A Moment Passes By In Utter Inconsequentiality

Sometimes a tiny detail of daily life, work, or what lies in between will claw its way back from the obscurity of lost memory to intrude once again as the focus of attention.

We read the news on some blog, or in the newspaper, or listen to the radio. Someone wrote that blog post, the wire story, or radio copy. How much work was it? Will they remember it tomorrow?

We drive along the highway, or ride in the bus or train. Who poured the concrete or rolled the asphalt, who laid the rails? Who planned the construction and guided the project along, these many years ago? They may have forgotten doing it by now, or it may be the pride of their life's work, an achievement they tell about to this day.

The sand, gravel, lime, and crushed rock used to make the concrete all came from somewhere. Would anyone remember the day those components were ordered, delivered, or put together?

We dispose of some problem or issue, only to have it return from the grave. The matter is settled, we think, and it leaves our short-term memory, erased from our agenda for all time. But something in the solution to the problem was incorrect, insufficient, or ill-advised. Invisibly, it has clung to existence, waiting for just the wrong moment to spring itself on its erstwhile vanquisher.

A penny lies quietly on the sidewalk. How did it get there? If the penny could write a blog post, would it tell of its glory days as part of the change back from a Happy Meal? Or would it lament that, with the minimum wage what it is, it now would be unprofitable to hire someone to pick up pennies even if the ground were strewn with them?

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What's the Use?

Ross Douthat at The Atlantic writes of Armageddon, and the choice to retaliate or not to retaliate after the fall of a national capitol.

As Douthat has it, the British Prime Minister has break-the-glass orders with nuclear submarine commanders at the bottom of the ocean for what to do in case London were vaporized, King and Parliament with it. Ross wonders what Reagan would have done, and speculates that after his country were razed, Reagan may not have retaliated. He suggests that the Lion of Reykjavik would have lain down with the Wolf of Glasnost, saying that at that point, "What's the use?"

The utility of following through with destruction of their following destruction of ours is simple: lovers of liberty must oppose tyranny with every tool at their disposal. If the submarine fails to deliver retribution, evil men will dictate the history books. There, done.

The more interesting question is if the submarine commander would be bound to follow the orders of a dead Prime Minister.

Military doctrine, upon which the Geneva Conventions are based, holds that an officer's legitimacy stems from his loyalty to the State. Supposing that State no longer to exist, or to have been captured by opposing forces, the commander would be a rogue actor, or a member of the armed resistance, should he choose to obey the orders written in the safe.

But does the State no longer exist once its administrative offices and its Head are so much glowing dust? I think no easy answer to this question is possible, because there are levels of existence. If a State loses its monarch, bureaucracy, executive leadership and entire flag officer corps, does the State exist? Perhaps the question can only be answered post hoc, should the citizens of the State reformulate it into something able to control its territory.

Supposing the entirety of the nation's is land rendered inhabitable, or during the time in which the State is nonfunctional, we still have our submarine (or lunar base) commander, out of communication with the rest of the race. He may have information as to the source of the destruction that came upon his nation, or he may lack it, and in any case he will be confronted with some amount of uncertainty.

During the Cold War, he might safely have assumed that the former Soviet Union were the responsible party, and could be counted blameless for expending his arsenal against any high-value targets he could reach.

But in the 9/11 era, even a worldwide intelligence network may fail to uncover the source of mass destruction. An incommunicado commander, wishing to remain hidden, would have somewhat less certainty over how to retaliate, and against whom.

But such a commander would be loyal not just to a chain of command or the laws of a particular nation, but first to the noblest lady of our civilization: Liberty herself. If he could band together with like-minded warriors at sea, and perhaps find some undefended shoal to call home, they could once again breath the air as free men. Their war would continue until victory or defeat, by enemy or age.

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A Post Which Roils

One of the blogs I troll is called In Socrates' Wake, written by teachers about teaching, especially the teaching of philosophy. I'm not a teacher, except by the abhorrent personal habit of forcing my wisdom on others, unfettered by their acceptance or appreciation of same.

