’ in the nominative. On the other hand,
[024] it may be said that the word ‘quod’ is in the nominative case, so that the definition
[025] will be this: Natural law is that taught all living things by nature, that is, by
[026] natural instinct. The word ‘natura’ will then be in the ablative case.22 This is what
[027] is meant when we say that our first instinctive impulses are not under our control,
[028] but our second impulses are. That is why, if a matter proceeds only as far as simple
[029] sensual pleasure, not beyond, only a venial sin is committed. But if it proceeds
[030] farther, to the contriving of something, as where one puts into practice what he
[031] has shamefully thought, it will then be called a third impulse and a mortal sin is
[032] committed.23 And note that for the reason that justice is will, taking into account
[033] rational beings only, natural law is impulse, regard being had to

[001] all creatures, rational and irrational. There are some who say that neither will nor
[002] impulse may be called jus, jus naturale or jus gentium, for they exist in [the realm of]
[003] fact; will or impulse are the means by which natural law or justice disclose or manifest
[004] their effect, for virtues and jura exist in the soul.24 This perhaps is said more clearly,
[005] that natural law is a certain due which nature allows to each man. Natural law is also
[006] said to be the most equitable law, since it is said that erring minors are to be restored
[007] in accordance with [natural] equity.25

Mathematically this is the Ground State of Man, although there will be some provisos in that and a few things granted us by the Law of Nature and our inheritance as a species. Those changes, however, are 'built-in' and instinctual, just as the desire for perfect liberty is part of all animals so we, too, have that desire. Thus these things we get from our background and history as a species are part of the Ground State of Man. A Ground State can have many values, depending on what is measured, but for simplicity's sake we can set that at Zero.

GSM = 0

With the package of being human we get an affinity to form personal bonds and family groups, and yet many animals also have this as instinct, so we cannot say we are special from Nature due to this trait. What we do have is conscious control over the exercise of it, and in that we can say that this adapted behavior (personal bonds) can be exploited as an aptation to other things. A shellfish may not have control over the colors that its shell gains (and many don't) but when a predisposition towards coloration also gains a benefit, that trait is then one that is used as an aptation: it is not there due to survival characteristics, but may help to enhance survival just the same.

To us this personal bond capability that we get via instinct can be used to further our survival beyond what Nature has provided for. That aptation is part of the GSM. Our ability to consciously use it, and as members of homo sapiens sapiens that comes part and parcel of our heritage, is also part of the GSM, although a distinction with a difference that sets us apart from other species. That distinction is neither a plus nor a minus in moving from the GSM, but has been bestowed upon us as providence from Nature.

When we consciously choose who is our mate, and then when we choose by that decision to restrict our activities towards that mate, we then start doing something different than Nature has provided. While we may have instincts to stop us from doing harm to that mate, that does not stop such things in a sovereign way in Nature: Natural Law over-rides even that bond if the need for survival precludes it. Thus if threatened with death or injury, a being may offer up its mate to fate to survive and while it would instinctually feel loss that is only due to the absence of the mate, not the decision itself. Once we move to actually self-sacrificing for that mate, to preclude not only other pleasures but to withstand pain and even death for that mate to survive, we create something wholly new. This is Bracton on that topic:

What the jus gentium is.

[017] 33The jus gentium is the law which men of all nations use, which falls short of
[018] natural law since that is common to all animate things born on the earth in the
[019] sea or in the air. From it comes the union of man and woman, entered into by the
[020] mutual consent of both, which is called marriage. Mere physical union is [in the
[021] realm] of fact and cannot properly be called jus since it is corporeal and may be
[022] seen;34 all jura are incorporeal and cannot be seen. From that same law there
[023] also35 comes the procreation and rearing of children. The jus gentium is common
[024] to men alone, as religion observed toward God, the duty of submission to parents
[025] and country, or the right to repel violence and injuria. For it is by virtue of this
[026] law that whatever a man does in defence of his own person he is held to do lawfully;
[027] since nature makes us all in a sense akin to one another it follows that for one to
[028] attack another is forbidden.36

What manumission is.

[030] 37Manumissions also come from the jus gentium. Manumission is the giving of
[031] liberty, that is, the revelation of liberty, according to some, for liberty, which
[032] proceeds from the law of

[001] nature, cannot be taken away by the jus gentium but only obscured by it,38 for
[002] natural rights are immutable. But say that he who manumits does properly give
[003] liberty, though he does not give his own but another's, for one may give what he
[004] does not have, as is apparent in the case of a creditor, who [may alienate a pledge
[005] though the thing is not his,39 and in that of one who] constitutes a usufruct in his
[006] property.40 For natural rights are said to be immutable because they cannot be
[007] abrogated or taken away completely, though they may be restricted or diminished
[008] in kind41 or in part. 42It was by virtue of this jus gentium that wars were introduced
[009] (that is, when declared43 by the prince for the defence of his country44 or to repel
[010] an attack) and nations separated, kingdoms established and rights of ownership
[011] distinguished. Individual ownership was not effected de novo by the jus gentium but
[012] existed of old, for in the Old Testament things were already mine and thine, theft
[013] was prohibited45 and it was decreed that one not retain his servant's wages.46 By
[014] the jus gentium boundaries were set to holdings, buildings erected next to one
[015] another, from which cities, boroughs and vills were formed.47 And generally, the
[016] jus gentium is the source of all contracts48 and of many other things. What long
[017] custom is will be explained below.49

This thing we create is the law of nations and the first and greatest hallmark of it is that protection of others and NOT starting a war on one's own. Self-defense of that most basic bond we decide to form is immutable and a positive liberty. To wage war that endangers it on one's own is a negative liberty. Thus we get the next two parts of how we measure things:

1. Positive Liberty of War - Self-Defense which we keep to ourselves as an inborn liberty and right. Thus PL(W) = +1.
2. Negative Liberty of War - The offensive war against others is something that is still within us, but we vest it into society. Thus NL(W) = -1.

We get both of these from the GSM. Each value is your entire liberty in each sub-area.

Thus GSM = PL(W) + NL(W) = 0

This changes our Liberty Index (LIB), that measure of our Liberty with regards to the GSM, which has a neutral value. LIB is therefore the measure of Liberty with respect to the GSM. Each individual will experience Liberty differently, that is part of our nature, yet we each have a maximal amount of Liberty available to us and that maximal amount is absolute: no one gains more than what Nature provides. We may create different venues for expression, but those venues are, themselves, expression of our Liberty available under Natural Law. Thus we may not be able to conceive of ourselves utilizing full Liberty or experiencing it, which is subjective, but that we have it is self-evident with all men being born equal in potential.

Our Individual Liberty: LIB(I) = PL(W) = +1

Our Society's Liberty which is vested in Government: LIB(G) = NL(W) = -1

For us to be safe from NL(W) we must have society and its organs to govern it, and that allows us the ability to defend ourselves freely using our positive liberty to do so. For this to be done there must be an agreement by ALL individuals in the society to do this, or else we are all put at peril to the individual's whim. Thus we grant freedom to each other to not be fearful of war of man upon man and we, through that vestment of it in society with that negative liberty, increase our positive liberty.

Another division is seen with restraint of actions, and this is also one that divides into a positive and negative liberty.

1. Positive Liberty of Restraint - Self-restraint, the ability to check one's own actions with regards to our fellow man. PL(R) = +1.
2. Negative Liberty of Restraint - Restraining others for our own wishes or to enact our own desires, which harms society. NL(R) = -1

The Negative Liberty of Restraint is handed to society and its organ called government so as to allow it to restrain others that would endanger society. Thus we now have more positive liberty, even if we no longer have perfect freedom:

LIB(I) = PL(W) + PL(R) = +2

LIB(G) = NL(W) + NL(R) = -2

This formulation, while not done with math, is described in a way that we can understand it:

Some writers have so confounded society with government,
as to leave little or no distinction between them;
whereas they are not only different, but have different origins.
Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness;
the former promotes our POSITIVELY by uniting our affections,
the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one
encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions.
The first a patron, the last a punisher.

That from Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and it makes perfect sense when seen as a form of mathematics. In this case the organ of society that holds the LIB(G) is called government, while the rest of society is formed by our cooperative use of LIB(I). When we utilize government to restrain those activities that would cause harm to society, we exercise a positive value of control via our LIB(I) via our civil liberty. Thus the Liberty Index gains a Control Value that is necessary to keep our negative liberties lent to government via society in check. From that the CV must be strong enough to ensure that we are not put in danger by government that holds our negative liberties. In a perfect world that must be equal:

CV(G) = -1 x LIB(G)

At this point we get this replacement:

CV(G) = -1 x -2 = +2

That is, happily, the LIB(I) and thus we would feel secure.

Now I will step through a thought experiment and apply values as I go.

Our PL(W) is for all forms of self-defense, everything from a spit in the eye to a thermonuclear device. Now let us say that we are uncomfortable with the very high end of that scale and say that such things as war making aircraft, ships, and WMDs are to be restricted from our society as they are just too dangerous for the individual to use. Happily they are so expensive that they are out of the reach of most individuals, even the 'super rich' and thus this is a minor fractional impingement upon our LIB(I). Let us say that this Restriction is a mere tiny fraction of PL(W).

R(W) = 0.01 x PL(W) = 0.01

To do this requires that we must increase the magnitude of NL(R), that is put more Restraint into the system that is held by government and remove it from PL(R). This must be reflected in the control value of government.

Thus:

PL(W1) = PL(W) - R(W) = +0.99

NL(R1) = NL(R) - R(W) = -1.01

CV(G) = -1 x ( NL(W) + NL(R1)) = +2.01

LIB(I) = +1.99

LIB(G) = -2.01

When we want government to do more to restrain our positive liberties, we lose liberty and government gains control power over us. This does not make society safer as this is a function of control by government on our liberty and freedom and as it is taken away from all individuals society is lessened by that loss. Also, on this scale of liberty measurement, we are now lacking in an amount of control commensurate to the differences needed between C(G) and LIB(I). That is worrying as the restrictions we have coming from government are based on an unsupported control factor from our personal liberty. In short we begin to lack the essential back-up to the control of government which is our positive liberty: there is a liberty deficit equal to that difference or delta.

LIB(DEL) = CV(G) - LIB(I) = +0.02

That Delta between the necessary control of government and your personal liberty is a meaningful one, as when government restricts your liberty it needs greater control and you are feeling controlled by government. This is also called oppression by authority and such a government is authoritarian. Now for our social good all governments are at least mildly authoritarian so as to help keep order of society within society.

Another area of liberty is economic liberty and it, too, has positive and negative aspects.

1. Positive Liberty of Economy - Your ability to gain by your own hand from your own work through the utilization of freedom to work. PL(E) = +1
2. Negative Liberty of Economy - Your ability to take from others and steal their work or otherwise gain by their work by doing none yourself, the act of taking is not considered positive. NL(E) = -1

The sum of your economic liberty is: GSM = PL(E) + NL(E).

As with the previous forms of liberty, we put the negative form into that organ of society of government to control it.

LIB(I) = PL(W) + PL(R) + PL(E) = +3

LIB(G) = NL(W) + NL(R) + NL(E) = -3

CV(G) = -1 x (NL(W) + NL(R) + NL(E)) = +3

Government utilizes the NL(E) in various ways: tariffs, taxation, duties, imposts, and eminent domain.

If we postulate a case where all government taxation via all means and all governments is 30%, then that is the amount your PL(E) is impacted by government. This is the amount of burdening or restraint upon your personal liberty of economy to run the government.

R(E) = 0.3 x PL(E) = +0.3

PL(E1) = PL(E) - R(E) = +0.7

NL(E1) = NL(E) - R(E) = -1.30

Thus:

LIB(I) = +2.7

LIB(G) = -3.3

CV(G) = +3.3

LIB(DEL) = +0.6

When there is a positive LIB(DEL) > +20% LIB(I) then government is thought of as having more power than the people of society.

When there is a +/- 20% LIB(I) difference a government and its people are in balance.

When there is a negative LIB(DEL) -20% LIB(I) then government is considered to be subservient to the people in regards to Liberty.

Our CV(G) in the US has, as part of its arrangement, being from the 'consent of the governed'. With that said, the IRS acts as a mandatory agency with its own courts to decide tax issues quite separate from our civil courts, and those courts are rarely reviewed, rarely overturned and act as an arm of government collections. With 'consent of the governed' that LIB(DEL) on the imposition against personal economic liberty is supposed to be moderated, and yet the collections are most coercive and the one place hardest to get an acquittal is tax court. If tax problems were accountable to standard civil courts, then an argument could be made for civil justice, but as it is not that moderating influence vanishes and 'consent of the governed' goes with it. The ability to tax has become a true law unto itself, answerable to no civil justice. That is for the federal side of things, which is a percentage of the R(E) but a large percent of it, nonetheless.

That R(E) would be an average across all individuals in society. When we leverage disproportionate taxation, that is change the amount being taxed due to things like income, those who pay less or no taxes do not notice the R(E) or the LIB(DEL) due to it: the poor don't care much about the full taxation of those who pay taxes.

Inversely those who have great wealth and can shield it via an incremental use of tax gimmicks, hiding income and tax lawyers feel less of a bite than if they had their full share levied upon them. Every exemption that is useful to only the upper portion of those with income lessens their appreciation of the R(E) and LIB(DEL) via the amount they can shield minus the cost of the shielding. So long as that shielding yields a positive net result, the amount of taxation felt is lessened thus lessening concerns about those who cannot use such techniques to a net positive.

Thus the middle income individuals feel the full brunt of taxation, get only a few 'tax breaks' to mollify them, and have to pick up the load for the poor AND the amount the rich shield from tax collections.

The felt LIB(DEL) is thus changed for those paying taxes. If, say, 30% pay no taxes or no discernable taxes (this is not just income tax but things like sales tax, duties, etc. and is a net 30% as many of the poor do pay taxes, but they are not discernable beyond a modicum, so 30% is an overall net loss from this income bracket) then their LIB(DEL) effectively drops to zero and for those rich who can shield their money, they may only feel, say 80% of the remaining LIB(DEL), thus forcing the remainder LIB(DEL)(REM) to pay the share of the poor:

LIB(DEL)(P) = 0

LIB(DEL)(REM) = LIB(DEL) + 0.3 x LIB(DEL) = 0.78

LIB(DEL)(R) = LIB(DEL)(REM) x 0.8 = 0.624

LIB(DEL)(M) = LIB(DEL)(REM) + (LIB(DEL)(R)-LIB(DEL)(REM)) = 0.78 + (0.624 - 0.78) = 0.936

From this a nominal amount of overall economic liberty delta is not felt by the poor, only just a bit above the nominal average for the rich and predominantly upon the middle class. The rich, by being rich, can get in loopholes into the law via lobbying so as to bring their nominal rate down to near average (and some do pay no income tax but cannot escape other taxes) and the middle class gets the squeeze. In truth the LIB(DEL)(P) is rarely 0 but never reaches an effectively half-average until you get to be un-poor and join the middle class. Even then the lowest part of the middle class has some effects moderated thus shifting burden to the middle and upper income earners.

This system works so-so to explain the effects of taxation, but the effects of those who get taxed and feel that they have less control over taxation is, for them a much higher amount than average as the tax code favors the poor and the rich, simultaneously although in different ways. Until this point in time all individuals have been considered to share the burden equally, but due to tax policy we can no longer consider that as the case: by favoring some over others government creates inequality in participation and control over the government itself. This is the Equality Quotient (EQQ) which is a measure of the differences in burden from LIB(DEL).

Thus:

EQQ(P) = LIB(DEL) - LIB(DEL)(P) = +0.6 - 0 = +0.6

EQQ(R) = LIB(DEL) - LIB(DEL)(R) = 0.6 - 0.624 = -0.024

EQQ(M) = LIB(DEL) - LIB(DEL)(M) = 0.6 - 0.936 = -0.336

When one has a positive EQQ they are said to be Favored by government (>= 10% LIB(DEL)).

When one has a near zero EQQ they are said to be Neutral with respect to government (+/- 10% of LIB(DEL)).

When one has a negative EQQ they are said to be Disfavored by government (<= -10% of LIB(DEL)) .

As I have pointed out I am exaggerating with respect to the Poor which will change the position of both the Rich and Middle Class in regards to LIB(DEL). That may actually move the EQQ(R) into slightly positive territory and bring the EQQ(M) downwards, but perhaps not into the 10% range of Neutrality. As this is a difference from the Average a smaller variation in a system professing equality has a larger impact than the absolute comparison between LIB(I) and LIB(DEL) used for the absolute case. Still a government can have a rough correlation of power in balance with its society and still have EQQs that demonstrate unequal dispensation of the use of that power.

This examination is of a government that is given only our negative liberties to safeguard so that we may maximize our positive ones. When we put together a government that doesn't do that, we can start to see some major problems in the reduced liberty of the individual.

Examining a society that hands positive liberties to government changes that balance of Liberty, Control and Equality. To postulate, lets start with a position in which all handguns are prohibited, save for those made at home (along with ammunition), and rifles and shotguns are heavily restricted to the general population, and all other firearms are prohibited. With that we would see only a 20% available positive liberty of warfare for self-defense, and probably closer to 10%.

PL(W) = 1 x 0.2 = +0.2

NL(W) = -1 - (1 - PL(W)) = -1.8

Thus:

LIB(I) = +0.2

LIB(G) = -1.8

CV(G) = +1.8

LIB(DEL) = +1.6

To achieve this requires a highly authoritarian government. Compare this with a LIB(DEL) for the simple restriction of WMDs to the individual LIB(DEL) = 0.02, and we see a government that must be 8 times as authoritarian compared to that extremely mild government. In this all individuals are considered to be equal, although if the government preferentially allows one group to be armed, say a ruling group, then the EQQ would be very high between those that govern and those they govern.

To examine a society in which government is not only entrusted with the negative economic liberty, but also the lion's share of the positive, say 90% of the positive liberty, we get the following:

LIB(I) = +0.1

LIB(G) = -1.9

CV(G) = +1.9

LIB(DEL) = +1.8

When postulating a government run economy, one is said to have very little control over government nor personal liberty with respect to government with LIB(I) being a mere 1/18th the canceling amount to feel some security from government for one's liberty. This is very close the minimal case of slavery:

LIB(I) = 0

While having 10% control of one's economic future is better than none, it can in no way said that one control's one's own destiny in that realm. If this case were added to the previous case we would see the following:

LIB(I) = +0.3

LIB(G) = -3.7

CV(G) = +3.7

LIB(DEL) = +3.4

That is beyond authoritarian and what we would call a totalitarian state that dictates your life to you and then ensures that you can in no way defend yourself FROM government.

This has been an interesting thought experiment!

The drawbacks of this system:

1) It deals with the absolute realm of liberty in multiple areas, and then sums them, thus making any fast and easy analysis of a government or society difficult. Each area must be dealt with separately.

2) There are no hard definitions on restraint of positive liberty imposed by government. The cases I give are ones in which I just used numbers to represent approximations of restraints, and I used no hard and fast rules on them. Still that could be done given more time.

3) Subjectively each of us deals with our emotional and mental attitude towards our use of liberty differently. With that said it is very easy to assume that one's subjective approach is universal, which, thusly, puts one at odds with even a slight variation of one's outlook. If a large scale outlook is different, then valuations on restraint and even what positive and negative liberties ARE will change valuations. That is why I went the route of the ENTIRE of each, so that the most expansive view of positive and negative to their furthest limits are the full value of them.

4) Each society, beyond just individuals, will approach the magnitude of restraint of liberty by government differently. In trying to use a common, absolute, evaluation, the concept is to give a level staring point and then allow different societies to state their valuations of each restraint so that a cross-society system could be developed. My analysis is 'rough and ready' used to demonstrate some of the basics of how a system like this works.

5) As a society and individuals we have ignored wanting to put such valuations on our liberty, freedom and even such things as our personality. Yet these are not sacrosanct areas, forbidden to thought and analysis. By sequestering a comparative, objective system that encompasses human liberty from our scope of learning, we still wander in a region where the hypothetical rules and the objective, hard and fast definitions are left outside in the cold. While such analysis may seem cold at first blush, it actually helps to examine differences in societies and puts some order of magnitude understanding on the hypothetical works and allows us to review just what various authors are saying and cross-compare how they approach topics. If you want to get to a science of society and governments, then something like this will be necessary and hand waving and hypothetical cases will need to be made into rigorous postulations with numbers put against them that are clearly explained.

The pluses of this system:

1) Personally I was surprised at how some of the things we talk about in comparing governments and personal liberty immediately stand out. Simply putting numbers on these things we talk about helps to regularize understanding and create a cross-comparative review of not only politics but societal attitudes.

2) The interim numbers generated, like the CV(G) turn out to be interesting indicators of the relative power between society and government. While LIB(I) is for all individuals and collective, so is LIB(G). The examination of that Delta between LIB(I) and the positive control necessary for government to function with its negative liberties (or positive ones taken from individuals) is a highly powerful tool.

3) Even without extreme rigor on definitions there are clear indicators of liberty, freedom and equality quickly stand out. When we talk of government taking part in a large section of our economic lives, not only in the Health Care area but in all other areas that we get regulations put in by government, we can see how even small and incremental changes in the balance of Liberty have extreme impacts in our feeling of enfranchisement and if the government is going authoritarian. Thus an intervention on 16% of the economy would be a huge change in our personal Liberty and the necessary control by government is that we would characterize for authoritarian regimes. Under that view most of Europe is under authoritarian regimes.

4) Being nice to the poor and letting the rich get tax breaks means the middle class gets hit and hard by the authority of government. If we were to add to taxation the other regulations controlling our daily lives, we have probably reached a tipping point between a modicum of balance between the people and government and are now in a realm where authoritarianism is possible. While we know that as an intellectual exercise, when one begins to put numbers to it the actual reality of it sinks in much, much faster.

5) I do not deal with Liberties wholly retained by the people, such as religion. Still, as that is wholly retained by the people, and we are restricted on our negative liberties, that leaves us with talking about it, social exclusion and other means to express ourselves that preclude warfare and repression. ANY action taken by government in that realm is a negative... which is a lesson we have already seen in history. That does INCLUDE stopping historical and societal use of religious terms within government and on such things as our currency: as established they are perfectly allowable and trying to get government to CHANGE that basis is actually asking for favoritism. Yet we still have those that will not let sleeping dogs rest without poking them with a sharp stick.

In no way is this review an actual analytical tool.

It is an examination of what a good analytical tool would do if we had one for this purpose... which we don't.

I've been putting this together in bits and pieces over a few days, so the math may not be rigorous.

Sphere: Related Content

Decades of horror

Andy Serwer at Time has a strange take on the decade of 2000-2009, calling it A Decade From Hell.  The gloom and doom and self-inflicted wounds that he propounds and expounds upon does not have the taste of Hell to them, however, only somewhat of the hinterlands of Purgatory and self-inflated idealism come to rest on rocky shores of reality.  To my mind there are at least four ten-year time spans that are worse, far worse, than 2000-2009, and yet no real mention of them.  Without history for perspective we can easily become self-obsessed with the present, as individuals and a Nation, and the bemoaning of those ills we created for ourselves that were highly predictable and took decades of neglect and outright deceit to perpetrate does no one any good without that larger lens of the American Experience.

Assuredly those self-inflicted wounds, like the Community Reinvestment Act and its follow-ons starting during the Carter Administration, point to a deep and abiding misunderstanding of markets, money and human nature.  If we bemoan the end of the free ride of the Housing Bubble, then let us not forget its origin decades before this most recent.  The problem with banking was not an outgrowth of just Glass-Steagall being repealed, and the previous S&L crisis of the '80s should have pointed to this being something of the nature of the banking beast.  What spurred both on were regulations passed by Congress via the instrument of most unwise attribution of authority created just a little under a century before the present: the Federal Reserve.  That institution has gotten multiple banking problems, the housing bubble, and two recessions exactly WRONG in its prescriptions, and yet we hear not a peep of its role that it played in influencing regulators year on year, decade upon decade.  Similarly FHA, Fannie and Freddie get bare mention with regards to how Congress wanted more money to pour out of them and into the housing market, and even to the 'under privileged' without an income, a job or assets.  Those, of course, are actual regulations put in place that made things worse, not better, and so get glossed over.

Even the 'we have not kept up our infrastructure' is misplaced, as multiple decades of neglect took to get here with NO setting aside of funds for repair and maintenance that matched the bills coming due, year on year.  We bear fault for that, too, as we do for housing and banking, as our culture was extremely inward looking and willing to procrastinate, putting of necessary expenditures to retain what we had and now find we are losing what we have not retained.  Poor us!  And yet that, too, points back to the 1950's through to the 1990's as a problem point that structural and civil engineers told us about in budget meetings each and every year.  Since there was no big, bad wolf, we, as a culture, decided that we didn't need to maintain ourselves and our equipment against the creep of decay.  That is a bill for willful ignorance and suppression of reality by belief, not of single decade's making.  Of course before that America was used to building and revamping infrastructure, not just mere maintenance, but that, too, gets to go under the bridge.  Perhaps, just perhaps, when America is vibrant and outward looking, we take in stride the cost of maintenance as we build afresh... only when we turn inwards can we easily forget the cost of maintaining what we have.

Terrorism!  Ah, how quickly Mr. Serwer forgets the Barbary Pirates and the need to upbraid them as done by President Jefferson, or the Islamic Pirates of President Jackson's day who threatened our Far East commercial shipping and got a warship in response.  We had taken World Wars and Public War to be All War and forgot, by willful design and neglect, that the worst wars of all in mankind's history are Private Wars that signal the decay of Nations, Empires and simple States.  Terrorism in the modern mode started in the 1960's with 'State Sponsored' but 'hands clean' terrorism performed by Communists.  Che Guevara was a brutal, torturing killer who met a harsh end for practicing his killing and torture upon the poor to beat them into submission in a foreign land, and yet is he reviled by one and all as a beast, a monster?  Heavens no!  A segment of our population holds him up as an ICON!  The first hijacking of note happened when the PLO joined up with one of these Central American Red groups to hijack a plane in Panama, I believe it was, in the late 1960's and yet little was done about it.  Similarly Shining Path, FARC, various Red Factions/Armies/Groups, and then radical Islam like Islamic Jihad groups sponsored by the Muslim Brotherhood and 'State Sponsored' Hezbollah with its Iranian sugar daddy would wage more and more violent private war year on year, extracting a civilian death toll that, while small, was becoming global.  Soon would come 'Eco-Terrorists' and even rogue fashion designers set to wage their war upon all mankind to Get Their Way.  One would think the US Marines killed in Beirut would have woken us up, if the betrayal of the Law of Nations by Iran just a couple of years previously had not done so.  Even once the USSR went defunct, some groups it spawned would continue and do continue to this day, waging their war upon us although not in the numbers like al Qaeda, the presence of them bespeaks our lax attitude towards our own civilization:  we don't care about it enough to keep it.

So if this is not THE WORST DECADE in US history, what tops it?

To my mind the next up the list, but by no means the worst is:

1930-1939

The Great Depression, The Dust Bowl, The Rise of Fascism and the rise of the capitalized first letter of important words as a means of reinforcing things.

Coming in under Progressive President Hoover and going out under Progressive President Roosevelt, this decade witnessed men in the stock market plunging out of windows to their deaths in 1929-30, and continued through to 1939.  The over-inflated 'Roaring 20s' went pop on a big scale, and misguided monetary and banking policy set the stage for the worst decline in America in over 50 years.  This decade, too, had decades to build up to it and the mistaken belief that the active role of government is 'good' with respect to the common man was greatly espoused even while the 'recovery' policies steadily entrenched the Huge Recession into a Great Depression.  All the lovely things put in place to 'help' included huge business taxes that came about to 'help' the elderly and give retirement 'benefits' at the expense of government and the working class.  Just as the recovery of 1937 got started, those taxes hit and caused the recession of 1938-39, and employment would require a World War for the Nation to get back to anything like 'normal'.

The catastrophe of the Great Plains had been decades in brewing, and easy lending policy for farmers to break up the soil of the mid-west and western States during a time of relative plenty in rainfall, would cause a disaster when the rains didn't come.  Single storms with thousands of tons of dust that was once soil would shift that soil permanently from where it was and head eastward, and even darken the skies in NY City, Boston and Washington DC.  Any comparison between that and the decades of government encouragement for those in dry land areas to use up underground aquifers that take centuries to recharge is intentional.  Perhaps this time Big Agribusiness will suffer what the small farmer of the 1930's suffered during the Dustbowl, but don't bet on it with the way politics and money flows these days.

And while we bemoan modern terrorists, we forget the militant Statists of the post-WWI era that became exemplified by the Fascist and Nazi movements in Europe.  America had its off-shoots directly in Fascist groups and even the American Bund which suffered warm/cold relations with their cousins in Germany.  The prospect of mass rallies and beatings in a few places does pale in comparison to terrorist killers, although when one examines the end of the Great States of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, we come to realize that the death toll from organized State killers really does dwarf what terrorists can normally aspire to.  It is very strange that some of the killers of the 1930's get lauded today, others castigated and some given a 'free pass' by their modern counterparts.  Also we forget that Mein Kampf translated into Arabic is Jihad.  But pointing that out would be rubbing those trying to appease terrorists into the folly of what they do, and just like the 1930's we 'can't have that, now, can we?' is the order of the day.

Can we really forget the run on the banks and then the crooks coming in to give the banks a run for their money?  Yet the FDIC was supposed to fix that for our modern time, but it is going insolvent unable to cover deposits and now requiring banks pay, months in advance, for deposits not yet made.  We exchange the Tommy Gun for the Tyrannical Might of Government to steal from our banks for 'our own good'.  Such a sweet protection racket would not pass muster during normal times, but was a welcome alternative during the 1930's.  How little did we expect that all protection rackets must come back to bite us, and this one was started as a 'good idea' in the 1930's and now begins to fail us for the exact, same thing it was supposed to stop.  Broken banks by crime or government are still broken banks, and our trust in the institutions and in the 'regulators' supposed to 'protect us' was supposed to be an unalloyed good from the 1930's.  So, too, was the FHA which, in its ability to get regulations to be lax and spread its market power around, was supposed to ease the housing problems of the poor, not give expensive homes to those who could not afford them.  Apparently there is no 'good thing' that government can't ruin when it allows that federal beast that runs the regulations to write the regulations and influence the regulations and decide upon the regulations.  Are we sure this isn't a form of the Mafia?

What is even grander is that those lovely federal devices set up in the 1930's didn't help the people THEN, either.  Social Security, FDIC, FHA, and SEC all failed to 'turn things around' and even caused a deepening of the Great Depression by taking needed cash out of the economy and funneling it into that non-productive thing we call government.

Lest we forget, World War II started not in Poland but in Manchuria during the earlier part of the 1930's.  The US Navy drafted up a Plan Orange that looked at exactly how Japan could attack the US in Hawaii and Philippines in an attempt to cripple our Pacific Fleet and keep it stifled via submarine attacks.  That was long years before 1941, and while it was just one casebook, it is the most prescient that would tell of what an economically moribund Nation would signal to the Imperial Japanese military machine, a machine we supplied with much steel that was then used against us in the Second World War.  If the decade came in with the Great Stumble it went out with the Great Gasp in Poland and the world fully expected to have a repeat of World War I.  The world would not be so lucky, and yet that wouldn't have happened if appeasement was not the order of the day in the mid-1930's, and if America had a sane economic policy that would have just allowed the recovery to happen as it had in all previous downturns.  Instead we were too wise to be smart and too smart to be wise.

Horrible, no?

Yet that is only the next worse up the scale, making our decade pale in comparison.  There is worse than that?  Oh, my, yes!

