Friday, December 29, 2006

The Year Ahead

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

When the good Mr. Z at Bloviating Zeppelin put forth a post on his views on the year ahead and asked for any from his readers, I did, indeed, respond.

As has been the case at DLSF, I shall give the full rendition of my words only, attempt to fairly impart any responses and then give my continuance or response to that. Spelling, syntax and grammar all remain mangled 'as is' so the reader will know the lacks within the writer's capability.

Thus begins my response:

I do wish you a Merry Christmas, Mr. Z!

There is one image that will not shake from my mind about Mr. Giuliani... that of him amidst the smoke, dust and chaos, doing what was necessary and putting the first face on *how* to face this world. He did not know what had happened to the rest of America, but something under his care will *not* fall while he is in charge. To hell and gone with 'social issues' which are used to divide the Nation into smaller pieces. Those can be hashed out as needs be... but we must *have* a Nation to do that. The time of America running from the World is now over.

Large oceans will not protect us.

A large military will not protect us.

More nuclear devices will not protect us.

The only ones that can protect us is us, We the People.

The last time America went isolationist when the world was in danger, we heard about this funny man in Germany and the Sudetenland. Japan had already been in China and fighting Russia for long years by then. We slept. We pulled the covers up and hoped for the best. The World would not touch America...

Now there is no excuse, no place to run to, no place to hide and only the American People can save themselves. We are, most likely, doomed and have been ever since the Republic started. But we are consumate experts in putting off that final doomsday just *one more day*.

That feeling that used to portend isolationism now cannot isolate America. The last time it was reminded of this, three tyrants fell across the world. This time the World will not be so lucky if we decide that 'enough is enough'. Isolationism is anger at being disturbed in Our Liberty and this time there are those denying that Liberty has meaning both at home and overseas.

We cannot afford the Socialist Coma of Europe, nor the criminal capitalism of Russia or the lashing decay of Communism in China. Each of those types of systems have run their course and those ideas of the mid-19th century and 20th century have run out of steam. And yet a Nation of the 18th century can survive and flourish, but the death toll to get from here to there mounts day by day, not by ones and twos in Iraq or Afghanistan, but by the huge butcher's bill that accrues if we run again.

We now have enemies that cannot and will not make Peace by design of how they fight and what they do. The Left has no solution, no value, nothing to put up to address that. Fear speaking of the enemy and you become enslaved by that fear. Yet that is what those to that edge of the spectrum do every day... those on the Right have lost all hold on what it means to have a Nation that stands *for* anything. Big Government from *both* sides is the death of Liberty and Freedom as life is dictated by Government.

We felt the shifting in the winds this summer... a shift that left both Parties and both *sides* becalmed. The Dream of Empire has awoken in the world once more and they cannot address it. Hegelian views are not those to confront an Empire... Empire must be opposed across the spectrum with *everything* and give it no room to gain strength and build.

Run this time and the first global war of this century will make the death toll to all of last century's conflicts appear miniscule. America on the run will be ripe for the knife in the back... and then the Terrible Swift Sword of the Republic, in full flame, will drop sunlight in a thousand places and light them up with the final light of Liberty.

Those that want to do *nothing* now, that want to *run* now, that want to *hide* now are asking for that fate. By trying to avoid it, you doom yourself to it as that is the logic of Empire and of every Tyrant ever to walk the Earth.

And it all starts with Naming Names.

And hearing one 'side' of the spectrum squeal at the 'unfairness' of it. And the other side fall silent as they have no answer to those names, having created the situation we are stuck in. Then you have two sides that get you to the exact same end... squealing and silence, just the same.

The cold winter winds of Empire are starting to be heard in far off lands now brought close. Jack Frost is visiting the cozy red lumps of Communists and making them tremble. Those wanting a 'real world approach' shiver at the coldness and wonder if it is time to put the suntan lotion away. Those trying to get 'economic stability' suddenly realize their coins have gone icy cold and they stick to the fingers.

2007 the Year Empire Returned to Mankind.

And the Sons and Daughters of Liberty squabbled as the first flakes of snow drifted onto them.

Nothing in politics of the 20th century has stopped this from happening.

Welcome to the 21st century.
Now the good Mr. Z did respond to this and cited that the Left seems to, after all of these years of touting how 'small the world is getting', be running and trying to get the idea across that really, America CAN isolate herself from the world once more. And from that I did, indeed, give response.

Thus this follows:
Mr. Z - The Left kept on telling everyone what a 'small world it is'. Now they run hard from that very same belief.

It is small and it has reached out to strike, not once, but many times. It has struck at home to let us know that Empire is coming back and will not stand us. And there the Left go saying the size of the world will protect us.

You cannot have it both ways and the proof of the smallness was on Dec. 7, 1941. The next good reminder of that was on 9/11, although the strikes at Embassies ARE against Sovereign Territory of the US. That has been set in diplomatic circles for at least two Centuries if not longer.

The Left would now have us curl up and deny the world and want to sing happy songs, while the barbarians seeking Empire arise once more to start pulling civilization down. These enemies will not stop.

They are taking no quarter: submit or die.

The US put paid to such in previous generations all the way back to Thomas Jefferson... funny how so many on the Left laud him, and then will not stand up as HE DID to send troops to a far off land to protect the Nation and let others know that we will not submit to blackmail or extortion. If Jefferson could do that, then where does the Left get off in wanting to curl up and deny the world?

And Jackson sent the first US ship of any kind half-way around the world to deal with Pirates. Islamic Pirates. The first US ship to circumnavigate the globe was a War Ship sent by Jackson. We have been fighting Islam in one form or another since Jefferson. Jackson. T. Roosevelt. Those were men that had ideals, Jackson's harsh but fair, Jefferson's high but realistic, and Roosevelt's optimistic and yet oriented to keeping the Nation safe.

Where does the Left of today get off running when the likes of those set the Nation to fight Islam? And the Islamic Moros in the Philippines took nearly a full decade to finally put down and end as a threat then. And the Moros of today restarting their killing still FEAR the name of Pershing. And respect that name.

I do not care if America is loved by the likes of terrorists. I want them to fear us enough so that they drop this fool notion of attacking us. If not, then the Roman way against those who opposed them also worked. As did the Varangians in Byzantium who unfurled the Raven Banner. As did Jefferson. Jackson. Teddy Roosevelt.

They wish to build an Empire on our bones.

I do not want to give them the least bit of breathing space to continue.

If you abhor fighting *now* then the holocaust to follow is your responsibility entire.

Fighting is never the *first* thing to do.
By making it the last you guarantee slavery before it.
I put it around #3.

Talk first, but that has been tried for decades with thousands dead.

We have been struck many times, and with talking nothing has been accomplished.

Now attacked, and so it is fight.

We did not start this war.

But we sure, as hell, will end it or die trying because it is the death of Liberty if we STOP.
And any readers know that the Modern Jacksonian has not only *adjusted* to this, but re-asserts the paradigm of scale-free networks of friendship and accountability above all else in DEALING with this small world of ours that does, indeed, look like a raucous village of millenia past. And to that sort of free-form setting the Modern Jacksonian applies the tried and true structures of Responsibility, Method, and Rights to uphold the first two.

For all the Leftist going on for well neigh two decades on how small the world has gotten, to run away NOW is death to the Republic, Liberty and Freedom.

And the Re-Birth of Empires that will remove all of that for good and all.

May you all have a Happy New Year.

Let us work together to ensure that it is not one of the LAST for the Republic.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

The Modern Jacksonian - Chapter 3 - A Nation Amongst Nations

The internal accountability of individuals to the Nation is a given fact of the Westphalian world in which Nation States are the Prime Movers of interactions between and amongst mankind's diverse populations. This solution to actually have an accountable Nation State was hammered out via long religious wars in which a central religious Power sought Dominion over all Earthly States that adhered to its type of religion. That homogeneous conception failed, however, as the religion, itself, was unable to readily adapt to a changing world. Indeed, the conception of change, as a thing in and of itself, was something that this religion would only let people have once it had been thoroughly processed by the Seat of Power so as to not conflict in any way, shape or form with the religion. Here the stability of continuity of religion was seen over and above such gross concepts as 'human freedom' or 'human liberty'. While these concepts were put forward in the area of religion, so that any could convert TO it, the rest of thought was to be put under harsh stricture so as to keep the religion itself pure. This would prevent new ways of looking at the world from appearing without, first, having gone through the lens of religion and adapted to it.

What brought this down, as a conception, and would change all of what would follow was a tradecraft that revolutionized the world of thought: printing via movable type. This was something that in the form of block-cut printing, or carving out blocks of wood and then inking the raised surface and applying a transfer media, was not unknown. Indeed there were some few printers of that sort around for ages. Because lengthy tracts could not be readily carved out of wood for this printing, it was limited mainly for black and white woodcut art of a mass form. That changed when the conception of making letters and spaces that would take up identical sizes, or proportionate sizes to each other, appeared. This was applied to the simple knowledge of metallic casting which had also been around for some time, starting out at the 'lost wax' technique and moving up to soft metal within hard metal casting. Together the simple conception of repetition of letters made from the same mold and each mold of the proper sizing created a new industry of printing which had not been conceived of by any high or noble thinker. The printer was now, with this single change, able to become a 'typesetter' and put together much longer, printed script works that would take years to hand copy, but mere days to transcribe over from script to movable type. And a new economic function was ALSO born of this: as more copies are made, the original labor cost of setting the type and proof-reading it were now absorbed across all the copies of a work that were made. At first this did not make new printed material of long length 'cheap' but it did bring the price down to the realm of limited personal wealth and individual libraries. Where, before this, libraries were things run by States and Cities, now an individual could endow a library or even, as things went on, OWN a library. And because the printing press, itself, was something that any wine making region of the world could easily assemble, and wine pressing only took a few weeks of the year, the idea of using pressmen on a permanent basis also invented a new category of labor.