Usually, ISW is instructive, even enlightening, and always thoughtful.

This post, while instructive and enlightening, just made me want to scream.

Teaching Feminist and Race Theory: problematic assumptions and positive transformations

I teach feminist and race theory to five students, four of whom are white, none of whom are female. Yet, for all their lack of diversity, they understand the philosophical relevance of gender and race. Critical theory for them, however, was remarkably new when they began. While they began their studies with me in order to broaden their perspective in social and political philosophy, none of them had ever reflected on some of the contemporary social structures and implicit patterns of thought that are implicitly sexist and/or racist. None of the students were sexist or racist when they entered the course, and they would have been quite defensive about being labeled as such. Yet, on campus, and in other classes, this was the challenge they faced.

I dare you to read it all.

Instead of screaming, I wrote this:

The most interesting aspect of this is how self-absorbed and myopic is the entire field of feminist and race theory. I am critical both of your methods and your goals, either of which you may accept or reject.

Because while you complain to young learners how difficult life is for someone who is not white and male, millions of non-white non-males are out in the world ignoring, sidestepping, or overcoming the hurdles placed in front of all of us, striving, excelling, and winning.

With the assumption of systemic "oppression", you doom all who buy into your world view to a life of learned helplessness. All of their hopes and dreams must go into cheating the system which they have been told oppresses them, or into the ballot box, which is cheating by official means.

Because individuals are not bound by the nature or the common limitations of the groups to which they belong. It is profoundly racist or sexist to say that they do.

I was struck by your statement that the students coming in had a remarkable lack of diversity, listing as your only evidence that four of them were open-minded white males. That displays an amazing lack of introspection, even hypocrisy. Because I'm sure you would agree that people are not defined by their skin or gender.

On another level, by stating a priori that there is "systemic oppression", you as the authority in the classroom establish that principle as an inarguable tenet of the class. This puts the student on the defensive. That's great for establishing the power of the teacher in the classroom, but not great for actually learning anything other than that racism and sexism are bad, which your students already seem to have known coming in.

Further, it makes the students feel guilty for being who they are. If that is your goal, you're nothing but a jerk with a lectern.

So I will assume it is not your goal. But it appears to be your major accomplishment.

As I said, it's one of the blogs I troll.

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They Are Not The Public's Airwaves

With all of this talk of the Censorship Doctrine (from which the Democrats may be backing away), it seems like no one can talk about the topic without using the phrase "public airwaves".

Maybe it's a fine point, and I'm just picky. But while the public "owns" the air, the public doesn't own everything transmitted over that air.

You can put up a sign in your yard, and unless you obscure someone else's view or something, you don't have to present an opposing view. And yet, you are transmitting, in a very real sense, the images over the exact same air as a radio show uses. It's just that we can see light with our eyes, but radio waves are of too long a wavelength for us to detect with the naked eye.

What the public owns is spectrum. The set of frequencies allowable to radio broadcast is controlled by the FCC, so that radio stations close together don't broadcast on the same frequency, and so bureaucrats have something to do.

But the actual radio waves being propagated are not the property of the government nor the public, but of the broadcaster. You could say they are no longer even the broadcaster's property in any real sense, either, but they certainly don't belong to you and me.

So while I get the idea that idioms don't have to make sense, this is a case where the idiom has the potential to deceive.

Just saying.

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Someone Please Tell David Brooks He Is An Idiot

Writing to accelerate his newspaper's fall into negative net worth, David Brooks says:

The other camp, the Reformers, argue that the old G.O.P. priorities were fine for the 1970s but need to be modernized for new conditions. The reformers tend to believe that American voters will not support a party whose main idea is slashing government. The Reformers propose new policies to address inequality and middle-class economic anxiety. They tend to take global warming seriously. They tend to be intrigued by the way David Cameron has modernized the British Conservative Party.

I don't care if the majority will not support shrinking government. It's the right thing to do.