1909-1919

I have written about this before in The 10 years that change the path of America, and it is an unexpected decade that most of us don't understand or discount far too easily.  Yet the roots of much of the 1930's happens right in this ten year, or so, time span, where the woes of our modern times can find its deep roots in the Progressive Era of politics and the belief that we really can change the Nature of Man via government fiat.

Of course many of the bad farming practices were already ongoing by now, but the continuation of them and the easy land and money policies that were started previously were continued.  Even worse the Federal Reserve was created to help 'stabilize' the currency and now we have seen, since its creation, that our currency has lost 95% of its value since that time.  If you think a 'strong dollar' of a decade or so ago was something, imagine it having 8x the buying power as it did in the era before the Federal Reserve and its ever so unwise policies.  That was a strong dollar!  Nothing government couldn't change, of course, in order to 'spread the wealth around'.

To that end the Progressives sought and got disproportional taxation, which is to say that each citizen was not charged a set price to run the government, which the States gathered, but could be taxed DIRECTLY from the US government in any proportion the government chose.  A simple Constitutional Amendment change the absolute equality of all taxpayers to a graduated deal, where some would be valued and taxed more than others.  The the Federal Reserve could be made flush with funds from 'the rich'!  Luckily those very same 'rich' also got the windfalls of having government support unwise lending policies via the Federal Reserve, and crony capitalism in its modern form gained a US face.  If you hate the payouts of government to Big Business, then look for disproportional taxation and crony capitalist politics as its cause.  While it was assuredly there before, the money amounts involved were generally small and that only grew when government could grow.

On the personal liberty front, the US government decided that it could start using parts of the Constitution to dictate our lives to us, and started with the Harrison Stamp Act on marijuana.  The government could, indeed, mandate tax stamps for a product, in which you had to have the product to get them... but if you had the product without the stamp you were committing a federal crime.  And Congress never had any of the stamps issued.  That proved to be a perfectly acceptable power-grab by the US Congress and we have lived with the expansion of Congressional powers since that era.  Yet that era was ushered in with the weakening of control over Congress when the lovely Progressives allowed for the direct election of Senators from States, instead of them being appointed by the State Governments.  That little restriction was getting in the way of expanding government as some States didn't send Senators to DC, which meant that government bills would get waylaid until the States could be convinced to send someone to vote on them.  That is how the system is SUPPOSED to work, but because 'fast and efficient' government is not the hallmark of a representative democracy, it is what the Progressives and their supporters wanted and got from the gullible public.  The expansive power of Congress begins in this era and we live with its ramifications to this day in more taxes, more regulations and more power concentrated into fewer hands than ever before in the US.  If you bemoan the problems of officious government on drugs, the point is not lost that before the Progressive Era there were NO federal drug laws on the books and you had the absolute freedom to decide what you took and when.  The only change happened for the Food & Drug Purity Act which mandated ingredient labels and for the few short years before making them illegal, consumption went DOWN as people realized how drugged up they were.  Government would soon decide that for you, however, so that those with horrifically painful fatal illnesses couldn't get addictive painkillers for their short span left on Earth.

This was made no better by the US Congress deciding to fix its own size and no longer have a floating proportional representation system.  'Gerrymandering' had happened before, to a certain extent, but this single chain made it a permanent landscape feature of the US political scene.  Just before that took place the Progressive Era marked a sea change in US politics from one where the electorate went from throwing the bums out of DC to the extent that it was rare that 30% ever got BACK per session, to one in which it was rare that 30% ever got tossed out at all.  The creation of the fixed size Congress to 'streamline' and 'make Congress manageable' ignored the salient feature that Congress in the House of Representatives was supposed to be unmanageable, volatile and see a high turn-over rate.  By demographics alone, small districts would see change-outs of Representatives frequently and yet the number of Representatives expanded via population expansion, thus allowing deep rooted representative democracy to take hold.  That got uprooted in 1911 and has remain unchallenged until a recent court case now working its way through the system.  It is amazing to think that the House can set its own size, pay rate, goodies, perks, dividends and never have any of that called into question for nearly a century.  If we bemoan Incumbistan, then the roots of it must be brought to light and the corruption that comes with a fixed size Congress also brought to light.  Not that those wanting more power for the State ever want you to hear that.

On the grounds of wartime spending, do ponder that the last million man army in Europe at the end of World War I was that of the United States.  And that as a part of our GDP, that military machine dwarfs our modern contingents in Iraq, Afghanistan, Philippines, Colombia and elsewhere on bases around the globe.  World War One would leave the industrial powers in Europe dwarfed by the US, and yet the US did not fight in any but a restricted fashion just against Germany and not against the corrupt Austro-Hungarian allies of Germany nor the rump of the Ottoman Empire which Britain had to fight on its lonesome and which had been committing genocide just prior to the war.  A genocide reported to President Woodrow Wilson.  President Wilson didn't want to interfere with Turkey because we had such good trade relationships with it, and that we might be able to reform Turkey via that trade.  What that meant is that the US did not fully participate in the War and that at the end of the war we were not at the 'Adult Table' to help determine the aftermath of the war.  France and Britain had already decided the landscape of Europe, the Middle East and Africa to a large extent by the end of 1918, and President Wilson's grand vision of a 'League of Nations' was something he couldn't even get the US Senate to buy into.  That dream, along with the post-war accords, would seed the world with divisions, Germany would fester for over a decade and the secular Turkish State would divide up Kurdistan so that the Kurds would never have a Nation that was guaranteed them by the post-war US agreements that they had signed on to.  By not realizing that to be considered a 'Major Power' one must act like it and go after all the allies of an enemy, President Wilson's idea of fighting a limited war would plant and water the seeds for the next World War.  Talk about ill-spent funds!

During that war was something that can only be accounted as the most draconian curtailment of free speech ever seen in the US, even granted what happened in the next worst up from this.  The delusion that is propagated about President Wilson being such a great-hearted fellow belies the fact that he deployed thousands...no tens of thousands... of agents in America as part of the 'Blue Eagle' campaign to buy goods that were certified as ok by the US government and report ANYONE speaking against the war, the President, Congress, the government.... many of the Progressive allies of President Wilson found themselves in jail when they attempted to use their free speech rights to speak up against what was going on.  At the same time the government was distributing officially sanctioned songs, reading material, eating schedules and even lullabyes for infants.  Without a sense of any perspective, our modern critics don't realize that what is being done to find al Qaeda personnel is within the traditional war powers of a President, while those exercised by President Wilson were not and are not.  If things were as bad as they were then, most of dKos and DU and other Leftists would be in jail, not walking around freely to criticize everyone and everything to their heart's content.  Imprisonment for free speech is not an answer then or now, but bemoaning communications intercepts with foreign individuals is something that is NOT protected under the US Constitution.  That power was exercised by Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, and over-stepped by President Wilson to a large degree.  Thus on this front the awfulness of the last decade comes up very, very short of any mark by any rational person.

You would think that these things, the massive spending by the US on WWI, the change of Congress to radically alter and remove its checks and increase its powers, the increased powers and how they were used, the restriction of civil liberties by President Wilson, the Armenian Genocide that President Wilson did nothing to address, the horrible state of affairs left after WWI... that this decade just might have gotten a bit of recognition as being a bit on the bad side.  Apparently not, and that is to our detriment that we forget these things and take them as 'business as usual' when, in fact, they are not usual to the Republic and caused a serious of changes that resulted in most of our modern woes in banking and the unrestricted power Congress would come to wield over our daily lives.  Instead we get dead silence save for a very few that dare talk about just how bad this era was, particularly the war years.

Next up is a decade that really does rate much, much higher in everyone's books if you but take a moment to think about it.

1860-1869

The US Civil War and period of Reconstruction.

Apparently Mr. Serwer forgot about the millions dead in the Civil War and the problems of Reconstruction.

Remember that little thing?  At least 618,000 dead due to battle and the diseases that followed it?  This was not a good decade for the US no matter which way you cut it.  You would think that just on that basis, alone, that we might get just a teensy bit of perspective on our modern era, but apparently, not.

It also had the emancipation of the slaves, and allowed for a large shift of populations in the post-war era.  The devastation of the South, however, left the economies there in dire straights for decades.  Additionally the general feeling was that the post-war governments were imposed on the population, which would lead to hard feelings that still last up to the present day in some areas of the South.

Really no single article can cover the devastation and human suffering the US went through over the decade that contained the Civil War.  Our last decade is no 'Hell' in comparison to that decade: we fall far, far short of it no matter which direction you take.  In pure cash it was horrific and while the North would have a relatively intact industrial base, the South would be impoverished.  Civil Rights were largely suspended by President Lincoln in many areas due to having a war fought within the Nation, itself, but that gets scant mention these days.  War time profiteers on both sides make Halliburton into a piker for charging a couple of bucks to deliver a cold can of soda to our troops in the middle of nowhere in Iraq or Afghanistan.  We don't have companies sending shoes made for undertakers to our troops, only to find them made of cardboard and falling apart nearly instantly.

The blood spilled for the freedom of all men in society, no matter their race, has been forgotten by our modern era, and we pay no homage to the dead who fought on both sides in this gargantuan struggle to determine that all men really ARE created equal and endowed with certain, inalienable rights.  Purposely forgetting the struggle and its outcome, and remembering its scale does a grave disservice to our honored dead who fought for what they believed in.

What is even more humorous is that those on the Left and Socialists forget that Karl Marx supported the NORTH in this effort as Capitalism was far superior to any slave based agrarian economy and that Capitalism must do its good work of getting the best efficiency so as to emancipate man from abject slavery of the old agrarian sort.  Relative wage slavery is far, far preferable to true slavery and leaves the individual with many choices for their wages and a chance for betterment leading towards a better society.  For all the embrace of the modern Left for some socialist ideals, they forget that basic principle: that Capitalism of the free market sort is far better than State Capitalism, State slavery or agrarian slave based systems of any sort.  This should have been driven home during the US Civil War, but somehow has been missed by the over-educated, under-learned Left of our modern era.

The years 2000-2009 a 'Hell'?

The next decade is highly telling and ranks as the worst in America for my taste.

1776-1786

The American Revolution.

Ten percent of Americans left dead at the end of it.

Fifteen percent of our population fled to other Crown colonies.

The economy devastated.

The first government created in 1776 coming undone and the Shaysites, as a larger movement, nearly overturning the Articles of Confederation as the State governments had impoverished the rural folk to the point of confiscating farms for back taxes and throwing farmers in jail.  All that due to war debt owed to France.

America failed at its very first government, and we are born of that failure.

If it had succeeded we would have no US Constitution but the Articles of Confederation, to this day.

Our government failed us.

Our political class failed us and were forced to rethink their positions which were destroying the lives and economy of the Nation.

The great civility that lasted through the Revolutionary War nearly came undone at the seams between urban and rural America.

2000-2009 as 'Hell'?

If our civility between urban and rural unravels, if the political class of urban America thinks they can 'organize' rural and suburban America, then we may get to revisit this 1776-1786 era.

And the political class forced to rethink their positions.

Or else we may find ourselves one, fine Shays away from finding out what true 'Hell' really is.

Sphere: Related Content

Foundations of law

The following is a white paper of The Jacksonian party.

After spending some time examining the historical documents that examine the law in practice and its basis, I have determined that a better way to describe what our modern, civil law has become should start at a more practical level starting at the basis of what we are, as humans.  From there proceeding to our more modern views of law should give some basis for further understanding what the strengths, limitations and limits of our laws are.  To any who have read at this site, this is more a summary article than one breaking new ground and may be of little interest save in that summary basis.  As there are many aspects of the universe that can only be answered through venues of faith, philosophy and religion I must, necessarily, put those aspects of what the law is off, at least to the point where mankind can formulate those things.  With that said, and not to exasperate phenomenology practitioners, we must understand that we do, indeed, have a form, an existence and a basis of time and space that we experience.

The question of what time actually is, or space for that matter,  I have covered elsewhere when looking at the problems of science in science fiction.  Whatever the general basis for time is, as individuals we must live with the consequences of our actions taken and the universe also reflects that events have happened in one way and not another, albeit others are acceptable in scientific terms, they are not the ones we have to deal with.  Thus our basis is that of natural beings in a natural universe that has had a series of events, large and small, happen to it with the least of that measure being our time alive at the current moment.  As we are physical beings in a natural universe, we partake of the aspects of that universe covering everything from sub-atomic interactions to the motions of galaxies, all of the chemistry, physics and time related events are what we are to contend with.  That entire gamut of forces, energy, space and time are summed up under the concept of: Law of Nature.

This concept often comes with the tag line 'red of tooth and claw', and such is the Natural Universe and its Laws as they play no favorites.  Nature, like Justice, is blind, save that the tools of Nature trump those of Justice as something being 'Just' is a biased view of Nature and Nature, above all things, is unbiased in the whole.  One of the great and age-old questions is 'why do bad things happen to good people?' and never is asked 'why do good things happen to bad people?' or good to the good and bad to the bad.  While our presence in this universe of Natural Law is biased, in that we have personal bias towards certain ends, the universe, in its whole, doesn't care about that, about us or about Justice.  We flee from injustice aimed at us and head towards Nature as it is unbiased and we can craft survival on our own and worry about biased others as part of our greater survival needs.  When we are threatened with doom by unjust society, Nature in its even-handedness towards the Just and Unjust, alike, is preferable to injustice perpetrated upon us by others.  In trading the Tyrant for the Wolf, we go from a decidedly biased organization to one that is merely Natural and we understand that our status varies by our own hand and is determined by our skills, not by our value to a Tyrant.  Thus if we bemoan when 'bad things happen to good people' then we must also recognize the succor and relatively safety of Nature in being unbiased and without Justice.  We cannot cheer for the Partisan resisting Tyranny from Nature and then bemoan that Nature plays no favorites and visits ill upon the Just and Unjust alike, as well as good fortune upon both.

Survival in Nature requires working with what Nature does in the Laws of Nature, and then finding ways to mitigate the actions of Nature or use them to advantage.  Reproduction allows this and reproductive strategies have many facets for survival, although we are used to thinking that only one is best, that is the outcome of a long series of events that get to our using one method and being temporally successful in the present.  Yet examination of Nature shows that many other species use many different modes to reproduce, and they all have varying degrees of success and failure that cannot be predetermined as being successful in the future.  Thus plants give off pollen during their pollination season in the hopes that one, tiny, pollen grain will find its home in the receptive parts of another plant of the same species so as to fertilize it, and that then allows for a seedling to form, drop and suffer the vicissitudes of Nature.  It is not a guaranteed success, per plant, but for all plants it has proven to be a wonderful means of spreading species and causing allergies.  Many sea animals release thousands if not millions of egg to be fertilized by the sperm of their species counter-parts and then those eggs, fertilized and unfertilized, find their fate in Nature.  Some species find this to be ill-suited to survival and tend the eggs until they released a juvenile of their species, and for some that is the extent of their caring.  Fewer still will create bonds between themselves and a mate or their young, or both, so as to spend time and energy ensuring the survival of a few of their young.  All of these strategies are sound, utilize what their beings have as internal structures, and then exploit venues that allow for successfully passing on genetic material from generation to generation.

Most species fail.

Nature's harvest of species represents 95%+ of all species that have ever existed now being extinct.  That is the way of Nature, and no species is immortal just as no natural being is immortal, either.  Our race against death and extinction is temporary, although we do try to make our existence worthwhile and to ensure the greatest chance of survival to our offspring.  This latter, as we have seen, is a survival strategy bequeathed to us by our lineage both ancient and recent.  Within Nature animals within a species have used the raising of offspring as a major way to ensure genetic heritage being passed onwards.  Also within Nature we observe that numbers of individuals of a species of diverse genetic background can come together for self-protection.  Some that do this do it without conscious thought, while others have conscious discrimination although it is driven by instinct.  Evidence of this behavior crosses all lines of species, and is not held just for herbivores or omnivores or carnivores, and even plants that cooperate between members of a species to crowd out other species can be thought of as having this instinct for survival.  Thus man is an animal of nature in that way and our distinctive characteristics are few and telling.

At one time the ability to use tools and create tools was thought as distinctive to humanity, however observation of primates, great apes and avian species now demonstrates otherwise, as they are able to form tools to go after insects in hives and otherwise create direct use tools to do things.  What separates hominids from this is the ability to use tools to create tools and then extrapolate that outwards as a meta-concept.  Recursive tool creation, making tools to make tools to make tools to craft a final, useful item, is something restricted to hominids, of which humans may be the last of that lineage.  That, however, is a hard characteristic to determine and while it sets us apart in thinking it does not set us apart by Nature, which is to say it is a distinguishing characteristic of hominids but not determinative of being human.  Even something like the use of fire and creation of fire falls into this category of distinguishing sole characteristic, but not a determinative one.  You can tell a human does these things which makes that animal a human, but this does not speak to those things which create humanity.

If our tools, use of fire and artifacts do not create humanity, then we must look elsewhere into our nature as being that do so.  This must then be in our social nature as individuals and how we utilize that beyond other animals.  At base our decision for mating, keeping a mate and raising children is not one that is truly unique amongst species, as many species have this in evidence across all species types, although there is difficulty in finding this in the plant kingdom due to the nature of plants being rooted in one spot and having little choice of mates.  Plants may have community, indeed a climax forest of one plant dominating all others points to just such a thing, but it is not one driven by more than suitability to climate and habitat, with some characteristics to crowd out other species for that climate and habitat.  In that the Law of Nature holds.  Amongst other animals we do see conscious choice in mates amongst individuals and this happens in many species.  What is seen with that, however, is the push by intrinsic nature upon conscious decision making, to that end of nature of procreation.  There is an ability to reject mates in many species, and pick and choose amongst suitors from those present and even to bond with a suitable one for life is not unknown.  Humans are not tied to a mating season, however, and our conscious quest for a suitable mate goes beyond any single season or year, and until we can do that and find a way to find good mates via conscious means, we can do without such a mate.  When our means are enacted, either by the further creations that we make to get that decision or directly, we then establish that direct link and create something wholly different from the Natural world.

Our formation of society rests not upon instinct but upon conscious decision outside of the realm of mating.  We may create many things to do this for us in that final creation of society, such as 'matchmakers' but that is also a conscious decision and our ability to say otherwise, as individuals, can still be upheld.  When that decision over-rides personal decision to our detriment, the system is determined to be tyrannical and inimical to us and must either assent to our declining it or we must find suitable society that supports such decisions.  Here the creation of something to sustain that choice, something that is not driven by instinct but conscious thought, creates the thing that few others in the animal kingdom have: society.  Forming society is conscious, driven by our thoughts, and voluntary in that we may choose not to be in a society that upholds certain forms and yet we do uphold that society is necessary to uphold those forms we desire.  While we do create this society in the Earthly realm, it is not held to the Law of Nature alone but to our own conscious creative spirit that is held within all individuals who uphold that society.  When we recognize that we can do this and do so consciously, we set ourselves apart with a distinguishing and determinative characteristic of that subset of hominids known as Homo Sapiens.  To extrapolate out, to add the meta-thought that this is an actual new creation by us within the realm of Nature is something that makes us unique beyond physique and tools, thus creating Homo Sapiens Sapiens and a new order of Law.

This is the Law that allows societies to be created and for our mutual bonds to be upheld by society and to use our natural liberty to seek out societies that uphold such bonds.  This is not Civil Law which is an outgrowth of society, but a greater Law that is one we must hold voluntarily to have society.  At that moment we consciously recognize that we seek out others to be with consciously, that we put a single meta-structure that describes the creation of other structures over those structures we have created a man-made form of Law that is separate from the Law of Nature and yet built upon it.  We could not have such Law without Nature and yet Nature does not provide us with this Law and it is one we must make and discover for ourselves within the Law of Nature.  This Law of creation of society forming at our bond with another person consciously, and consciously creating that bond between us has a name unique to it that is neither the Civil Law nor the Law of Nature.

It is the Law of Nations.

If any other species, no matter how primitive, utilizes conscious thought to create bonds amongst individuals and then seeks to create a further structure to uphold those bonds, which we call society, then they are voluntarily committing to the Law of Nations.  I have examined the fact that we recognized such back in the 13th century and what that means to us, today, in a previous piece.  This concept is foundational to all societies and to all of mankind, and is voluntarily committed to by us, even if we do not know we are doing it either through lack of forethought, lack of knowledge or lack of introspection on the meaning of these things we do.  Yet, even if it is not recognized, not taught, not written it is a Law that is easily described and defined, and as the creation of any society rests upon the Law of Nations it can be rediscovered even if forgotten or even if it is actively not taught by those seeking tyranny over us.  The reason that latter is true, is that it is true in the long run, not the short run.  A successful ideology seeking to enslave all peoples may be able, for a time, to erase the written signatures of the Law of Nations, but because it is founding a society it, also, rests upon the Law of Nations and cannot do without it.  This is why those civilizations that seek to put the imprimatur of a God upon a mere mortal will assuredly fail over time: that we are of Nature is self-evident, and that man is not Divine is likewise self-evident.  Any society that allows such rests upon a deep lie that is contrary to our nature and to Nature itself.  Likewise, any society that tries to 'remake' man into 'perfection' will find the absolute imperfection of the mortal realm as its long-term lethal enemy.  As we are of Nature we cannot be made perfect and will always remain creatures of Nature no matter what we change ourselves into be it a workers paradise or a silicon based platform for thought, neither can do without Nature and has the flaws of Nature within it which is self-evident to thought.

All other orders of Law be it Civil Law created by society to uphold its norms or National Law to unify multiple societies into a Nation State or International Law between Sovereign Nation States, all of them must uphold the Law of Nations as that is foundational to them just as Nature is foundational to the Law of Nations.  What the Law of Nations does is describe those things that we, as individuals, set aside to have in common as a society so that we may have society.  The Law of Nations then becomes the structures that grow up around those set aside liberties and freedoms that we voluntarily acquiesce to having common governance over in society.  There are a large number of things that we voluntarily give up to have society: Private Bondage for Crime, Private War, Private Execution of Law.  Thus we agree that we, as individuals, are not judge, jury and executioner and must abide by the laws created by society, which are the Civil Laws,  as part of being members of society.  Likewise we cannot wage war Privately, which is to say without the sovereign grant of our society, as that would quickly lead to the downfall of all of society.  So momentous an action would quickly dissolve society back into Nature as we set man against man, society against society by individual whim.

At this level of the Law of Nations we find that there is no creation of government as this is the Law necessary for the creation of government, not of government itself.  Some of the provisos, actions, penalties and such that form the Law of Nations do get passed upwards to the organs of society made to administer our few relinquished liberties and freedoms in order to have society.  With society comes governance and the creation of organs to execute those things held in common for our self-protection and the protection of our creation which is society.  These things we enact then have their own realm of Law which is the Civil Law.  By being the laws created by society and common practice of that society, it is local law.  Civil Law varies from location to location, from place to place, from society to society and there may even be multiple different venues of local Civil Law within one locality.  Town, Municipality, City, County and Province or State all overlap each other on local law venues and all execute Civil Law that is local.  Whenever an issue is to be decided by members of society the proper local Civil Law must be utilized to address those needs.  If a local venue at its lowest form of government is not suitable to an issue, it must then either be recognized as not incorporated into the local law or incorporated into a higher level of local law.

Local law is often referred to as 'customary law' and may have areas of it that are unwritten.  The unwritten nature of local law makes it adaptable, flexible and capable of changing due to the changing nature of society.  When such unwritten or 'customary' law is enacted as scripted or written law, it becomes much, much harder to change as it gains structures of government, administration and oversight by the organs of government that are made responsible for it.  If all of life was to become law that is written down, then individuals would lose their civil liberty and become mere automatons of script with no conscious choice left to them.  Yet the creative nature of man is such that not everything can or should be scripted and written down into law for government to oversee.  To do so has been attempted in the past, in India with the Mahabharata and through the various Empires in China in which the administrative class once served as that class that kept absolute restriction upon society so that the structure ruled over the individual.  Such deeply scripted societies can last for decades or even centuries, and yet when one unscripted event happens, the society is at a loss for how to deal with it and creativity is put to use to figure out what is happening.  Some events may fit within the realm of what can be dealt with, say the Shogunate restricting coastal trade with medieval Korea, and yet may collapse entirely, as when Admiral Perry forced an opening for trade in the Shogunate.  Medieval Europe could well be sustained with a numerous feudal class, but when war and plague wiped out a large percentage of that class the survivors were then relatively wealthy having inherited the wealth of the dead and that started a chain reaction that broke that feudal society asunder. 

Thus, as in nature, a society that is scripted may have staying power but little resilience and succumb to the unexpected, as so many species have since the beginning of life on Earth.  Be it Soviet Union, Sun Empire, Shogunate, European Medieval society, Roman Empire, Pharaohonic Egypt, Hittite Empire, Alexandrian Empire, Babylon, Sumeria, Persian Empire, or India under the Mahabharata's dictates, those societies have not withstood the test of time due to the heavy nature of the scripting between classes and individuals.  And each of these conformed to having refined Civil Law at the National level, thus creating National Law.  When local Civil Law has wide agreement within a larger organized Nation State, then those laws may be codified into National Law that is upon all parts of a Nation.  Beyond that there are necessary Public Laws that must address the entirety of a Nation, such as trade, commerce, and how the Nation addresses sustaining the National government.  As highly structured Nations seek refuge in that structure, so they become brittle by leaving too little to local variation.

From the structure of laws at this point, there is the following larger to smaller subsets seen:

First is the Law of Nature, which encompasses all of Nature, entire.  It is the foundation for all laws made by Natural beings and is unbiased.  It is involuntary law and all must abide by it.

Second is the Law of Nations, which is that law which allows societies to form and, from that, Nations.  It is built upon the Law of Nature but separate from it as it is consciously made via our interactions with each other.  This law is voluntary and to be a member of a society, any society, one submits to the Law of Nations so as to ensure one's own safety, the safety of other members of society and the safety of society itself.  While unwritten law, it is easily recreated the moment society is formed and, thusly, is universal to all beings who possess liberty and freedom to form associations and create society consciously. As a structure the Law of Nations is unbiased, although individual societies will emphasize some parts of the Law of Nations over others.  All societies, however, are governed by the Law of Nations and voluntarily abide by it.

Third is the Civil Law or customary law, which is local law of society.  This is built upon the Law of Nations and is the method by which society creates those organs necessary to regulate the body of society on a local basis.  By becoming a member of a society one agrees to abide by the Civil Law and to do so as long as one is a member of that society.  When one is born into a society, one has no choice but to abide by the Civil Law and its consequences.  Upon reaching an age of conscious understanding of society, one may seek to leave one's birth society and seek another society that is more in agreement with the beliefs, attitudes and life outlook of that individual.  That is supported by the Law of Nations via the self-evident ability of man to consciously choose his form of outlook and join with a society that is agreeable to him.  This is the realm of State Law, which is to say the organs of government representing localities that are delegated by society for such government to preside over.

Fourth is Public Law, which is Nation State law, and is the law for an entire Nation as a whole, not in its parts.  Public Law represents the sovereign government of a Nation and that Nation State must abide by the structures set up for human interaction that are defined by the simplest of interactions via the Law of Nations.  Any Nation State is a high stature creation of large societies or multiple societies having broad common agreement on governing principles or other societal venues that bring them closer together.  As such the Public Law needs address the entire Nation State it represents in the continuum of other Nation States.  Thus the Nation State is a similar organizing unit in concept to the local government, but gains absolute independence due to the fact it represents an independent society or set of societies with high common agreement amongst them.  There is no larger or more sovereign power than a Nation State.

This then brings us to the fifth area of law which is International Law.  This is the form of law governed by the universal and voluntary Law of Nations as any Nation rests upon the Law of Nations for its existence.  As such Nation States as representative of independent societies are the sovereign organs of their societies and no Nation State is given preference or higher status within the Nation State system.  With such a system of equals there is no other power to turn to as each society has its own biases, preferences and outlooks that are represented by the independent and sovereign Nation State.  Thus all agreements that Nation States make are enforced only by those organs of society that create the Nation State, and any enforcement mechanism is likewise agreed-to voluntarily.  As such any Nation State may break an international agreement unilaterally, on its own, without compunction nor reason given.  The only repercussions faced are those imposed by other sovereign Nation States, not by a higher authority as there is none.  In this widely recognized accords become familiar to societies and agreeable ways to function between Nations is found, yet this does not mean that they become beholden to those ways.  Any society that finds the ways burdensome, alien or dangerous can, and should, rightly reject them especially when they put an entire people of a Nation at extreme risk and danger.

Summing up International Law, then, requires a recognition that it is a form of sovereign to sovereign contract law with either able to nullify the agreement at a moment's notice as that is the right of sovereignty.  The dream of there being a world state is one that comes against that sovereignty and is a notion that is relegated to the form of state known as Empire.  Any Empire that rules over a disparate set of subjects, climates, ethnicities and so on, soon finds the burden of trying to manage something that large to be impossible due to Civil Law at the local level.  Some Empires have kept such local establishments going with over-arching provisos of the recognition of the Imperial State as the Supreme ruler, but they, too, have fallen time and again throughout history.  The cracking point of all such grand schemes, be it a religious ideology of a single mass religion or a political one of a single world government, fall straight into the diversity of mankind at the local level.  Smaller Nations can, for a time, impose top-down rule as can Empires, but even in relatively limited geographic circumstances the ability of such Nations to continue on without local upheaval dissolving such government is recognized to be nil.  One dictatorial system may replace another, of course, and that has been seen in China, Russia, and elsewhere, which indicates some problems in societal understanding and cohesion more than an affiliation with the love of Tyrants and Despots.  Even then such dictatorial rulers must abide by the fact that they, even in their extreme self-indulgence, must cater to the entirety of their ruling domain.  Anointed Kings have found themselves in the hangman's noose or the mob's guillotine due to such lacks, and today the bullet becomes the end of those who believe that they are appointed to rule, not govern, for they have forgotten their place as an organ of society and in breaching the Law of Nations they find themselves at its sharp end.

If our modern era has any lacks it is understanding that most basic of laws that we create to separate ourselves from the Law of Nature, which is the Law of Nations.  That the Law of Nations only deals with Nation States as a function of our ability to create society, itself, is lost upon our modern culture and society.  There is a deep, dark space in our way of thought that presumes that the Civil Law or Public Law is the most supreme of all laws, and we even ignore the Law of Nature and presume to say that we can now rule Nature when we can not even govern ourselves well.  It is in that darkness that we hear the voice of corruption and tyranny, whispering softly to us that just by entrusting more of our liberty and freedom to governments that all will turn out well.  It whispers to us that mankind can, against all evidence against it, be perfected and is perfectible.  The great sorrow and bloodshed that comes from the voice of unreason sweetly whispering to us is denied time and again, yet the copious dead to the pyre of perfection smells just as rank even if you call it sweet ambrosia.  In believing that we can blame all our lacks on society and all our good will to government, we invert the actual nature of ourselves and forget that what we are saying is that government comes first, society second, while just the opposite is true. 