One innovation, applied to known technologies suddenly revolutionizes economies, thought, and, ultimately, the world itself. The ramifications of these changes are still felt and fought throughout the world today, because it is liberating to give individuals information and then letting them make an honest and reasoned judgment upon it. The Birth of the Modern Nation State rests solely on this innovation. Without it, the promulgation and inculcation of ideas and their spread and interplay would not have happened with anything like the rapidity seen during the Renaissance, and conceptions that would be anathema to the religion of that era would never have seen the light of day, save via the burning stake. Higher idealism for mankind and individuality rests upon this and honors and acknowledges this via the pathways taken to ensure that such ideals could not be rooted out from society. The meeting of such groups with craftsman, who were now becoming of moderate means and no longer poor, started a blend of revolutionary individualism with the arrival of that new group known as: the middle class. No longer was there a hard and fast division between the upper class wealthy aristocracy and the mere serf or laborer.

Middlemen merchants had always been around in the world, but their wealth from trade was always seen as tainting such individuals so as to make them not worthy of the aristocracy, save for the very, very few. The Middle Class would come to engender a different attitude on life and outlook which would drift from aspirations to aristocracy and towards fulfillment of individual's lives. This part of the foundation of the Modern Nation State is that of abundance of wealth from this concept known as: working for it and earning it. While the good and charitable works done for religion and mankind were still given high honor, that was an outgrowth of 'extra wealth', not a mandatory payment extorted by the tax man. Freedom that was given to income brought with it responsibility beyond oneself and one's family via the active use of wealth for the betterment of others. Many did invest wealth in new enterprises, seeing that employing one's fellow man was giving a 'hand up' to a better life through gainful employment. Acting in a charitable fashion, however, was still a reciprocity to society for ones place in it. When Dickens wrote of Scrooge, it was not that he was wealthy that was being attacked. It was his lack of charity and understanding that to lead a fulfilling life one must give back to society and embrace the larger concept of a 'societal good'. Looking out for oneself is absolutely vital and necessary, of that there is no doubt. Looking after the society that allows one to have the freedom of opportunity that one has gainfully used is just a high a responsibility so that not only can oneself continue to attain such means, but so that the entire society can reach out further and deeper to uplift the entire Nation. Charity builds the Nation so that it may be strengthened in those ways that individuals see fit to do so. No Government may ever lift that burden from a Free People as it is their debt to the society that gives them freedom of opportunity that we know as Liberty.

One of the great wonders of the Modern Age is that so many can point to the fine ideals of Liberty and so few point to the necessary physical underpinnings of it. Having fine and noble thoughts on the 'brotherhood of mankind' is all well and good, but having it jotted down on a scroll or a hand-illuminated book that sits in a library where few will ever touch it, or having all known copies sequestered by a religious institution does not, in reality, have much impact upon things. In point of fact without a way to quickly disseminate ideas and make enough copies to ensure that they will not be squelched is a necessary part of Liberty and Freedom. Having the ideas without the means to preserve and promulgate them does no good whatsoever, and usually leads to a shortened life for the individual doing such espousing. What is rarely looked at is the opposite case in which you have printing, but no great thinkers that have postulated upon Liberty and Freedom.

The test case for this is currently going on in China, in which the all digital revolution is slowly undermining the entire foundational structure of Authoritarian control there. What every modern individual in China who considers themselves to be modern has is a cell phone. And in this era of cheap digital integration it is most likely a picture phone. The lovely thing about these phones is that they have two main methods for moving data around via the cell phone networks. The first is the high throughput communications to move pictures and voice communications, which are the well known uses of the modern cell phone. But there is a slower, less data intensive capability known as Simple Messaging System. Here text is a low-bandwidth affair as it takes up little data space, has known error correction capabilities via the data stream and it is readily transmitted in very short periods of time via the wireless communication system. And SMS messages can be easily passed on to callers in one's personal directory, thus enabling a rapid dissemination of information amongst individuals. Teenagers were the first to pick up on this in the late 1990's, particularly in the Far East and Europe, and the ability to do this spread deeply into Nations that had unreliable land line systems for wired communication. Totalitarian Nations, looking to do things a bit on the cheap, decided to use this technology and save the time and effort of laying down copper or fiber optic cables.

In post-war Iraq the landlines telecom system still lags behind modern standards for availability, but nearly everyone has a cellphone. This is communications for the People. And as China learned, like the religious institutions of ages past, once the People get this power of communication, the very first thing they do is start to undermine the authority of the system itself. Chinese authorities were already having problems with encroaching information from the West via the Internet, and has worked hard to try and stem this tide of information. They still pick up those putting forth new ideas of Liberty and Freedom, but have found that getting the individual and stopping the idea are two totally different things. For when the Chinese authorities take in the computer of such individuals, they find that the files have already been sent to many other individuals. Some of those individuals run web sites and they are doing a fun thing known as: database replication off-site. As the printing press and copies of books spread widely, so is the ability to keep a 'hot spare' site up and running. Even worse for the Chinese authorities is that computers, even in China, are cheap. Trying to take down networks of individuals who have multiple, anonymous contacts spread throughout the Nation is difficult. What they never, ever thought of was that the SMS capability would prove even harder to stop. When one Chinese official in a Province was going to give a bad report about the situation there, he diligently did so. His superiors did not want the bad news to be spread and told him not to tell anyone of this news. He smiled and let them know it was too late to do so, as he had uploaded it to his cell phone and sent it out through his calling list and then erased it. The scandal itself was minor, as these things go, but the Chinese authorities had to fess up that things were not so rosy.. because tens of thousands had gotten the message within hours of its being sent out. Hitting the 'message forward' button and 'send to all' means that no idea can be stopped as every cell phone of every friend acts as the 'hot spare' in China. And as SMS crosses back into the wired networks, messages promulgate asymmetrically throughout the world.

Saudi Arabia loved the cell phone, until the picture phone showed up and dating hotlines were soon spreading pictures and nude images across the cell phone network. Actually, from what has been heard from the Middle East, everyone who has a cell phone most likely has some porn, a number of quite rude jokes, a huge set of information readily available and even more once they swap memory cards. This is the beginning of the all-digital, all-the-time era for mankind. And the only way to stop this is to end the technology and its use, thus throwing mankind back into the Dark Ages once more. No previous conception of mankind has prepared it for this upcoming era, which is one in which the individual will be given the fullest power and capability to express themselves across all boundaries of Nationality, Religion and Culture. What humanity currently does not have is an adaptable cultural outlook to allow this to take place without either a reversion to Authoritarianism or a decay into an Anarchic state of being. Walking that middle-path between tyranny and anarchy is something that requires more than just Liberty and Freedom: adaptable social structures. In this realm mankind has not done so well, as the ability of culture to change to technological influences has been slow, at best, and reactionary at worse. The pathway for such change started when the last speciation event diverged the paths of the two segments of Homo Sapiens into Neanderthals and Cro-magnon. A look at the stone tool suites of both races indicate that at the start of both, they shared a high degree of similarity in stone tool making, shaping and use. A bare double handful of stone tool types were seen and both served as a starting point for tool use in each of those groups. Neanderthals, up until the very last, were using a stone tool making and crafting suite of skills little changed for their duration of existence. Sapiens, however, soon started crafting new tools, started using stone flakes for tools and, in general, let nothing go to waste as better tools were formed. By the end of the simultaneity of this side-by-side existence, Sapiens was using hundreds, if not thousands of different tool types.

This led to the ability to adapt nature to needs, rather than the Neanderthals needs to nature, and would prove to be a vital turning point to actually start inculcating change and advancing culture. Of course change was something happening on the order of tens of generations, so adapting to it was little problem. The advent of depicting ideas in symbols that were painted or scribed was another major change, that allowed for long term record-keeping and the start of cultural memory. Some few verbal stories in the Australian Aboriginal histories and the faintest echoes from the Norse culture both point to the very beginnings of that time. With writing would come the need for further abstraction and actually needing to count things. That, secondary, need was pushed by a physical labor that allowed an untold change for all of mankind: ploughing fields. These two combined to create a new cultural milieu that created the foundations for the local City-State via recorded governance and laws. The earliest of Empires sought to extend the influence of these concepts and gather more power to themselves as they agglomerated other Peoples into this new ruling paradigm. These first Hydraulic Empires, centered on water source utilization and control would prove to be self-limiting as people with different backgrounds from those ruling would pick up the necessary new tools from the expanding culture, and then seek to undermine it with those very same tools. Cultural conflict intensified the change cycle, although it was still not outpacing society in the realm of governance and religion.