I don't take Global Warming seriously. I don't believe:

• It is happening
• It is Man's fault

If it were happening, I would not believe:

• It would be bad
• There would be any way to fix it

Addressing inequality? That's not the purpose or function of government. Punish people who hurt others, but don't try to make sure they're all equally successful.

Middle-class income anxiety? Call out demagogues like Obama for their class-envy tripe. There, anxiety fixed.

w/t FrankJ

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Assimilist

Michelle Malkin reports receiving the following email from an Obamunist:

My sympathies. I did some research, and you are exactly what I thought - an assimilist with no knowledge of themselves. What a hater! You attract minions of jealous non-thinkers. Thank you for making me proud to have voted for Obama.

A person's ancestry matters only to geneologists and racists, though I don't mean to tar one with the brush of the other. The idea that a person must cling to the culture of her parents is so illiberal as to be its antithesis.

By the way, Michelle, I think assimilist is code for 'Uncle Tom'.

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Still Undecided? Read This

Jay Nordinger at NRO finds the continental divide in this election. Is Communism good or bad? Is it a wonderful idea which has had some suboptimal implementations, or is it a rotten idea which has been tried and found to be a rotten idea?

I think it's a rotten idea. Barack Obama appears to think it just needs his special touch to make it work.

Your call.

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Voting For Economic Self-Interest

Benjamin Franklin said"When the people find they can vote themselves money,
that will herald the end of the republic."

Commentators are astonished that middle-class conservatives seem to vote against their economic self-interest by voting for Republicans. Let's break it down.

First, we believe that, as the cliche goes, a rising tide lifts all boats. The economy is not, as Marxists believe, a zero-sum game, in which some get rich only when others get poor. More often, either everyone prospers or no one does.

Suppose two people acquire wealth at different rates, one becoming only a little better off while another becomes filthy rich. The social justice crowd would have us believe that the people who are only a little better off are actually worse off, because their envy blinds them to reality. The gap has widened, which they take as conclusive evidence of injustice.

If you have no car, and someone sells you his clunker at a bargain price, you are happy. Then, when the former owner of your clunker drives up in a Certified Pre-owned Lexus, you're envious: you have a clunker, and he has a Certified Pre-owned Lexus. When is your car going to break down? Yet before you had to walk to work in the snow and rain, and now you can drive. You're not driving a Certified Pre-Owned Lexus, but you're not driving Certified Pre-Owned Nikes, either. You're better off, not worse off, and the circumstances of that other fellow are irrelevant except to your own envy.

And thus is it in general.

But back to voting: a person's vote indicates his mindset: is he voting for what's best for him, or is she voting for what's best for her country? To the extent that a single vote matters, a person ought to cast it in favor of something larger than his own petty interests, if that is defined as what the government is going to give him.

We have public schools. They should be teaching that Franklin quote, and from it the principle it conveys, which is as old as democracy. Perhaps then the people would know that their vote is an important choice between the health of the Republic the satisfaction of their own envy.

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Obama Missing the Point

Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is running for President of the United States.

Transcript of Obama’s Remarks at San Francisco Fundraiser Sunday

[...]

But — so the questions you’re most likely to get about me, ‘Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What is the concrete thing?’ What they wanna hear is so we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing — to close tax loopholes, uh you know uh roll back the tax cuts for the top 1%, Obama’s gonna give tax breaks to uh middle-class folks and we’re gonna provide healthcare for every American.

No, we don't care what you're going to do for us. We don't want you to do anything for us, because what you want to do for us is going to end up being done to us.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

[The following was cross-posted at Redstate]

Dear Senator Obama:

The government only has a small number of jobs. Bringing employment opportunities to rural Pennsylvania, or Illinois, or California, is not among them.

The government's first job is to defend the people from foreign enemies, such as the human rights violations of Chinese bankers and Middle Eastern terrorists.

Defending the people individually from each other also is the government's job. And too, we let the government take care of parks, roads and bridges and other such common areas. That's about it.