In this mortal realm we are bidden to seek to be 'more perfect' and understand that the Law of Nature that brings us forth creates imperfection within us and all things that cannot be removed.  No law has been so good that its best practitioners have not obeyed it, and even Moses, upon casting down the Tablets, ordered his fellow Israelites killed against the exact, same dictates he had just carried from the Mount.  Yet when we seek to practice imperfection, to loft up the power of government over society and over the Law of Nations, we will find that this can be done... and then that great and awful edifice will fall, with great loss of life in both directions.  No government is so wise as to be deemed all powerful, as it is made up of men and the creations of man, which are fallible, biased and prone to our corruption to ill ends.  No leader is so wise as to be able to understand the daily lives of each of his subjects nor to rule over them in such a way as to tell each how to live.  No people have created an eternal government full of wise and charitable leaders, that lead a penniless existence and only serve the ends of their Nation State.  It would be humorous that there are those that hint that this is possible, if we could just ignore the gore and horror attendant to each and every time that is tried.  Those preaching this are so wise that they have forgotten the founding Law that makes their existence possible, and then transgress the Law that makes such society as they live in possible by suggesting we don't need it if we only trust the infallible, all powerful, all knowing government that we, poor, frail and imperfect man creates.  And the epitaph of those who preach this seems to be invariant:

"It seemed like a good idea at the time."

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Morning thoughts on the off-year election

Living in VA I can only offer the biased view of the elections just past as seen from a local standpoint.  Yet the trends locally appear to be mirrored elsewhere in the US.

VA had been trending from 'Red' to 'Purple' since the mid-1990's as the population increases in the State shifted the voting patterns from rural and somewhat south towards Richmond northwards to Northern VA (NoVA) and the DC Metro area.  This off-year election saw campaigning that offered a stark contrast from the way they had been run since the mid-1990's and those campaigning in the older mode of pure attack ads, with very little positive to say about themselves as candidates, lost yesterday.  The winning candidates had ads were either purely positive about a candidate or ran with attack ads as half or so of the campaigns media buys.

As a side note on my viewing patterns, as they do skew what I see, the overwhelming majority of my time watching any television (approx. 3 hrs/day) concentrates on the History and Discovery channels, with a small portion of FNC added in.  I can't speak to the other channels and their viewership amounts or media buys, but for those cable channels, particularly my majority viewing time, was dominated by the Republican party and I can remember seeing less than 5 total Democratic party ads over the last month, while on my main viewing channels that would be what I saw nightly for the Republicans.

The winning themes of the ads were: lower taxes, efficient government, and a strong personal story featuring military service either by the candidate or by family members.  The McDonnell campaign did not stage any buys for 'response' ads to negative ads taken out by the Deeds campaign.  Watching the 100% map last night saw VA that had very few 'Blue' districts in the Governor's race, and the State's color was 'Red'.  Yet this is not the 'Red' of Social Conservatism, although a strong family presence for the McDonnell campaign was evident throughout the late campaign season.  Words that were not heard were: abortion, 'family values', 'litmus test'.  The Deeds campaign ran one of the worst campaigns State-wide that I have seen in my time in VA, dropping the rural background of the candidate and, instead, going for attack ads based on  a 20 year old college paper done by McDonnell.  That form of campaign worked well for Webb's Senate campaign, but flopped with a 20 point margin loss in 2009.

Down-ticket races run by Republicans (Bolling for Lt. Gov., Cuccinelli for Attorney General) both won with a mix of positive ads and attack ads, with the Bolling campaign nearly evenly split while the Cuccinelli campaign remained highly positive in its buys up to the last day or two.  Their themes were similar to the McDonnell campaign, save that the negative buys tended to place themes that were difficult to shake: 'Washington Insider', 'weak on crime' and 'higher taxes'.  Those negative themes bolstered by positive candidate buys, along with single response ads by all the candidates proved to be critical to those campaigns.

Local district campaigns also moved strongly into the pro-candidate positions on taxes, jobs and fiscally responsible government.  In NoVA this became a sweep in even in Fairfax County that had been tending 'Blue' for over a decade.  The Rust and Greason campaigns (Fairfax and Loudoun districts) had mixed mode campaigns that still favored positive themes over negative ones, with the Rust campaign side-stepping charges of not carrying through on previous campaign issues for State funding for autism by putting forward issues of VA financial problems requiring tough budget decisions.  Here the balance between what would be 'nice' to do was pitted against fiscal realities during a downturn that started over two years ago in Fairfax.  The Greason campaign buy had its initial message of attack politics evenly split with positive imagery of their candidate as a family man and veteran, both of which resonated with the Loudoun district he ran in.  The negative attacks were echoes of those further up-ticket: 'opponents as outsiders or carpetbaggers', 'weak on crime', and fiscally irresponsible.

Overall the positive themes were those of fiscal responsibility and taxes needing to be lowered, along with positioning government so as to help the working class in suburban districts, plus messages of military service and strong family backing.  The losing themes of digging up 'dirt' a decade or two old, balancing the budget with taxes and playing to the mid-1990's to 2008 campaign trends that emphasized negative campaigning lost.  They lost heavily in VA Statewide and locally.

 

Some observations on other races

NJ - The Democratic Party Machine has run into extreme problems in the Garden State.  From what little I've seen/read about the races there, they are a strongly set of concurring themes as seen in VA for the winning candidates: fiscal responsibility via lower taxes and less government, personal integrity, positive ads, and strong family backing for the candidates.  Four or eight years ago a major shift in NJ from the Democratic Machine would have been inconceivable, and yet, even with huge investment from the party in its candidates, those media buys have not proven to be effective.  Outspending your opponent is no longer a path to victory.

NY-23 - As I grew up in Western NY what I witnessed going on over this election cycle was what I had come to expect: an incompetent and clueless Republican party.  Upstate NY is a different beast than downstate NY (NYC to Albany axis, but mostly NYC): the urban center of NYC and suburbs of Long Island and those suburbs stretching north are far more socially and fiscally liberal than rural, small town and suburban upstate NY.  The Republican party in NY has been more closely aligned with the 'Rockefeller Republican' fiscally 'moderate' (ie. pay for everything with taxes) wing of the Republican party.  While fiscal conservatives do pop up in NY State, they are the exception, not the rule.  By not holding a primary for the NY-23 seat, the Republican party also played to its tone deafness towards their own party and placed someone who was highly irregular for that district into the election.  Scozzafava's backing for the NY State equivalent of 'card check', winning the Margaret Sanger award, and being unable to realize that in a downturn these are not in tune with the district she was in caused the Conservative Party of NY to run Hoffman against her and the Democratic candidate Owens.

A month ago Hoffman was an unknown.

A month later he garnered nearly 46% of the final vote tally after Scozzafava dropped out and endorsed Owens.

In that month in-between the old GOP insider system broke down when Gingrich endorsed Scozzafava and both Fred Thompson and Sarah Palin endorsed Hoffman who ran on fiscal conservatism.  Gingrich's image as a Washington Insider had already been seen on the 'global warming' ad with Nancy Pelosi, and none of his 'we need a seat at the table' rejoinders were coming off well when the answer that fiscal conservatives expected was: NO.  By playing the Washington Insider game, Newt Gingrich demonstrated his own brand of DC-centric tone deafness and thinking that 'having a seat at the table' actually can get you what you want.  The rejoinder by him that Scozzafava would follow the Republican line on 'key votes' went no where, and the endorsements by respected, fiscally conservative Republicans of Hoffman saw a major push on his candidacy that would cause Scozzafava to lose in a three-way race.  That polling also showed that she split votes with Owens, thus leaving Hoffman the winner.  She left the race so that Owens could garner her votes and win the election.

 

Final thoughts

'Blue Dog' Democrats now are faced with a situation in which two key States for the Democratic party in the 2008 cycle have rejected the party on fiscal conservatism grounds.  Districts which once trended 'Blue' in VA now trend 'Red' and similar is seen in NJ.  This is not the advance of the Republican party, but the shift to candidates that address fiscal realities during an economic downturn, and who do not see more government, bigger government and more taxes as the way out of an economic crisis.  Much to the consternation of social conservatives, the idea of a 'litmus test' has disappeared on the Republican landscape overnight.  That brand of social conservatism from the 1980's to 2008 has just received a major blow as none of the issues that have been 'hot button' played any role in these races.

Contrarily social liberalism is not a path to victory, either, as none of the issues played up (at least in VA) gained any traction at all.  Free spending big government is not something that will garner winning vote majorities.  Nor will paying for those with higher taxes, fees, or any other scheme be something that can easily be shrugged off.  Government largesse comes with a huge economic price tag that, while not seen immediately on the individual level, effects the overall economy.

Where that leaves social conservatism is in a 'live and let live' mode that doesn't like to have 'purity' of anything, yet understands the need for strong families and commitment to the Nation, not its government.  Abortion will continue to play a role, no doubt, but it is no longer a topic that is ascending, but descending.  Restrictions on abortion will continue to be a theme in Republican politics, but will only play in the fiscal area of: 'government shouldn't pay for it, it is your life and your responsibility'.  That should be a rallying point, this idea of self-responsibility, but big government conservatives have demonstrated a tone deafness on this issue like no other.  That leaves social conservatives unable to thematically address that self-responsibility for families, local affairs and moral behavior becomes an over-theme to campaigns, thus leaving candidates to find that for themselves.  A 'take responsibility for yourself and don't look to government to get you out of your messes' is one that should resonate in the socially conservative realms, and yet it has not received an airing for decades.

That is because the message would have to adopt fiscally conservative values that endorse smaller government, lower taxes, a 'live and let live' attitude on many life styles, and not endorsing a government role in 'expanding' political correctness of the Left or Right.

'Blue Dog' Democrats are now seeing the beginnings of a flow towards what should be their home territory of fiscal conservatism, but they are also witnessing the break-up of Republican systems that have tried to enforce party unity from the top downwards.  The Democtratic party has been doing that for decades, and the social and fiscal sands that castle is built on will not hold, as it did not hold in VA or NJ.  To win in 2010 as a 'Blue Dog' requires adopting fiscally conservative themes and voting that way, while speaking out on those themes every time a microphone is in front of your face.  If you talk about 'party unity' and 'having a seat at the table', you will soon find yourself in Newt Gingrich's Washington Insider Intensive Care Unit.

Liberal Democrats will be doing their damnedest to enforce 'party unity' and to 'keep on message', and not realize that their majority rests upon districts now flipping against them.  Voting trends in 2009 will continue if there is still an economic downturn into mid-2010 and be reinforced by any major fiscal disaster by any State or in the Federal Government.  Thus the following States, now facing huge budgetary problems heading towards insolvency, become key States to watch: CA, MI, MA, NY.  CA, in particular, is seeing a melt-down unlike any other ever seen in the US as its taxes go ever upwards, its government size balloons and people, even the illegal aliens, run away from the State.  MI also has extreme problems and even with Ford doing well, the high spending, high tax system of MI has destroyed Detroit and is about to suck the rest of the State down with it.  MA has tried to give medical benefits to everyone, and now sees its system heading downwards.  NY has been a high tax state since the Erie Canal proved a revenue boon, and has never gotten off the increased tax syndrome that came when the Canal died, and the anti-business stance of the putative Republican Bloomberg in NYC points to the woebegone state of the Republican party in NY.  As NYC goes, the rest of the State must follow due to economics, and NYC is digging a hole in the river.

To survive this 'Blue Dog' Democrats are now in the position of either meaning what they say and breaking with the high tax, big government Liberal base, or seeing a landslide of epic proportions as the cost of such programs ripple throughout the Union.  As Republicans are now foundering and seeing parts of their party shift away from the central portion of it, the Democrats now face this exact, same problem: 'party unity' is a loser at the local level.  Voting for 'big ticket' items after this election is a strange form of political seppuku for 'Blue Dogs'.

What is interesting is that the Conservative Party in NY now has a moment in the limelight, and any astute party leader should push for a large registration drive over the winter, plus as many candidates as they can field upstate in hard hit regions economically.  Shifting emphasis to fiscal conservatism that backs strong families and personal responsibility can resonate in NY State, when coupled with the message: 'we are being taxed into poverty'.  Of course in NY that would be a good place for 'Blue Dogs', who vote their values of fiscal conservatism, to head towards.  No one thinks the NY Democratic Party machine can be broken in NYC in any substantive way.

But it can be broken in Upstate NY.

With the Republican party leadership heading one way, and its State based organizations moving another (save in NY where it is notable by its tone deafness), any 'Blue Dog' can see that they have the exact, same problem in their party.

Does this mean a third party?

That depends on many factors, and this winter will see if the Tea Party movement is effective in its organizing efforts in multiple States and if the NY Conservative Party can find an independent voice from the Republican party.  Meanwhile the Democrats in DC are now eyeing the fact that 2008 had personality trump policy, and that 2009 dramatically reversed that so that policy is now in the trump position.  Votes do matter.  Putting higher taxes and bigger government in place is no longer the default winning condition.  And that, too, is a change from the last two decades and a much needed one.

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Examining health care in light of the powers of government

This is a personal opinion paper of The Jacksonian Party.

At Hot Air I ran across the question of the constitutionality of health care mandates as a possible power grant to Congress, and found a set of arguments both for and against that did not, to me, seem to scope out the exact power structure of the federal government.  As is my wont I left commentary, and I will now pass that on to you 'as-is' untarnished by a spell checker, without syntax check and otherwise for the amusement of the reader.

= = =

I think the better Madison quote comes from Federalist No. 41, in which he responds to the problems brought up by a number of Anti-Federalists:

Some who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed that the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.

Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms "to raise money for the general welfare."

But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing had not its origin with the latter.

The objection here is the more extraordinary, as it appears that the language used by the convention is a copy from the Articles of Confederation. The objects of the Union among the States, as described in article third, are "their common defense, security of their liberties, and mutual and general welfare." The terms of article eighth are still more identical: "All charges of war and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare and allowed by the United States in Congress shall be defrayed out of a common treasury," etc. A similar language again occurs in article ninth. Construe either of these articles by the rules which would justify the construction put on the new Constitution, and they vest in the existing Congress a power to legislate in all cases whatsoever. But what would have been thought of that assembly, if, attaching themselves to these general expressions and disregarding the specifications which ascertain and limit their import, they had exercised an unlimited power of providing for the common defense and general welfare? I appeal to the objectors themselves, whether they would in that case have employed the same reasoning in justification of Congress as they now make use of against the convention. How difficult it is for error to escape its own condemnation!

The point brought up is that there are those who will ignore the semi-colon or otherwise misconstrue the actual verbiage in light of expedient legislation. The argument is not one of the logic involved, which those same Anti-Federalists actually point out, but one of human nature and the nature of governments over time moving away from restricted rights for government unless there are some very and extremely harsh checks on that power put in place. Hamilton's goal of a 'robust role' for government in commerce would be addressed by the veto of the US National Bank Veto of 1832, which addresses the very concerns about stare decisis, powers and limitations on government:

It is maintained by the advocates of the bank that its constitutionality in all its features ought to be considered as settled by precedent and by the decision of the Supreme Court. To this conclusion I can not assent. Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority, and should not be regarded as deciding questions of constitutional power except where the acquiescence of the people and the States can be considered as well settled. So far from this being the case on this subject, an argument against the bank might be based on precedent. One Congress, in 1791, decided in favor of a bank; another, in 1811, decided against it. One Congress, in 1815, decided against a bank; another, in 1816, decided in its favor. Prior to the present Congress, therefore, the precedents drawn from that source were equal. If we resort to the States, the expressions of legislative, judicial, and executive opinions against the bank have been probably to those in its favor as 4 to 1. There is nothing in precedent, therefore, which, if its authority were admitted, ought to weigh in favor of the act before me.

If the opinion of the Supreme Court covered the whole ground of this act, it ought not to control the coordinate authorities of this Government. The Congress, the Executive, and the Court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others. It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval as it is of the supreme judges when it may be brought before them for judicial decision. The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve.

But in the case relied upon the Supreme Court have not decided that all the features of this corporation are compatible with the Constitution. It is true that the court have said that the law incorporating the bank is a constitutional exercise of power by Congress; but taking into view the whole opinion of the court and the reasoning by which they have come to that conclusion, I understand them to have decided that inasmuch as a bank is an appropriate means for carrying into effect the enumerated powers of the General Government, therefore the law incorporating it is in accordance with that provision of the Constitution which declares that Congress shall have power " to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying those powers into execution. " Having satisfied themselves that the word "necessary" in the Constitution means needful," "requisite," "essential," "conducive to," and that "a bank" is a convenient, a useful, and essential instrument in the prosecution of the Government's "fiscal operations," they conclude that to "use one must be within the discretion of Congress " and that " the act to incorporate the Bank of the United States is a law made in pursuance of the Constitution;" "but, " say they, "where the law is not prohibited and is really calculated to effect any of the objects intrusted to the Government, to undertake here to inquire into the degree of its necessity would be to pass the line which circumscribes the judicial department and to tread on legislative ground."

The principle here affirmed is that the "degree of its necessity," involving all the details of a banking institution, is a question exclusively for legislative consideration. A bank is constitutional, but it is the province of the Legislature to determine whether this or that particular power, privilege, or exemption is "necessary and proper" to enable the bank to discharge its duties to the Government, and from their decision there is no appeal to the courts of justice. Under the decision of the Supreme Court, therefore, it is the exclusive province of Congress and the President to decide whether the particular features of this act are necessary and proper in order to enable the bank to perform conveniently and efficiently the public duties assigned to it as a fiscal agent, and therefore constitutional, or unnecessary and improper, and therefore unconstitutional.

Without commenting on the general principle affirmed by the Supreme Court, let us examine the details of this act in accordance with the rule of legislative action which they have laid down. It will be found that many of the powers and privileges conferred on it can not be supposed necessary for the purpose for which it is proposed to be created, and are not, therefore, means necessary to attain the end in view, and consequently not justified by the Constitution.

Here, some 43 years on from Federalist 41, we have the outlay of powers and how they work between the States and the federal government and within the federal government itself.

First off is that precedent, both SCOTUS and legislative, is a dangerous source of authority especially when examining the constitutional powers granted to the federal government. You do not ignore previous decisions, but they must not trump reasoning on constitutionality.

Second each arm of the federal government has separate and independent powers, not co-equal powers. This is forgotten and misconstrued in the modern day, but these separate powers were designed as independent checks and balances on federal government so that each branch has its review of constitutionality independent of the other branches. Congress is to create laws that are constitutional, the President has the veto power to reject laws that are unsound, improper, unnecessary or unconstituional. The SCOTUS is given grant to judge on the constitutional basis of laws and strike down those not adhering to the constitution. These are in no way equal powers, but separate and independent powers. So just as it may be within the scope of power of Congress to do something, it must be judged first by the President as necessary and proper exercise of powers, and judged by the SCOTUS on those grounds examining their independent powers in that judgment.

Third and not to be forgotten, is that there needs to be a general assent to legislation from the States and the people, and acknowledging that such legislation is desired from those levels and can be executed via necessary and proper laws that adhere to the constitution. Thus with health care and the powers granted to government we hear rejoinders on:

- Precedent - A dangerous source of authority regarding constitutionality as prior judgments may not have taken the full scope and power of the constitution into consideration as it regards other areas of legislation and law. When judging the constitutionality of a law, the restricted scope of prior decisions may not represent a true reading of those power grants for a particular statute. In health care and similar areas there are few arguments utilizing Amendments IX and X, and if the court has been remiss in the past in considering those, than those grounds can serve as a basis for new suits on legislation to call into question the necessary and proper part of powers granted to the government when enacting laws.

- Necessary and Proper - Even granted that the federal government may have a role in health care, can Congress create a necessary and proper law that adheres to its constitutional restrictions as to being wise and fiscally sound, and having the general support of the States and the people? These are not minor considerations and no election changes the fact that the people and States have been indifferent to passing this question on to the federal level. Thus, without that clamor and, indeed, the overwhelming majority not having expressed a want of federal intervention, there is little that Congress can stand on. Even appealing to precedent in this case must take into consideration all of the Congresses that have brought up this question, all the States that have considered it, and the general view of the electorate separately. Precedent does not lay basis for good law without these legs to stand on via precedent: the SCOTUS is not alone in having a history, and all relevant history must be examined as part of new legislation.

- Powers and Privileges - Those organs that Congress creates are made via the powers it has in the constitution. If the powers granted are not necessary to the purpose involved, then Congress cannot create such an organ of the government as it does not have the power to do so. If created without power to do a purpose, then it is not a constitutional object of government nor a means to achieve the ends of Congress. This is a question that must be established in light of mixed precedent, necessity, propriety and the actual extent of the power grant to the federal government. Just because legislation is expedient and towards good ends, that does not give it necessary and proper standing within the constitution, nor power to Congress to enact it.

An unlimited interpretation of 'general welfare' wipes all question of limited power away and reduces the Nation to a state of tyrannical government. If the form and function of these powers were so sweeping, the constitution would say so, and yet it defines the exact opposite, particularly when examined in Amends. I, II, V, IX and X. The specific things the federal government cannot do are joined by a general rule that what is not given to the federal is retained by the States and the people. Do note that the understanding of power functions is outlined in Law of Nations, specifically mentioned in the constitution and understood by the founders so that when power grants are seen in the document, it is easy to examine the similar sections of Law of Nations and see what the scope and meaning of the powers are (as witness George Washington's Neutrality Proclamation) and then examine how those scopes of powers continue as grants from the people to the federal government. From that additional questions in regards to security functions and their organs (CIA, NGA, NSA, etc.) are to be examined in the Commander of the Armies and the Navies power as they are, at heart, military functions for National Security (there may be too many of them, yes, but that is a different argument). Likewise to uphold the laws of the US, Congress has created the FBI for general laws and other organs for things like Immigration and Naturalization. Something like USGS and NOAA come under the part of mapping and charting necessary for military purposes and for understanding the scope and breadth of the Nation. Something like the Dept. of Agriculture, Education, Energy and so on are less viable on these grounds and less accountable as they have fewer functions directly tied to constitutional grants and could, and probably should, receive review on the necessary and proper functions, as well as if these are sound bodies to have or even wanted by the States and the people.

Healthcare under federal regulation? Is it necessary and proper? Is there an established hue and cry over many years for it from the States AND the people? Can it be done within the power grants? Can it be made fiscally sound? Have established precedents considered all aspects of such a power and the restrictions placed on them by the constitution and amendments? To date I have no good answers that lead to 'yes' on these.

YMMV.

= = =

So ends my commentary at Hot Air on the topic.

Yes, my commentary does tend to run long, as do my pieces, as finding the collection of simple outlooks that underlie a complex problem is not easy nor amenable to simplistic scrutiny.  Finding and defining the parts tell us much about what the whole of something should look like and how it should work, and without finding those necessary and simple parts that make a complex problem, one cannot begin to address the problem, itself.  This is not a simplistic 'root causes', as given by many in an attempt to thwart any real progress on problems, but to thematically find and identify those parts of a problem that are salient to it and discarding emotional baggage attached to them.  Those seeking 'root causes' in the emotional baggage never come to address the actual, and underlying driving forces of a problem and find themselves always resorting to an emotional appeal from the lovely baggage they are rooting through.  I like to know why the baggage fell off the train in the first place, and will only look to the baggage as a cause if there is evidence that the baggage is the cause.

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A Dangerous Enemy

This is a personal outlook paper of The Jacksonian Party.

An interesting question cropped up when I was reading commentary at Hot Air looking at the difference between what President Obama said as a candidate and what he has done since taking office. Part of the outcome is looking at the concept that every promise by President Obama 'has an expiration date': it will have a time when he will come out and say and do the exact opposite of the promise. The Gay community has felt this in his promises on what he would do and his inactivity on those promises, but that is a smaller part of the overall set of promises on Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Terrorism, and the Economy that have all been put forward one way, while campaigning, and then done another way while in office to date. Problems which look 'simple' to the candidate become 'complex' to the office holder, which is a normal part of human affairs, but how one approaches those complexities reveals much about the individual in question. Without exception President Obama has sought for more power and control to be vested in the federal government, the least accountable government in the Nation, and not trusted individuals to find their own use of liberty to sustain the Nation by using that liberty to create prosperity and freedom.

The reprisal of 'helping the poor' puts forward that only the federal government can do this, but the reason to being poor is so various, from a string of absolute bad luck to poor decision making to mental illness, that no one, single, unitary way to approach poverty can be performed. If it were 'just' money, then the hundreds of billions spent on anti-poverty programs would have ridded the Nation of poverty decades ago. Instead it has put individuals into situations where not working, not using your liberty and being rewarded for that has endangered the overall economy to actually sustain productivity so that there is a source of wealth to help the poor. Government does not create wealth, but currency: it is not the maker of things, but puts in place an established exchange unit that is worked with to create wealth. It is this simple understanding, that government is only the backer of society for creation of wealth and not the engine of wealth, that has, apparently, driven much of the policy of the federal government for nearly 80 years. Herbert Hoover was a Progressive Republican and FDR continued on many of the exact, same Progressive policies and then added his own into the mix, and none of them addressed that government taxing money, printing money, and distributing money for make-work jobs was not helping the overall economy but making it worse. By 1937 the actual recovery had been established, but the increased taxes put in from 1934-36, especially Social Security, would take a major bite out of that recovery, create the recession of 1938-39 and then stall out the overall recovery at a lower employment plateau. Double digit unemployment would not end until WWII was utilized as a means to move unemployed young men out of America, give them money they couldn't spend, and put the remaining population to work, thus utilizing the underutilized work of women and those who were too old to find jobs in the previous economy. Unless you were getting SSN, then you had to be offered a federally subsidized stable of 'goodies' in the way of health care that would outlive the war and haunt us to our current times.

One of the prime culprits of making the Great Depression possible was the fiscal policies of the Federal Reserve, the institution put in by President Wilson to centralize banking and finance under federal 'regulation'. And yet that 'regulation' called for fiscally unsound lending practices that led to the Great Depression and made it worse under Hoover and FDR. This is the manifestation of political power into the regulatory system, so as to reflect ideology and not sound fiscal practices, and it has spread to the SEC, FHA, Fannie and Freddie and numerous other 'helpful' government systems. By coupling political influence with garnering such positions in the regulatory system, regulators have become part of the political process, as particularly seen by Freddie and Fannie, both lobbying Congress directly with taxpayer backed funds at their beck and call. The appointment process to those two organizations has been one of politically well connected individuals getting appointment positions and then using those positions to further their political and ideological goals. The overall system described is one that the United States had discarded in another form after closing down the National Bank system that was, itself, not fiscally sound, having political appointees setting policy with little oversight, and allowing for outside influence to sway decisions that helped the well connected but did little for the common man. The elements brought up in the Bank Veto Message of 10 JUL 1832 sound as clear today as they did then and the second paragraph is clear on that score on what the dangers are:

A bank of the United States is in many respects convenient for the Government and useful to the people. Entertaining this opinion, and deeply impressed with the belief that some of the powers and privileges possessed by the existing bank are unauthorized by the Constitution, subversive of the rights of the States, and dangerous to the liberties of the people, I felt it my duty at an early period of my Administration to call the attention of Congress to the practicability of organizing an institution combining all its advantages and obviating these objections. I sincerely regret that in the act before me I can perceive none of those modifications of the bank charter which are necessary, in my opinion, to make it compatible with justice, with sound policy, or with the Constitution of our country.

A National Bank or Federal Reserve system is, indeed, useful to the Government and the people, but the powers, privileges and capabilities given to get that utility are not only unauthorized by the Constitution, but a deep source of corruption, influence peddling and cronyism, far beyond unsound fiscal policy. This Veto Message stands not just on Constitutional grounds, but practical and reasonable grounds as well, that examine the entire economic activity of the Nation, as a Nation, and then looks to how the corruption of the power is toxic to the States and the people, and ultimately to the Union. It is one of the foremost documents on National Fiscal Policy ever delivered by any President of any era, and yet remains largely unknown due to modern political 'sensibilities' not wanting to examine the deep questions of liberty associated with fiscal policy. Progressive era schooling, thusly, does not allow you to forget such works as it will not teach them to you: you are kept ignorant to meet a social agenda.

This problem was not unknown in the Founding era, and the Drafters of the Constitution had numerous and various problems addressing their critics, the so-called 'Anti-Federalists', many of whom were 'Federalists' as they saw it and criticized the Constitution on Federalist grounds. Even those who were not 'Federalists' and who just wanted a stronger Confederacy are not 'Anti-Federalist' in their insights, many of them based on human nature and the outcomes of past, historical systems of government that were well known in the era. Thus there is a question, or truly a series of questions, at the site Truth and Common Sense, revolving around a 'how would you bring down a democratic republic?' To do that requires little more than delving into the 'Anti-Federalist' archives at Teaching American History and reading as the objections, while diverse, continue to haunt us to this present day. Not all are salient, of course, and there are more than a few 'Anti-Federalist' hot heads who expounded conspiracy theories, just like our modern 'Truthers', those seeking the 'real assassin' of JFK, or how we got velcro which normally involves UFO cover-ups. Conspiracy theories go far back in history beyond the Knights Templar and into the plots and counter-plots of Kings, Emperors and Potentates very close to the beginning of actual recorded documents on clay tablets.

The need to explain the mundane, how a disturbed Communist sympathizer can assassinate a US President and then, in turn, be killed by a man who is not playing with a full deck but clearly was a patriot and did not want the President's death and widow to be un-avenged, puts two disturbed men influencing the course of the Nation and to many people there is no balance in that scale and, thusly, needs something 'deeper' to be playing out. Arch-Duke Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian who wanted Serbia to gain some freedom for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and yet we get World War I as the result, thus putting a disturbing balance between those in power, those out of power and the mechanisms of government via a direct juxtaposition. Yet we accept that set of happenings and the millions dead that followed as they are, while not accepting the far lesser assassination of a President as somehow being 'proof' of a conspiracy. The first changed the course of world history, for the worse, and the second was a brutal assassination done by a committed ideologue who sought personal infamy and recognition. Of the two the first had dire consequences for the modern world, the second some ripples in the United States, yet it is the second that gains the conspiracy theory while the first is seen as a tragic happening normal in global affairs.

How normal? Presidents McKinley and Garfield were assassinated, and yet no real conspiracies grew up around their deaths. We remember President Lincoln because of the Civil War and see that assassination as its tragic capstone and the man a martyr to the cause of the Union. That actually did have a set of conspiratorial actors attempting multiple assassinations that night, but we downplay that conspiracy and play up one where there is no evidence of it. Negative proofs, by eliminating all other possibilities and then demonstrating something is or is not present by the lack of those things, are hard sells in mathematics, and the positive proof, the evidentiary proof far easier to piece together, even if it does not create an emotional sense of well-being in doing so. By trying to not accept the actual proof and testimonies of those involve, those pushing conspiracy theories want a negative proof as the standard so that anything that isn't directly recorded, but that can be accounted for, is proof of a 'conspiracy' covering up 'evidence'.

What this all too human need points to is trying to impress upon reality our emotional sensations. When done to a set of ideologies that have few connections to the real world, we get a fantasy ideology forming in which all the 'positive' evidence is retained and the 'negative' evidence discarded. Often we find forgery or fraudulent manipulation of the historical record both to make 'positives' appear and to make 'negatives' disappear. An old photograph of dinosaur tracks in a creek bed show later manipulation by 'creationists' trying to 'prove' that man walked with dinosaurs and the photography shows the differences decades apart: a simple field photo to show a representative sample of tracks against a modern photo of the same tracks shows manipulation of the tracks, themselves. Stalin had people removed or added to historical photos based on their current position in the hierarchy in an attempt to manufacture a 'perfect' history. That goes to the modern United States where you are not taught about the Bank Veto message or, indeed, given the actual words of Presidents beyond a few kept as 'samples' but often taken out of context. Thus something like The American Presidency Project that brings forth the actual documents of the Presidents allows us to see the actual office holders as they said they were and we need no longer resort to a bit here and a bit there chosen by those compiling books for selling to schools.

Much have I heard those on the Left on one such happening, that of the 'Trail of Tears' and they point to President Jackson with accusations of racism, and yet his First Annual Message on the State of the Union deals with the problem as seen then:

Your particular attention is requested to that part of the report of the Secretary of War which relates to the money held in trust for the Seneca tribe of Indians. It will be perceived that without legislative aid the Executive can not obviate the embarrassments occasioned by the diminution of the dividends on that fund, which originally amounted to $100,000, and has recently been invested in United States 3% stock.