In particular the mass media of the day, that being the carved glyphs on State built monuments, served as ready propaganda for all to see. This stranglehold upon the written text, and thus upon the movement of cultures, did not let up until the printing press. Advances in other areas were sequestered into knowledge zones kept by religious sects and tradecraft guilds, both of which had need to reduce the amount of information put outside of their areas, so as to ensure their supremacy of oversight upon them. With that breaking up came the fastest series of advances in the shortest period ever witnessed by mankind. While the doubling of information may have been going since the invention of the written word, the geometric progress in shorter time scales seen today are undreamed of by earlier human cultures. What this gave rise to was the formulation of Nation that was *not* under religious oversight nor control. That hard divorcing of the 'revealed truth' against the 'measured facts' required that two major realms of human life be split apart: religion and government.

In Europe this started in the 17th century and the Peace of Westphalia, thus putting centuries of religious based bloodshed behind as a new era of Nation based bloodshed began. Competition amongst Nations soon led to the need for ways to make actual human labor more productive, so that a Nation could get a competitive advantage in such production. In the 19th century the new, Industrial Empires expanded to the point of meeting the last of the Hydraulic Empires in China, and the harsh difference in philosophy of governing, population management and trade had stark outcomes upon China. Throughout all of this the pace of change increases as the means of communications amongst mass populations becomes less expensive. That is a basic paradigm shift for humanity, from hording knowledge to disseminating it and the realization that the greater the interaction of knowledge the greater the result. Not, of necessity, benefits, because progress has come to have its darker side in that society no longer keeps pace with the rate of the rate of change: the rate of change itself is increasing over time.

This brings back the hearkening of what one does to cope with this and adjust to it. One can ignore change, as China did, and pay a higher price in blood, tyranny and now a liquidification of society as it seeps out through the cracks in the Great Firewall of China. By stepping into affluence and instant, cheap communications, the Authoritarian structure of the Government is finding itself in the same bind as Western religious institutions found themselves in the 17th century: adapt or be broken. Western religion survived because of the slow pace of change in that era, while a regime attempting to control thoughts and information, and thusly lives, finds itself hard pressed to do so and little time to adapt. The Western ideal became typified in the United States in which personal Liberty and Freedom were given reign, and religion relegated to the States. Thus the Union had no religion, no matter what the make-up of its States were. With changing technology and demographics, most of the States changed to become more secular in governing and repealed such things as 'Blue Laws' that attempted to enforce religious belief upon the activities of the population at large. Attempting to make individuals lead moral lives through the process of law is impossible if there is not absolute majoritarian adherence to that religion to near unanimity. Further, technology and the needs of an advancing society no longer permit the niceties of a day of pure rest as perishable goods would, indeed, start to perish without their getting to market for sale. Society adapted to this and the laws fell by the wayside as impractical for the modern era. It is this adaptation and adjustment from the bottom-up, from Individuals to the Nation that makes Western democracies capable of shifting with the times.

What has happened, in this secularizing of the Nation, is that the deep religious nature of the United States has become masked by a photogenic mask put forward by the entertainment industry. Amongst Western Nations the US still has the highest rate of church attendance for believers and the rate of charitable giving far outstrips the Government in all but a few areas. The deep disconnect between the media industry and the majority of the population puts an internal stress upon the United States unlike any other Nation: two distinct sides of the US are present, although only one gets a forthright glare upon the world, which is that most suited to the limelight. Even with some of parts of the older line religious sects moving into the televised and now digital realms, the feeling of disconnect is still present between what the US distinctly *is* and how it is seen to be. Even those that do not partake of religion can be troubled by this, and by the vehement anti-religious attitude put forth by the few upon the many. The overt, anti-religious nature of Mass Media is attempting to enforce a viewpoint against religion, particularly traditional sorts, while opening up a broad 'spectrum' of other views that may only be as deep as a single proponent. While there is some equality of footing in the 'marketplace of ideas' the inequality of making a sliver or singular minoritarian viewpoint exactly equal to a majoritarian one is anti-democratic in its nature and outlook.

This is not to say that individuals or minoritarian views are to be stifled. Let each have their say, but then let an equal weighting go to the depth of the believers. For the few, paltry hours put out by sectarian religious channels and those giving sermons or speeches on the weekly holy days, the rest of the mass media outweighs that by thousands or tens of thousands to one. And the majority of that media does have bias against religion, against faith and pushes agnosticism or atheism as an 'enlightened' message to the masses. Religious believers had to get a thick skin and learn to take much of the earlier good-natured sets of jokes and stereotypes of their various sects, that is pretty much par for the course. What has happened in recent years is the attack upon personal belief and faith itself, by demeaning individuals who have same and then attempting to belittle the majoritarian belief structure with quite recent and outre new beliefs. Part of that is intentional, and comes from Marxist ideology put forth from the previous generation of scholars. By pushing an anti-religious message, the attempt to divorce religion from society, isolate it and cause it to be an effective anchor for individuals is an outright attempt to put forth ONLY a secular society with no place for belief or worship of something greater than the individual. Unless, of course, it is worship to the State itself.

Another part of this comes, quixotically, from the fact that the written word of religion has locked it in place. That same printing press which freed new ideas to move forward through Peoples did the exact opposite to religions: their texts became locked for good and all at one state of being. Some of this was already being done for those religions that followed the Word, and their texts have only seen some adjustment over the ages, with some funneling due to disasters and editing causing texts to be merged and cross-shifted. The benefits of locking such texts are obvious: they give a uniformity of understanding, history of society and commonality of belief. The downsides are less well understood, but also manifest: religious strictures becoming inapplicable due to changing technical capability, rigidity of thought and belief, and the distancing of the Divine, over time, to an era that the modern reader has less and less identification with. Attempting to re-interpret texts and underlying belief structures for new problems that could not even be thought of when the original texts were created is a vexing one as it is a direct attempt to put words into the mouth of the Divine. And some large amount of the texts speak to different visions and different ways of looking at things that a justification for anything can be read into them. The need to bring the Divine and Spiritual into the present is manifest by these new religions.

A bemusing side note about a game I heard about some decades ago, although the name of it escapes me. There were 6 different alien groups and they were each defined by race, capabilities, outlook and religion. Basically, each race or species has one religion... until you get to humans. There the writer of the text put forth: 'Humans are a very strange race in that instead of having one religion for their species, they, apparently, make up a new one every day. Each of these new religions gains some number of adherents that fervently believe in it. Often a number of adherents will shift day to day on what they believe in.' That is an attempt to cope with the modern world, by trying to plunk down a belief structure that is either a deep mutation of a previous religion, a revival of a religion out of favor, or, as has been seen numerous times, a brand new religion with little connection to much else in the world. Cults of personality crop up as anyone that claims superior moral guidance and direction may just be that 'beacon of hope' to understanding an ever changing, complex world. The result is a small group or cult that deeply reflects the central personality and the fissures of an individual become manifest amongst the followers. And if the individual lasts long enough, is persuasive enough and gains enough followers, then those divisions become inculcated into the new belief system and will manifest itself from thereon out.

The wisdom of having a secular State with joining the non-religious commonality of a People together avoids those rifts and divisions, which were the cause of so much in the way of destruction in previous eras. This problem has arisen once more, in an old religion that became reflective of the central figure and the divisive problems of having multiple records of his sayings then becoming unreconcilable due to cultural application by different Peoples. Within religions there are multiplicity of outlooks that do support commonality of theme, but those difference are seen, within those communities, as worse than those of the unbelievers: no one sins as much so much as one who agrees on the majority of things, but disagrees on one or two resultant viewpoints. Within a secular state, those differences must needs be put aside to have a common society, so they become relegated to those things held in the personal and understood to reflect the frailty of man's understanding of the Divine rather than seeing the Divine, itself, as totally different things that need be fought over. These two major themes in World Affairs are driving the United States to a central cross-roads of Liberty, Freedom and Individuality.

Internally the divisions are those between a minority viewpoint that gets full and deep expression and feels itself safe to actually deride and demean the culture of the Nation. That goes against the fundamental compact between We the People to set aside such differences and have common culture that is an agreement amongst the People and not dictated by any segment or portion of the population. Mass media, while attempting to find a 'lowest common denominator' soon stressed THAT and academia picked up on that as the actual culture of the Nation.

Externally there is a movement to bring back Empire and the Totalitarian State on a large scale. This has two parts to it, also. One portion of this is the secular outgrowth of Western cultural perspective of lowest common denominator viewpoint coupled with Marxist views of the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat'. To have that ruling dictum, however, religion needs to be ridiculed and divorced from culture, which is why so many attacks upon religion use a lowest common denominator cultural approach to do so. Hit at the perceived basics and one hits at what should be the center of that religious outlook. What this does not recognize is that the commonality of the compact amongst the People of the United States is an agreement amongst ALL religions to have a common culture. Strike at religious belief, and one strikes at the entirety of that peaceful compact. This attempt is one to cause an outright divide amongst the People so that affiliation to common culture and commonality amongst religions is replaced by less associative group distinctions or class distinctions. This is further emboldened by the fact that academia supports this wrong-headed view and gives intellectual cover to those looking to divide the People so as to bring down society and reform it into something different that is anti-democratic. The entire concept is encapsulated as Transnational Progressivism, both in its wholly interior varieties and the unity of those varieties with a larger, Western movement against the ideals of Individualism and Freedom.