But the poisonous witch's brew of notions that somehow the people of small town flyover country are helpless without you, and that we don't have jobs, and that the Bush and Clinton Administrations let us fall through some imaginary cracks, and that all of that makes us bitter enough to hate anyone not like us -- that is just the wrong way to look at things.

(More...)

It is despicable and un-American, and I use that term advisedly, to encourage people to be bitter at the government for not doing enough to help them. The American way is self-reliance, not the desperate bleating of a people living only for the next chance to suckle at the government's teat.

In your class warfare, you foolishly suggest that our alleged bitterness over a lack of jobs causes us to cling to guns and religion. You even said it makes us dislike people who are not like us. Do you not care whom you insult, nor with what hypocrisy?

Guess what, Senator: we know that the jobs aren't as plentiful nor as lucrative in our little towns and small cities as they are in the metropoli of your dreams for us. We read the papers. But we also know that where we live, we don't have to lock our doors at night. We can leave our cars unlocked at the grocery store, or in our driveways. And we even have driveways of our own, rather than having to cram ourselves into mass transit. Our schools don't have metal detectors, because they don't need them.

You have the cart before the horse. We choose to live out here, because we can. It isn't any supposed bitterness over lack of government jobs which causes us to cling to guns and religion. We live here in part so we can go hunting and fishing now and then.

And we like our little churches. They don't tell us that the government created AIDS, either. It's not their job.

We choose to live out here because we like our neighbors, for even the nosiest don't tell us how to live. It's not their job.

And Senator Obama, it's clear from all that we have seen, that the Presidency is not, and must never be, your job.

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Truth

I believe that everything I believe is true. So do you, else by definition you would not believe it, for if you held some doubt about something being true, you therefore could not be said to believe it.

At the same time, I know that there are some things I believe to be true which are false, or only true sometimes, or are only partially true. I just don't know which is which.

And that is not to say that because I believe something, for me it is true. No, if I believe something which is not true, then I am wrong and require instruction.

John Stuart Mill, in his marvelous essay On Liberty, noted that most true things are only mostly true, being our best approximation to Truth. We accept them as true because they work, or nothing else we believe to be true conflicts with them. Then something comes along to test our belief, and we must either reject our own view, accept the new one, or reconcile them somehow.

Most things we believe to be true (aside from purely mathematical or logical constructs) are true with caveats and exceptions. The contrary opinions held by those who disagree with us are obviously false, but they generally hold some spark of truth, some tiny bit of correction which can be gleaned.

Communism, for instance, built an entire world view on the inequity of rich and poor. Some even today believe it to be a better way to organize society than capitalism, the trouble being that communism rejects human freedom and is thus doomed to failure.

But we need to be reminded of the truth of our own beliefs, and the reasons for those beliefs, or some new communism will come along and we will be unprepared to properly reject it, and even more, to reconcile the bit of rightness it contains, and the bit of wrongness it points out in our own belief.

It is therefore our duty, if we seek Truth, to encourage those of a generally contrary opinion to our own to voice that opinion.

And that is why I blog.

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Brother's Keeper, Loser's Weeper

It is often said, now almost tritely, that "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins." Yet extending this maxim to a general rule for recognizing the boundary between individuals on other matters is more difficult.

For instance, just as you have a right to an unbroken nose, you have a right to unblackened lungs. So clearly I must not blacken them by sticking the exhaust pipe of my car down your windpipe. And holding my exhaust pipe an inch from your face is hardly better.

But just as clearly, you would be hard pressed to show a difference in the blackness of your lungs if I drive my car in the next town against if I don't, or even if I drive it in the next town or your own. Somewhere between these extremes is a point at which my injury to you is too great to allow my production of pollution in your proximity.

But not only in distance or difficulty of detection of the injury caused is there a boundary point on one side of which my behavior would be acceptable and on the other not, but you also have a similar boundary. Our boundaries may not be the same, but for each of us one exists.

There arises thereby a bargain, by which you and I agree to allow each other activity which is mutually injurious on some level, but from which we derive some benefit. It may be that you directly derive some benefit from my activity and vice versa, but in the least we accept one another's activity so as to obtain permission to engage in it ourselves.