The condition and ulterior destiny of the Indian tribes within the limits of some of our States have become objects of much interest and importance. It has long been the policy of Government to introduce among them the arts of civilization, in the hope of gradually reclaiming them from a wandering life. This policy has, however, been coupled with another wholly incompatible with its success. Professing a desire to civilize and settle them, we have at the same time lost no opportunity to purchase their lands and thrust them farther into the wilderness. By this means they have not only been kept in a wandering state, but been led to look upon us as unjust and indifferent to their fate. Thus, though lavish in its expenditures upon the subject, Government has constantly defeated its own policy, and the Indians in general, receding farther and farther to the west, have retained their savage habits. A portion, however, of the Southern tribes, having mingled much with the whites and made some progress in the arts of civilized life, have lately attempted to erect an independent government within the limits of Georgia and Alabama. These States, claiming to be the only sovereigns within their territories, extended their laws over the Indians, which induced the latter to call upon the United States for protection.

Under these circumstances the question presented was whether the General Government had a right to sustain those people in their pretensions. The Constitution declares that "no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State" without the consent of its legislature. If the General Government is not permitted to tolerate the erection of a confederate State within the territory of one of the members of this Union against her consent, much less could it allow a foreign and independent government to establish itself there.

[..]

There is no constitutional, conventional, or legal provision which allows them less power over the Indians within their borders than is possessed by Maine or New York. Would the people of Maine permit the Penobscot tribe to erect an independent government within their State? And unless they did would it not be the duty of the General Government to support them in resisting such a measure? Would the people of New York permit each remnant of the six Nations within her borders to declare itself an independent people under the protection of the United States? Could the Indians establish a separate republic on each of their reservations in Ohio? And if they were so disposed would it be the duty of this Government to protect them in the attempt? If the principle involved in the obvious answer to these questions be abandoned, it will follow that the objects of this Government are reversed, and that it has become a part of its duty to aid in destroying the States which it was established to protect.

Actuated by this view of the subject, I informed the Indians inhabiting parts of Georgia and Alabama that their attempt to establish an independent government would not be countenanced by the Executive of the United States, and advised them to emigrate beyond the Mississippi or submit to the laws of those States.

Our conduct toward these people is deeply interesting to our national character. Their present condition, contrasted with what they once were, makes a most powerful appeal to our sympathies. Our ancestors found them the uncontrolled possessors of these vast regions. By persuasion and force they have been made to retire from river to river and from mountain to mountain, until some of the tribes have become extinct and others have left but remnants to preserve for a while their once terrible names. Surrounded by the whites with their arts of civilization, which by destroying the resources of the savage doom him to weakness and decay, the fate of the Mohegan, the Narragansett, and the Delaware is fast over-taking the Choctaw, the Cherokee, and the Creek. That this fate surely awaits them if they remain within the limits of the States does not admit of a doubt. Humanity and national honor demand that every effort should be made to avert so great a calamity. It is too late to inquire whether it was just in the United States to include them and their territory within the bounds of new States, whose limits they could control. That step can not be retraced. A State can not be dismembered by Congress or restricted in the exercise of her constitutional power. But the people of those States and of every State, actuated by feelings of justice and a regard for our national honor, submit to you the interesting question whether something can not be done, consistently with the rights of the States, to preserve this much- injured race.

As a means of effecting this end I suggest for your consideration the propriety of setting apart an ample district west of the Mississippi, and without the limits of any State or Territory now formed, to be guaranteed to the Indian tribes as long as they shall occupy it, each tribe having a distinct control over the portion designated for its use. There they may be secured in the enjoyment of governments of their own choice, subject to no other control from the United States than such as may be necessary to preserve peace on the frontier and between the several tribes. There the benevolent may endeavor to teach them the arts of civilization, and, by promoting union and harmony among them, to raise up an interesting commonwealth, destined to perpetuate the race and to attest the humanity and justice of this Government.

This emigration should be voluntary, for it would be as cruel as unjust to compel the aborigines to abandon the graves of their fathers and seek a home in a distant land. But they should be distinctly informed that if they remain within the limits of the States they must be subject to their laws. In return for their obedience as individuals they will without doubt be protected in the enjoyment of those possessions which they have improved by their industry. But it seems to me visionary to suppose that in this state of things claims can be allowed on tracts of country on which they have neither dwelt nor made improvements, merely because they have seen them from the mountain or passed them in the chase. Submitting to the laws of the States, and receiving, like other citizens, protection in their persons and property, they will ere long become merged in the mass of our population.

It is plain that he is addressing a complex problem and pointing out the obligations of the United States from the start of this section on Indian Affairs. If he was 'racist' then why would he care that any Indians gaining funds promised to them had a shortfall in such funds? That is an embarrassment to the Union not to meet its obligations to the Sencas, and yet I have never heard this passage mentioned by those pointing at the 'Trail of Tears'. Right after that he points to the injustice of the Government's policy towards the Indian tribal lands and that the policy has driven Indians into a wandering state of affairs that helps no one and makes things more costly to the Union.

Yes, the great one who started the 'Trail of Tears' is railing against the injustice of the policy that will bring that 'Trail of Tears' about! Amazing, no?

And pointing out that it would be unconstitutional for the federal government to demand that the States cede portions of their territory, and that the States are sovereign in determining their territory and that no one else can force them to give up any of the territory, he then does what he can to inform the Indians wanting a carve-out that they are out of luck unless they can convince the States to otherwise recognize and hand over territory to them. He is begging with the States to do just that as the federal government doesn't have that power. He does what he can and offers territory that is, as yet, unsettled and unclaimed by the Union. He asks for a voluntary emigration and setting up of a regular set of governments in that territory. He does not want to see force used, and says so, clearly. He wanted an Indian Commonwealth beyond the Mississippi - a recognized government and Nation to deal with. The injustices had already been done by his time and he could not right those wrongs if the States did not help to do so.

If you have only learned the 'President Jackson was bad' meme, then you are being confronted with something that totally crosses that up. How you react depends on how you view the world.

A person with a fantasy ideology will find excuses, criticisms, and do anything to NOT deal with the historical facts present. These are facts by that President years before the 'Trail of Tears', and he is saying that he doesn't like the course of affairs, that it is unjust, that it is long standing, and that there is damned little he can do about it. Later Congressional actions will drive the course of affairs to a large degree as it is Congress that will have to pass and support the military means necessary to star the ball rolling. That inconvenient fact is also overlooked in the meme. Jackson has basically said he will carry out his Constitutional duties, and continues to do so in all other policy areas during his time in office: from working on Treaties (some with other Indians!) to getting the National Bank removed to ensuring that military veterans of the Revolution get a proper pension and forgiving current soldiers who have been out AWOL and otherwise disorderly, then discharging them. By resorting to a modern view of what 'racism' is, and attempting to put those views on the past, one overlooks that they were not the views then and that the ones given were the actual ones cited not just by President Jackson but by the States and Congress.

A person who finds themselves presented with actual facts that contradict what they have been taught who is willing to re-examine the record and not revert to easy, fantastical and ahistorical reasons for past actions will then re-examine the issue and start to ask some serious questions about what they were taught. Clear and contradictory evidence to what one is taught indicates something lacking in the teacher and the teaching establishment. One cannot say if it is because the instructor was ignorant, or the texts and teaching curriculum slanted and biased, or both, but one can say that it did not properly represent the era, the activities and the reasons given at the time by those involved. One cannot mind read into the actions of the dead and when their own, stated reasons that are then followed through on are brought to light there is a high coincidence of correlation between what is said and what is done. Imputing motives not given is an act of not believing what has been said in support of those actions and can only be done with contradictory evidence. In this case President Jackson is telling everyone that this will not end well along the current course of affairs and that he had limitations on what he could do as President.

Fantasy ideologies that become embedded in individuals are hard things to remove as they offer a comforting, non-reality based way of viewing the world that offers a form of reassurance that actually dealing with the world doesn't afford. Religion, itself, is trying to understand one's world and their place in it, but when it becomes an obsession that puts one out of touch with the world, as the Millerites did in the 19th century, the consequences can be troublesome. With a Jim Jones they become lethal to the believers and to a group like al Qaeda it becomes lethal or potentially so for everyone who does not see the world their way. There is a difference in believing in UFOs and believing a Mothership is trailing a comet and that all one has to do to get to it is kill yourself: one is an observation that there is unknown phenomena that cannot be easily explained and is unidentified, the other is believing that such things are a path to heaven via suicide. To those with a fantasy ideology no amount of actual, real world and demonstrable proof or evidence that goes against the world view of the fantasy will change their minds. Indeed alternative ways to explain such things, that are themselves fanciful and go beyond normal causality to look for a 'deeper truth' is what is sought. Anything that allows the fantasy to exist by twisting actual factual data to indicate something other than they do indicate is the goal of any believer in a fantasy ideology.

Looking at one of my previous works in regards to Socialism, my second critique goes to the actual Scientific Socialist view of Marx's works, and they are individuals who have most tried to apply some scientific principles to Marx, and yet find that when their analysis leads them out of real world human nature, that Marx is to be preferred over accounting for reality. This is part of the Theory and Practice Conundrum:

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.

In practice there is.

Thus, accepting Marx's end-state analysis of how Socialism comes about as the final social order of humanity, one can then examine those end conditions and ask 'what satisfies these conditions?' In doing that one finds a wealth of problems in Socialism that requires not just technological achievement, but deep and profound changes in human nature that have been evidence at no time in human history on any scale. Even better is that Marx, himself, followed up on his beliefs and did things that modern Marxists/Socialists wouldn't understand, like support the North in the US Civil War as it was a power for advancing mankind and industry. The Scientific Socialists kept up with that, however, and the stories given me as I was growing up of Socialists who would resolutely stay at their jobs during the World Wars so as to support the betterment of mankind through the expanse of capitalism, so that capitalism can do its necessary work and then be supplanted, is one that does shock the modern Socialist Left and even the Socialist Right, come to think of it. Schismatic Socialist movements splintered from the main of Socialism, so that everything from Communism to Fascism to the 'feel good' NannyState have become its hallmarks. And yet each and every venue that is Socialist depends on the solid foundations laid out by Marx, and if one examines the foundations, they are less than sturdy and less than stable. And that was done in regards to my first article on Socialism.

That list of premises that must make the foundation of Socialism possible, the actual things that must come about, I will extract from my second document:

Premise 1: All working hours are equal, no matter the time investment into gaining the skills to do them.

Premise 2: One man shall *not* gain over another's work on an hour by hour valuation.

Premise 3: Workers know how best to do their work.

Premise 4: The amount of labor to complete a given task is static over time.

Premise 5: Work is its own reward in keeping society running.

If we recognize Liberty as self-evident in the nature of mankind, then utilizing Liberty means that each person prospers in accordance to their ability to apply their skills and receive recognition for those skills in the way of actual payment above and beyond the normal. A skilled craftsman is recognized as being above and beyond the norm and their works are appreciated as such. While one can argue that a cinematographer like Vertov, say, would not have appeared under Czarist rule, it is more than possible he would have appeared under capitalism with a generally liberal representative democracy in place that gave freedom of the marketplace to value some works more highly than others. Dziga Vertov demonstrates just the opposite of spreading skills under a non-rewards based system: no one in later years would ever accomplish such grand works in film as he did as the system did not reward invention, innovation or even good taste. It was in capitalist countries that his work would be influential, not in the USSR.

At this point many of the Scientific Socialists would point out that the USSR had not met the industrial pre-conditions put forth by Marx as necessary for Socialism and that the USSR was not 'socialist'. That is true, so far as it goes, but the shift from a form of serfdom to a society that did try to get an equalized end-state is ignored and the status of the USSR as a demonstration point on the feasibility, or lack thereof, of getting to that lovely end-state is tossed away in that analysis. The question is: would satisfying the industrial precondition change the result of the outcome of the Soviet experiment? Was it a matter of not having enough capitalism, not enough technology that makes the difference? Or is it in the nature of man, himself, outside of the preconditions that made achievement of such an end-state impossible or even desirable? Each of those premises has backing in a viewpoint of what human nature is and how human nature makes those end-states come about. Yet if the actual human nature is at variance with what is expected, then trying to change human nature, to shift it out of the nature of man as mortal, fallible, and prone to his own weakness, is folly and lethal simultaneously.

Our modern Transnational Progressivist Left and Right, like their antecedents in the various Socialist movements, likewise put forth broad and disturbing generalities of mankind in an attempt to undermine the Nation State system on an international scale. John Fonte has detailed the outlines of the goals of Transnational Progressivism which are little different on the Left or Right of that movement, save for emphasis on societal or industrial means:

Groups are what matter, not people. You are "Black" or "Christian" or "Mexican" or "Afghan" or "Sunni", you are not yourself. You also don't get to choose your group; it's inherent in what you were when you were born. Someone else will categorize you into your group, and you will become a number, a body to count to decide how important that group is. And your group won't change during your lifetime.

The goal of fairness is equality of result, not equality of opportunity. It isn't important to let individuals fulfill their potential and express their dreams, what's important is to make groups have power and representation in all things proportional to their numbers in the population. Fairness is for groups, not for individuals. The ideally fair system is based on quotas, not on merit, because that permits proper precise allocation of results.

Being a victim is politically significant. It's not merely a plea for help or something to be pitied; it's actually a status that grants extra political power. "Victimhood" isn't a cult, it's a valid political evaluation. Groups which are victims should be granted disproportionately more influence and representation, at the expense of the historic "dominant" culture.

Assimilation is evil. Immigrants must remain what they were before they arrived here, and should be treated that way. Our system must adapt to them, rather than expecting them to adapt to us (even if they want to). The migration of people across national borders is a way to ultimately erase the significance of those borders by diluting national identity in the destination country.

An ideal democracy is a coalition where political power is allocated among groups in proportion to their numbers. It has nothing to do with voting or with individual citizens expressing opinions, and in fact it doesn't require elections at all. A "winner take all" system, or one ruled by a majority, is profoundly repugnant because it disenfranchise minority groups of all kinds and deprives them of their proper share of power.

National identity is evil. We should try to think of ourselves as citizens of the world, not as citizens of the nations in which we live, and we should try to minimize the effects of national interests, especially our own if we live in powerful nations.

Fonte's descriptive analysis serves as a handy test to see if a political position put forth is bound by this ideology. There is no handbook of the Transnational Progressivist just as there was no ready handbook of Progressivism: the days of actually having to state what you believe in as a coherent view of society and man's place in creating it are no longer the goal of Progressivism, save to put both society and individuals under the rule of a self-described elite. This system is not just Transnational, but anti-Nation State at its core. Yet the Nation State is the creation of mankind across the globe, and wherever man has created culture of any sort, man has created States and Nation States. While there are technological gulfs between the Incan Empire and the Roman Empire, or between the Iriquois Nations and Swiss Confederation, the actual utilization of Nation State diplomacy, many of its features and ways to address other powers was highly similar. As was examined in the 17th to 19th century, this is due to the similarity of the nature of man and how he derives culture, self-governance, States and then Nations to deal with other States. The Nation State is the creation of mankind to protect cultures that are different, and yet recognize that other cultures are valid and recognizes other Nation States as equals in those terms, if not economic, social or military terms. Indeed it is talked about from ancient times through the 12th century in England all the way up to the 19th century and the forms and formulas of embassies, treaties, Nation to Nation agreements, pomp and circumstance is all guided by those understandings that we now accept as common.

Progressivism wanted to co-opt the power of the State and such social organs as Labor Unions as a means to break up the 'dominant' culture in the United States and elsewhere. Yet there was a major setback in that agenda that still exists to this day, as described by Walter Russell Mead in The Jacksonian Tradition (archive of that article here):

Most progressive, right thinking intellectuals in mid-century America believed that the future of American populism lay in a social democratic movement based on urban immigrants. Social activists like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger consciously sought to use cultural forms like folk songs to ease the transition from the old individualistic folk world to the collective new one that they believed was the wave of the future; they celebrated unions and other strange, European ideas in down home country twangs so that, in the bitter words of Hiram Evans, "There is a steady flood of alien ideas being spread over the country, always carefully disguised as American."

What came next surprised almost everyone. The tables turned, and Evans’ Americans "americanized" the immigrants rather than the other way around. In what is still a largely unheralded triumph of the melting pot, Northern immigrants gradually assimilated the values of Jacksonian individualism. Each generation of new Americans was less "social" and more individualistic than the preceding one. American Catholics, once among the world’s most orthodox, remained Catholic in religious allegiance but were increasingly individualistic in terms of psychology and behavior ("I respect the Pope, but I have to follow my own conscience"). Ties to the countries of emigration steadily weakened, and the tendency to marry outside the group strengthened.

By the late 20th century this force was actively being opposed by the cultural elite who were adhering to a fantasy ideology of there being some societal equivalence at the society level between all societies, and that it was politically correct not to refer to the differences and problems in other societies and, instead, vilify your own society's problems and equalize them with those of other societies. Thus workplace discrimination in America is equated with discrimination in totalitarian regimes, such as China, that have even worse records of humanitarian discrimination and xenophobia behind them. The lack of gays having 'equal rights' in America to government recognition of things like marriage, are directly equated to the lofty elevation of gays in places like Iran who consign them to the grave. 'Enlightened' European Nations have socialized medicine that is costly to their Nations, bankrupting them, and often hard to get or have governments unwilling to even find out the quality of health care received, and that is directly equated to America where there are no dead on the streets and willingness to not purchase 'health insurance' is an exercise of liberty and a personal assessment of risk and benefits. At all points State control and telling the individual what to do is elevated over individual liberty and freedom to decide one's life for oneself.

Yet that is the role of government: to restrict, to punish. It is not a provider of 'good things' save in what it doesn't do, which is to straightjacket society with regulations in an attempt to force people to become 'good' and 'socially aware' by punishing them when they are not. Socialism had, at least, the belief that man saw work as its own reward, regardless of station in life, and that one got according to one's needs. When those needs are dictated to you, then you are no longer a citizen but a subject of the State. That is Transnational Progressivism's ideal: to make all individuals subjects to their States, beholden to their government and to force elitist views on what is and is not good upon all people.

Save the Elites, of course, they are above any rules, any laws, and any accountability.

That is the end of forcing people to 'do good' and punishing them if they do so in ways that are not acceptable to the State. It is a fantasy ideology that we can all think alike and 'be different' at the same time, and that human nature can, indeed, be overturned by government fiat. And yet those that come to power are no less human, no less susceptible to the temptations of mortal life than those they seek to rule, and often their excesses are made the worst because they feel that any 'good end' justifies their activities. That is not a description of freedom but of tyranny.

It is strange that so many want that tyranny because they believe it really will turn out 'all right' and 'better' for all concerned.

Don't mind the governments, States, Nations and Empires that have all ruled this way to the non-benefit of their people.

Only good intentions matter, even as the blood to get those intentions put in place run under the boots of those bringing it about and stain their hands, spatter their faces to put a red tinged haze around those 'good intentions' as that is the end of Elite rule wherever it is tried.

Sphere: Related Content

Civil vs Uncivil protests

The following is a personal perspective paper of The Jacksonian Party.

Tea Party protests:

(Pictures sent into Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit)

From G20 Summits:

One of the photos Victoria Police have released in their search for 28 'persons of interest' in relation to the November G20 riots.

Photo courtesy: The Age, 18 JAN 2007, persons of interest line-up.

Photo courtesy: John Kewley, RJK Photos via Lightstalkers, 2006 Melbourne G20.

Photo courtesy: William West, via AFP, ABC.net.au, Melbourne 2006 G20.

Photo courtesy: This is London, 13 MAY 2009

As seen at The Lambeth Walk, 01 APR 2009.

Again, Tea Parties:

Photo courtesy: AZ House Republicans, 17 APR 2009

Photo courtesy: Instapundit, 11 APR 2009.

Photo courtesy: Michelle Wong, Noozhawk, 04 APR 2009.

Photo courtesy: Charles Croninger, Noozhawk, 04 APR 2009.

Photo courtesy: RJ Ritchie, 21 MAR 2009.

Photo courtesy: Scootertrash Conservative, 14 APR 2009.

Photo courtesy: John Berry, Syracuse.com, 15 APR 2009.

Photo courtesy: Media Circus, 15 APR 2009.

Photo courtesy: edj_99999, 12 SEP 2009, Flickr.

Photo courtesy: Darleen Click, Protein Wisdom, 12 SEP 2009.

Photo courtesy: Michael A. Beck via iOwnTheWorld.com.

WTO protests:

Photo courtesies various: Via Semp.us Seattle 1999 WTO meeting.

Photo courtesy: IMC at Indymedia, 17 JAN 2004 on 1999 WTO meeting.

Photo courtesy: News Real Blog, WTO 1999 Seattle.

Why, yes, it is possible to see which part of the political spectrum looks to violence.

Of course no one ever asks their supporters to disavow them.  Turn them in. Distance themselves from these violent people.

Not once.

I even have sympathy for some of what those protesting the G20 and WTO are about as I put National interest in trade and protecting our citizens first.  Free trade is an excellent way to support friends and allies and become stronger with them in supporting liberty and freedom.

It has not proven so good at providing liberty and freedom outside of that venue.  Quite the opposite in many poor Nations, and even in such places as China.  The support of liberty and freedom is FIRST and without it you do not have free trade amongst equals until their governments recognize that human liberty is born within us as individuals.  Why we do not offer free trade only to our friends and allies is beyond me.  But that would probably set off its own set of riots for those who want to destroy civilization and building up liberty and freedom via such things as trade.

Turning to violence is not the answer save as the very last resort of self-defense for yourself, your family, your property and your neighbors.  That is the Law of Nations at work and we protect our Nations first and foremost by protecting ourselves.

Civil discussion and coming to common agreement is necessary to support civilization.  I see hundreds of thousands across the US doing just that and being called 'violent' and 'extremist' and 'racist'.  Strange that I don't see where the violence, extremism or racism is in those protests.  Those are meant to stop civil discussion and that is authoritarian in the extreme: to label things as they are NOT in order to stifle that which you disagree with on a civil level.

Those that turn to violence long before self-protection and civil discussion have demonstrated that they are willing to throw off the shackles of being civilized for the lovely niceties of the Law of Nature.  That is savagery and it is barbaric in the extreme and repulsive.  Thus my sympathy for those who turn to it is lost, even when I think there is some basis for protests in a civil manner, by turning to violence, epithets, and mis-labeling others, they lose their chance to make those points with me.  Especially when I bring up civil points and make them in a civil manner.  I turn from such people who bring that lack of civilization with them.

Do not grab me to yell at me.

That is violence.

And I do have the right of self-defense.

And I would not have started a fight by turning from those who lack civility.

You are given a chance to be civil and civilized.

You are given a chance to recognize that I do not see such civility.

You are given those choices by my responses to those actions: be civilized and be able to recognize when someone is trying to maintain civility towards you.

I stand with those who will wait until the very last in making civil protests to be heard as individuals even if I disagree with them, they should be heard.

And not called 'racist' or as doing 'violence' when the arguments are purely in the civil policy arena.

That is how we build relationships amongst ourselves and create Nations.

In case that point has been missed.

Sphere: Related Content

Guiding Principles of Jacksonianism

The following is a personal outlook paper of The Jacksonian Party.

If politics is a reflection of culture, then what happens when a culture doesn't embrace politics?

This is not a rhetorical question, but one that may decide the fate of the Nation and the course of global events within the next few years. It is about a people who are glad enough to live and let live, so long as you don't try to tell them: how to live, how to work, how to play and how to lead a good life. As one is born free, and with all their liberties, then each liberty and freedom that must be relinquished to form other constructs that we create so as to have culture, must be jealously guarded. Your rights are not bestowed by government, but recognized by government as residing within you and that very few things are given to government to do so as to safeguard the first construct that we create, which we call culture.

To create culture we must, as humans, come together not just to procreate, which is the animal based activity of ensuring that offspring born with half your genetic characteristics will continue your genetic lineage, but to also protect such offspring as they are poorly able to do much of anything for so long in life. That requires mutual understanding between man and woman that there must be a deeper bond between them and a mutual understanding, acceptance and work to keep that bond in place. It is that bond which forms the basis for marriage. It is that bond that forms the basis for culture. And it is that bond that forms the basis for Nations. This is the very first liberty we give up: the liberty to act without first thinking about how those actions will affect that bond. From that simple act of forethought we get the spark and full flame of intelligence, for which the God Prometheus was damned to a living horror that was unending. From that we must live with the things we create when we recognize that we can live a better life when a liberty is shared, and yet keep ever watchful eye out to ensure that our trust is not abused. While the goal is perfect, we are not and heir to the problems of the mortal world.

Thus we are not a perfect people, no matter how perfect the mission is that is handed to us.

Nor are we perfectible in this mortal realm, as the ways of the material world have problems that the realm of ideas are not heir to. Our social compact we call the Constitution has this exactly right: we can strive to be more perfect in our Union with each other. That is a goal of all individuals in society, however, not a statement of what government is to do to the people. The corruption of language to try and include the stated things of a people in a compact as only relating to government is one of the most pernicious and undermining of them all as it attacks the rationale and foundation of our understanding that rights come from individuals and are worked on, jointly, by agreement. To say otherwise is to say that government creates society, creates rights and creates liberty and yet it does not one single one of those things and cannot do them no matter how much we may wish them to as government is not divine, not incorruptible and is heir to the problems of those running it which are the problems of the physical and mortal realm. Forethought is given to individuals, not government, and it shows.

In re-reading Walter Russell Mead's The Jacksonian Tradition, put out in the fall 1999/2000 issue of the National Interest (archived here by Steven Den Beste) we see an analysis of the culture of Jacksonianism which is that tradition. For all of the talk of 'community organizers', Jacksonian culture is self-organizing and needs no higher level of 'organizers' than those who are interested in doing good works for the community. That tradition comes from the deep Scots-Irish, to which I would add the Nordic overlay of the Thing which holds rulers as accountable to the Common Law, which creates a vital and rich thread of culture due to its circumstances. From that period of 700 AD to 1100 AD one of the largest and most prosperous cities in Europe was that of Jorvik, also known as York by circa 900 AD, and for its earliest period would be the second most prosperous city in Europe. Both Scots and Irish culture would benefit from Viking trade as well as suffer from its depredations: the two went hand in hand depending on if you wanted to trade or fight. This was not a purely Viking concept, but became the well understood way of handling outsiders by the Scots-Irish: you treated them first in a friendly manner, then a neutral one if rebuffed and then in a hostile one if they attacked you.

This deviates from the more Christian tradition of The Golden Rule and Turning the Other Cheek as very few people take it well once both cheeks have been slapped, and to try and be forgiving after that requires bending over to ask for similar treatment. By inverting those concepts and being a bit more insular on top of it, a good faith demonstration of friendliness can be returned, but one is ever wary of having that trust abused. This is a first form of cultural separation while yet being open to working with others if they demonstrate they actually do want to work with you. The ability to utilize social standards to enforce other standards, including religious ones, would cause the Roman Catholic Church to excommunicate the Scots as they would not accede to the disbanding of the Knights of the Temple Mount. Roman Catholicism would remain a mainstay in the Scots-Irish culture, but the later attacks by Protestant governments and that original cutting off by the Roman Catholic Church would instill a deep-seated distrust of handing either temporal or spiritual power upwards to be used against society and its culture.

While this culture would retain its inward looking components and move to rugged wilderness inhospitable to direct government influence, it would also support the larger set of colonies as they sought to throw off the very yoke that the Scots-Irish had sought to dislodge for centuries: Great Britain. Common cause would bring the mingling of the hardy mountain pioneers of Appalachia into the Revolution in the southern Colonies, save Washington by cutting off the British southern command, and then allow for the tandem movement that would culminate at Yorktown with French help for arms, munitions and a sea blockade. For seven years north and south worked hard together, fought together, died together and won together. What came out of that, while started in the cities of Boston, Philadelphia and New York would be modified by those harder, more rugged folk of the hills and mountains who wanted to make damned sure that their sons and grandsons did not have to fight overbearing government ever again.

This ethos, this cultural ethic system, has moved westward from mountain system to mountain system, from Appalachia to the Rockies, Sierra Nevada and Cascades, and has left an indelible mark on US culture during this period leading up to and just after the Civil War. The great railroad building era, in particular, reached deep into Appalachian coal country to provide first hand contact and transport for this culture out of rural near wilderness and into the small towns and outskirts of cities at the end of the 19th century. These families found others that had been influenced by the previous migrations westward and by kith and kin in the North East, the 'Yankee' rural hill folk, and the culture accepted them and created a larger folk culture that, today, stretches from suburbia to wilderness in America. The attempt by the Progressive movement to 'urbanize' this culture went in the opposite way the Progressives wanted as Mead talks about in this section:

Most progressive, right thinking intellectuals in mid-century America believed that the future of American populism lay in a social democratic movement based on urban immigrants. Social activists like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger consciously sought to use cultural forms like folk songs to ease the transition from the old individualistic folk world to the collective new one that they believed was the wave of the future; they celebrated unions and other strange, European ideas in down home country twangs so that, in the bitter words of Hiram Evans, "There is a steady flood of alien ideas being spread over the country, always carefully disguised as American."

What came next surprised almost everyone. The tables turned, and Evans’ Americans "americanized" the immigrants rather than the other way around. In what is still a largely unheralded triumph of the melting pot, Northern immigrants gradually assimilated the values of Jacksonian individualism. Each generation of new Americans was less "social" and more individualistic than the preceding one. American Catholics, once among the world’s most orthodox, remained Catholic in religious allegiance but were increasingly individualistic in terms of psychology and behavior ("I respect the Pope, but I have to follow my own conscience"). Ties to the countries of emigration steadily weakened, and the tendency to marry outside the group strengthened.

Europe, left behind in the wake of the Revolution, was no longer the basis for American society although a large contributor to it due to the Colonial Era affiliations. America, protected by the Atlantic Ocean, formed a new culture that spread with the people as they moved and European culture was soon changed in ways that Europe could not do. While American culture has never been seen as equal to European culture by the intellectual elites, it was a great draw to all of those seeking to escape European elitism. Modern Progressives, by trying to import European elitist ideals soon found that the people that had immigrated didn't want to recreate European elite culture but create their own culture with their fellow citizens.

Socially this could not be countered by the US elite structure that would come to dominate the two party system. Thus the only venue left was to use the power of government to corrupt that society. This was done via the 'good ends' of the federal government subsidizing farming, during the expansion era, and then seeking to subsidize home mortgages during the New Deal era. Jacksonians, the relatively poor craftsmen, farmers and common working laborer, was glad of the help and took it. That said Jacksonians also remained starkly independent minded and the greatest thing to do was to have the mortgages paid off enough to shift them to commercial basis and the absolute greatest good was to pay it off, in full. For government to be able to do this, however, required the preceding Progressive era to have created a National financial system in the form of the Federal Reserve. That device has been cited for both the current problems of the economy and for creating the fiscal environment that created the Great Depression under the Progressive Herbert Hoover. In many ways the New Deal rebuilt the old banking system that President Jackson removed: the combined might of the Federal Reserve, SEC and Federal Home Mortgage system put the very problems and corruption back into the political system that had been removed in 1832. It is that distrust of the federal government that leads those getting home mortgages to want to get them off of federal backing, as the system, itself, is corrupt no matter how 'good' its ends.