The other exterior attack is being promulgated by far off-shoots of Islam. What cannot be done with Islam, as it is currently constructed, is to find any centrality of belief and wisdom, beyond the multiplicity of reports on the Prophets words and ideas that were somewhat rectified in the Koran. This attempt, like that at creating the Holy Bible, required that some written texts were seen as valid over other written texts and accounts of the same or similar happenings. Unlike the Holy Bible and structured religion around it, the Koran had to reflect a much more diverse viewpoint of multiple tribes and how they each heard the words of the Prophet. Further, the entire affair is harder to reconcile as the Prophet, himself, changed viewpoints as he grew older and wiser in outlook. These two divisive factors were not ones that were given over to a council or set of wisemen to reconcile during the life of the Prophet. And as the forethought of how to actually continue the religion as a coherent belief structure was never put forward, the divisions amongst interpretations after the death of the Prophet were almost instantaneous.

Unlike Christianity, there was and is not coherent central force to Islam. The variety of Church types after the death of Christ grew up out of a commonality of interaction between groups and the letters they sent each other. Consolidation of the fundamentals of Christianity still coalesced to multiple religious doctrinal sets, but the need for a common wisdom and understanding between these Churches was seen as a central need early on. The benefits, as discussed, were there as well as drawbacks, but this commonality gave a chance for a 'live and let live' atmosphere to grow up and that atmosphere would then need to be found anew when the Protestant sects broke from the commonality of the Roman Catholic Church.

By only having the somewhat central agreement upon the words in the Koran, Islam did not come together to heal differences and form a greater understanding of itself as did the Christian sects. Without a centralized force, the religion which had started decentralized remained so and continues to do so. And giving offense by impinging upon the beliefs of others in Islam is seen as something not done.... unless it is directed at killing them. And even then, the lack of understanding of Individual Rights and Liberty keep such views sequestered so as to not bring the full factional differences of Islam to the foreground and show a religion divided amongst itself. Thus the extreme factional off-shoots of the main thematic areas of Islam are putting forth a belief in two things that must happen.

First and foremost is that Islam be the Only Religion of mankind. Do mind you that this 'universal doctrine' is present in Christianity, but there the hard work at making that the sole realm of the Individual and respecting the decisions of that Individual are paramount. One agrees to enter into that belief and move towards understanding the Divine via that route. Under the extremist factions of Islam this is removed and simple submission to religion is all that is necessary of the Individual. The Individual, as these factions view Individuality, must submit to the Divine. There is no illegitimate submission in that realm of thought.

Secondly, a Religious Empire, called Caliphate, must be established so as to put one Religious rule over mankind. In this the dividing line on exactly how the upper echelon of Ruling Islam is to proceed is at odds between these factions. A Wahabbist view is that of a Caliph ruling over the secular and religious. The more Khomeinist Shia view is to have a council of religious elders rule over the Spiritual and set secular doctrine and have the Caliph as a figurehead for such doctrine. The entire Totalitarian structure to get to either of those is exactly the same beneath that highest area of rule.

As these factions within sects within two of the main sections of Islam put forth such things, they also demonstrate their view of the value of human life: there isn't any beyond submission to the Divine. This is a harsh spasm of religion against modern culture in an attempt to return to a Golden Age that never did exist. Further it is both fantastical in outlook, that the Divine will step in to uphold the righteous, and it is fatalistic in that one's life only has meaning in submission. The works of man, then, are seen as unworthy things and somewhat degenerate as they do not revolve around the Divine. Secular common culture is abhorrent to these factions, as it is a negation of the place of the Divine over all things, including economies and politics. By stressing the violence that these factions put forward, they are using intimidation and coercion upon the direct local Peoples that they go against and directing events so as to further demoralize Western secular culture.

In that last doing, they are aided and abetted by those portions of the Mass Media that also wish to demoralize and fragment Western culture. This, then, is a coalescence of Barbarity and Authoritarian viewpoints handed to the culture of the People as a whole in which the aim is to corrode and destroy that cultural cohesion. There are further segments, within Western thought, that propagate an ideal that economic freedom will gain other freedoms. They do miss the point that in order to properly use economic freedoms Individuals must have cultural openness *first* so that the fullest expression of the Individual may take place unhindered. To do otherwise is to relegate human Liberty and Freedom to economic good to be traded away in the hopes that it might be allowed to flourish. Within China that is a direct attack upon the social structure that is now going on in which centrality of State Authority, which has existed across all of Chinese time and culture, is being removed and NO structure is given as an alternative. The mass removal of these underpinnings are a threat not only to the Communist Party, but to the continuation of society as a whole in China. These last, desperate grabs to hold on to the ancient power concepts of the Bureaucrat as Continuity Figure under a ruling Authority is being liquidated by economic capability. Attempts at Liberty and Free Expression on a mass scale do arise, but in their inability to formulate what those *mean* to Chinese culture they have trouble gaining foothold and are repressed by the Government.

And Islam, as a whole and with all of the Nations that have large sections of believers, is undergoing this exact same decohesion of culture. The radical factions want to put an extremely Authoritarian structure down so that this can be fought. By attempting to put a rigid belief and social structure into place, these extremists realize that the entirety of Islam, itself, is decohering because it has no Central Axis. Starting out as a distributed religion it will further be distributed and decohere until it is a diffuse belief system with thousands of separate off-shoots, each claiming validity of insight and belief structure. By being unable to formulate a secular response, as the Protestant Christian Nations did, the only other option on the limited menu is that of Empire. Instead of fostering Individual Liberty and Freedom, economic freedom and inexpensive goods have armed these factions with cheap and deadly weapons with which they will use those to enforce their beliefs upon World.

Or die trying.

To remedy that only One Nation, amongst All Nations offers a way forward for Accountable personal Liberty and Freedom: The United States of America. The attacks upon such Accountability are central to Transnational Progressivism, so as to remove ideas of personal accountability and put nebulous 'society' or 'culture' to blame. What is not understood by them nor by those who espouse Liberty before Accountability, is that without the structure of Accountability, Liberty turns to Anarchy or Totalitarian State. Culture is either destroyed as it atomizes into pure, unaccountable Individualism, or personal Accountability is vested in the State to use as a tool against the Individual and the Individual has no recourse against such uses. Either way society as a common agreement amongst People is destroyed.

The way forward is harsh, clear and will most likely put all life of Free People to be Free at risk either by removal of all lives on Earth or by the removal of the underpinnings of Freedom and empowering the State to use technology against the People. Against the internal divisiveness supported by outside Transnational Progressivism, The Jacksonian Party espouses what it has always espoused for those decrying the nature and state of culture and society: Tell us how you think it should be fixed or shut up about those trying to do ANY fixing at all to keep it going. To have Individualism and Freedom the structure of Accountability for Personal Actions is Primary. Any attempt to make that diffuse is an Authoritarian power grab by those espousing it, be they clergy or lawyers or scientists. Commonality of Law and Accountability to same is fundamental to Society actually having structure. The clearly stated goal of all of those within the culture is that 'to form a more perfect Union' amongst the People by the actions of Individuals. Remove the Accountability and degeneration happens as Law is diminished and no longer applied to actions destroying society.

On the International Affairs realm the US needs conduct itself as an actual Nation that has Stance and Posture with respect to Individual Liberty and Freedom. This requires recognizing that only those things that support such goals in the form of cultures that have Accountability for Actions as a touchstone are those which help spread Liberty and Freedom. To do this required divorcing the US from any global organization that does not have that as a foundational view, discriminates against Nations based on that view and uses that as a necessary and positive bias for bringing about the greatest of Individual Liberty while having the Individual hold themselves accountable for their Actions. This is an across-the-board Precept that is not something the US can ever negotiate upon without demeaning and devaluing human Liberty and Freedom as a whole. To negotiate in that realm is to succumb to Authoritarianism and the eventual erosion of all human Freedom.

And to finally begin to address the problems of schismatic and factional Islam that puts forth means and methods and activities destroying human lives and seeking to subjugate all of mankind, Islam needs something that it has never had: a Central Axis upon which it holds itself accountable. In the modern age this requires an across-the-board coalescence of Islam at the only single point that it holds in common, that being Mecca. And the only way forward for that is to get All of Islam to hold Mecca as One Religion with multifactional views that have means and method to come to common agreement on what is and is not allowable for the entirety of it. That is the beginning of an Accountability Structure upon which Islam can find its bearings in this modern age. Retreating to the past and to Empire will put not only the vast majority of human life at risk as the web of infrastructure comes tumbling down that supports modern life, but it will also remove the concept of Liberty and Freedom for Individuals and put a Totalitarian Empire enforcing beliefs upon Peoples in place. By trying to formulate the Koran, those doing that formulation found that many of the separate works and beliefs of the Prophet and various teachers could not be expunged. The attempt was of the right direction, but the inability to coalesce around meaning of a totality of Islam that would *also* give meaning of life to Individuals and respect them in their differences points to an overall failure for Islam.

That failure has placed the entire planet in grave danger as the reductio ad absurdum of Total War, being weapons made cheaply so that the greatest taking of life can be done for the lowest cost, now puts minor Nations and rich organizations or organizations with dispersed and decentralized economic income, into a position of gaining such weapons and putting an end to Liberty and Freedom. Islam is not the only threat from this realm, but it is the most pressing and by far the worst as the reactionary segments and factions seek to impose their will upon all of Islam and upon the World as a whole. That threat cannot even begin to be addressed until Islam finds a way to make Individuals accountable to the belief structure of Islam. And then address how Islam, itself, can exist in a modern age that will dissolve it as the cultures supporting it are likewise dissolved by rampant technology empowering Individuals to do as they please to destroy such culture as that does not promulgate Liberty.

With Accountability.