A similar situation exists for the wearing of perfume or cologne, noise polution, use of foul language, the use of offensive speech, and so on. In each case, there is a range of activity from innocuity to assault, and the line separating the two is difficult to place. We allow each other some leeway so that we will have leeway in turn.

In each of these instances there is the use by the individual of some common resource. Clearly we are each entitled to use common resources to some extent, or we could not breathe the common air or make any noise if we wandered off our own patch of dirt. But we also must not make the common resource unusable.

But differing opinions on usability are possible, just as individuals differ in their tolerance for injury. Some may prefer to allow more use of common resources than others, either so that they in turn may have more use, or because they don't want to use the common resource at all. Some, of course, do not consider the rightness or proprietary of their use of the commons, they simply use what they want, or what they can get. Similarly, so wish to keep the commons pristine.

We are passed by tradition or custom the expectation that we are permitted certain activities and denied others that were innocuous or harmful, respectively, but with the crowds of modernity have become less restricted or more so.

It is reasonable to suggest that there are some actions I could take which would not be injurious, or be minimally injurious, to another individual, but would be of greater harm to some group of individuals taken together, or to society as a whole. If I overuse or ruin some common resource, my overuse or ruination may not affect the next person to use it or the next fifty, but eventually my share or corruption will be felt.

So where does the interest of society in our behavior enter?

That, and any satisfying conclusion to the foregoing, will have to wait for another day.

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Obama's Hell Week

So you want to be President. So do a lot of other people, but its popularity notwithstanding, I view the desire to be President as sufficient proof of some yet undetermined chemical imbalance. As circular confirmation, I present two stories from the news of the day.

Someone else with a clear chemical imbalance is the leadership of Hamas, who believe that the way to win friends is to cheer when you kill their friends. But appearing in the Trinity United Church of Christ newsletter from last summer (during the Presidential race) was an article by Mousa Abu Marzook of Hamas, claiming that Israel has no right to exist.

'Splain me that, Senator Obama. Square that with your public support of Israel. Which is it? Is Israel an ally, or is their existence yet another detail about which you'd be willing to negotiate with terrorists? Hamas claims not to be part of a larger struggle, but the players in the larger struggle make no such claims about Hamas.

In other news, Erick Erickson reports that Rev Jeremiah Wright has been invited to speak in Macon, GA. The mayor of Macon, an Obama supporter, calls Wright's sermon style "Socratic". Perk my ears! Like Socrates, Wright is pilloried for asking the wrong questions, for challenging the status quo, according to His Honor the mayor.

There is a clear difference between the two, however. Socrates' questions were always intended to winnow, never to incite. If he asked a question which was out of bounds, he knew it was out of bounds and was expecting an answer to bring the focus back in bounds.

But since it's Friday, I tried to imagine what a typical Wright-as-Socrates session would be like:

Wright: Do you suppose that white people invented AIDS?

SANE ANSWER: I thought it came from monkeys.

Wright: Suppose they did.

SANE ANSWER: OK, suppose they did.

Wright: Then you're saying they did it to kill black people?

SANE ANSWER: No, you said that.

Wright: Suppose they did.

SANE ANSWER: Well, that question presupposes that all white people act in concord, when in the United States AIDS has mostly killed whites.

Wright: Well, what about in Africa? Could there not be white people in Africa who invented AIDS to kill black people?

SA: I suppose there could be.

Wright: So since white people invented AIDS to kill black people, that is why they are giving out needles to also addict them with drugs.

SA: Sure, whatever. Look, I have to go ...

Wright: How can we avoid AIDS when white people are giving us needles, and I.V. drug use is one of the primary ways AIDS is spread?

SANE ANSWER: All someone need do is abstain from sex before marriage, and make sure his prospective mate did the same. But I have to ...

Wright: So you're saying black people can't do that?

SANE ANSWER: Your powers of understanding are unequaled. Good day.

Wright: I knew white people were racists.