Mead describes the result as 'Crabgrass Jacksonianism': it always crops up in the well manicured lawn of politics no matter what is used to eradicate it. The weed is mightier than the eradicant and grows stronger due to it:

The new Jacksonianism is no longer rural and exclusively nativist. Frontier Jacksonianism may have taken the homesteading farmer and the log cabin as its emblems, but today’s Crabgrass Jacksonianism sees the homeowner on his modest suburban lawn as the hero of the American story. The Crabgrass Jacksonian may wear green on St. Patrick’s Day; he or she might go to a Catholic Church and never listen to country music (though, increasingly, he or she probably does); but the Crabgrass Jacksonian doesn’t just believe, she knows that she is as good an American as anybody else, that she is entitled to her rights from Church and State, that she pulls her own weight and expects others to do the same. That homeowner will be heard from: Ronald Reagan owed much of his popularity and success to his ability to connect with Jacksonian values. Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan in different ways have managed to tap into the power of the populist energy that Old Hickory rode into the White House. In both domestic and foreign policy, the twenty-first century will be profoundly influenced by the values and concerns of Jacksonian America.

It is more than just entitlement to rights that Jacksonians want, but recognition that these are our rights as citizens and free people. The greatest right and freedom is that from government so as not to be beholden to government.

From these things Mead forms up the Jacksonian Code and I will paraphrase it somewhat and add commentary.

First is self-reliance, which means that each individual holds their place in society via hard work and contributing to the greater society by working. From that there is no love of poverty born of indolence nor of the indolent rich. The greatest value we have as individuals is to contribute back to the greater society by first and foremost taking care of ourselves as individuals and families. This is a Middle Class value, yes, but it is seen strongly in the working poor, who feel that they are to be recognized for their hard work and not patronized by politicians seeking to exploit them by making them into non-working poor. Because work builds self-confidence and self-esteem, that one can, indeed, perform tasks that have social value, it creates self-reliance and the ability to walk away from bad jobs, bad employers and know that the skills one has can find employment elsewhere. Thus self-reliance means you are not tied to one job, one company, one union, or one way of doing things. That ability is not only admired but respected because it demonstrates that the person in question is doing their job for themselves as a citizen and fulfilling their potential as a person. Those that disrespect that, beyond puerile 'dissing', can expect disdain and even outright hostility: you never, ever, degrade a man or woman who does hard work well for working hard.

I am going to take Mead a bit out of order as this next point goes higher, for me at any rate, and is a telling part of Jacksonianism. Also I see it in a far different light than Mead and cover his point prior to this section.

Fourth is Honor. Honor to one's elders and taking up one's Nation's honor as their own is a primary mover for Jacksonians. This is not understood in modern urban culture of elite and ghetto variety, but is recognized in the working poor. For hard work to be deeply meaningful, beyond oneself, it must be to sustain one's family or, if lacking that, the greater community around you. Thus helping the elderly, the sick and those even less well off than you are is just as important as being self-reliant. Indeed, you must first be self-reliant to do these things, but it is these things that make being self-reliant so important. If we create our society by how we work and how we spend our resources, then our society becomes a reflection of us as individuals. A generous and giving society is the reflection of generous and giving individuals who honor those around them and ensure that our elderly have a good life until their last day with us: they are the living embodiment of our memory and deserve that honor. That honor can be lost by an individual's actions, but it is first there to be lost and takes much venom on the part of an older person to lose it.

Likewise, in personal relationships, we come to understand that the words 'to love, honor and obey' places the precedence rightly. We must first come to love another and with that we come to honor them. That honor demands obedience so that it and the love that drives it are not lost by our actions. This is the obedience to that honor and love. As the Law of Nations starts with that personal relationship, how we act towards those we love creates the environment and society that our Nation reflects. To those that are allies, we hold them close and tightly and seek the greatest good amongst our people so that we may strengthen each other over time. That is exactly what we do in personal relationships and the support of our family to grow larger is foremost for Jacksonians. This honor that comes from family deserves respect and recognition from our fellow citizens. Similarly our love towards our allies deserves respect from our fellow Nations. There is no sliding scale between these concepts for Jacksonians: they are scale free ones that move perfectly from the individual to the Nation State. In a very real sense by binding our love and honor to another we do create a Nation and a duty to it.

Second is equality. All who work, do their job, care for themselves and their families are equal in respect and deserve that absolute equality of respect and recognition. No one gains a right to tell anyone else what to say, how to think or how to act and any attempt to do so via any spoken, written or 'unwritten' code gets just and due hostility for being authoritarian and elitist. Jacksonians are independent of church, state, unions, PC codes, social cliques, and political parties: the rise of the 'Independent' in America is the rise of Jacksonian self-reliance that defies anyone to categorize or classify us via any pre-scripted, pre-tagged definition. It is a part of the code that has equality as a necessary part of individualism and for one to be self-reliant one must be individuated from as many labels as possible so as to be free to act within respected and honorable means as they can. No one tells a Jacksonian what to contribute, how to contribute or when to contribute to society. It is that ability to contribute and have it recognized and respected that is the greatest equalizer amongst citizens, so that everyone determines the best way to build society on their own without being dictated to by any organization, any group, any religion or any political party. Jacksonians don't contribute to beggars but to known and respected charities, even while being willing to hand out a fiver to someone who really has worked on their spiel: they have worked hard and deserve the recognition for that. Jacksonians are that most dreaded amongst the beggars: when asked for money to buy a meal, we invite them to come join us in a meal. That is equality at work, so that good ends are performed, hard work rewarded and the poor cared for, and we do not hand that off to any government, any church nor any other institution in full as that is the responsibility of equality.

Third is individualism. Part of Mead's recognition is that these are interconnected things: self-reliance, equality, individualism. As we are born individuals, not born of a cookie cutter nor with social graces, we must come to learn that such individuality is to be sustained by us and that each person is accountable for what they do. That is not a negative but a positive: those that seek unaccountable actions seek tyranny. Each of us is responsible for how we conduct ourselves, what we see as necessary forms of ethics and morals, and to determine what, if any, spiritual outlook we have. With that said Jacksonians are respectful in these realms as we can recognize good moral and ethical individuals when we encounter them. Jacksonians invent new spiritual outlooks, new religious outlooks and new codes of ethics and morals: there are as many of those as there are Jacksonians. In honoring our forefathers and their religious outlooks, we are not tied to them as we are individuals. Yet the respect and honor for their religious outlook and for the good system of ethics and morals they used is never diminished by our own outlooks. By and large Jacksonians speak frankly about their beliefs or lack of same, as I have pointed out about myself quite some number of times previously. Yet I do not slight any religion, save those that seek to kill the innocent or force or coerce conversion to them, or those that do not allow an individual to find their own pathway within it towards greater enlightenment. There is an equality about that which goes with self-reliance and requires honoring the man or woman who does good deeds no matter, or in spite of, their stated belief system: a black knight who does the deeds of a Paladin had done those deeds, no matter how he gets to those ends.

Even with individualism, we are members of society and create a greater society by our actions. To have a good society we must do good and respect the efforts of others and afford them recognition and honor for their work. Raising a family means that children understand the discipline that is necessary to create a strong society. Corporal punishment is not handed out without reason, but as a pointed corrective to create civil behavior. To have self-reliance one must be civil in their dealings with others and fair to themselves so that they can expect only what is due to them in the greater society. Without such civility we cannot have honor to bestow upon the elderly nor to have in our relationships with others. To be civil is to be civilized. Thus civility for oneself is necessary, first, so that one can create self-reliance and honorable associations so as to be a valued member of society. That civility allows us to treat each other as equals in our work, and to have a civilization that thrives on that acknowledgement of respect. Even when a person's ways are far out of the norm, so long as they work to build society, protect their family and children, respect the elderly and show equality towards their fellow man and harm no others, then who are we to question how they get to those good ends? I have and reserve the absolute right to be scandalized by my neighbors and they are quite free to be scandalized by mine.

Mead's fourth is Honor, but tied to the financial realm. Growing up in the lower middle class and having family in the lower class, the poor working class, I do come from a different view on financial honor to a certain extent. The old adage of 'neither a borrower nor a lender be' was one that was understood as a way of operating. I think that looking at the 1990's fluidity in the marketplace, Mead took the transient moment of finances to be indicative of a greater view towards borrowing. To a degree borrowing is a form of self-expression, but paying off a debt is a matter of self-reliance and honoring a debt. While bankruptcy has moved from the venue of social catastrophe to serial event for many individuals, the inability to control one's finances and create lasting value for oneself is seen as a lack of self-recognition and, perhaps, valuing one's skills beyond what they actually are. With that said, borrowing to form a new business or to form a new way of doing business is seen as part of individualism and is the driving force of the US economy. What is left unsaid in this, however, is the origin for those loans, especially ones that are to businesses that have already started.

Jacksonians, being more on the 'doing' side of things, tend to have a unique way to start up businesses: in their homes. Livingrooms, basements and garages are tell-tale signs of self-reliant individuals following a business dream. Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computers, Dell, Cisco, and indeed a raft of businesses large and small have all started in just this venue, which is the family venue. There is a great difference between someone with a business plan and having done nothing when compared to a family business that has just gotten its first major order and finds that it cannot meet that with the manufacturing ability of a garage, basement and livingroom, plus all family and friends brought in on the work. Being tradesmen, tinkerers and similarly oriented individuals, Jacksonian businesses are, traditionally, family businesses with '& Sons' being a tell-tale sign of that. Failing in a family business that everyone has put their heart into is a tragedy, not a fiscal loss or impugning of capability. While Jacksonians do come from all walks of life, the concept of starting and growing a business by personal sacrifice is one that is proof-positive of a hard working, self-supporting individual.

Fifth is courage. To stand by one's beliefs one must, indeed, stand by them and back them up, to the hilt. That requires the ability to defend oneself in order to stand up for one's beliefs, be that in the verbal or physical realm. To be a citizen requires the ability to defend yourself, your family and your property against those that would seek to hurt or destroy them. I will use Mead's words for this:

Jacksonian America’s love affair with weapons is, of course, the despair of the rest of the country. Jacksonian culture values firearms, and the freedom to own and use them. The right to bear arms is a mark of civic and social equality, and knowing how to care for firearms is an important part of life. Jacksonians are armed for defense: of the home and person against robbers; against usurpations of the federal government; and of the United States against its enemies. In one war after another, Jacksonians have flocked to the colors. Independent and difficult to discipline, they have nevertheless demonstrated magnificent fighting qualities in every corner of the world. Jacksonian America views military service as a sacred duty. When Hamiltonians, Wilsonians and Jeffersonians dodged the draft in Vietnam or purchased exemptions and substitutes in earlier wars, Jacksonians soldiered on, if sometimes bitterly and resentfully. An honorable person is ready to kill or to die for family and flag.

Again, this is self-defense as part of the Law of Nations and that bond we form at the very and most intimate level being moved up, scale free, to our Nation. This is not an archaic form of honor, but the basic construct that allows us to have personal relationships, have families, create society and have a Nation that we all contribute to via our work. Written just two years prior to 9/11, the attacks of 9/11 demonstrated the strong Jacksonian streak of Americans: even when the media were reporting failure and attempting to undermine the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, men and women still volunteered in record numbers and the armed forces met all of their quotas not only for new recruits but often exceeded them for re-enlistments. Defending the Nation is a good, hard and deeply honorable job. Others talk about supporting the United States in war and peace, but Jacksonians do that, time and again. Even eight years on, this is still very true even with the changing winds of politics in the country.

Jacksonians draw a line between who is defended and why.

Those on the inside are those who are the people we love and care for, and will sacrifice for. Outside of that is a cruel, harsh world that really doesn't give much of a damn for liberty, freedom and the rights of man as individual. Attacks upon our families, our children, or those enforcing the law deserve what is coming to them in on uncertain terms: as much as can be delivered. That is true for rapists, murderers, pirates and terrorists: they are all of the same kind and type and unwanted in forming civil society. To Jacksonians the extent that civil society has expanded has not been missed, but not because Jacksonians have changed their view of self-reliance, but have extended that all men are created equal:

The underlying cultural unity between African Americans and Anglo-Jacksonian America shaped the course and ensured the success of the modern civil rights movement. Martin Luther King and his followers exhibited exemplary personal courage, their rhetoric was deeply rooted in Protestant Christianity, and the rights they asked for were precisely those that Jacksonian America values most for itself. Further, they scrupulously avoided the violent tactics that would have triggered an unstoppable Jacksonian response.

Although cultures change slowly and many individuals lag behind, the bulk of American Jacksonian opinion has increasingly moved to recognize the right of code-honoring members of minority groups to receive the rights and protections due to members of the folk community. This new and, one hopes, growing feeling of respect and tolerance emphatically does not extend to those, minorities or not, who are not seen as code-honoring Americans. Those who violate or reject the code—criminals, irresponsible parents, drug addicts—have not benefited from the softening of the Jacksonian color line.

Were Jacksonians racists in the past? Yes.

Now racism is relegated to the elite upper class and echelons of politics. Hard work, seeking approbation and equality for working hard, and being self-reliant so as to help those around one are universal in aspect. Creating civil society is damned hard work, and having those who come to America recognize that hard work gains equality of recognition is one of the greatest boons for spreading equality ever devised by mankind. No government can create that, but can only clear out the space and make the playing field equal without regard to race, ethnicity, etc. and then support that those who do violent acts against the community deserve punishment and those hurt are to get justice by having the law decided upon equally without favoritism.

This is paramount to Jacksonians, and the equal application of fair laws is a boon to all members of society. Good government, to a Jacksonian, is accountable government and that needs the most direct accountability possible. Mead puts it in this manner:

Jacksonians are instinctively democratic and populist. Hamiltonians mistrust democracy; Wilsonians don’t approve of the political rough and tumble. And while Jeffersonians support democracy in principle, they remain concerned that tyrannical majorities can overrule minority rights. Jacksonians believe that the political and moral instincts of the American people are sound and can be trusted, and that the simpler and more direct the process of government is, the better will be the results. In general, while the other schools welcome the representative character of our democracy, Jacksonians tend to see representative rather than direct institutions as necessary evils, and to believe that governments breed corruption and inefficiency the way picnics breed ants. Every administration will be corrupt; every Congress and legislature will be, to some extent, the plaything of lobbyists. Career politicians are inherently untrustworthy; if it spends its life buzzing around the outhouse, it’s probably a fly. Jacksonians see corruption as human nature and, within certain ill-defined boundaries of reason and moderation, an inevitable by-product of government.

Our representatives are human and just as apt to be corrupt as any ne'er-do-well who can't get a decent job. Often they are one in the same. To that end it is best to keep districts small and compact and keep the ne'er-do-well of the district accountable to the public of it. Without that accountability you get picnics over-run by ants and outhouses that have more flies than seating space.

Just as when money is lent to a friend - you expect to get paid back.

So when we lend our voices to our representative, we expect our voice to be heard in the halls of power. That is our payback for electing them.

There is no honor worth speaking of in politics, and what problems there are can be best handled by term limits and smaller districts, thus putting more of the scoundrels into the Congress and at each other's throats so they don't have time to swindle the rest of us as they suspect each other of swindling them. That mutual suspicion breeds good government, and keeping people out of government is a very, very good thing, indeed. Makes them have to work for a living. If more of our representatives treated their job as a job, and worked hard at it, we would all be better off. Sadly that does not happen with the ne'er-do-well no matter how much you help them to learn self-reliance.

This is why Jacksonians have fled the Democratic Party and have no great want of being Republicans, either.

Neither respects hard work and keeps government small so as to allow the people the greatest leeway in creating a good society.

Not honoring that impulse of the people to lead a good life without government interference is dishonoring them.

And no good has ever come of that.

Sphere: Related Content

Tree of Law, Tree of Liberty

The following is an outlook paper of The Jacksonian party.

We live our lives with fundamental concepts of liberty and law and they grow up to give us shade, but both have deep roots and wide trunks that make our modern heights of law and liberty possible. As they grow up so close to each other their roots intertwine so that they not only have interactions in the deep past but their branches spread to each other in the present. Their fates, too, are intertwined as they grow. If Liberty grows without restraint it will put shade over the law and man will slowly become lawless and see no restriction upon personal activities. If the Law grows without restraint it shades liberty and we are left with our freedoms withering and we become slaves to our creation which is the Law. The rot of one set of roots goes to the other set, when one gains the other is threatened by shade. When they are in equal measure the keep each other manageable and healthy. When one puts the other in shade they both suffer and we soon find ourselves without liberty or law by measures, and then the hot sun of our Natural Selves burns upon us to dry out our good natures and lower us by measure downwards to more and more barbaric states.

Not all societies are equal: some feed one tree in preference to the other for a time, but soon find the loss of one leading to the loss of the other. Chaos of Natural Law on one side, the Totality of Law on the other and both prove to be hostile to human society and the individuals within them. Our understandings of these concepts of Liberty and Law come from diverse sources: Ancient Greek, Roman, Nordic and English sources. While I have gone over these concepts before, it is worth examining how they grew together in the late Nordic and early Christian era when these different ideas on what government, liberty, law and personal freedom call came into direct and deep contact with each other so that Church based teachings needed to reconcile themselves with ones derived from multiple sources and each of these sources had its own view on how the basics of society were to be worked out. Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England has a home page at the Harvard Law School Library where the work attributed to Henry of Bratton is available for reading and it comes from that era written in the 1220-1230 timeframe with additions around 1250. Even with just a partial work to peruse, we get the strong outlines of much of our views on law and liberty from it. Within the first page from the site we come to a passage that would confound moderns, and yet was perfectly acceptable as a way to make law within society, and still is to this day:

[010] Though in almost all lands use is made of the leges and the jus scriptum, England
[011] alone uses unwritten law and custom. There law derives from nothing written [but]
[012] from what usage has approved.4 Nevertheless, 5it will not be absurd to call English
[013] laws leges, though they are unwritten, since whatever has been rightly decided and
[014] approved with the counsel and consent of the magnates and the general agreement
[015] of the res publica,6 the authority of the king or prince having first been added
[016] thereto,7 has the force of law.8 9England has as well many local customs, varying
[017] from place to place, for the English have many things by custom which they do
[018] not have by law, as in the various counties, cities, boroughs and vills, where it will
[019] always be necessary to learn what the custom of the place is and how those who
[020] allege it use it.

England used unwritten law to rule itself, unlike many other lands that used scripted law, written law, but had a tradition of common findings of the law to guide it. From this comes the Common Law which is variable as to what is covered by jurisdiction but regularized by judicial findings. To those used to the written law, as we are in America, this is passed down to us via the federalism concept in which States are sovereign entities within the Nation able to have their own laws, and within States are counties, cities and municipal regions that have their own variations of the law. We put our laws in writing to regularize them, but that also sets them on a static basis: as the public changes over time the laws tend to remain the same as the bother of actually changing them forms an innate resistance to changing them. As in physics so it is in the law: a law at rest tends to remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force which is our system while the English one described has the law in motion tending to remain in motion and guided by the written findings of judges. That writing down of judicial opinions is also handed down to us from this era, although it is interesting to note that the English did not apply this to Admiralty Law until the 19th century. That jurisdiction was highly variable up to that point and it only took prominence in Britain once it was understood how much of the Nation's wealth rested upon regularized trade relations. In the US our understanding is that trade was a main source of income for the Nation and the Admiralty jurisdiction within the civil law was started from the very beginning with the Constitution.

In a single paragraph the outlines of federalism being multiple local law domains under a single National domain, precedence in decisions via recording them so that laws are regularized when they are similar across multiple domains, the law being made by public agreement and usage that is common in an area (as well as penalties), and the procedure of building up common usage via precedence along with sovereign agreement which then makes up a wider law for all in a land. If that sounds remarkably familiar to the view of our Founders, it is because that strong and deep source of society remains viable over time.

As a Judge and former Judge, Bratton spends much of his work going over the differences between types of law, jurisdictions, and jurisprudence. Most particularly are such things as equity under the law and how one is to judge under the law. In this public law is seen as that which is for the common welfare, and deals with religion, priests and public officers. The reason for the religious aspect is that public sins need to have pardon, and such sinners are to have their moral health put in line with the public morality via doing penance for such sins. The State is the one to administer the law as it is in the public interest that magistrates appointed by the State, that organ which is of society, look after the common welfare. Due to the era that Bratton lived in, the State is a pre-existing institution and pre-dates the full Christianization of England, and has been running common law for the common welfare for some centuries. Public morality and the common welfare need to be reconciled and it is the job of a those enacting jurisprudence to ensure that all parts of a judgment do just that.

The second area of the law is private law, or that which pertains to the welfare of individuals, and is secondary to the law of the public. Private law is not, of necessity, local law, but those sets of laws which effect the individual that arise from other sources than the State, itself. These laws are divided into three distinct types: natural law, law of nations and civil law. To modern eyes this is one of those times that what one knows may not, immediately, seem to be in accord with what is being put forth as we typically have daily concerns only over the civil law and not much concern with either nature nor nations in our daily lives. When reading onwards, however, things become most clear:

What natural law is.

[019] 21Natural law is defined in many ways. It may first be said to denote a certain
[020] instinctive impulse arising out of animate nature by which individual living things
[021] are led to act in certain ways. Hence it is thus defined: Natural law is that which
[022] nature, that is, God himself, taught all living things. The word ‘quod’ is then in
[023] the accusative case and the word ‘natura’ in the nominative. On the other hand,
[024] it may be said that the word ‘quod’ is in the nominative case, so that the definition
[025] will be this: Natural law is that taught all living things by nature, that is, by
[026] natural instinct. The word ‘natura’ will then be in the ablative case.22 This is what
[027] is meant when we say that our first instinctive impulses are not under our control,
[028] but our second impulses are. That is why, if a matter proceeds only as far as simple
[029] sensual pleasure, not beyond, only a venial sin is committed. But if it proceeds
[030] farther, to the contriving of something, as where one puts into practice what he
[031] has shamefully thought, it will then be called a third impulse and a mortal sin is
[032] committed.23 And note that for the reason that justice is will, taking into account
[033] rational beings only, natural law is impulse, regard being had to

[001] all creatures, rational and irrational. There are some who say that neither will nor
[002] impulse may be called jus, jus naturale or jus gentium, for they exist in [the realm of]
[003] fact; will or impulse are the means by which natural law or justice disclose or manifest
[004] their effect, for virtues and jura exist in the soul.24 This perhaps is said more clearly,
[005] that natural law is a certain due which nature allows to each man. Natural law is also
[006] said to be the most equitable law, since it is said that erring minors are to be restored
[007] in accordance with [natural] equity.25

Natural Law is that which derives from our properties derived from being of nature. As natural beings we gain certain abilities and our liberty, yet they are the complete set of things provided by nature. When one has a reaction to anything, nature is the first to provide it by instinct. The simple acting out of one's natural instincts can cause harm, which is why we tend to classify actions based on them being instinctive of having been thought through. Reaction to the world is instinctive, but if it is a wrongly felt reaction, one that is negative to the self, then taking that thought up compounds that problem, then acting out on it demonstrates a chain of actions that start from base motivation, are held as thoughts and then, by third hand, acted upon.

Between base thought and action is the activity we know as Reason. Many that we class as 'habitual criminals' may have no utilization of reason between thought and action, thusly what they do comes from base motivation and primitive impulses. When one plans out an action to ill-ends, then the ability to reason is put to ill uses so as to gain those ends and becomes a higher crime. One may find a lover cheating on them and in the heat of passion hurt or even kill that third individual, and we know that as a simple 'crime of passion'. Yet if one finds out and then sets up an elaborate plot to eliminate that third individual, then you have put reason to ill ends no matter what the motivation, and your ability to reason and seek other ends is what makes that crime greater: you had the chance to seek other ends than that driven by base motivation.

Thus when judged by other realms of law, natural law can be seen as having an impact based on our having come from the natural world. The civil law, after that, is one we know much better in our modern times, as it has grown the largest and, indeed, overgrown the thought space of other realms of law as we have so much of it:

What the civil law is.

[009] 26Civil law,27 which may be called customary law, has several meanings. It may
[010] be taken to mean the statute law of a particular city. Or for that kind of law which
[011] is not praetorian; it sometimes detracts from or supplements natural law or the
[012] jus gentium, for law different from that outside sometimes prevails in cities by
[013] force of custom approved by those who use it, since such custom ought to be
[014] observed as law.3031Civil law may also be called all the law used in a state [or the
[015] like], whether it is natural law, civil law or the jus gentium.32

Statutory law, written law, and customary law are within the realms of the civil law. That said, as England has no written law in that era, customary law rises to the level of Statutory and written law, as the unwritten laws are those of the public residing within the State and the shift from common law as customary to statutory or written is a lengthy process. The presiding documents of this era are the Magna Carta put in place in 1215, and the Charter of Liberties put in place in 1100. As Bratton writes in the era when the Magna Carta was still being amended and worked over, his stresses upon using past rulings to guide present ones and having to reconcile the civil law that is customary with the written law are of prime importance. After King John I, the need for England to have regularized judicial findings becomes a paramount concern, as well as ensuring that no man, not even the King, is above the law. The State had set certain provisions and limitations on State power and those needed to be enacted through the local level, which would be done by magistrates and other bodies of local governments that would need to have any local problems addressed via the pathways of customary and other statutory law.

The Magna Carta, itself, is a positive rights document, which gives great leeway on rights to the State and carves out those parts within the law that are to be ensured to the common man and serve as areas the State may not trespass. That formulation was given substance in the US under The Bill of Rights which sets forth that no matter what happens, certain areas of the law are set aside from the State and then, all those areas not given to the State explicitly, are reserved to the States (plural) and the people. The Bill of Rights transforms a positive rights concept, in which the State has all power, to a negative rights concept in which the power resides in the people and their sovereign States in the Union. Yet we would not have the positive assertion of definite areas delimited from the State without the Magna Carta, and working through how these limits on the State are to be played out become an essential part of how we view our civil rights under civil law.

If natural law has a bit of a stumbling block for understanding, then the law of nations will seem like a brick wall: we no longer even think in these terms, and yet they are as vital to us, today, as they were in the 13th century:

What the jus gentium is.

[017] 33The jus gentium is the law which men of all nations use, which falls short of
[018] natural law since that is common to all animate things born on the earth in the
[019] sea or in the air. From it comes the union of man and woman, entered into by the
[020] mutual consent of both, which is called marriage. Mere physical union is [in the
[021] realm] of fact and cannot properly be called jus since it is corporeal and may be
[022] seen;34 all jura are incorporeal and cannot be seen. From that same law there
[023] also35 comes the procreation and rearing of children. The jus gentium is common
[024] to men alone, as religion observed toward God, the duty of submission to parents
[025] and country, or the right to repel violence and injuria. For it is by virtue of this
[026] law that whatever a man does in defence of his own person he is held to do lawfully;
[027] since nature makes us all in a sense akin to one another it follows that for one to
[028] attack another is forbidden.36

What manumission is.

[030] 37Manumissions also come from the jus gentium. Manumission is the giving of
[031] liberty, that is, the revelation of liberty, according to some, for liberty, which
[032] proceeds from the law of

[001] nature, cannot be taken away by the jus gentium but only obscured by it,38 for
[002] natural rights are immutable. But say that he who manumits does properly give
[003] liberty, though he does not give his own but another's, for one may give what he
[004] does not have, as is apparent in the case of a creditor, who [may alienate a pledge
[005] though the thing is not his,39 and in that of one who] constitutes a usufruct in his
[006] property.40 For natural rights are said to be immutable because they cannot be
[007] abrogated or taken away completely, though they may be restricted or diminished
[008] in kind41 or in part. 42It was by virtue of this jus gentium that wars were introduced
[009] (that is, when declared43 by the prince for the defence of his country44 or to repel
[010] an attack) and nations separated, kingdoms established and rights of ownership
[011] distinguished. Individual ownership was not effected de novo by the jus gentium but
[012] existed of old, for in the Old Testament things were already mine and thine, theft
[013] was prohibited45 and it was decreed that one not retain his servant's wages.46 By
[014] the jus gentium boundaries were set to holdings, buildings erected next to one
[015] another, from which cities, boroughs and vills were formed.47 And generally, the
[016] jus gentium is the source of all contracts48 and of many other things. What long
[017] custom is will be explained below.49

The law of nations is one of the prime concepts necessary to understand what our place in life is with regards to other men and all of mankind. It is not the natural law, as it is not directly derived from it but supported by our natural instincts to form society and communities. The most basic of all communities is that of the family, and serves as the founding basis for this other realm of law. From that, the law of nations is a creation of man's society and a thing particular to all mankind and distinct from natural law because it is man who creates it. Natural law gives the right to fight, the right to defend oneself and the right to wage war. The law of nations gives you the liberty to defend others, defend your family and defend your country made up of all members of your society within that State. Thus the same liberty that is used to defend your spouse and children is the exact same liberty to defend your country and there is no scaling between the two: the right and obligation to use liberty for their defense is the same regardless of where on that scale you are. Attacks upon any individual who utilizes the jus gentium, who acknowledges their place amongst the order of men and Nations, are to be defended against. It is always lawful to defend the law abiding individual against attack from those who take the law into their own hands.

These natural liberties when exercised in a just way are self-supporting and one's rights are inalienable from that liberty. When our societies create individual States and then Nations to exercise those liberties that individuals grant to society for their own defense, mankind creates a new realm of law that is not wholly based on nature and is not the civil law, either. In the recognition of these different societies we entrust those liberties that we are born with to the society we live in which creates organs called government that represent a State and then a Nation to interact with other Nation States that represent other peoples and other societies. In creating these things, in having close proximity to each other in places that respect civil law so that mankind can create larger units called villages, towns and cities, we also acknowledge that other Nation States do this. As each of these areas has its own law, the law of nations starts out as customary law: unwritten law particular to each Nation State.

Over the next 550 years this concept, which starts with the ancients, will expand upon this common base and gain a body of work that better describes the law of nations, until a formal and wide ranging conception of The Law of Nations is written in depth and detail. At this point in time the first regularization of any international law is still a century away and that would happen in The Black Book of the Admiralty. For all that the law of nations, as a concept, is customary law, this formulation of Nation States has proven to be invariant no matter what society or time period is being described in history. The earliest City States acted very much under the influence of this customary law, and reading about embassies, treaties, expect safe passage, and so on, from ancient works and then going to Meso-America and finding similar descriptions of how their States acted towards each other, be they Incan, Mayan, Aztec or Iroquois in North America, then examining City States and Empires of Africa or Asia then reveals a deep system that mankind creates that we call the law of nations.

Many animals have the instinct to protect family or even larger extended groups of kin, but even if there is reason present that has not extended to a recognition that all those who are of that species has that capability and extends this concept to all members of the species who follow regularized, lawful practices. While local groups are recognized amongst animals as having customary practices and the right of defense of the group, the ability to extend that across multiple groups has not been witnessed to date save in mankind. That leap from family and local genetically affiliated population to the larger society is something that is unique to mankind, as well as the universal understanding of that right that arises from our liberty. Our liberty is more than mere civil liberty, but liberty under the law of nations and is understood that both are necessary to have society safeguarded.

Thus the law of nations is voluntary law and customary law. And as with the English unwritten law, you are still beholden to it by that custom: ignorance of the law is no excuse to break it. As with customary law actions are accountable to the law of nations, be they from individuals or those in charge of the Nation State. While customary law within a State can vary by locale, the law of nations will also vary by locale, save that the organizing units are Nation States. Unlike local customary law within a State, Nation States are accountable to no higher power than other Nations, and Nations themselves accountable to each other for their practices. While God has domain over all things, the law of nations is man created law for the derived Nation State and there is no appeal to any higher power than other Nations for the activities of individuals and Nations within the law of nations system. If you (be it individual or Nation) decide to not acknowledge such customary law, you are liable for the consequences of your actions.