Even if that can be done, the continued threats to culture, society and Freedom will continue in other realms, but these few things need be done or the way forward upon this present path is one that leads to no good ends for anyone.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

If it sounds like a duck...

This is a personal position paper taking up space here while Blogger gets its beta act together and finds some way to transfer Dumb Looks Still Free... which, considering that this started on 9 DEC 2006 is more than just a bit longer than a 'fast and easy' upgrade ought to take. Still, there is no such thing as an easy upgrade. 9 DEC 2006 in the morning. And with giving me scads of emails that *congratulations* you have moved successfully over to Blogger Beta, etc., etc. Yes, those arrived by the tens... the hundreds... and then soon followed by the scads of emails that said, basically, a problem had occured and maybe things were all not so bright and cheerful, etc., etc. and that they would get on it RSN. So, while DLSF is in the betweener limbo, and has a post all prepared for it, I decided to post here for a bit... so, a definite Personal Position Paper. Not The Jacksonian Party Policy.

Yet.


There has been a disturbing tendency over the last few decades to degrade the meaning of words and phrases away from their original meanings so as to lessen those meanings and generalize such words to the extent that they become meaningless. By moving the necessary bar to employ such a word as, torture say, it has shifted from its medieval meaning of thumbscrews, the rack, and iron maiden past its modern uses of attaching electrodes onto body parts with intent to cause pain via electrical stimulation, to that of being made to run around naked or to have a bag of water put into one's mouth until a choking sensation stimulates deep fear. Somehow when you go from the idea of bamboo slivers under fingernails to naked human pyramids, something just gets lost in the transition. There is a difference between bodily mutilation without anesthesia and some social humiliation. To me these are two entirely different realms in which using the concept of 'torture' to cover humiliating treatment is a total degradation of the word and concept of 'torture'.

This has gone so far as to suggest that one of the more standard criminal interrogation techniques, lack of sleep, is 'torture' when applied to terrorist suspects held in military custody undergoing military investigation. A very strange thing, this juxtaposition of 'torture' and repeated and continuous lack of sleep... now would this be defined as 'involuntary'? I would assume so. Long-term? Yes, that would be necessary, too. Disorienting? Most definitely. And since 'torture' is pointless, so decry those who say that such sleep-deprivation is torture, then even if used by professional interrogators, it just yields to an inhuman and inhumane condition upon the subject. Now, what if you had that going on for two years, say? Beyond horror, isn't it?

A very strange thing, this 'torture' concept, as purported by its advocates on this part of it. Because that is my life due to organic brain functions that have tripped off a latent familial condition that has not manifest itself with anything like the sort of problems I have had for at least 3 generations. And it had a sudden onset far past the normal time for such, when it is a non-genetic based problem. Lack of restful, recovering sleep to any fair degree or the return of stamina, coupled with sudden attacks of loss of the voluntary motor functions and resulting loss of muscle tone. Yes, utterly pointless and beyond my control, very disorienting to see reality and dream become a fluid whole and no dreams ever coalescing from the vast wasteland of my sleeping hours. I do hold up pretty well under this constant, ongoing assault against my will and consciousness. Would you call this 'torture'? It fits all of the definable characteristics of those who point to such AS 'torture'. And yet, from this vast grayness that is my life I can fairly say that this is NOT 'torture'... and those cataleptic attacks are most coercive and beyond my control or ability to control my body and be conscious throughout them. Horrible, isn't it? From my position, which is fairly staked and claimed in this netherworld of no respite do let me say that using 'torture' to describe this is an insult to me. Pointless, coercive, draining and with no sign of respite nor cure nor much amelioration though the WORST of it is under control. You should have seen what I was like when it was uncontrolled, for the symptom list I have given you is the current, very mild and ameliorated form of this condition of mine. For about 8 months of that it was far, far worse. While I would wish it upon no one, I would not describe anything close to THAT condition as 'torture'.

Such has it been with other concepts, like 'Civil War' which has had a centuries long history of meaning: One organization within a Nation raises a flag and new concept of Governance, takes control over territory, puts up new Government, hands out uniforms and actively opposes the existing Government in all things in an attempt to either secede or to overthrow the existing Government and replace it with the new one. That has been a pretty stable meaning since the War of the Roses through the English Civil War the Spanish Civil War and the US Civil War. Even the folks in Lebanon had this idea down pat when you saw individual neighborhoods standing up with flags and ruling councils and identification markers so you could tell who was who. By trying to shift that between disorganizations that actively oppose each other and the current Government and offer nothing better to replace it nor any open alternative nor raise a flag nor put on uniforms, what you do NOT have is a 'Civil War'. Throwing out centuries of meaning just to get an emotional 'feel good' about saying something is a 'Civil War' when it is not, is destructive to the import of the concept itself.

War, as a concept, has also been degraded as it is moved from the realm of armed conflict to such things as: poverty, cancer, diseases of various sorts, illegal drugs and the heartbreak of psoriasis. Some of the illegal drug users and agents and growers and refiners do, indeed, get into conflicts, but a 'War on Illegal Drugs' somehow gets the mental picture of pills growing arms and legs and marching around with miniature weapons. Trying to stop a social ill or disease is definitively NOT war, no matter what else it *is*. People may still die from diseases, but this is known as dying from that disease or due to use of arms in an illegal activity. What it is NOT is a conflict against a Nation or its People. Mind you nuclear devices would be a great 'cure-all' but I do doubt that anyone is looking to employ those in the mis-stated conflicts.

Onwards we finally get to: terrorism. Here you do have a problem, especially when it is endemic but is leading nowhere. Terrorism is, at heart, illegitimate warfare against a Nation or People of a Nation. It is not just illegal as a civil crime, but it is an illegitimate use of warfare without forming the necessary foundations to give it credence. Terrorists that actually raise up a flag and so on, and do those things necessary to form Government and be accountable are 'revolutionaries' or 'secessionists' as they are putting up a new Government with which to combat the existing one. Now, some people have put forth that there is, within the definition space of civil governments that depend upon multiparty elections, this idea known as: Legitimate Armed Political Party.

That is, however, an oxymoron as NO State will allow any political group to go about in an armed fashion so as to intimidate and otherwise disrupt civil society. Using such intimidation tactics is an undermining of the meaning of 'civil society' and of 'legitimacy'. Political parties stand or fall on this thing known as 'ideas' which form something known as 'policy', which is then put to another thing known as 'a vote'. Does the concept of 'Armed Party' fit into this?

Civil disorder in societies can erode to the point of semi-lawlessness as was seen in Weimar Germany. There, in the late 1920's and early 1930's, various factions took up arms with which to assert control of segments of the population so as to 'capture' their vote. Individual 'Party Wardens' had neighborhoods that they sent goons in to ensure that the populace kept to the party line. As these groups proliferated a form of conflict evolved that involved: intimidation, threats, coercion, torture, and assassination, as well as outright extortion and murder. One of these armed parties killed its way to the top, which meant the largest single faction in the parliament, and then used its position to take over the Government so as to use it to clear out opposition to its rule. Thus an armed party that had a plurality, but nowhere near a majority, usurped power outright for itself and repressed the population once it did so. The legitimacy of the regime that followed brings into question the very concept of 'Armed Political Party' as it acted more as local strongmen to coerce their way into power on the majority of the population. Do note that the concept of 'mandate', which is to get an overwhelming majority of the votes while still having viable opposition, does not apply: mere sub-majoritarian plurality is not a mandate to do a wholesale change to Government, but is a chance to perform caretaker duties and, perhaps, negotiate some reforms into place.

Thus the conception of 'Legitimate Armed Political Party' comes to mean: able to kill your way to power, seize Government and use the power of Government against the majority of the population. That is a total undermining of civil society, by having a minority determine how the majority should live if power is seized and not shared amongst such parties as are necessary to get a coalition majority into place. Plurality coalitions are rarely a 'mandate' unless they have presented a front *before* the election in which the Coalition seeks to reform or change Government in part so as to perform necessary functions that allow the population to lead a civil life without fear *from* Government.

Here is 'terrorism' transformed into 'Legitimate Armed Political Party': they are one and the same. Terrorists look to erode the civil structure of a Nation and so does an armed political party. They both use the tools of terror and coercion upon the populace of that Nation. They both seek to undermine the Government, although terrorists just in general by creating the social atmosphere of terror while the armed political party combines *that* with then forcing its way into the Governmental structure. Both promise that if they just 'get their way' that everything will be fine... just accede to their demands and you will have nothing to worry about... save your life and liberty.

Now, what would one say if a minoritarian faction were armed by two allied Nations, so as to influence the politics of that Nation? Well, that would be meddling in the affairs of that Sovereign State now, wouldn't it?

And what if that minoritarian faction were ARMED by those two allied Nations, so as to use coercion upon the People of that Nation and to threaten its Neighbors? That would be the usurping of the Sovereign control of Armed Forces within that State, would it not?

Let us further suppose that this faction forms a political party, and coerces its way via local, neighborhood control into a minority position in the major elected body of its Nation. Would that not be outside interference in the direct running of a Sovereign State due to the influence being used by those outside Nations?