I always thought "March Madness" was about basketball.

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I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth. That is a program of sorts, is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep conservatives busy, and Liberals at bay. And the nation free.

--- William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008) in Up From Liberalism (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1961)

(I should note that this entry is, by complete coincidence, almost identical to this National Review post.)

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Cratocracy

Faith in the power of government. Governing (especially attempting to govern well) for the sake of gaining and preserving power.

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The Perils of Legacy

In the waning days of a presidency, talk inevitably turns toward "legacy", seeking by prediction to influence what the future will say of the Oval Office's occupant.

The picture is often painted of the lonely leader, sitting at the big desk, staring out the window at the manicured lawn and seeking to find his place in the pantheon. Implicitly, we are led to believe that his actions in his lamest hours will be in effort to guide history's view of him.

I hope that this is a false scenario. I hope that the President instead tries to do the right thing, not worrying how it will look to future historians any more than he should worry about how he looks to present day pundits.

I also trust that the present Bush Derangement Syndrome will subside, and a rosier view of George W. Bush will in time prevail. I have more than past precedent to guide me, for I know that Mr. Bush is not attempting to become a theocratic dictator as many BDS sufferers feverishly profess. Eventually, it will be clear even to the most unhinged lunactivist that the 2008 elections will go on as scheduled, that the National Guard will not stage a military coup to keep Bush and Cheney in power, and that really, no one was listening in on the silly liberals' calls to their Crystal Power Advisor. At that point, perhaps their irrational hatred of the man will subside.

Or maybe not.

I am also made mindful that we are now living in the past. If you don't believe me, just wait a bit, and you will see that I was right.

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I Know My Rights

Do you?

[This was originally posted at my tech blog, before I split off political and philosophical rants here and left the stuff I actually know anything about over there. I'm posting this here now because in thinking about the Global War on Terror and its impact on civil liberty, I wanted to get back to basics. I now see several flaws in my reasoning and perspective, and will address those in an upcoming post. ]

I've been thinking lately about human rights. You know, the kind for which men died at Normandy, at Lexington, and Golgotha.

That kind which stem not from the lifestyle to which you are accustomed, not from your power to secure them, nor from government largesse, but those which you have by virtue of your existence.

Warning: I have made no effort to keep the following suitable for the small-minded in general nor for Hate Crimes Commissioners in particular. Others may read freely on...

...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed....

Those familiar words are the milk on which young American minds are weaned away from innocence and into the stark world of defiant individualism. They tell us that there are universal truths, and that these truths are laid manifestly before the eyes of anyone who looks upon the human condition.

Government, it is revealed, exists to keep men from violating each other's rights.

But what are these rights? The Declaration decries violations sufficient to motivate revolt, and the Constitution, as amended, gives some more examples that are explicitly protected. But the writers of those documents seemed to deny steadfastly the urge to make a complete list. I believe they were wise in that denial, which has compelled each generation thereafter to lay claim to those which were not enumerated and by so doing to revalidate those which were.

Rather than attempt an exhaustive list myself, I will attempt only those which are axiomatic. That is, which rights are the truly fundamental ones, without which the people are enslaved to tyrants?

It seems to me that the Declaration's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are categories of rights, rather than particular rights themselves. These categories are merely for convenience. The rights reinforce each other, each standing in the stead of the others when the wall of their protection is breeched. All people everywhere, unless they yield them by due process or temporary emergency, have the right to:

Life ...

• to stay alive
• to eat and drink
• to breath air, and see the sky
• to parental supply of food, shelter, and love
  
• to practice their beliefs
• to choose their own medical treatment
  
• to mate and procreate
• to raise children
• to privacy

Liberty ...

• to travel
• to use weapons
• to participate in government
• to due process
• to equal treatment under the law
  
• to speak and write, and to disseminate the results

and the Pursuit of Happiness

• to choose and direct their education, vocation, and avocations
• to own and use property
• to take risks
  
• to assemble

People have the right to stay alive, from the moment of conception to the moment they cease to function. Minor children have a right to nurture from their parents, or in absence of parents, from the nearest adult. Parents have a corresponding right to direct their children's upbringing and instruction in the ways of the world.