As Bratton goes on to start clarifying aspects of the law, itself, he writes a very succinct view of the law that goes beyond his immediate point and is more generalized due to the formulation of that point, and that point is discussing what freedom is:

What freedom is.

[024] 15‘Freedom is the natural power of every man to do what he pleases, unless
[025] forbidden by law or force.’ But if so, it then appears that bondsmen are free, for
[026] they have free power [to act] unless forbidden by force or law. But freedom is
[027] defined by that law by which it is created, by virtue of which they are called free.16
[028] For though bondsmen may be made free, since17 with respect to the jus gentium they
[029] are bond,

[001] they are free with respect to the jus naturale,1 thus free and bond, but from different
[002] points of view, and so wholly free [or] wholly bond, not in part one and part the other,2
[003] as was said above. And in this connexion the civil law or the jus gentium detracts
[004] from natural law.3

Natural Law, that which gives you all your rights and liberties, is restricted by your acquiescence to the law or by force. Natural liberty is never taken from you, it is inalienable from your person which is a natural being residing in this natural universe. When you agree to the law, you restrict your natural liberty and rights with regards to others and that is a voluntary association. Both civil law and the law of nations restricts actions and put accountability for actions into place that would not be accountable under natural law, save for immediate ones. One as their entire liberty and freedom under nature, but those are restricted by the voluntary, customary laws that are the civil law and the law of nations.

In the centuries that would follow this concept of being in bondage or enslaved would come to loggerheads with our understanding of all men being born with equal liberty and freedom. The idea that God gives universal freedom and liberty and that it is man who restricts it comes to be a major turning point for our modern understanding of civil liberties. And yet, even with civil liberties there is the law of nations to contend with and the obligations that individuals get to the customary law between Nation States.

What this system describes is a derivation of law into multiple layers starting from a base layer that is natural law. Natural Law is that law which is universal to being a part of the natural universe and it exists everywhere there is nature. This is the law of beasts and the natural world as it exists and we, as beings of nature, partake of natural law and derive all our liberty from it. Even when rights and liberties are granted from other law sources, those sources have the ability to do that only by being part of the natural world and they restrict or allow the use of those natural liberties and rights, but do not create them.

The very next layer is that closest to nature and comes from our ability to form the most basic of social units, which is the family. This layer is the law of nations, surprisingly enough, because it spans in an equal manner from families to the largest grouping of society called Nations. Our ability to recognize that other societies that form equal units called Nations is already in place by the fact that we form societies. Freedom, when juxtaposed against the areas of the law have restriction after natural law: the law of nations which restricts us as we form families and band together with other families to form societies and requires that individuals protect that society that supports them, private law which delimits how we may act in society and has accountability for our actions built into it which forms the State, and public law which cross all geography of society so that there are some common items held by all the members of a society that are publicly adhered to in support of the Nation.

In the last part of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century there has been a move away from the civil basis of the law of nations and to the written civil law and public law. While this does regularize some social norms, it also puts them in place as rigid structures that are unable to quickly adapt to changes in society due to that scriptum. To compound that problem many laws have been established that move the efforts of society to govern itself on a private basis out of the private realm and into the public realm. If we do not enjoy the set and local dictates of mere local, municipal and State government, then the movement of things given to individuals and society moved into the public realm cause untold problems due to the nature of the public realm.

That nature is the one that must put all forces into play from the law of nature up to the Sovereign Nation State and find some agreement amongst them all to form public policy and public law. In doing that, those things that are most flexible at the private realm of the law of nations becomes stultified and overbearing at the Nation State level. The modern US bureaucracy has seen the total number of regulations climb steeply after 1972 to the point where more than two-thirds and approaching three-quarters of ALL regulations have been passed since then. Something that was meant to 'stabilize' the dollar, the creation of the Federal Reserve Board, has done just the opposite, and the contrast between the steady rise in power of the dollar before 1912 to the steady decline of it afterwards is one that happens only when the Nation State seeks to control a vital aspect of the economy.

What happens with this is the shift in the power relationship moves from the multitude of hands vested in the people ever upwards to fewer and fewer hands that seek to reverse our understanding of liberty and freedom to one of the Sovereign 'granting' and 'supporting' certain 'new rights' that then cost the people, as a whole, in terms of liberty, freedom and even plain old cash money. When moving from a system of unwritten laws guided by local common consent and past practice to written script with law enforcement to uphold it, we move from the approval or disapproval of society that has local law force to one that vests the law in the few hands of the enforcers and those who create such laws. Yet that was always kept in reserve for crimes against persons or the Nation State: robbery, murder, rape, corruption of the young, and treason. Many lesser crimes of the local sort would include such things as adultery, fornication or even imbibing of alcohol, and would carry lesser punishments done at a local level. The movement of each of these upwards creates some commonality to the law and its practice, but becomes a jumping off point for those put into the position of writing such laws having more power in those realms over time. By placing more power in fewer hands, liberty suffers, but to place none in fewer hands we have no protection for liberty.

Thus the intertwining of the two starts off as a loose and generally informal association and unlike the trunks of great trees we find that these start out at bushes with many branches. What can be a healthy relationship between them then changes as the tree of liberty loses branches at the lowest level and must grow wider and straighter, while the tree of the law turns into something more akin to kudzu which rarely grows straight but can grow more powerful at the expense of liberty, itself. If liberty had more shade to guard its lower reaches and deprive the kudzu of life, it would grow farther from liberty and the great tree, itself, would move to its former form of greatly interacting bush able to thwart its counterpart by having no formality to its shape and size. By fostering the kudzu of written law, however, we put that part of liberty which remains in grave danger as we seek to regularize every aspect of man... until liberty dies and all we are left with is the kudzu of the law depriving all beneath it of light and life in favor of itself.

Sphere: Related Content

Fantasy Ideology and its fallout

The following is a white paper of The Jacksonian Party.

From Lee Harris, Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology:

Know your enemy” is a well-known maxim, but one that is difficult to observe in practice. Nor is the reason for this hard to fathom: If you are my enemy, it is unlikely that I will go very much out of my way to learn to see things from your point of view. And if this is true even in those cases where the conflict is between groups that share a common culture, how much more true will it be when there is a profound cultural and psychological chasm between the antagonists?

Yet, paradoxically, this failure to understand the enemy can arise not only from a lack of sympathy with his position, but also from a kind of misplaced sympathy: When confronted by a culturally exotic enemy, our first instinct is to understand such conduct in terms that are familiar to us — terms that make sense to us in light of our own fund of experience. We assume that if our enemy is doing x, it must be for reasons that are comprehensible in terms of our universe.

A Fantasy Ideology is one that can only determine the course of events and give policy within a limit set of mental boundaries that form up that ideology.  Al Qaeda has a belief system that includes the concept that if one good and strong deed is done, then Allah will sweep his hand out to do the remaining deeds for you and lower your enemy.  Lee Harris gives very good analysis of how that works and why, but the crux of the problem is that any fantasy ideology has within it fantastical concepts, magical concepts, that anyone without the ideology is put into a position of wondering why these people believe the world works that way when all experience demonstrates otherwise.

The premise presented by Mr. Harris is that when operating within a fantastical realm of thought that is supposed to determine how reality works, that those who get negative results do not take those results as an actual feedback to their actions, but as having missed some particular set of nuances inside the belief system that then need to be rectified.  One particular point is brought up by Mr. Harris when he examines how this plays out in America, and it is an extended quote so as to get full context of his observation when having talked with a friend about an Anti-Vietnam war rally in Washington, he disagreed with a friend about the productiveness of a disruptive event that could turn very counter-productive, his friend disagreed and that even if it was counter-productive it was good for his soul:

What I saw as a political act was not, for my friend, any such thing. It was not aimed at altering the minds of other people or persuading them to act differently. Its whole point was what it did for him.

And what it did for him was to provide him with a fantasy — a fantasy, namely, of taking part in the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. By participating in a violent anti-war demonstration, he was in no sense aiming at coercing conformity with his view — for that would still have been a political objective. Instead, he took his part in order to confirm his ideological fantasy of marching on the right side of history, of feeling himself among the elect few who stood with the angels of historical inevitability. Thus, when he lay down in front of hapless commuters on the bridges over the Potomac, he had no interest in changing the minds of these commuters, no concern over whether they became angry at the protesters or not. They were there merely as props, as so many supernumeraries in his private psychodrama. The protest for him was not politics, but theater; and the significance of his role lay not in the political ends his actions might achieve, but rather in their symbolic value as ritual. In short, he was acting out a fantasy.

It was not your garden-variety fantasy of life as a sexual athlete or a racecar driver, but in it, he nonetheless made himself out as a hero — a hero of the revolutionary struggle. The components of his fantasy — and that of many young intellectuals at that time — were compounded purely of ideological ingredients, smatterings of Marx and Mao, a little Fanon and perhaps a dash of Herbert Marcuse.

For want of a better term, call the phenomenon in question a fantasy ideology — by which I mean, political and ideological symbols and tropes used not for political purposes, but entirely for the benefit of furthering a specific personal or collective fantasy. It is, to be frank, something like “Dungeons and Dragons” carried out not with the trappings of medieval romances — old castles and maidens in distress — but entirely in terms of ideological symbols and emblems. The difference between them is that one is an innocent pastime while the other has proven to be one of the most terrible scourges to afflict the human race.

This concept is not unknown and was seen decades prior to the Vietnam war by another man who was examining the decline of Western Culture.  From Oswald Spengler, The Oswald Spengler Collection: Biographical Essay; Extracts From The Decline Of The West: The Hour of Decision:

We live in momentous times. The stupendous dynamism of the historical epoch that has now dawned makes it the grandest, not only in the Faustian civilization of Western Europe, but - for that very reason - in all world-history, greater and by far more terrible than the ages of Caesar and Napoleon. Yet how blind are the human beings over whom this mighty destiny is surging, whirling them in confusion, exalting them, destroying them! Who among them sees and comprehends what is being done to them and around them? Some wise old Chinaman or Indian, perhaps, who gazes around him in silence with the stored-up thought of a thousand years in his soul. But how superficial, how narrow, how small-minded are the judgments and measures of Western Europe and America! What do the inhabitants of the Middle West of the United States know of what goes on beyond New York and San Francisco? What conception has a middle-class Englishman, not to speak of a French provincial, of the trend of affairs on the Continent? What, indeed, does any one of them know of the direction in which his very own destiny is facing? All we have is a number of absurd catchwords such as "overcoming the economic crisis," "understanding of peoples," "national security and self-sufficingness," with which to "overcome" catastrophes within the space of a generation or two by means of "prosperity" and disarmament.

Spengler was coming to grips with a movement of Western Civilization that had started before his time and was gaining steam in his life.  He saw the results of the inward-looking trends of Western Civilization and in identifying those trends he sought to understand them as they play out in society.  He would examine this playing out in Germany, but the general thesis is plain across Western Culture that the insularity was leading to a belief that by giving popular catchwords or phrases that a problem could be defined, refined and then addressed all in good order.  Yet there is only the order we create in the world and it is not one that broad generalizations or categories can properly address.  The idea of a citizen being self-responsible and knowing enough of the world to make good decisions was being supplanted by one of moving decisions from the citizenry and upwards to governments.  By giving pleasing words to represent what were thought to be the problems, the citizenry was given that their politicians actually knew what they were doing.  That, however, led to World Wars and global ideological conflicts as those not joining in this Western inward conception of the world continued to act outside the constraints of political definition.

That latter effect he would go into, and it was one that politicians would utilize to further isolate the common man from world affairs and even the affairs of government:

Added to all this is the universal dread of reality. We "pale-faces" have it, all of us, although we are seldom, and most of us never, conscious of it. It is the spiritual weakness of the "Late" man of the higher civilizations, who lives in his cities cut off from the peasant and the soil and thereby from the natural experiencing of destiny, time, and death. He has become too wide awake, too accustomed to ponder perpetually over yesterday and tomorrow, and cannot bear that which he sees and is forced to see: the relentless course of things, senseless chance, and real history striding pitilessly through the centuries into which the individual with his tiny scrap of private life is irrevocably born at the appointed place. That is what he longs to forget, refute, or contest. He takes flight from history into solitude, into imaginary far-away systems, into some faith or another, or into suicide. Like a grotesque ostrich he buries his head in hopes, ideals, and cowardly optimism: it is so, but it ought not to be, therefore it is otherwise. We sing in the woods at night because we are afraid. Similarly, the cowardice of cities shouts its apparent optimism to the world for very fear. Reality is no longer to be borne. The wish-picture of the future is set in place of facts - although fate has never taken any notice of human fancies - from the children's Land of Do-Nothing to the World Peace and Workers' Paradise of the grown-ups.

Little as one knows of events in the future - for all that can be got from a comparison of other civilizations is the general form of future facts and their march through the ages - so much is certain: the forces which will sway the future are no other than those of the past. These forces are: the will of the Strong, healthy instincts, race, the will to possession and power; while justice, happiness, and peace - those dreams which will always remain dreams - hover ineffectively over them.

At this point we now merge Spengler and Harris, to see the passage of Western Civilization going into a mode of thought that is fantastical not only in its beginnings but in its outcomes.  The actual 'do this activity because it is a good activity' that was present before the ongoing urbanization of the West was being replaced by a fantastical conception of what man had to actually do to get good results: you just had to have good intentions and talk a good game, and let others do the hard work for you.  That is not living with reality, but a fantasy in which what is said gets magically enacted in the real world and made perfect because it had such a good start as an idea.  Narrative for your own life that you write now replaces actually living a life that is worth being narrated by others.  Instead of being ground up in the urban environment where you are just one individual isolated from others within a large city by yourself and unwilling to do the hard work of actually getting to know others around you, as was done in small towns heretofore, you need only join isolated social groups that have such similar beliefs that you think by acting across a wide-ranging physical landscape that you are also doing that for the mental landscape and that all other areas believe just as you do.  Never mind that is one, single, individual from a farther area that believes as you do, that individual must represent 'the masses' around him.  That is how personal heroic narratives go, and so you make your struggle that 'of the people' while not actually reaching out of your limited mental confines to experience a variety of the people who just might disagree with you.

Western Civilization, Spengler's 'white culture', is part of the ongoing evaluation of how man examines himself, places himself amongst his fellow man and then uses the observed differences to inform him so as to make decisions.  What this boils down to, although Spengler could not know it, is a more generalized condition of man via his own works, that would separate man from the inherent wisdom of working with nature and understanding it.  If all of our great works are so wonderful, and they are, then why are we to die so as not to appreciate them forevermore?  By creating the works, themselves, man does that self-isolation, and to live in cities is to live in a created realm that has little attachment to nature and yet nature comes to pull man out of it as nature can only be built upon, not replaced.  This new form of man has a name to him: Homo Urbanus.

What happens when man moves from nature to urban environments?  This is what Spengler addresses and the disconcerting problem is that as urban areas are created, they have a seeming facade of control to them via that creation.  Yet this urban creation does not cater to the needs of those who are there: the poor remain poor, the sick remain sick, and the needs to get basic 'services' to such people then taxes our creation that is not meant for so many to be crowded into urban environments.  The cries we hear, today, of the 'global problems' are not a reality but a reaction to our urban world being unable to cope with the needs of our own people and, thus, we recoil from it and cast about for something, anything, that we might be able to do something about so as to ignore the things we can do nothing about.  Our great works fail in many areas and our own mortality is reflected in that failure.

Those that follow politics see this play out on the Left that asserts certain future 'facts': that everyone will have affordable health care, that everyone will live in peace with each other, that our world is being destroyed by us, that we must change NOW in order to get to a perfect world.  That imperative is repeated for everything from Dreadnoughts to nuclear arms to 'population bombs' to a coming global ice age to being irradiated by nuclear reactors to the dangers of cars to the dangers of not eating right to global warming to health care: there is nothing that cannot be put off as a future 'fact' that can not be addressed NOW if you would just give up some of your liberty to those that run urban societies.  Do not bother these adherents of urban fantasy with such things as economics, human culture, manufacturing needs, limits on what can be done with medicine or the very fact that man being a creature of nature will never be perfect or perfectable, just able to be more perfect than he was.  By putting that into play and to show our advances, those who want a perfect world will then castigate you for how far we have yet to go... yet we can get there instantly if we give up our liberty, our self-identity and our worth to government.

To them.

Those that use the past to guide their decisions, who examine civilizations of all cultures, see this siren song again and again: serve Pharaoh and all will be well, be forced to unity under a warlord and all will be well, give Caesar the power to rule and all will be well, let the smart decide for you or the powerful or the politically well connected and all will be well.  Be it Agamemnon, Ramses, Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, Castro... the idea that an entire people can be embodied in a single representative who rules arises so often in mankind's past that it is to be seen as the norm of how man works.  Yet the Enlightenment was to move us down a path away from hero worship and from belief in a perfect State and to one of imperfectable man creating imperfect works and dealing with problems as they arose.  With increasing urbanization comes the belief that we CAN control what we build, that nature CAN be made to do our bidding, we forget the actual nature of the world and ourselves.  The grotesque fantasies of childhood are not dispelled so long as there is a belief that by dealing with WORDS you can deal with THINGS and EVENTS.  We have clear evidence over the history of mankind that trying to make future 'facts' come true, requires the most horrific of events to happen so as to make those 'facts' arrive.

We CAN make sure that the elderly are always cared for by government.  And create a system headed to insolvency that will bankrupt the Nation.

We CAN wage a 'war' on poverty.  And yet the poor are ever with us no matter how much we spend.

We CAN wage a 'war' on cancer.  And find that it is not one thing but many, many things that each need different approaches so that there is no 'silver bullet'.

We CAN have a post office for first class mail.  That now runs a deficit each quarter and needs massive subsidies to run in an inefficient manner.

We CAN give government the ability to 'regulate' our banking and currency.  Yet that has made one recession into a Great Depression and spurred on another recession to something deeper.

We CAN give government the ability to regulate corporations.  And find it was unable to do so and helped cause at least one recession if not more of them.

We CAN help people 'live the American Dream' to buy a home.  And build a corpulent bureaucracy full of political cronies who then strong-arm banks to give loans to people who don't have good credit or ANY credit at all nor the means to pay off such loans.

We CAN make drugs illegal.  And then spend billions upon billions chasing the now illegal drugs, putting small time users in jail by the truck load and giving a massive stimulus to global organized crime and terrorism.

We CAN give government the ability to tax disproportionately because it will NEVER tax the working class.  Which died as an ideal within years of the passage of that.

We CAN give government tremendous 'oversight' to the banking industry.  And find that it misses huge fraud systems by organized crime that even a decade on can not be unraveled.

We CAN give government more to do to make us better off.  And find our liberty, our lives, and our freedom threatened by so many regulations that even the regulators can not keep up with them all and YOU are at risk for breaking many, many federal regulations each and every second of every day and should probably be put in jail for your own good when you are born so you can have your life dictated to you without the niceties of faking civil society.

It is that worrying last part that makes the cycle difficult to understand, in that thinking that the words we put into regulations under law will, actually, change society and change mankind.  Instead we find ourselves coming to be not only ignorant of the proliferating regulations but coming to understand that such regulations, no matter how 'good' their ends, are not worth the means of their creation.  From that we come to accept that we, as individuals, will practice common sense when leading our lives with the understanding that all the good worded regulations are not worth learning.  From that we become criminal not from conscious intent but from not caring about the regulations and their goals.  Mankind under Homo Urbanus then moves towards Homo Criminalis:  Criminal Man. 

From Wim Bernasco, Foraging Strategies of Homo Criminalis: Lessons From Behavioral Ecology, Crime Patterns and Analysis, ECCA Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2009:

Environmental questions on how crime is enacted are perhaps regularly asked in criminology, but elaborated theories that explain behavioral variations are rare. Sometimes, routine activities theory (Cohen and Felson 1979) is used to answer such questions. According to this theory, crime arises from patterns of ordinary legal activities. When these patterns lead to motivated perpetrators and unprotected targets being present in the same place at the same time, the necessary and sufficient conditions for criminality are fulfilled, and crimes will occur. By this theory, crime is thus a question of “systematic coincidence.” An objection to this approach is that it does not take the goal-oriented behavior of many perpetrators sufficiently into account. For many of them, committing crimes is an everyday routine. Moreover, many criminals do not merely encounter unprotected targets by accident but consciously go in search of them, as is shown by the findings of many ethnographic studies (e.g., Wright and Decker 1997, 1994). Rational choice theory (Cornish and Clarke 1986) is also frequently used to answer environmental questions on crime. This theory is not concerned with criminal motivation either, but in this case because it assumes that every person is in principle prepared to commit crime. Rational choice theory regards every form of behavior as a goal-oriented choice directed toward accomplishing objectives. The point of departure is that, after weighing the advantages and disadvantages of various alternatives, a choice is made which is optimal given the aim (benefit maximization). Rational choice theory itself is abstract and requires supplementary empirical content through specification of the relevant aims and choice situations. To be able to apply rational choice theory to questions of how crime is enacted, a supplemental theory is therefore often necessary with respect to the choice situations with which individuals are confronted as they make decisions about when, where, how and against what target an offense will be committed.

An over-regulated world creates a rational choice space within it, that requires that each individual makes the best choice for themselves that is goal-oriented towards what they are doing.  As that often requires, or even demands, that regulations be broken to accomplish these activities, individuals do so: to perform legal activities in an efficient manner so as to yield best price vs cost results, the breaking of a regulation is more than just a savings point in monetary terms, but a negation of cost to the activity involved so as to yield greater gains and timeliness to the activity and transaction.  When government so believes it can control all behavior, all transactions, everything about commerce, we find that the overwhelming burden of it upon ourselves and our businesses not only does not increase accountability, but diminishes it.

From the WSJ 28 APR 2009:

Mr. Lewis has told investigators for New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that in December Mr. Paulson threatened him not to cancel a deal to buy Merrill Lynch. BofA had discovered billions of dollars in undisclosed Merrill losses, and Mr. Lewis was considering invoking his rights under a material adverse condition clause to kill the merger. But Washington decided that America's financial system couldn't withstand a Merrill failure, and that BofA had to risk its own solvency to save it. So then-Treasury Secretary Paulson, who says he was acting at the direction of Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, told Mr. Lewis that the feds would fire him and his board if they didn't complete the deal.

Mr. Paulson told Mr. Lewis that the government would provide cash from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to help BofA swallow Merrill. But since the government didn't want to reveal this new federal investment until after the merger closed, Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke rejected Mr. Lewis's request to get their commitment in writing.

"We do not want a disclosable event," Mr. Lewis says Mr. Paulson told him. "We do not want a public disclosure." Imagine what would happen to a CEO who said that.

After getting the approval of his board, Mr. Lewis executed the Paulson-Bernanke order without informing his shareholders of the material events taking place at Merrill. The merger closed on January 1. But investors and taxpayers had to wait weeks to learn that the government had invested another $20 billion plus loan portfolio insurance in BofA, and that Merrill had lost a staggering $15 billion in the last three months of 2008.

This was the second time in three months that Washington had forced Bank of America to take federal money. In his testimony to the New York AG's office, Mr. Lewis noted that an earlier TARP investment in his bank had a "dilutive effect" on existing shareholders and was not requested by BofA. "We had not sought any funds. We were taking 15 [billion dollars] at the request of Hank [Paulson] and others," Mr. Lewis testified.

The government as 'regulator' turns into the government as 'strongman'.  We go from it being for the common good for all transactions in banking institutional investment to be held openly between institutions for mergers and consolidations, to having them put into secret by government fiat so as to commit the very abuses the regulatory structure was meant to eliminate.  The ease of the criminal behavior on the part of those that are supposed to ENFORCE the regulations points to that change over to Homo Criminalis: the shift from breaking minor regulations for commercial expediency to undercutting the structure of transparent transactions for government expediency.  Homo Criminalis is Homo Urbanus who is willing to undercut the very structure of regulations that allows the urban environment to prosper because it is a 'good thing to do'.  This was what Spengler was talking about when those in government who are unconnected with reality try to force 'facts' to happen.

The dread of reality is not that it can be summed up in nice, neat catch phrases but that it can't.  When the expediency of 'we are doing this for your own good' replaces the actual and fair system of due process, you no longer have due process of law, but process to pre-defined outcomes.  And when reality does not conform to those outcomes, when bolstering the banking structure leads to unaccountable transactions and money that cannot even be FOUND that have come from the public coffers, you find that the COST of such 'facts' far outweigh any 'solution' that was meant to get to them.  That is not only in purely economic terms, although that is horrific on its own, but in social and cultural terms as this is an abrogation of trust at the highest levels of government.  As both Parties and both Presidents wanted this to happen, BOTH have demonstrated that they are untrustworthy.  If one President leaves with little trust, the next comes in picking up the exact, same methods and procedures and finds his trust eroded no end.

 

What is even deeper than the corruption of public institutions by such activities is that those pushing for the 'good ideas' that will assuredly lead to good ends, no matter what the process, have forgotten that it is the process that is to make good ends and to be satisfied with that process and its ends as they are a benefit to all of society.  This conception of wanting the good end and enacting laws to 'make it so', and becoming a personal hero because you took part in the pushing of the idea, is in harsh contrast with the previous version of heroic acts.  Laying down in front of a car to protest a war is not a heroic act to all of society, but to yourself, only: it is a narcissistic conception of hero that sees the only benefit of your actions coming to yourself, with hopes of praise from others that it was, indeed, heroic.  Unfortunately much of that praise comes from other self-oriented 'heros' who have a vested interest in giving praise so as to get praise.

Heroic deeds are done in service to an end, of course, no one would deny that.  A hero, however, does the deeds as they are related to the end, and does not allow them to become an end in, and of, themselves.  Some heroes set out on heroic journeys but find that there is a deep and grave cost to them in lost comrades, lost paths and even lost hope.  Odysseus was one such who was already a Hero of the Trojan War, a 'sacker of cities' in the grand set of conflicts that would see Troy stripped of her affiliated trade partners.  Returning a Hero from war, however, and helping to bring the Trojan War to an end, was not the end of the Heroes journey and Odysseus would find himself and his men hard put to survive the tempest ride home.  Indeed the older and wiser Odysseus would be the sole survivor of that journey: returning alone with the rest of his comrades in arms lost to destiny.  Hercules would find Goddess given madness given to him just long enough to have him kill his beloved wife and family.  Even knowing that this was not his own rage he saw that this is the rage that flesh is heir to and needed to atone for his being part man and part God.  His journey to atonement would require him to tame himself as seen in the Hydra where the passion of battle rage would defeat any who only saw red until they were exhausted and eaten by the multiplicity of heads their combat had created.  Jesus Christ would have his fate tested high and low, the problems of being a man exposed and fight through those only to have his final faith tested on the Cross: he was heroic for keeping his faith, not just in any single deed and would point out that we ALL have these problems within us.

The reasons that Heroes are universal is that they speak to the human condition writ large: they face dangers and problems so extreme that ours pale in comparison.  And yet the story of them is that they win through or die trying and that, often, achievement of the goal is not the end and it may not even be a good end.  Hercules can only find redemption in a living warrior's funeral pyre, Jesus would die on the Cross to have his eternal self revealed and Odin would be pinned to Yggdrasil and lose one eye to the crows only to be bestowed the gift seeing into the future from that empty socket even though he knew what the final destiny of the Gods was, already.  Odysseus would return to find suitors clustered at his old home, trying to get the hand of his wife in marriage after he had been presumed dead and gone.  She would be rewarded by her faith in him and his return would see the suitors put to a bloody end: there would be no other in the home of Odysseus worthy of his bow.  Each of these Gods and Men would seek out those necessary things to them and find a high, high price to pay for their fame, and we would tell stories of their works as ours are so small how can we not find some part of us that can get through our much smaller pains and problems?

To continue on with Spengler we get the following:

But Romanticism too, with its lack of a sense for reality, is just as much an expression of rationalist arrogance as are Idealism and Materialism. They are all in fact closely related, and it would be difficult to discover the boundary between these two trends of thought in any political or social Romantic. In every outstanding Materialist a Romantic lies hidden. [3] Though he may scorn the cold, shallow, methodical mind of others, he has himself enough of that sort of mind to do so in the same way and with the same arrogance. Romanticism is no sign of powerful instincts, but, on the contrary, of a weak, self-detesting intellect. They are all infantile, these Romantics; men who remain children too long (or for ever), without the strength to criticize themselves, but with perpetual inhibitions arising from the obscure awareness of their own personal weakness; who are impelled by the morbid idea of reforming society, which is to them too masculine, too healthy, too sober. And to reform it, not with knives and revolvers in the Russian fashion - heaven forbid! - but by noble talk and poetic theories. Hapless indeed they are if, lacking creative power, they lack also the artistic talent to persuade at least themselves that they possess it. Yet even in their art they are feminine and weak, incapable of setting a great novel or a great tragedy on its legs, still less a pure philosophy of any force. All that appears is spineless lyric, bloodless scenarios, and fragmentary ideas, all of them displaying an innocence of and antagonism to the world which amounts to absurdity. But it was the same with the unfading "Youths" (Jünglinge), with their "old German" coats and pipes - Jahn and Arndt, even, included. Stein himself was unable to control his romantic taste for ancient constitutions sufficiently to allow him to turn his extensive practical experience to successful account in diplomacy. Oh, they were heroes, and noble, and ready to be martyrs at any moment; but they talked too much about German nature and too little about railways and customs unions, and thus became only an obstacle in the way of Germany's real future. Did they ever so much as hear the name of the great Friedrich List, who committed suicide in 1846 because no one understood and supported his far-sighted and modern political aim, the building of an economic Germany? But they all knew the names of Arminius and Thusnelda.

Those saying they are in 'real world' views and then holding fantastical outlooks are substituting their fantasy of the way they wish the world should work for the way it does work.  They will tell you of all the things they support, all the changes they want, and how, really, everyone is striving towards that same end.  Without exception!  Save those nasty people who disagree with them... what is strange is that those living in this 'real world' conception are unable to put forth their own courage save in the 'I protested, I'm a hero!' way, that is neither heroic nor actually a deeply held theological nor ideological conception of how the world works.  Those who have protested war in Iraq, say, have grown quiet even though the conflict continues and grows bloody as we seek to pull out from it: they will take NO responsibility for the blood on their hands for their grand ideals and don't care if others die for their ideals because they are 'right'.  To be 'right' however, requires adult ownership and responsibility to one's beliefs and obligation to recognize that ideology has real world consequences.  Saying that Jason and the Argonauts getting the Golden Fleece is a great idea and then claiming part of their heroism for yourself is not being heroic: you have not done the hard work, suffered with the grieving, made amends for the dead, but just claim part of someone else's actions for yourself.  Leaving a war requires as much, if not more time, care and oversight so as to end it in an equitable fashion than getting INTO it.  The United States spend the end of 1941 to mid-1945 at war, and then would require more years to help rebuild Germany, Italy, France... and over a decade in Japan to ensure that a constitutional republic had really been established there.  And our forces are STILL not fully out of these problems and on station to continue our help DECADES later.