Actually, that sounds pretty hostile and would actually give rise to Casus Belli upon BOTH those outside Nations. Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? Yet many will claim that this backed party representing the interests of the two outside Nations is 'legitimate' because they have used their ability to coerce and bribe that segment of the population. And yet that is the very problem of the Spanish Civil War in spades, as it had multiple outside Nations looking to back sections of the population in Spain so as to overthrow the legitimate government and take power. The USSR and Mexico supported by the Communist International put actual fighters into Spain, as did the Germans and Italians aided by Portugal and Ireland with assent from the Roman Catholic Church. Now THERE was a problem of interference, bar none... this thing with Hezbollah is pretty damned minor compared to that fiasco. And yet the illegitimate intrusion of Foreign Nations was just as wrong then as it is NOW. Legitimacy for civil government is *not* gained through the barrel of the gun, but via the assent of the governed. So, if Hezbollah really meant to be a part of the civil structure in Lebanon it would lay down its arms and support the Government of Lebanon to *protect them*.

Yes, the juxtaposition of that is intentional. While Lebanon was finally coming out of its Civil War, that was spurred on in more than a little bit by the presence of the PLO and its being supported by Syria, when the PLO was leaving the Syrians immediately worked a deal with Iran to support Hezbollah. Thus the Palestinians were used as pawns by Syria and Iran to work their Foreign Policy, and when their utility was coming to an end they immediately sought to make a new pawn in Lebanon to carry out their will as they were too cowardly, as Nations, to openly go about their Foreign Policy against Israel. While many decried the interference by outside Nations in Spain, today that is just seen as 'forming a legitimate armed political party'.

So where does that leave these concepts?

Torture, it appears, is turning into something given meaning to by Monty Python's Flying Circus and their depiction of the Modern Spanish Inquisition. Soon we will be having such implements of 'torture' as the Comfy Chair brought out! But only after poking with the 'Soft Cushions', but to finally end up at the 'Dish Rack'.

For 'Civil War' we have already seen it denigrated in its use to mere office politics and to long term squabbles between folks inside such dangerous organizations as the Rotary Club and YMCA. Yes, yea and verily do those squabbles amongst factions meet up with the modern ideal of 'Civil War'.

And 'Armed Intervention into the Affairs of Another Nation'? Mere building up of a political minority via the use of terror technicques so as to be seen as a terrorist group... it is just *internal* to the Nation, not external.

How will we ever come to terms with the 'Old Fashioned' sort of 'Civil War' if it is so demeaned as to mere squabbling in private organizations? Perhaps a modifier could be used to identify it, such as a 'Plus Civil War' for when any actual, physical violence happens. And a 'Double Plus Civil War' for actual open warfare between factions. And then 'Ultra Double Plus Civil War' for the real 'Old Fashioned' Civil War between competing governing ideals amongst a People.

This new outlook on language actually has a terminology to it: Newspeak.

From George Orwell's 1984.

And how do its modern day practitioners sound? Well, Orwell's description is better than mine:

One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.

Winston had finished his bread and cheese. He turned a little sideways in his chair to drink his mug of coffee. At the table on his left the man with the strident voice was still talking remorselessly away. A young woman who was perhaps his secretary, and who was sitting with her back to Winston, was listening to him and seemed to be eagerly agreeing with everything that he said. From time to time Winston caught some such remark as 'I think you're so right, I do so agree with you', uttered in a youthful and rather silly feminine voice. But the other voice never stopped for an instant, even when the girl was speaking. Winston knew the man by sight, though he knew no more about him than that he held some important post in the Fiction Department. He was a man of about thirty, with a muscular throat and a large, mobile mouth. His head was thrown back a little, and because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes. What was slightly horrible, was that from the stream of sound that poured out of his mouth it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word. Just once Winston caught a phrase -'complete and final elimination of Goldsteinism'- jerked out very rapidly and, as it seemed, all in one piece, like a line of type cast solid. For the rest it was just a noise, a quack-quack-quacking. And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was saying, you could not be in any doubt about its general nature. He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against thought-criminals and saboteurs, he might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian army, he might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar front -- it made no difference. Whatever it was, you could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure Ingsoc. As he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and down, Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the man's brain that was speaking, it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.

Syme had fallen silent for a moment, and with the handle of his spoon was tracing patterns in the puddle of stew. The voice from the other table quacked rapidly on, easily audible in spite of the surrounding din.

'There is a word in Newspeak,' said Syme, 'I don't know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse, applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.'
- George Orwell, 1984, Chapter 5.
For that is what is now heard... 'torture'... quack!

'Civil War'.... quack!

'Legitimate Armed Political Party'.... quack!

For those going quackers, you are using duckspeak.

And have joined Big Brother in the ranks of Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism in the destruction of the language so that it no longer means what it says.

When your time comes to be vaporized who will speak up for you?

Because there will be no words left to describe your fate.

Just the sound of quacking.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

The Modern Jacksonian - Chapter 2 - The Responsibility of Structure

From its foundations this Nation is one of builders and doers, with a fair oddment of thinkers and philosophers thrown in. The majority of those coming to this Nation either did so to escape repression, social or religious, were exiled by law, thus being common crooks being given a choice between imprisonment or exile, or came willingly to start a new life with new horizons and form a culture amenable to those seeking such. While a class of land owners, merchants and generally wealthy individuals did form, they were not sinecured via past positions to those of power. While the Crown did establish colonies and law in these new territories, the people of those colonies saw themselves as distinctly apart from the mother country. This new land was decidedly different from the old country, and did not have things in form or shape of society that easily fit into the guidelines and definitions set by the Crown itself. Further the actual Government was seen as quite some far removed from the daily affairs of these farflung citizens and not abiding by the compacts of representation for such basic things as taxation.

The cultural compact between the Peoples of a Nation has history and structure to it, both of which are commonly known so that they can be held in common. While religion was somewhat better tolerated than in centuries past in Europe, these new colonies looked to strongly divorce themselves from the waning traditions of tying religion to Nation. Religious persecution, suppression and discrimination were things that drove minority or repressed religions to America and they had this strange notion that to have a different society that tolerated their religions they must *make* that society that did tolerate such differences. And while they were majoritarian followers of a single type of religion, they had seen that intra-religious warfare had killed more people and brought more suffering than could be tolerated by any religion that held to the decency of its practitioners and followers. That was a necessary divorce of culture that was amenable to the small town ethos that was forming up across the colonies, and that ethos goes far back in history, even beyond the near term Scots-Irish, and into deeper parts of Scandinavia and Central Europe.

Unlike the rest of Europe, that practiced 'Divine Right Monarchy', the strand coming from those northerly climes had a different viewpoint on all things religious and how to have a Nation. These peoples held a common, village assembly on an annual basis to determine the interpretation of the Law of the Land. In this the Lawspeaker was able to hold even the King accountable as an individual, and the Kings honored that basis as they would not have a Nation without such structure amongst their People. That moved into the Scots-Irish areas via contact during Viking expansion and changed the local laws to more closely follow this ideal. That infusion changed Law from something dictated by the Nation to something agreed to by the people of the Nation. This diffused over centuries into the general English and then British culture, but the highly clan and tribal based Scotts and Irish adhered to this as it was a form of governing that made much sense to them and gave much in the way of personal liberty while still holding individuals strictly accountable for their actions.

This makes a strong tie between the commonly held culture and the Law that upholds it. And as those were by and large rural communities that practiced this form of government, the actual settlement of a dispute was put off until the next local assembly. That waiting, be it mere days or up to a year, gave time for cooling off and reconciliation between the individuals involved. Thus an important part of the legal system was the social accountability of those people within that town, city or Nation. Such a deferred settlement system does not properly scale up to large formulations of settlements, thus the waiting period became that of awaiting adjudication rather than that of settling the dispute on personal terms. That change came to then reflect the basic adjustment that those trials, then, need be fair, swift and have societal feedback via the jury system. For these peoples this is an outgrowth of Law from below, not imposed from above. It is a means to hold those governing the Law accountable to standardized and regularized means that are given to it by society.

That conflict between Law from below and 'Divine Right' Law from above came into harsh and direct contact in the British Isles. While the Crown was slowly ceding rights it held to the People, those moving from that society wanted a society that was directed for and by the people, not the Crown. By not actually giving representation to citizens and imposing taxation without the input of those being taxed or plainly ignoring them, those people felt that their community was being dictated to from above without recourse of the commonly held system that ruled from below. The Crown could have done many things to assuage these citizens, but did not do so. The citizenry recognized their debts to the Crown, but wanted a more lenient pay schedule not enforced taxation. While this is a gross oversimplification of the colonies that would become the United State, the basis of the Precepts of that Nation were laid out along the communitarian lines of those things held in common amongst a diverse community of believers who did not wish to repeat the mistakes of their forebearers.

From the philosophical side such things as Free Masonry would play a part in this as those who followed that set of outlooks held much in common with those craftsmen that had become the basis for their name and meeting places. They, too, had contact with this more community based form of governance and used more southernly notions of democracy to play into that. And religion, particularly Christianity but also the Deists who did not follow the strict beliefs but the underpinnings of those beliefs, came forth to design something different: a society based upon its People as the ruling force. The Declaration of Independence put for the Precepts, or guiding light, of this New Nation and that its foundation was to be something accountable to man, not to King or God. This was a hard and necessary break with the past so that past ills would not be repeated in the New World. To do this required not only the Precepts and Revolution, but a final Government that would not inculcate either of those problems within it.

To have a common government accountable to men, it must be set up as representing those individuals within the society and adjust to them while putting none in danger due to divisions. One of the interesting side-lights of the final tumult leading up to the Constitutional Convention, during which the Articles of Confederation were leading the Nation to bankruptcy and ruin, is that the drafter of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, had carefully been given diplomatic duties in France. The Declaration itself nearly fractured the Colonies asunder and while high minded philosophy was fine for Precepts, they don't make good drafting of Government. The one man crucial to editing and rewriting BOTH documents was a man that did understand that this government must be something that is held by the People: Benjamin Franklin.

While being a man of deeply religious feelings, he also recognized the need to formulate things on a more basic and fundamental level to society. He had many trades and occupations during his life, from printer to diplomat to scientist to philosopher, and he so no boundary between these things. By experiencing so much of the richness of many ways of life he knew that this richness must be ensured by those things held common to all of the People so that *any* of them could lead such a rich life. He was the one who redacted the outright religious phrasing of the Declaration and put in the 'self-evident' language because if something was self-evident, you need not reply upon a Deity to hand it to you as it was already done and given as a fact of life. And while he did not formulate the KISS principle, its application is, indeed, self-evident throughout the Declaration and the Constitution. Those things which are 'self-evident' are held in common without regards to religion, race or any other thing and thusly needs no assertion of that evidence.

After the speech to open the Constitutional Convention Franklin then let the backers of the 'Virginia Plan' for divided Federal Government put their proposal forth. It took much hammering out, but this foundational concept of the structure of Government being divided, yet stable in the stresses of that division, is one still pertinent to any way of thinking about Government to this day. The actual drafting and final writing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights seen as necessary first amendments to that document, still form a basis for a new way of looking at the structure of society and government and its relationship to its people. Nothing quite like it was really formulated before it, as it changed around the entire basis for government from top down to bottom up. To do this requires a recognized structure and the Constitution in this plan-view is something that is inherently simple and yet complex in its finality.

Within the Body of the Constitution that outlays the sections of Government that is common to the People, each section follows a Division as follows:

1) Responsibilities - Each section of Government is given harsh delimitations on its Responsibilities and given purview over oversight of them.

2) Means and Methods - This is what each section of Government can do and lays out the structural means for how they are to be accomplished.

3) Rights - Lastly Government is given limited Rights to achieve those Responsibilities through the Means and Methods it is given.

The 'Virginia Plan' sets forth a set of interior and exterior accountability systems so that within the Federal Government there is cross-oversight by each section of Government upon other parts of it. The exterior accountability are that this Government is accountable to the States and the People, and the States, in particular, while ceding many Rights to the Federal Government, retain all others and is given provisos for recovery of Rights if Federal Government is seen as no longer doing its job. Finally all Rights are held by the People who may change, edit or amend the Constitution in part, via amendment, or in whole via Convention open to All the States.

That Body of the Constitution so re-iterates this that it is taken that this is the entirety of the Constitution. Government, when it is given something to do, must actually do it, even if the means and methods and rights cannot fully satisfy those responsibilities. Then Government MUST come to the People for help. This indicates that the entirety of the Body of the Constitution is, in and of itself, a means and rights section of the entire document. That would indicate that there is a Responsibilities section before the Body telling what has those Responsibilities and what they are. And that is just the case as the Constitution starts with the Preamble starting with the famous words: "We the People..."

From the bottom up societal view of things via the Scots-Irish, this statement is a foundation of SOCIETY not GOVERNMENT. The outlay of all Responsibilities for everything that Government does is put upon We the People. When Government fails it is a failure of the People of the United States, not their Government. And as the Constitution hands out all of those things which MUST be accomplished FIRST via the Means and Methods given and the Rights seen as fulfilling those, it is the complete and utter responsibility of the People to see that all of the things handed to THEM get done FIRST. Government is just ONE way to do this because all other Means and Methods and Rights are held by the People who grant a very few of those to Government to have a stable society.

That is why Thomas Jefferson was left steaming in France: he put forth rights over community. With him at the Convention it would have dragged on for long, long months if not a year or more and be a fundamentally weaker document because it does not hold the People into the strictest accountability for everything done in their name. When the People elect Government to act in their Name they abide by those decisions, even if they disagree with them. This is a harsh and stark difference between the Declaration and the Constitution, in that it does not disperse responsibility along with rights, but concentrates it to the level of the individual. We the People agree to uphold the Law and the commonality that it gives us and agree to peaceful means to express opinions and try to change the minds and outlook of other Citizens against Laws seen as unjust. This gives continuity to society, while Jefferson is famously quoted as saying that it would be a 'good thing' for the country to have a revolution every 10 years or so. That was a non-starter for the majority of the People as they were sick to death about fighting and squabbles and wanted accountable government that would NOT force its ideas upon them. The Jeffersonian method would get government that tried to do everything that was 'right' and failing, while the 'Virginia Plan' put forward a few things a Federal Government MUST DO so as to succeed.

By doing that and creating a limited set of oversight areas for the Federal Government, the rest of the Responsibilities move towards the States and the People. The direct ordering of who has Responsibility and Rights, then, is:

1) We the People. We have all rights as a People and put forth common responsibilities that we agree to abide by first so that we may have a society in common.

2) The States. The States are given autonomy within the Federal Structure so as to have practicing difference in law and culture so long as regularity, but not identicality, of law is applied.

3) Federal Government. This is the last and least of Governments, although it is given awesome responsibilities to handle for the common good.

From this ordering of Responsibilities and Rights, We the People are put first and hold it all. This actually was the understood compact amongst the People up to the modern age, and the Federal Government was seen as generally distant, small, and not having much to do outside of wars. The less Federal Government *did* the better the Nation was. The modern age of industrialization changed that starting in the World War era of 1914 to 1945. The United States tried to switch back and forth from Mass Mobilization to small volunteer force and Mass Industrial Mobilization of the Nation. The needs for WWII were such that over half the economy of the Nation was devoted to it as *more* was being devoted to it by Germany, Italy and Japan. While German industrial advancement was always touted and seen as strong up to WWI and then again during the lead-up to WWII, in point of fact it was not a thoroughly mechanized economy as its military demonstrated: at its height only 60% of the German Armed forces were mechanized, and such things as horse transport were still used for things like field artillery. Italy was more a rural society with pockets of industry as was Japan, with centers of industrial activity. The United States distributed industrial expansion across the Nation and then found a few areas to concentrate it during wartime, mostly for vehicle and aircraft production.

To get *that* capability to actually command industry, powers were used by the Federal Government that were only rarely pulled out for dire necessity. It was highly unusual for the Federal Government to have such a deep level of activity in the affairs of the Nation, and the majority of the People much preferred it that way. The Depression Era programs that were installed just prior to that were actual late-comers to the recovery and only started to appear once recovery had already started. Industrial expansion and regrowth had already started by 1934 and by 1938 was in full swing. Some of the large 'public works' projects added to this, no doubt, and gave the United States added resources in the way of electricity, that had not been readily available before then. These resources were put to use for WWII and after that war a new, global enemy to the US helped to solidify that ranking of Federal Power. What was unusual and contrary to how the United States was formed was now the new 'normal'.

By doing this and inserting the artifact known as 'Big Government' into the agenda of the Nation, the Federal Government soon was seen as a source of *solutions* instead of being the last place to go to so as to ensure *rights*. What this did, however, was break the previous agreement that the People held all Responsibilities and only gave a limited number and limited Rights to Government to achieve those very few things. Moving to higher levels of Government to get things done at a local level removed local accountability from the equation and with them the Rights of the People to oversee these things directly. Concentrating power via the Federal Government is a direct erosion of the Rights of the People as it is done at the level of least accountability to the People. Those things should be few and far between, not a legion of programs to 'address the Nation'. Bottom up society was now turning into a Top down one, and Individuals lost feeling of connection to society by that formulation.

Here the actual structure of society is put at peril and it is this that Jacksonians abhor, above all other things. To have a society worth fighting *for* one must have the most possible say into that society and how it is run. The movement to 'Mass Society' removes that direct connection of the Individual and starts a process of isolation amongst the People. The commonality of non-infringement of rights and beliefs turned from a cohesive force of agreement to one of minoritarian pushing for that force to be diluted by 'social recognition of them within the law'. To Jacksonians the law does not codify what society is, but creates room for a common society to exist. By divvying up that common space you get the 'tragedy of the commons' in which no one cares for that which is common to all in preference of small segments 'getting what is theirs'.

Such things as segregation and racial laws are a divisive force between the People. Turning around and then wanting the problems codified into law forevermore is even worse than the original transgression as it tries to make a permanent separation of what is seen as a common good to the People as a whole. 'Getting yours' means that this piece you have taken removes it from the common for trivial reasons. Once segregation is removed, it is up to the People to determine, without recourse to defining what is 'right' in terms of the exact same terms used for the original division, of how to administer to the wrongs done. Because all of the rights that are being asked for as 'special treatment' are already held within the commonality of the People as Individuals to give or not as they see fit.

Top down enforcement of social change is contrary to the agreement held that the People find a way to work it out and resort to government as a last recourse to ensure that basic rights are upheld. Codify rights and privileges based on previous discrimination is, in and of itself, discrimination and seeking entitlement FOREVER for temporary misdeeds. And when such laws try to be generalized to 'class', then the conception of seeking permanent isolation from the totality of the community of the People is put forth and that is contrary to the system actually set up by the People.