Thus the political Left in America is not only following a fantasy ideology but, like the Romantics in Germany, unwilling to actually toil at what they talk about.  Instead it is 'protest this' or 'march that' and 'chant the other' all the while the things that they seek to ease, poverty, sickness, corruption in politics, a better understanding between Nations, all of that can be DONE by individuals who are willing to put themselves into the fray to actually DO THE WORK.  The modern Left in America is not only unwilling to enter the fray, they criticize any who DO that and wish to put those works at an end because people actually dare, DARE to follow through on their beliefs with direct work for them.  They are all ready to 'man the barricades' and 'change society', but please don't ask them to move from their computers, coffee houses, or elite social groups to actually get their hands dirty doing any of that.  Homo Urbanus knows better because they 'know' what everyone wants.  Just don't bother them to talk with everyday people who may not agree with them to find out, as that would take actually going out into the world from their Urban environs which are self-imposed no matter if it is a teenager in an apartment in the heart of any major city or Theodore John Kaczynski who would write diatribes against modern society, spend long hours crafting bombs and then send those out to kill and maim innocents to prove just how deranged society was as he had spent so many hours describing.  Really, it had to be true if it would drive a nice man like him to do these things, doesn't it?

With that the Unabomber completed his cycle to Homo Criminalis deciding to impose his tracts on society via brute force of criminal activity.  What he did, instead, is show the derangement that comes with believing that mere words and great wishes describe society entire: they cannot.  To be flexible in outlook towards cultures means mutual respect of cultures, understanding the good and ills of each culture and working to improve your own while not endangering that of others.  The modern Left has no wish of that, and prefers a bland 'multi-cultural' blanket of easy to identify racial and sexual characteristics to the actual work of taking time to understand other people's, their cultures, their mores, their ethics and their moralities.  Self-sequestered into pointless 'me too' heroics, and group thinking, the Left demonstrates a form of decadence about their own cultural interests: they don't have any to judge anyone by save within their groups and identity political realms.

It is telling that 'identity politics' so suffuses the Left that anyone who doesn't act according to the precepts of it are then only seen in the prism of 'identity politics'.  If you disagree with a black or hispanic candidate you are dubbed: racist.  That misses the point of those who can only judge by 'race' and who call 'racism' at every turn are, in themselves, practicing racism.  The idea that anyone else just might have a different way to view the world and politics, and accept that policy is a good way to judge character is not acceptable as it requires the actual examination of policy and then trying to see if that is acceptable to an entire Nation.  Anyone who criticizes the modern Left on a policy basis is only judged by the Left's own inward looking prism of 'identity politics' based on race, gender, ethnicity, religion and social class.  The concept of good policy that must work across all classes, races, genders and not infringe on the rights or liberty of anyone is now apostasy to the Left: to speak of it makes you a RADICAL in their eyes, who is racist, classist and so on.

It would be funny if it weren't so lethal.

This is the politics of 'the ends justifies the means' so that any, and I do mean ANY, excuse as a good end then justifies the expansion of government, erosion of liberty, removal of freedom and vesting more and more power in National government that then can make laws and rules to cover any aspect of life from the moment you are born to the moment you die: the State will decide if you are to be born, how you are to live, and when you die.  By forcing society to 'do good' via government, the powers of government being those that we vest in it for our own security, are then turned against the people of a Nation.  There is no 'good' in that even if the ends are reached as expected, but those ends are never reached because they are unreachable objects in and of themselves.  To remove poverty we must have none that are rich and, thusly, impoverish everyone to a life of servitude in which their liberty gains them NOTHING.  Indeed, being able to prosper by one's own works is seen as an absolute threat to the modern Left that prefers to imbue government with being able to do everything good and that people just have to be restrained so that they can do good.

In putting forward so much for the State and so little for individuals, what is sought is the life of servitude, no matter how 'nice' or 'good' for all citizens.  The 'elite' will 'toil' with grand ideas that they will then force everyone ELSE to work at.  Yet it is that very elite structure now in the highest reaches of government, and it has been there for decades, that have increased the amount of regulations on us to the point where over 2/3, if not 3/4 by now, of all regulations have been enacted since 1972.  And yet we have seen no end of poverty.  Sickness is still with us.  Our infrastructure decays rapidly. Businesses find it hard to expand and grow due to regulations that put high burdens on growing so as to protect Big Business elites.  It is laughable that 'regulations' actually threaten large businesses when they are the ones able to get seats at the table to WRITE THEM no matter which party is in power.

Thus the modern RIGHT now has the problems of the modern LEFT in believing that more regulations, more laws, and more interference in the lives of individuals is a GOOD THING.  If that is merely lethal when done by one-half of the political 'spectrum' then it is FATAL to liberty and freedom when done by ALL of it.  Yet this last election demonstrates that little more than 50% of the public eligible to vote actually voted.  That 49% that didn't vote are not absent by mandate, but by choice: they purposefully stay away from the polls as they find nothing, no one, worth voting FOR.  They are not 'leaving it to the knowledgeable', but telling the 'knowledgeable' that they have NOTHING to offer these that do not vote.  Any organization that could offer even a fraction of the non-voting public a reason TO vote would swing politics in this Nation completely in ways that neither the Left nor Right can fathom.  To do that, however, takes hard work, meeting your fellow man, understanding him, and working out the basis of agreement so as to fashion a new political view that starts to bring down the edifice created by these 'modern' parties and yet stay fully in the modern world.

As neither Party seems able to do that, these days, we now must look to the people who don't show up at elections, those who are so fed up with the system that they have withdrawn their support for it.  Perhaps they have some folks willing to do things with each other so as to create a better Nation and remove the laws and regulations that have turned us into Homo Criminalis.  Because neither Party will support liberty and freedom for the common man as they both believe that by mandating the good they are actually creating it.  Instead they practice a far worse evil than mere criminality: they seek to remove the actual good behind doing good of your own free will.

There is no worse evil than that as it becomes the source of all tyranny.

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Two parts does not a spectrum make

The following is a white paper of The Jacksonian Party.

How bad is the 'health care reform' 'debate'?

Two items of note display just how badly stultified 'debate' is in America.

First from Instapundit's reader Quent Cordair on what he saw at the protest rally against 'health care reform' in San Francisco:

I was there all afternoon, protesting with a dozen friends from the Golden Gate Objectivists club. Even more proof that there was a disturbance in the force: from what I saw, there was only one lonely counter-protester all afternoon! She’s the one in the video, pacing the back of the crowd with the sign “Who would Jesus insure?” with “Answer: Everybody!” on the sign’s reverse. During a few minutes of silence being solemnly observed by the protesters, marking the politicians’ refusal to hear our concerns, the counter-protestor continued to frenetically march around the perimeter, chanting loudly, “Free Health Care For Everyone!” We endured her silently for awhile, until someone raised the responding chant, “Free Beer For Everyone!” The counter-protester gave up and went away. It was a good day.

The second is an article is linked by Jonah Goldberg from his Liberal Fascism site at NRO, and it goes to a blog article at the Baltimore Sun which clearly doesn't understand Godwin's Law.  The interesting part is not the article, itself, but the commentary which follows and one thing, in my mind, that is clearly missing from all 'health care reform' 'debate' that is going on today.  I will give the very broadest of overview summary of the major positions held in the commentary:

First is that government is the better 'option' for providing health care to 'everyone'.

Second is that private businesses are better able to do this and that the system, itself does not need a full scale overhaul.

 

In fact nearly all 'debates' I have seen, all commentary at blogs and what little I watch of television have these two centered in the 'debate'.  This debate is so skewed, so twisted, that a woman could hold up a basic WWJD sign and posit that GOVERNMENT is the choice of JESUS.

Now think about that for just a moment.

If you were sick and couldn't get to Jesus, would he instruct the messenger to have the sick person supplicate to the Roman Empire?

Can you even begin to imagine that?

I can't!  I'm no Christian scholar, no daily reader of the Holy Bible, nor much of a mind reader, but just based on what Jesus did and said in his life (and he could heal with just a touch, do remember that) can you imagine that he would send someone to the tender mercies of the Roman Empire for care?  It was this same Jesus who would have us render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and render unto God what is God's, and that the greatest good we can do in our lives is to take care of each other.  That is YOU caring for the sick, the poor, the needy and those who are less well off in mind, body and spirit than YOU are.

Have the State look after the medical and spiritual needs of the sick and needy?

Would Jesus really say that?

Of course he wouldn't, he wanted to make sure that people understood that the State can not do everything and that all of our Earthly works are under God's domain and that we are to understand that God does not rule directly and that we are to demonstrate our worthiness of spirit in this realm so we can receive the rewards of the next after we die.  What a horrific thing to imply, that Jesus would want the State involved in your health and the life and death decisions of your own, personal, care.  That is totally ignoring YOUR responsibility to PERSONALLY care for the poor, the sick, the needy, which demonstrate how much you actually have the good nature necessary for an easy transition to the after-life.

Beyond that, however, I examine in a personal article the major problem with the debate as it has been staged and winnowed down to a 'two choices out of all choices spectrum'.  That winnowing down does not even consider, as seen at the Baltimore Sun's commentators (at least up to a day or so ago when I first started going through the commentary) that there is a third and completely viable, low overhead, efficient and open to all means of providing health care.  Yet this third way is never, not once, talked about and our tax code is set up to create big insurance companies which can out-compete this third form of care via the spiraling of costs that goes with subsidizing care and medications via the tax code.  This third method does not have money to invest in lobbyists to get it further tax breaks because it is so efficient it can not justify getting them.  Yet that very efficiency leaves them at the mercy of a spiraling cost market with no regulator, no Congress, no President willing to sponsor legislation that will PROTECT them from these costs and LEVEL the playing field so as to encourage this third way to survive and thrive, so as to provide MORE coverage to the poor and needy.

In my article I look at other things that need to be done including tort reform to limit damages to actual costs to fix malpractice problems (even if they are disabling that person is due for the health they once had for their normal life) but without the pain and suffering awards lottery that drives up insurance costs beyond all recognition for health care providers. 

Second is to treat health care as an investment and provide vehicles so that individuals with predispositions to certain medical problems can purchase major treatments years or decades before they are needed and then have a guarantee of that procedure at a given future time when it is redeemable.  This would allow individuals to address their family history and begin the hard process of admitting they may not be young and healthy forever, but need future care.  This is a form of direct investment to the health care industry and an encouragement to sustain new and innovative research to specific problems by institutions that would be pre-funded for delivery of care.  In this way the cost of treatment will decline as better procedures are found, and the institution providing such care will now have a long-term investment stream that will be based on how well they provide services now and are preparing to provide them in the future.  This investment, like all investments, can be bought, sold and traded so that when you move you can get a fair market equivalent between what you invested in one locale versus another.

Third is to make donations to HSAs tax-free so as to lower the burdened cost of health care by removing the tax burden on it.  Likewise is to encourage businesses to contribute to their employees accounts on a tax free basis, letting their employees manage accounts which roll-over and grow year-to-year.   So long as money is withdrawn for health care expenses it is not taxed, at all.  This would encourage people to invest in their future health care so that when that most expensive last year of life arrives, they can PAY FOR IT.  Lower the tax burden, now, so we can lower the overall cost, later.

The last major way I look at, however, is this unmentioned way of doing things.

You know, the one that Jesus told us about?

And it is the system being ruined by modern health care even though it was once the sustaining method of providing care to the poor, the sick, the elderly and those who could not afford treatment at for-profit institutions.  It is not the way of the State or of corporations.

It is the way of Charity.

After the 2004 Christmas Tsunami, the #1 largest contributor to recovery and relief to that region was, bar none, the American People via the charitable institutions we have.  Number 2 was our government.  All others pale in comparison and even our government ran substantially behind the power of the American People to do good on their own.

The efficient hourly rate of providing services in the US government, at best, is 65%.  That is the burdened hourly rate of return for every dollar put in to the very best of government agencies, which, strangely enough, resides at that most scorned part of DoD.  That 65% represents the 65 cents on each dollar that is spent actually doing work, with the rest of the time spent on paperwork, unnecessary time spent for non-productive uses, and other overhead that eats up time, like filling out forms, going to EEO seminars and the like.  Almost every meeting could be included in that, but I would like to keep the best above 65% and the government and industry do not count them that way, by and large.

Commercial industry in the same sector provides 80% efficiency: 80 cents on the dollar is spent in productive work hours.  Remember the best of government does not hold a candle to the average of industry.  So here is a prime factor of why so many on the 'conservative' and Right want government to butt out of trying to provide health care: it is horrifically inefficient at best and the government average is 55%, meaning that delta is picked up for by the American taxpayer.

These two are at loggerheads on the Left and Right and have so turned the debate into pap that they do not look at the next most efficient form of providing care and services.

Charity has its own overhead rate analysis and that typically falls between 7-15% waste or 85-93% efficiency.  Yes United Way is corrupt and falls down to 65% but Direct Relief International is at 1%.  That latter flies materials to disaster areas on a global basis and keeps stocks of donated goods ready at a moment's notice to provide immediate and direct relief to those who are stricken by disasters.  Thus the worst of charities compares with the best of government, the average of charities out works the commercial sector and no one, literally no other institution on the planet can touch the very best and most efficient and dedicated of charities.

Period.

And yet we do not give our citizens a full tax write-off to donate to Charity.  Nor do we give a tax write-off on even a minimum wage basis for those who donate time to Charitable works.

Even with that, the American People are the largest donor to Charitable works on the planet, outstripping all governments and when you include the time spent by Americans performing Charity to their fellow citizens, there is no Nation on the planet that provides as much time, effort, and energy as the American People to helping our fellow man.  Not only at home but on a global basis.

But we discriminate and heavily AGAINST charitable donations and provide SUBSIDIES to commercial industry?

What the hell is up with that?

You would think that those on the Right who are 'good Christians' would be bellowing in outrage that we subsidize commerce and discriminate against Charity!  Yet I can't find a peep about this on the Right.

And on the Left you would think that providing no cost care to the poor and means tested care to everyone else would be the MODEL that they would push for, to show that the great good of helping our fellow man is worth supporting and that everyone pays what they can afford to get such care while the good citizens of the Nation make up the rest.  Do they do that?  NO.  They seek to tax ALL CHARITABLE DONATIONS and discriminate further in support of undermining Charity and supporting Big Businesses that would result so that they an be 'regulated' by government and become the lap dogs of government.  No good word for Charity and our personal responsibility to aid our fellow man is ever, not once, spoken of without, in the very same breath, the concept of government being stated.

This is not a 'debate' that is looking at the best ways to cut costs, seek efficient care, ensure that the poor are not burdened to get care and that everyone else pays what they can afford.

It is, instead, a debate between Big Government supporters and Big Business supporters and no one, ever, talking about our responsibility to our fellow man as a personal burden that we each must carry on our own, to demonstrate that we can, indeed, do good works and are worthy individuals who hold that care as important enough to donate time and effort to.  Both seek to shift that burden from your shoulders and put it on someone else's who will NOT do a good a job of holding the spending accountable as Charity does.  After the Christmas Tsunami of 2004 the first groups to cite waste, fraud and abuse of donated goods and money was CHARITIES who served as the watch dog on ALL the donations for the region.  They pointed out the corruption, waste and abuse of funds by large donors and recipients, and then changed their own giving ways to go to those that WOULD deliver relief without the corruption.

Charity did that.

Not governments.

Not commercial enterprises.

Charity.

Charity that actually wants to deliver goods and services to the needy at the lowest cost possible to help the greatest number possible and never have to turn away the stricken.

Just try to get anyone to say a good word about Charity and how it needs our support to thrive and benefit all our citizens.  As it helps not just those receiving such help, but those giving it who know that they are creating a stronger society by easing such burdens and doing good works for their fellow man.

I can't find that in the modern 'debate', this actually doing the things being said that are wanted to be done by those willing and able to do it.  Regulation I can find lots of.  Helping our fellow man directly?

Lotsa luck, I tellya.

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One graph to rue them all

The following is a personal perspective paper of The Jacksonian Party.

I had started thinking on what the current environment of the population would mean for the elections in 2010, what with the vehemence that is being shown against House and Senate members and that so many of them are of the Incumbistani Party, which holds its head up high inside the DC Beltway and disdains the vassal State of Electistan that they really don't wish to represent but must as that is their 'duty'. The Emirs of Incumbistan are very, very cozy in their relationship with their respective parties, both of which have worked very hard to make it impossible for a new party to form on even a State to State basis, not to speak of a National basis.

As the Incumbistani do have to stand for re-election from time to time, although often in 'safe' districts that their parties have gerrymandered into existence to protect those 'safe' seats, most of that is a rubber stamp affair with those backers who get goodies from the Incumbistani government wanting to show up to continue the goody stream, while those not getting goodies feel that they are left out and, soon, unrepresented by their 'Representative' who has the vested interest of those who gain from his or her votes to get goodies to them as a higher principle than the rest of the plebians there.

From memory I had dredged up that this was a modern symptom due solely to the changes of the 'Progressive' era. Thus I dredged through my posts and found the lovely graph of the problem, itself:

Courtesy: thirty-thousand.org

And there they are!

My initial feeling was that it had been a long time since there was even a 30% turnover in Congress, and I was right. The last times that happened in the post-'Progressive' era were: 1904, 1912-1916, 1922, 1934. As the top graph's red line is percentage, the startling artifact is that all Congresses prior to 1902 had never REACHED a 70% return rate. That era of 1896 to 1902 was the one-way 'ratchet' to modern Incumbistani politics, in which America went from 'throwing the bums out' on a continual basis to 'throwing the bums back in' on a continual basis. That percentage shift is as clear as night and day where the left half never reaches up to 70% turnover and the right half rarely reaches below 70%.

That increase that temporarily went outside all historic bounds up to that point changed the political landscape of the United States in ways I have gone over before: the Senate became a directly elected body and no longer represented Statehouses in the federal government, taxation was allowed to be directly and disproportionately levied upon all the people so that the federal government could discriminate who paid how much which was previously left to the States to do, the House capped its size outside of the proportionate powers given to it in the Constitution, and the federal government got the notion that it could restrict the use of medications and criminalize them and arrest doctors for the distribution of them.

The after-effects are astounding to contemplate, in that the government changed from being the protector and care-taker of the Nation to being the dominant player in the Nation, politically. Washington, DC went from a sleepy town to a metropolitan capitol with powers resident in it that none of the signers of the Constitution could imagine, although many of the Anti-Federalists could and did imagine them and stated them quite clearly. We went from the politics of the knock-down, drag-out fights of local concern to ones of huge party machines saying to the States just how a party could form and get on the ballot in each and every State. And when a new party could manage to gasp some air, the rules were changed, yet again to deprive them of air supply. Having come from a family that supported a third party that was once on the State ballot and then lost that due to political changes from the two major parties, I can say that with confidence and the party, itself, reported this happening in more than one State. Even if you don't like socialists, their right to be on the ballot with a party should not be DENIED by any political system.

That change-over would see the federal budget go from modest means, and barely able to support a foreign war in the Philippines, to a massive, government involved complex that would support the last standing million man army in Europe after WWI and be the key part of defeating three of the most dictatorial governments in WWII and defeat the last one in the Cold War. The expense of that was and is astronomical, to gain the most powerful and robust fighting force the planet has ever seen not just once, but multiple times: WWI, WWII, Cold War with Conscription, Cold War without Conscription, and the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately that power went far beyond just defending the Nation and has put in places schemes now causing the government and the Nation to go insolvent in trying to 'help' retirees, the sick, elderly, home owners... each of these places of intervention have drained money from our economy, concentrated power into government at the highest level, and now leave the people at the mercy of the Emirs of Incumbistan who feel that a bureaucracy can actually 'fix' health care while the bureaucracy is the PROBLEM in health care.

NOT conniving pharmaceuticals who now sign on with money and influence to get a bill THEY like.

NOT big retail chains who sign on to the concept so they can make the cost of becoming big insurmountable by PURCHASING political support.

NOT by overseas oil companies that seem to make the same 8% profit no matter where the market is because they have to cope with a fast paced and changing marketplace that has booms and busts thus making the ability to keep experienced hands on the payroll very difficult.

NOT the doctors who now spend as much money and time for staff to fill out paperwork FOR insurance companies as they do in TREATMENT of the ill.

NOT in insurance companies who do make a profit so they can expand coverage and pay back those that invest in them with dividends (and just why don't folks pick up mutual funds that invest in them to get some of THAT money back?).

No, there is a source of these problems and they don't start in 2004, 1992, 1986, 1978, 1966, or even 1948. They start in 1942 when the system was SUBSIDIZED to convince those who were retiring due to Social Security to stay at work: it was a non-cash benefit that wasn't taxed. That's right we subsidized the retirement and then had to subsidize convincing folks to COME BACK TO WORK. Social Security you can trace back to 1934-36, right after that last big turnover in Congress of 70%.

When the President cites 'history' of how we pay for health care,he isn't going back into deep and ancient history, not back to the Founding, not back to the Reconstruction, not back to the Progressive era, nor even back to the Roaring 20s (and damn I would love to have a Chicago Typewriter!). Nope, it is recent history within the living memory of our parents and grandparents! Only to the Baby Boom and post-Boomer generations is this 'history' in that it pre-existed them.

This 'problem' starts WITH government trying to do 'good' and having it backfire on them because they paid ZERO attention to changing demographics for life expectancy when they signed the bill into law back in the '30s. The US Census had that information THEN, BTW.

Even worse is that prior to the 1940's there was no problem in health care AT ALL.

Zilch.

The 'problem' comes when you subsidize insurance and get the problem of subsidies.

European Nations went one step further and made their systems 'universal' for State run coverage and got the Tragedy of the Commons.

Prior to the post-WWII era the US had universal coverage. They got it through charitable hospitals and doctors. Local physicians who did FREE work for the poor and less well off. Pharmacists who could give price breaks to long standing customers. And because the multiple immigrant communities had their own ideas about 'health care' they also went to barbers, butchers and other tradesmen who had a dab hand at injuries and setting bones as they had been doing that for decades as part of their trade. Not as doctors, but being a doctor wasn't all it was cracked up to be and is still more of an 'art' than a 'science'. Which is why doctors 'practice' at it. In case you missed what those things doctors set up are called.

To get to that era of 'change' in the 1930's you needed an entrenched elite class in DC.

That started in the 'Progressive' movement of the late 19th and early 20th century.

It was a light switch going from government doing very little and people exercising full liberty to government taking control in people's lives and restricting liberty.

You want medical marijuana? The 'Progressives', those lovely moralists, took that right from you as they did with all medications by demonizing the worst practices with them. The would NOT allow merely telling the people of the Nation what was in their foods and medicines to be enough... yet in the few years of that the people started to move from snake oil and to better prepared foods and medications... no the idea of restricting your liberty due to the abuses of a very few was the idea across the board.

There were problems with many of those medications, yes.

Restricting the liberty of the people and throwing them in jail for the abuse of those medications was not and is not an answer. Unfortunately church groups of that era didn't want to get that involved on a personal level but wanted government to just outlaw the stuff on moral grounds. Yes get government to do your dirty work for you, and forget that YOU are the one with the moral imperative from the Creator.

Before that era there were NO national restrictions on what you could take and a damned good thing that was because many of the Civil War vets were addicted to morphine due to war injuries and nothing, then or when the restrictions went into place, would solve their pain problems. Yes to do a moral 'good' those surviving veterans were made to SUFFER.

Just like the modern Left wants to do with 'The Greatest Generation' by health care 'reform'.

You know, the folks who went overseas to kill Fascists, Nazis and Imperialists?

Gotta love how they are being called Fascists by those too young to know what Fascism is as they begin to practice it.

That all starts with that light-switch in the Congress.

Things were not all smooth and sweetcakes before it, but it sure as hell beats being berated for what you eat by food Nazis, that's for damned sure. The abuses, even the very worst of them, were never amenable to governmental power in a land where liberty is the highest value for all citizens.

Of course if you don't give a damn about liberty and love authority, then you love the modern era, no end.

Tyrants, authoritarians, despots and dictators always love power and the fellow travelers looking to give it to them.

Perhaps, just perhaps, liberty is not dead in America.

We shall see if the authoritarians, who always say they will win and that you shouldn't resist... we shall see if they are right, and we are supine sheep for the fleecing and slaughter of the lambs... or if we are a free people willing to suffer the problems of liberty so that we can use our liberty to address those same problems without the help of government.

Because that is what We say as We the People.

Soon we will learn if we should have listened to the Anti-Federalists just a bit more, and paid less attention to the erudite supporters of a system that had the readily seen problems in it that we now see manifesting themselves today.

That choice rests in you.

Do your trust a bureaucrat more than yourself?

If you don't, then just when do you say: enough is enough?

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Price vs value

"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892, Act III
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900)

Visiting Megan McArdle's site (h/t Instapundit) where she writes about her writing about nationalized health care and how critics are trying to paint a very narrow window for criticism while the larger objective is to get nationalized health care is interesting.  What is more interesting is that a number of commentators speak about chronic diseases and their cost.

So, having a number of chronic conditions or conditions which can complicate chronic conditions or being treated with medication that treats chronic conditions that lead to further and worse fall out from chronic conditions... do you follow that?

One chronic condition can get complicating factors from other, possible, causes and medicating to lower the risk of those separate causes then lowers the risk of further complications to the main condition down the road.  Thus you treat the others at the first sign of problems or, due to the effects of medications for those conditions, you have the medication supplied BEFORE any of those other conditions show up as they help the main condition stave off further problems.

Got it now?

Good!

Now I've had type I diabetes (previously 'Juvenile Diabetes' but it now has been demonstrated to show up independent of age and other conditions, although may have some environmental factors associated with it as seen in the Scandinavian effect of more cases showing up in late fall and winter) since 1983.  Over 25 years with it and nearly 26.  As type I is not amenable to the medications for type II, and has different symptoms with it, and is the low percentage of all types of diabetes (~10%), it has some similar and some different risk factors with it although complications run about the same direction.

Starting in the early 80's and going to the early 90's I was on NPH insulin, one injection per day.  That had crept up with a resistance to it, but that (as it turns out) is not a permanent effect.  I was switched to Lantus (glargine) which lasts longer in the blood stream, but my use of it crept up, also.  Before all this I was and am prone to infections of the upper respiratory tract, and if you have ever experienced a dual ear infection, sinus infection, pleurisy and vomiting, I know EXACTLY what you have gone through.  All at the same time.  Without modern antibiotics of the 1970's I wouldn't be here, today.

Now this all changed when I volunteered for a trial study at NIH.

You know, National Institutes of Health?

I was, relatively, well at that point but a few of my cholesterol and other numbers needed to be 'baselined' so I was taken off of one statin that was causing me to gain weight and put on another.  That all squared away I was then put through a day or so of 'how to properly maintain your blood glucose level for this study' which turned out to be a primer on how to do this for your life.  It is not that complicated, and takes about a month to finally get all the proportions worked out right so you are balancing carbohydrate net intake per meal with the proper amount of insulin to counter it, per meal, and then do a test two hours later to ensure that your glucose levels are in the preferred range.

Thus my control of my condition went from 80's understanding relatively so-so to early 2004 understanding by the top researchers on the planet.

With poor control I was getting normal and expected complications due to how long I have had the disorder.  I had three bouts of laser surgery to cauterize areas at the back of my eyes that were seeping interstitial material.  I was getting some peripheral neuropathy, mostly in my feet, but still had and have decent sensation in them.  Basically, at 20 years onwards I was doing pretty well, all things considered.  And being a government employee and having chosen a health plan, all of the complication were picked up by the plan.

Now things changed in 2004-05 as one of the medications given to me to lower my cholesterol level had truly nasty and undesired side-effects that are not well publicized but horrific for anyone getting them.  Beyond memory loss I was having sudden lapses where I could not do anything with my body but was conscious.  Lethargy was omnipresent and my stamina plummeted to almost nothing.  Starting in DEC 2004 when these problems first started to appear, they were not correlated to the study medication and the best minds at NIH got a chance to try and figure out what was going on.  My personal physician also started work on it.  My endocrinologist identified the medication and the problem immediately... that was FEB 2005 and things were getting worse as the loss of body control was happening multiple times per day.  I was taken off the medication but the problems persisted and were not getting better.  By MAY 2005 I had my primary care physician fill out the paperwork to take me off the roads and I could no longer function at work.  From MAY-JUL 2005 I went to a neurologist who had a preliminary diagnosis in JUN 2005 (after an MRI) and final diagnosis after a PET scan (which I paid for out of pocket) as I wanted the condition nailed down.

From then, onwards, I have been dealing with a steadily improving condition via treatment with medications that we still don't know very much about even after they were invented in the mid-1970s.  Seems fitting as my genetic background has a predisposition to the condition that the prescription medication caused to become present.  That is no hard and firm diagnosis, but it does fit all the facts and will continue to be the best-fit explanation until a better one can come along.  Turns out my own endocrinologist was thinking of putting me on that medication, anyway, because of my underlying condition.

That period from DEC 2004 to JUL 2005 saw me taking more blood tests, getting imaged multiple ways, having my heart scanned in 3D (I was interested but my lack of energy and stamina kept that to a minimum), having pins inserted into my muscles to measure them and then have them artificially stimulated (it is not as unpleasant as it sounds, but isn't pleasant, either) and until I got a neurologist who could figure it out the next thing up was a spinal tap.

Mind you, this is with the VERY BEST researchers and clinicians I could get my hands on in the DC metro area...

To go through the disability paperwork I had to fill out a raft of forms from SSN.  That was necessary for my government disability, I expected nothing, zip, zilch from SSN because I was just debilitated to the point I couldn't drive, could walk around the block, and had problems staying awake most of the day.  My lady helped me and SHE was fine!  She had problems understanding the SSN paperwork which appears to be meant to defeat anyone who does not have their full cognitive abilities to their credit which was my case at the time.  Remember, this is FOR that exact, same sort of problem, so the paperwork is made in such a way as to stymie those needing help.

Gotta love that.

My diabetes, however, was in great control!

And I was put on two non-systemic medication to address cholesterol which runs relatively high in my family.

So, from that, and trying to avoid things like dialysis by keeping my blood vessels open NOW means a raft of medications, many that can have pretty nasty side effects and a tendency towards low blood pressure... I have had nurses at NIH look at me and ask if I was actually still conscious when they took my blood pressure.  Twice.  Two different machines.  Then come back in a half hour only to find that it hadn't increased.

So, what is my annual cost to keep going?  Well, I will round and ballpark some figures.

Insurance cost: $7,800 /year

Insulin - $120/year for one on co-pay, market price $370/year

$120/year for a second type co-pay, market price $480/year

$120/year for a third type co-pay, market price $480/year

$160/year for syringes co-pay, market price $160/year

$180/year for pen needles co-pay, market price $180/year

$200/year for test strips co-pay, market price $1,560/year (I kid you not)

$45/year for lancets co-pay, market price $75/year

Hypertension - $240/year co-pay, market price $240/year (now if I take the pet version my price plummets)

Cholesterol - $240/year co-pay for the first medication, market price $340/year

$240/year co-pay for the second medication, market price $2,700/year

Neurological condition - $240 year co-pay, $800/year

Cost of medical visits varies, but I have few of them per year at this point.  A hard guess is $60/year co-pay, $600/year market

Dental costs vary widely due to my conditions and my ability to actually be conscious in a dental chair.  If I was healthier I could give an estimate on that, but I can't... the price differential due to my plan only giving partial dental coverage is generally a wash.

When I add up the numbers I come to the total cost insured, with cost of insurance: $9,765/year

Total cost without insurance: $7,985/year

Why stick with insurance?

Since I get my lady covered under this plan her costs, added in, would tend to balance things a bit, making health insurance a bargain.  It would be even more of one if we could just get to single plans, but that is not to be in our lovely world.  Shocking, but true, we could knock nearly $2,000 off our total coverage costs if we had two single plans.  Yup, divorce and re-marry!  Hey what a way to 'preserve the family'!  Thank you to the two party system for making something simple so asinine.

Plus my conditions and possible complications.

I am NOT a relatively healthy individual.  And yet just about half my net income goes towards my health.

I really do love how people make the argument, to me, that 'this is for those who are very sick', not realizing that I am very sick.

If I had federal paperwork ON TOP of all the other paperwork INCLUDING the daft SSN paperwork, I would not be here.

What I did do was ascertain the shortened life expectancy of people with my condition, the cost of long term complications, and then started planning when I was younger to deal with these problems.  My personal precautions were about half-done when the second chronic disorder was visited upon me.  Yet planning, saving, and working out how to deal with these things with the ones I love meant that I would not be a burden on them, that I would not be in poverty and that I would not need charity.  I have looked into getting a price break on some of my medications, but I am just 'too rich' for that.  Yes, take what I pay out and multiply it by 2.  That is 'too rich' in the way of income.  I do have other sources of funds, yes, but the plans I made have served me well.  I have gotten unexpected support from others, but that is extra and I am damned and duly grateful for such gifts and am not too proud to accept them... because I know I am not in the best of shape.

My life plan had not included anyone else, and I had expected to live a life alone.  That plan was adapted with changed circumstances, but the basis of preparing early for one's future meant that I had to face the basics of my condition as it was, then, and not expect a damned insurance company to pick up the tab for my costs.  Plus I did not and do not expect a single penny from SSN as it is heading towards insolvent and draining cash out of the rest of the federal budget which will sink this government like a rock heading into the abyss.

 

What is my 'solution' for 'health care reform'?

 

If you read past this, don't complain.

 

First - tort reform - Any malpractice suits are limited to actual costs to fix what wasn't done right and, yes, pay for your upkeep if the problem is permanent.  NO 'pain and suffering' awards which have become an inflator and a lottery system for juries to hand out bundles of cash that insurers have to pay, that raise the cost of insurance.  And double damages on anyone bringing a frivolous suit in attempt to win a payout lottery.

Second - remove the subsidies - Remove all tax incentives for 'health insurance'.  Why?  Because subsidized goods and services get over-utilized in an uneconomic fashion, raising costs.  What do we see?  Raising costs of health insurance and health care?  Why?  It is subsidized.

Third - incentivize health care - What the hell is that?  Here is a two-fold deal: change 'health care' from an 'insurance' system to an 'investment' system.  Instead of paying for 'coverage' you pay for 'treatment' that you may or may not immediately use.  Your 'treatment' can then be cashed in at any future time at any set institution that you invested in.  The cost is set on purchase and can even be reduced if the group providing treatment doesn't expect you to need it any time soon.  What would a triple-bypass cost 20 years before you could reasonably expect to need it?  If you paid for it NOW via investing at an institution that will guarantee the procedure (backed up with proper insurance and bonding) then you have an ironclad guarantee of service for that treatment.  Going to move?  TRADE IT.  This is an investment, after all, but one for treatment.  So if you wanted to trade it for, say, similar coverage at a facility near where you are moving to and, maybe, 3 visits over 5 years for a top notch specialist in the area and can work that trade, then you have those in trade for your previous investment.  Like bonds, if an institution goes under you are first in line for the FULL COST of the treatment when the place goes under: you are a creditor.  That is part one of incentivizing health care so you pay, now, for procedures you may not need and can then trade for ones you DO need.

Fourth - health savings accounts redux - Allow a full roll-over of money in all HSAs just like IRAs.  Allow full investment in money earning vehicles in HSAs.  Do not tax money earned in HSAs so long as they are used for medical procedures, medications, office visits, durable equipment, etc.  Set no limit on how much can be put into such accounts.  Allow employers to put money into their employees accounts TAX FREE.  Thus the employee could manage these funds towards the good end of paying for their health care (be it with or without insurance).  When employers offer job packages they can offer HSA contributions in lieu of pay or in addition to health insurance but with a lower salary.  Good long term investments will yield larger accounts, over time, and will ease the worry of skyrocketing medical costs... particularly if people decide to invest IN those providing health care.  Are health care companies and pharmaceutical companies making gonzo bucks?  That is reflected in investment portfolios, is it not?  If you invest in a portfolio, then you gain the benefit of a growing industry that will help you pay for the costs of it due to it being the one you need services from.

Fifth - there is no such thing as a 'national market' for health care - This is why we have 50 States.  You see a better arrangement in another State?  MOVE THERE.  Or write to your State representatives to see if a State to State arrangement can be made to expand coverage.  Large companies providing coverage already do this, of course, but smaller ones need protection due to the fact they address more localized markets and are better adapted to them.  When localized health care companies go under to be taken over by larger ones, the market loses competition and that is a long term worry to the citizenry and should be to the Nation as only a dog-eat-dog system at the lowest level allows larger structures to be pulled apart by innovation.  As it is the larger companies gobble up the small, shut the small facilities and leave communities without the facilities or coverage that used to be available.  Small scale inefficiency that is adapted to the small scale may have other benefits outside of 'cost maintenance': like providing any care AT ALL to a small community or sub-community in a larger population center.  If we are supposed to have 'laboratories of liberty' in our 50 States then getting a 'national market' is the last thing anyone should want.  That concentrates too much power in the hands of too few groups and individuals.  This also removes the 'tragedy of the commons' in which no one really much cares about the larger market and it then starts to stagnate because no one has the power to actually make sure it is working well at the small scale.

Sixth - The grotesque thing about government run anything is the inefficiencies of government, itself.  The best run of government agencies at the federal level, and I worked at it, was 65% efficient at what it did.  Yes the government, via overhead, only wasted 35% of every dollar spent!  Private industry does a much better job at 20% inefficiency, on average.  Remember the average of industry is still better than the best of government.  But if you really want to drive costs DOWN and put COMPETITION into the market there is one area that can compete with industry.  That is charity.  There are organizations that rate the amount that charities spend on overhead, and it is typically in the 7-15% range.  That is the equivalent of waste for a charity.  There are some that try to get that down to 1% via volunteers and other organized form of help that doesn't need to be paid for.  Of these three groups, which is the most efficient at providing 'health care'?  Government, industry or charity?  If you answer 'charity' then why is not the full and absolute amount donated to charity given as a tax write-off?  This, too, is a marketplace incentive, but one geared towards actually HELPING the poor get treatment.  Pharmaceutical companies could be given write-offs based on donations of modern medicines, not those that have expired, but fresh production.  Ditto to other parts of industry making durable goods and consumables used in health care.  By allowing companies to donate goods directly to charity to be used for the poor or those that cannot pay, we ALL gain greatly without any further interference by government.  Indeed local governments can give incentives in the way of property tax and other tax breaks to charitable organizations that do this work.  What is garnered are committed individuals who have the best interest of patients and the community at heart.

 

I do, indeed, want a health care system that 'works' for everyone.

One where we invest in our future infrastructure, not worry about current payments.

One where individuals are allowed to invest in themselves and their families, not one that takes money from them in taxes.

One that rewards charity to build communities so that the poor and needy are looked after by those who want to and will do their level best to cut all costs so that the money is spent ON the poor and not for profits.

To do these things requires that we change our way of viewing 'health care' as a service and treat it as an investment for ourselves, our children, our neighbors and our Nation.  You can't get that with government oversight.

But you can do that by the common citizen willing to take part to donate money and time, precious time from their lives, to charity.  Why do we penalize that instead of rewarding it? 

We are missing out on the best value around when we argue about costs.

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When civility disappears you have tyranny

I left a comment over at Mr. Z's place after seeing how those on the Left were following various marching orders for how to 'stop disruption' at town hall meetings held by Congresscritters: bus people in with the same outfits, with pre-printed pamphlets, surround the Congresscritter to 'protect' them, and then work to shout down citizens who were vocally complaining about health care, the stimulus that isn't stimulation, bail outs, not actually reading bills before passing them, expectations of the National Debt crushing the Nation, and so on.

Here is the comment verbatim, all spelling errors and such left intact for the amusement of the audience:

The mask slips on the Left and we now see organized violence, unions threatening to 'confront' people like the SEIU and disrespect of our elders by organizations purporting to support their wishes... and forget that those people are from The Greatest Generation and will not go down without a fight when opposed by tyrants be they monsters at the head of mighty nations or sweet mouthed deceivers looking to snooker them out of the very care they say they will provide.

Yes there is an 'astroturf' campaign going on... HCAN, SEIU and others are all following a script... saying the same things, intimidating their fellow citizens and seeking to end debate by their presence and closing out those who disagree with them.

If this were Bush doing that, the Left would howl in outrage over 'civil rights violations' and corruption at the highest levels of government. Instead we get the sockpuppets of repetition who are part of the campaign, itself. Those wishing to dissent are not starting this fight. That takes those wanting to intimidate, coerce and stifle debate to do that. It is clearly stated, clearly laid out and enunciated.

Not by those wishing to hold their Representatives accountable.

But by those wishing to stop speech and democracy in action.

Amazing how the Left decries 'astroturf' campaigns after committing so many in the past few decades on everything from 'global warming' (or is the PC term now 'climate change', as if the climate never changes?), 'race relations', housing, expanding 'entitlements', and doing such lovely things as attacking the character of a US General during an active military campaign. Yes the Code Pink, MoveOn, anti-war groups, global warming/climate change priests, million being marches that don't get 10% of a million... all of the usual suspects have been 'astroturfing' with Big Money backing from various individuals and corporations for years. The problem was that they got so used to that style of money-backed 'organizing' in politics that they didn't ever expect to see any other kind... and aren't able to RECOGNIZE any other kind due to the hot house theatrics the Leftist 'organizers' have been staging for decades.

The nature of American political movements is not top-down, but bottom-up.

Martin Luther King showed up a couple of years after protests were actively going on and were bolstered by men coming from the integrated Armed Forces who had fought with their fellow Americans of all races in Korea. The bottom part of racism in the south, that held by individual men of a young age, had changed due to military service post-WWII.

The Anti-Viet Nam war movement did not start out as a National scale movement, but one of isolated protests in the early to mid-1960's. The civil rights 'organizers' who moved to that venue saw success of a limited kind, and their grand idea that this would 'save lives' overseas proved to be drastically wrong with the North Vietnamese killing their way through the south, the collapse of Laos to Communism and the take-over of Cambodia by the genocidal Pol Pot. Those dominos plunked on the beach with no further to follow, but the wash of red, in blood, told a tale quite different than the lovely scenario painted by the 'activists' of how everything would just go perfectly once the US left. Well, the silence of the grave is a form of perfection, I guess, but not the one predicted.

That 'activist' generation has a lot to answer for on that, but no one ever held their feet to the fire to put forward that the ideology presented was self-serving, nihilistic and lethal to those we supported overseas and those that depended on us to hold a line we said we would hold.

That generation also got the space program gutted and then ensured that the authoritarian presence of government would stifle private space industry by limiting space access. When I hear complaints about global warming/climate change and the dangers of nuclear power, plus how industry is so very, very bad... I look back to Gerard K. O'Neill's group of engineers who had put forth a perfectly good plan to start removing fossil fuel based power stations via a system of expanding space based presence and industry. That was done from 1968-1972. Somehow the idea of expanding industry to the one, guaranteed, non-polluting basis that is still available so as to expand the economy and start getting industry moved off the planet just never did get to those who wanted to get more money spent on welfare and expand the power of government. Say, did all those billions put out in anti-poverty programs actually end poverty?

Just asking.

Wanting government to do the hard work for you misses the point that government is non-productive: it has a negative role in our economy and our lives by design. Any government that tries to get a 'positive' role seems to end up being expensive, authoritarian, expansive against personal liberty, and starts to dictate your life, your health and when you should die to you. And stifle your freedom of expression, your liberty and your pursuit of happiness to boot. I don't need to go back to the 1930's for that! I just have to see a President wanting a 'snitch list' of Americans who have the temerity to DISAGREE WITH HIM and that self-same President getting up and saying that those who 'caused the health care problem' need to shut up.

Say, that's the LEFT! They have been the #1 cause of inefficiency via government through increased regulation and encroachment on personal liberties AND productivity for decades, now. Congress, too. And the President himself, come to that.

Meanwhile 'youths' in decaying France hold more 'car-b-que' events, and that sort of thing is now spreading to Germany not on the ethnic 'youths' side but from the LEFT. In Great Britain, meanwhile, those in constant back pain don't get to have access to medication for it via 'the government plan', so that the POOR are deprived of pain relief. Why, that is just so compassionate, isn't it? And forget about defending yourself or your home in the UK: try to do that and YOU will be arrested on assault charges and tried. They disarmed the public a few years ago, the Red Mafia saw fertile fields to deploy lots of illegal automatic weapons, and the UK police, the grand, old 'Bobbies' are now in body armor and ALSO toting rifles and automatic weapons.

That worked out so well, didn't it?

All these lovely, grand, multi-culti ideals of the Left tend to wind up with property destroyed, economies in the doldrums, birth rates below sustaining levels, crime on the rise, and individuals oppressed by government in large ways and small: from their life to their health, there is no end to the 'good' government can't do.

I remember, clearly, going through university in the mid-1980's that the largest, number one, by far out distancing all other Leftist complaints, bar none, no exceptions was the following: that the American people weren't 'activist' and wouldn't join marches, etc.

And now... now... when the American people actually do start to attend meetings, rallies, and hold protests, what do we get from the Left?

Complaints that this is 'organized'!

One...

Two...

Three....

AWWWWWWWWWW!! Poor Babies!!!

You got what you wished for.

Deal with it.

The people most effected by 'health care reform'? You know the ones that are being called 'fascists' for complaining?

Yeah, as I put up above, 'The Greatest Generation'.

Amazing to think that men who had stormed the Beaches of Normandy, Iwo Jima, Tarawa, Sicily... these guys who fought and killed fascists for years are being called 'fascists' by an ungrateful, wretched Left that can't appreciate just how much they have twisted the language around to protect themselves from reading history and understanding what fascism is. I am not seeing anyone in protests standing up for more government, for socialism, and for fascism.

No only those following the lock-step orders on the Left are doing that. They did, indeed, read 1984 as a training manual. That describes Europe, however, not America. When you follow socialist doctrine aimed towards limited transportation societies with a history of authoritarian regimes going back centuries, you can get Orwell. When you do that in America, however, you get Alice in Wonderland and find yourself not supporting Big Brother but the Red Queen with her races and your words meaning just whatever you want them to. Which is Duckspeak.

That winds up with 'Off with their heads', in case its been forgotten.

Yes, 1984 through the Looking Glass... what a grotesquely horrific thing these events portend.

As civility decreases on the part of the Left, we hear the voice of ordering authority.

The Big Red Queen arises.

In the most well armed civilian population on the planet.

The violence has already started from the Left.

They either step back, now, and disown the authoritarianism... or they find out just what happens in a Nation like America when the public actually DOES become active.

And it is not what they wanted, I'll tell you that right now having seen their expectations from the '80s onwards.

Sphere: Related Content

Signposts to the road out

America, as a culture, has had two great political movements that have moved across her people.

The first is that engendered at the Founding, which saw the level of acceptance of it go from a state of 15% of the population to being accepted by the equivalent of 75% by the end of it: the concept that humans come from Natural Law and have, from that, vested in them all the Liberty that Nature provides us.  With such Liberty we create relationships with our fellow man and that, in turn, creates society.  Society, by its nature, is a vesting place of some negative liberties to ensure that there is social cohesion: there is group understanding, group associations and the ability of the group to identify those that adhere to, or at least put up with, a set of values held in general by all members of society.  Thus from self-rule we go to the self-evident form of first governance in which we vest the ability to shift members of society out of society for the protection of that society when those commonly held beliefs and practices are violated by its members.  That is a negative liberty, to ostracize, imprison or kill such members and it is one that we, as individuals, yield up to the organs of society made to stand in judgment of them.

What is garnered in return for that negative liberty is protection of society by those organs of society deemed worthy of creation and sustaining.  Likewise when the State is created to add further oversight upon what is and is not allowable within society, we further invest our negative liberties for self-judgment in bodies made up to create what those factors are to be judged.  This is, at heart, a process of making up those things called 'laws' which are a representation of those things deemed so important to that society that they must be adhered to across it.  A State with officially recognized internal organs that are identified by the population is then created and it need not be large: the first States were City States and incorporated within a single city and some small amounts of surrounding territory.

From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913):

Corporate \Cor"po*rate\ (k?r"p?-r?t), a. [L. corporatus, p. p. of corporare to shape into a body, fr. corpus body. See Corpse.]

1. Formed into a body by legal enactment; united in an association, and endowed by law with the rights and liabilities of an individual; incorporated; as, a corporate town.

2. Belonging to a corporation or incorporated body. ``Corporate property.'' --Hallam.

3. United; general; collectively one. They answer in a joint and corporate voice. --Shak.

Corporate member, an actual or voting member of a corporation, as distinguished from an associate or an honorary member; as, a corporate member of the American Board.

To create an incorporated entity, like a State, requires the understanding that the law of that State rules within that State's boundaries.  Thus States have bounds and limits to them and are considered areas of civil rule where society has created an understood and accountable entity to which any individual can appeal if they feel the law is misapplied or badly created.  Often that was under a strongman or warlord who came up through the ranks of society but was, more often, the leader of a small body representing parts of the State.  These parts were not just geographic but often social, and many State governments had members of trades, crafts and mercantile associations within their membership as the well run State did not want to overly impact the livelihood of such members who helped create wealth in society.

Isolated City States when they got involved with other City States or other governing bodies of foreign populations then created the first Nations:  this is the external organization that has organs of its own to allow for understandings between society to be made so as to lessen friction between societies.  This concept expanded when multiple City States or loosely incorporated regions recognized that they had more in common with each other than with other entities that did not hold similar outlooks on how to run one's life properly.  Thus the Nation State would grow to include all such areas under its governing oversight and create a fully incorporated entity that had common agreement internally on laws, society and government.  By setting down regularized forms of internal rules on trade, commerce and protection of members of society, wealth would increase multi-fold as the Nation State took on the negative liberties of warfare with other entities as well as the liberties to create and sustain agreements with other Nations.

This is not a political concept, per se, but one of taking a reasoning approach to how mankind rules himself, comes into cooperation with his fellow man and then creates larger organs for the good of society by investing such negative liberties in such Nation States that would then allow him to concentrate time and energy on other matters.

The abuses of such organs of government by Kings, Parliaments, Oligarchies, Aristocrats, Plutocrats and other less than representative organizations and individuals lead to the abuses of government that are the terror of those negative liberties turned on society: draconian laws, confiscatory taxation, abuse of the law by those in power and then chaotic rule centered upon a very few that then makes society captive to government.  These abuses are ones to be wary of as they are a misuse of those negative liberties meant to protect society.  It is amongst such misuses by a Nation State that forms the bulk of the Declaration of Independence which has, as its largest part, the abuses of government upon its people and why they cannot be tolerated:

[..]

--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

If we remember the preface to these words, then why do we forget these words?  For the preface is just that, a pre-facing of the later argument and the basis for it, giving the necessary definitions and underpinnings for what will then be given after it.  In holding such self-evident truths, the nature of the problems about to be listed are tantamount to government abusing and enslaving members of its society by ignoring or creating punitive law against members of society who have done no wrong to the larger body of the people.

As no one had catalogued and analyzed the upwards creation of government from society and only had the record of government already in place, as it is an early formation of society to create organs to protect itself, the concept that man had the ability to self-rule and that government should not punish man for that was one that took thousands of years to finally be understood. 

Man created government through society for self-protection. 

Government did not create society to rule man.

Sadly, the century or two of learning that it took to get to this point of understanding is still one missed by those seeking to rule society.

By the end of the 19th century the idea had arisen that government could do 'good things' for society and its members.  This concept was that of utilizing government to change society by using the power of government to mandate new aspects of society.  To do that all members of society had to pay for the oversight of such new 'good things'.  This idea did not originate in the United States as it had been a part of pre-Westphalian governing concepts in which religious bodies would set Ecclesiastical Law that would then be imposed via the Nation State upon its people.  That goes back to the time of the Pharaohs in Ancient Egypt and to the unification of China under a Sun Emperor and throughout the Americas where religious groups had great sway over secular government.  This creates a system of morals that are then imposed by law upon the members of society from no other source than the religion held by the majority of society.

The ills of this are great and many, and create wars, genocide and the migration of peoples seeking to flee tyrannical government and set up government more to their liking that did not punish them for religious belief.  With that said the cause of this was enforcing morals upon society and its individuals, and that is a separate problem from having a strictly religious backing to it.  From that understanding the concept of government enforcing morals held, even by a majority, becomes problematical as those in the minority that do not hold such moral views will then be persecuted for those simple differences in belief.  Once taking up the role enforcing morals, government must grow to do so, which eats up more in the way of wealth of society to enforce such moralistic beliefs, no matter what their origin.

Religion, however, does have a part to play in society and in promulgating morality within its members who then follow them to lead good lives.  The modern thought of divorcing religion from our guidance in society is an ill one, even when religion can come to ill-ends trying to promulgate morality outside of its adherents.  During the time of the ratification of the Constitution we get two supporters of it that give us this moderate view of religion.

First is Nicholas Collin in A Foreign Spectator XXVIII on 28 SEP 1787 :

The rational opinion, that sincere worshippers in whatever religion are pleasing to Almighty God, is now pretty generally established in all civilized nations. It is of the highest consequence, because the belief that eternal happiness depends on a particular creed or mode of worship, will prompt even good men to establish such at all adventures. We must not however imagine that this species of bigotry has alone produced the many religious wars and tumults; for there are antipathies arising merely from the peculiar genius of a religion, capable of doing much hurt. Any thing that appears to another sect very absurd, mean, unsocial, &c. has an ill effect. A bad influence on manners and government is a serious affair. If it cannot be helped, divide et impera is a good maxim with religious as other parties—where any sect has a decided superiority, or a rapid increase, others may be encouraged. Indifferency is not the proper remedy against superstition; for a very defective religion is better than none. Let then the several professions respect the advantages of each other, and with candid benevolence criticize mutual infirmities—Let the bright luminary of reason gradually rise, and shed its majestic radiance over this western world; it will manifest to all the same great God, and the same road to happiness here and hereafter.

The second is Noah Webster writing as A Citizen of America on 17 OCT 1787:

Of all the memorable eras that have marked the progress of men from the savage state to the refinements of luxury, that which has combined them into society, under a wise system of government, and given form to a nation, has ever been recorded and celebrated as the most important. Legislators have ever been deemed the greatest benefactors of mankind—respected when living, and often deified after their death. Hence the fame of Fohi and Confucius—of Moses, Solon and Lycurgus—of Romulus and Numa—of Alfred, Peter the Great, and Mango Capac; whose names will be celebrated through all ages, for framing and improving constitutions of government, which introduced order into society and secured the benefits of law to millions of the human race.

This western world now beholds an era important beyond conception, and which posterity will number with the age of Czar of Muscovy, and with the promulgation of the Jewish laws at Mount Sinai. The names of those men who have digested a system of constitutions for the American empire, will be enrolled with those of Zamolxis and Odin, and celebrated by posterity with the honors which less enlightened nations have paid to the fabled demi-gods of antiquity.

But the origin of the AMERICAN REPUBLIC is distinguished by peculiar circumstances. Other nations have been driven together by fear and necessity—the governments have generally been the result of a single man’s observations; or the offspring of particular interests. IN the formation of our constitution, the wisdom of all ages is collected—the legislators of antiquity are consulted—as well as the opinions and interests of the millions who are concerned. In short, in it an empire of reason.

Here are some of the basics of those who adhered to the Constitution as proposed at the Founding.  Now one of these men was a Christian devoted to culture and another of them a Reverend likewise devoted to culture, and both brought with them a strong set of views on religion which transcended minor varieties of Christianity.  Indeed some of the harshness of their views comes from the fact that there were and are varieties of Christianity, but in looking at their particular beliefs within the large manifold of all beliefs (and even non-belief) they reason through the place of religion in forming laws and influencing government.  Laws and good laws can come from ANY religion: no religion is given that sanction to itself for all of society.  Because of the power of religion, the attempt to have a majority religion dominate society in the attempt to become the totality of religion that would then guide society is seen as the opposite of moderation and reason.

Religion, by its intercourse via society, creates morals that can then be tested against the whole of society and when more than those that adhere to a given religion also do so, then such a thing moves beyond private morals to public morals.  That does not mean it is something fit for government to make laws about save when such morals ensure the liberty of ALL members of society: then the pressing need for laws to enforce such public morality becomes predominant as there is general agreement across society that such morality is deemed good and worthwhile as sustaining all parts of society.

Movement away from such moderate precepts started in the 1880's and 1890's in many forms.  I have more than touched on Progressivism in the past and note that it becomes a vehicle for other movements, also.  The Temperance Movement played no small part in the early days of Progressivism which rode on the idea that government can enforce itself to the good ends of public morality.  Likewise Theodore Roosevelt encouraged the Shanghai Opium Conference which would lead to the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914.  Both of these Progressive causes used public morality as their basis, and while it was then morality of allied religious groups, the concept that public morals could be pushed by government was one that became a hallmark of all later Progressive movements including those using Socialist views.  The devoutness of a Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover or Franklin Delano Roosevelt is never questioned.  The political ends that would come from inculcating public morality, however, would seek to supplant the known order of government stemming from the people and replace that with society enforced by government upon the people. 

That is not a difference of degree, but of kind, from restricting liberty for public safety to enforcing 'public rights' or 'social rights' at the cost of all of the people for the very few is a large step towards authoritarian ends.  Enforcing 'positive rights' from government carries with it a huge cost of government and eroding the rights of the individual to lead a good and upstanding life without government interdiction or overburden.  By supporting only some rights and taking the means to exercise others out of the hands of individuals, there is a cost to the individual of these 'new rights' which Theodore Roosevelt correctly identified in his autobiography as the 'old rights' of tyranny and despotism, of the strong over the weak and contradicted the right of the individual to self-rule and duty to self and Nation.  Yet it is exactly that form of 'rights', those created by government fiat and supported by government, that took root in America.  It is at loggerheads with the concept of individuals being the central point of all rights and posits that government can and must enforce rights... rights that only the government can decide upon.  Instead of moderating and refereeing the interplay of rights amongst the people and the States, government seeks to set the tone, write the tune, hire the band, and then enforce applause via the law.

Nations have an understood set of internal and external parameters to them, and this was understood not only by the Founders but derived from post-Westphalian period when such works as those by Grotius (written during the 30 Years War) were then picked up as topics for the purpose and role of the Nation in the affairs of mankind.  The sources for this would span Europe and finally come down to a few writers who would work to compile them and regularize their understanding, which would finally be put down by Emmerich de Vattel in close coordination with other legal scholars like William Blackstone who would incorporate ideas with his Commentaries on the Common Law of England.  The end product was the first attempt to compile all that was known and could be reasoned about what Nation States were and put into Law of Nations.  That work would identify the qualities of Nations of any stripe or form, be they religious or non-religious based it was a compilation and analysis of all known governments and their types which were then distilled down to their essential ingredients.  And the basis of Nations is that they acknowledge and respect the society that they represent.

The swing from Rights of Man liberalism to Government Enforced Rights liberalism is a long, long swing of society, and the extent of the latter swing over the past 130 years has been frightening.  Yet, just as that formulation took a century from the Founding to get going, we are now seeing, perhaps, the start of the movement back and away from Government Ruling Society as a 'good concept' for governing.

While many on the political Left today still try to sell the idea that Tea Parties are run by Republicans or  are racist or stooges for the wealthy or any number of things, the sheer number of explanations that are given indicate that they are none of those things.  People from all walks of life, all ages, all ethnic groups show up at such events.  What is not understood by the Left and by Progressives of all persuasions, is that American politics is, at its heart, an expression of its culture formed by individuals.  The chaotic tumult of society does have direction, but does not, of necessity, want LEADERS.  Indeed, American political movements start out leaderless and then find good people willing to lead them and who know that if they DON'T follow the general direction of those in the organization, they can easily get cut off from it.  American Revolutions and politics are self-organized and only those that need a high definition, hierarchy and 'Leaders' demonstrate that the movement has lost some steam as it goes 'mainstream'.  Those that wish to control society need organizations they can pin down, and rambunctious, chaotic and yet not directionless associations are a horror to them: uncontrolled social expression is an anathema to Progressivism which seeks control in all venues.

Thus Tea Parties show up as a signpost in the US culture that has an expression in politics.  It is not National politics, alone, but also local politics:  Tea Party members now show up at town council meetings, meet and greets by politicians, and stand up to ask questions of those 'in authority' who do not budget money wisely and are continually asking for more money due to their inability to make the hard decisions of what is necessary for government to do and what is not.  This is a re-expression of small government views given to a new era, so as to begin the process of addressing the actual problems that government has let go in the way of public maintenance of infrastructure.  The largesse of the federal government to State and local governments in the way of cash transfers now make such governments dependent upon the federal government.  As the actual cost for running such things as road maintenance, sewer line upkeep, constructing water treatment plants, snow removal, the full cost of schooling children... across all those areas the Nation has seen a marked decline in public services.  Even when expanding older infrastructure is not updated, not supported and maintenance is always the first place to cut and the last to get its full needs re-budgeted during better times.  Bridges built in the 1930's are at the end of their lifecycle for municipal roadways.  Interstate thruways now face decades of lack of properly maintaining and assessing the needs of these roads and we see bridges collapse and wholesale construction projects that remove roads from service as new ones are put in to replace them.  Things that should have had regular and scheduled maintenance and upgrading over time now must be built new as they fail.

By expanding the power and scope of federal outlays, local and State governments are deprived of local revenue streams to address local concerns in the most accountable way possible.  When you accept federal funds the entire federal regulatory structure comes with the money, and it is not an efficient structure at all, often eating as little as 35% of funds in 'accounting' and 'oversight' with other inefficiencies of federal mandates and that lost efficiency often stretches far beyond 35%.  For all the tens and hundreds of billions poured into local schools, the reading level has remained rock solid since the late 1950's when it was a scandal that poor Johnny couldn't read.  Johnny, Jane, Jose, Janet... all of them now read at that exact, same level WITH a federal bureaucracy 'helping'.  And as there is already a baseline on how bad things were BEFORE the government 'helped' we have a situation where no amount of 'help' has changed things and we now have a government department set up to employ over educated wonks who can't FIX the problem.

Another signpost is one that Progressives and those wishing to concentrate power in the National government structure don't want to hear as it is a re-assertion of the public's understanding of civil rights.  It is in an area that has been a paramount push to have changed by the Left and Progressives on the Right as it is a civil right that threatens them both.  It is essential to being a citizen and even if you don't practice the right, it is given to you by the Law of Nature in positive and negative aspects.  We hand the negative to the Nation State for protection of society as it is negative, but we keep the positive right for ourselves as no government may divorce it by any law, as the moment events happen to require the use of such a right, it magically re-appears outside the confines of human law.  It is the liberty to defend oneself, one's loved ones and your property and no government can take it from you: it can only kill or imprison you for transgressing it if it has the hubris to do so.  This liberty has the direct part of it from the Law of Nature, as all beings have a right to defend themselves to survive.  The derived portion is to protect your property and as that property is an expression of your liberty, you do have the right to defend it, also.  The defensive right to keep and bear arms is a necessary part of establishing and keeping civil society functioning as it is the prime expression of your right to be free of oppression.  We hand the Nation State portion of warfare to the Nation as civil society would be at risk if any many could declare war for it.  When government seeks to remove the means of self-defense we call it tyrannical and despotic, totalitarian in seeking to rule over society not help to govern it.

One of the bedrock stances of Progressivism is to remove the right of you to say 'no' to more government at a personal level.  The horror of WWII saw a strong backlash against firearms, and yet the natural understanding of man is that war is to be avoided unless handed to you and then fought to the hilt to end so as to rebuild and help honorable foes to stand up and for themselves with the understanding that war is not the answer as America is the solution.  This from