One of the reasons I go through this is that Jacksonians, from all I have seen and read, are enamored of crafts and trades and the activities of same. Any common trade craft, be it carpentry, metalworking, engineering, or network design, requires understanding that the tools available have limits and that the system for making something must be understood before you actually set out trying to make it or change one that already exists. As an example, a plumber is needed to address a leak in a far off part of the house, but to understand the cause of the leak requires understanding the mechanical and physical components of the entire water system and the workings inside of it.

To address the leak requires removing pressure from the system and some draining and then actually finding the part or area at fault and examining it. A 'busted pipe' can have many causes that are due to simple, local things: poor fitting, improper seal placement, poor welding. However it can also be an indication of a much wider and systemic problem: improper pressure for pipe type, improper layout which causes stress on components, old pipe style which has gone brittle due to age and changes in crystal structure of the metal involved, heat strain for plastic piping. In these cases addressing the leak does not address the problem, which requires some addressing of the overall structure. So, you can pay a bill for a hundred or so dollars now, and then have a catastrophic failure later which puts the whole house in danger, or you can trust the plumber when he says: 'You know these old cast iron pipes from that company just weren't made right and you got a problem here.'

Society addresses such ills in a different manner when they are put forward within the Constitutional structure. Here discrimination and segregation are seen as problems locally which must be addressed, and that the proper flow throughout the system will then rebalance given time. Those that want absolute systemic change today, wish to rip out the entirety of that part of society and put in something that they hope will work better, but have no proof of that. In this case those doing the purporting have not addressed the structure as a whole nor made the case to society that such a complete and drastic overhaul so as to resection Rights is necessary. How is the cure not worse than the disease which has already received proper treatment? So the specific case is, as the Scotts would say: "Not proved."

The general problem of seeing the Federal Government as the FIRST place to go to for redress of social problems is, however, demonstrated by this. As designed the Federal Government is the last back stop to the Rights of the Individual to be upheld. It is not the first place for social redress which starts at the level of the People as Individuals. Going to the Federal Government to 'force change' upon society is thusly seen as an attempt to circumvent all of society and over rule the entirety of that society. That is not a conception of Government that fits within the Framework of all Individuals holding the Responsibilities of society and Government FIRST and then delegating small portions of those to actual Government to do. By putting the remedy FIRST at that highest level for enaction DOWNWARDS is antithetical to the system of Government as it is laid out. To change society first requires the free flow of Rights so that Responsibilities may be addressed, and then doing this thing as actually convincing the People to change society. To change how they do things.

Removal of a blockage to Rights is one thing.

Looking to overhaul the entire system because the flow needs to restart and fully use that part that was blocked is quite another. One of these over-riding 'fixes' to the Nation happened to address a temporary ill, and is causing far more grief today than it ever fixed as a solution. In the Depression one of the problems is that older folks were still looking for work and seen as stopping the flow of younger workers into the workforce. Thus was born the idea of the 'retirement age' and paying out money to those who retired from Federal coffers. The immediate point of the program was to address the temporary ill of unemployment and the possibility of older individuals not having money to scrape by on. To pay for this the Federal Government did two things: 1) went into debt, and, 2) raised taxes.

The debt, then was minuscule compared to what it would incur during WWII. The taxation, however, was permanent upon earnings. Thus those earning money would be paying to help older people retire. As a temporary solution, this is not much of a problem. Demographically the Nation could afford this as the number of workers far outnumbered the retirees by fair margin. Further, distributed investment capability was not available to the common man, so finding secure and minimal ways to grow funds via investment was a problem. The remedy before the Depression was: families. Anyone who could get any work in a family helped to support the entire family. While many people did lose jobs and homes, the vast majority did *not*. Stories from Depression era Buffalo of families with eight or nine people living in the same home to make ends meet are not uncommon. Children worked. Mothers worked. In-laws worked. Anything to get food on the table, which included the growing of vegetables in the backyard and raising some ducks or chickens, or buying same at a farmers market. By the time the actual program got put into place, the families had already overcome the worst of the Depression and were starting to use this new-found mobility to get homes elsewhere in town.

Then in WWII women and overage workers went to work as young men went to war. By the time those men returned home, they found that their sweethearts had good jobs and their parents had earned enough to move into the suburbs. America had truly mobilized when the pent-up wealth of the war years was released and an economic boom of unprecedented size and scope hit the Nation. Again, retirement payments were a small part of the Government and seen as an easy burden to carry. The Baby Boom, however, were to change the entire demographic system as a flood of children hit the Nation and then would grow old with it. And even with that economic expansion still went on, even when fighting the Cold War and having that eat up 8-10% of GDP. That military portion would remain relatively static as an amount, but the size of the economy would push down its proportion more and more. What was growing in proportion to expansion was the age of those moving upwards in years from the Baby Boom. Suddenly the more traditional replacement rate of children into the economy spelled for a looming disaster.

What no one has addressed, however, is that this Federal Program has been moving money from the hands of Individuals and then doing poor oversight of those funds. Typically the US Government returns an industrial low of 45-55% efficiency on work. What this means is that in typical private industry, the productive hours are measured as a percentage of hours worked. Thus, the average in private industry is 80%, meaning out of an 8 hour day you get 6.4 hours of real work done. The US Government, due to overhead, paperwork, oversight, multiple systems of accountability, and so on, gets only a 45-55% average productive time out of any hour. So the billions of dollars spent on this program have a relatively low return rate on the overhead, for something that should be a highly automated system. Further, the demographics are pushing things so that a larger portion of earnings are taken in by this program to pay for the larger number of retirees.

This has changed the outlook of Americans upon their lives and has also put into this kitty the idea of 'retirement years'. Now turning into 'retirement decades' and soon to be 'retirement half-life'. That last is a bit of a misnomer as it is applied to the active working life of an individual being equaled by their retirement life. And when the US starts to see a shortfall in labor the choices are multi-fold, but also limited by this arrangement: 1) import labor, 2) automate.

Option 3 is never put on the table: scrap the system as it is no longer needed and let individuals who now have wonderful investment opportunities to create their own retirement accounts and system do so. What this would do is remove the retirement age so that those who find working to be enjoyable and productive, even if they want to take a lesser job, to be able to do so. Further, anyone who has 'read the tea leaves' of the retirement system knows that its eventual collapse is inevitable due to demographics and has been preparing accordingly since the 1980's. The math is not beyond an individual to do, nor is finding good investment vehicles, nor is getting insurance that they can choose as trustworthy or not. Doing this would return a huge proportion of taxes paid to the Federal Government back to those doing active wage earning and let *them* decide how to invest or squander it as they please.

This is no longer the 1930's and the capability of the individual to get necessary help for long term investment is no longer a mystical land limited to the wealthy elite. Funds that address all sorts of things with distributed ownership and investment and track records and outlooks are available in a plethora, and individuals can clearly find this material for investment as they have been doing so for decades. And as this is the largest, single portion of the money going to the Federal Government, the increased distributed earned *wealth* would then infuse the Nation via spending and investment. And grow the economy even more than it is and would place a huge, one-time burden on the Government which would be duly paid off through normal, low taxation.

Here the Responsibilities of the individual are being taken by the Federal Government and direct oversight of how those Responsibilities are carried out are at the furthest and least accountable system for something that effects every single working individual in the Nation. This is antithetical to the construction of the Constitution and the Society that is to be built upon the Individual as part of the People. What has happened is Social Engineering on a huge scale with little accountability and much in the way of problems and a patronizing attitude that those working for a living are not smart enough to figure out how to invest their money or their time. By putting this bit of Social Engineering into play the Federal Government has taken it upon itself to decide for the People what is best for them. Their role for the general welfare is *not* to create a Welfare State, but to create a Nation in which the People can look after their own welfare and do it well.

This 'assistance' from the Federal Government comes at a high cost of time, money, lost wages, and lost investment opportunity. And all of it to address a temporary ill, which was already passing by the time the program got off the ground and fully running. By the post-WWII era it was wholly unnecessary as the investment of parents into their homes would start to pay rich rewards upon the sale of same, and those that did not own were already being offered better packages through their workplaces. When those started to wane private industry invented the widely divested and invested 'mutual fund' system. There have always been poor elderly in this society, but the ability of a family to look after such individuals and those capable of actually working to support themselves was a backbone of the United States. Today, many of those who are elderly and *want* to work, cannot because of this retirement age business. They work under the table or risk losing their steady Federal Payment... instead of having invested that for 20 years or more and depending upon private payments upon which they have personal oversight.

This is why Jacksonians look askance at the idea of a Big Government to solve problems: it is contrary to the system put in place to support society and it demeans individuals and removes personal oversight and accountability for decisions. Trying to put in place long lasting 'social reform' for temporary problems is contrary to the Individualistic basis for which Jacksonians see as the strength of the United States. Even when you make BAD decisions, you then learn from them and stop doing them and find a better way to make decisions so that you do not hit that same pitfall again. Jacksonians are all FOR helping those that life has handed a bum time to: the infirm, mentally ill and those that have just been unable to handle their lives to any meaningful end. To those that can work jobs are to be found so that the Individual builds self-respect and self-worth in doing something productive. To those permanently disabled help and succor is given freely and openly as is currently seen with the large number of charities addressing same. The Federal Government's role is not to dictate a permanent treatment for a temporary ill.

Because every time it does so, more of the Responsibilities of the Individual are lifted from them, and from the People as a whole. And society is lessened by each and every piece that is taken from it and put to poor ends, that do not justify the means and that loss.