Clean, breathable air is everyone's right. So is dirtying it with smoke and other pollutants, to a certain extent. I'm not smart enough to say how to balance those.

Assembly can be a powerful tool in the constant battle against overbearing government. Without Assembly, Speech loses much of its salinity and Belief may as well be lost. I still place Assembly under Pursuit of Happiness, because it is not just political, but social and recreational as well.

The right to privacy is the essence of a limited government, for if government can inspect us to any degree it desires then we are in its power to that same degree. We are only as free as we are private.

Similarly, the right to travel is as fundamental as the others. If we are not free to go, then we are not free. Without a right to travel, we can't Assemble, and we can't Pursue Happiness.

I'll conclude with one observation which I hope will serve to illustrate fully the point of the interdependence of the rights. The freedoms of Speech and Press are one side of a coin that has as its opposite face the right to own and use weapons. They are the Pen to its Sword; if government removes one, it will surely pay with the other.

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Who Speaks For Me, Again?

Lately I've noticed a trend of sorts, or perhaps it's a theme that has always been there: liberals think that famous conservatives are speaking for the great unwashed masses of dittoheads [beware idiotic link], as if conservatives were looking for a leader to tell them how to think. 'Taint like that at all.

I think the error comes from a fundamental difference between liberal and conservative world views: are you an individual, or part of a group? Conservatives see people as individuals first, while liberals see people as members of groups. Conservatives tend to believe it takes two parents to raise a child, while liberals tend to think it takes a village.

Another possibility is that liberals want someone to speak for the downtrodden, and get used to the idea that leaders speak for the group.

Thence the annoying misconception that conservatives look to their leaders for moral and ideological guidance. Conservatives (and for the purpose of this post, libertarians) want someone to articulate the things conservatives as individuals already independently believe.

The conservative movement is all about ideas, not personalities, coalitions, or leaders. There are conservative groups, of course, but their beliefs are not coordinated or cross-checked. The notion that a message would come down from on high about what to believe is so silly it feels like a straw man, yet that appears to be how liberals think conservatives get their beliefs.

• I like Rush Limbaugh, but I'm not his parrot
  
• I enjoy Ann Coulter's wit and fearless disregard for backlash, but I'm not her groupie
  
• TV preachers get tarred with the brush of every scandal that any of them triggers, and many of them are intelligent, wise, and good people, but I'm not part of their flock
  
• I'm a 2nd Amendment hardliner, but the NRA doesn't speak for me
  
• As far as I can tell Toby Keith is a great American, but he doesn't speak for me, either
• No columnist, pundit, blogger, nor anyone dunked in a think tank speaks for me
• And Bill O'Reilly definitely is not my spokesman

No one has exactly the same viewpoint on every issue, and even if someone shared my beliefs perfectly, I would not want them to take my rightful place on my own soapbox. My voice is my own, and while I may lend it, I will not yield it.

But then, I don't speak for all conservatives.

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The Two Kinds of People

I always tell my kids that there are two kinds of people in the world ... and they roll their eyes, knowing that Dad has found yet another way to oversimplify something.

Psychologists categorize people as:

• Sensers and Intuitives
  Do you trust what you see, or what you know?
  
• Introverts and Extroverts
  Do you focus your dominant abilities on yourself, or on others?
  
• Thinkers and Feelers
  Everyone thinks and feels, but is your dominant mental ability verbal and logical or visual and emotional?
• Deciders and Waiters
  Choose an option to be done deciding, or wait for a better time?

In addition, there are other ways people differ psychologically:

• Memorizers and Processers
  Some people who remember events, and others who remember things based on what they thought about the events. This is one aspect of Sense versus Intuition.
  

Without much commentary, I'll add:

• Givers and Takers
  Trade for it, or get it by force?
• Stubborns and Flexibles
• Spenders and Savers
  Rich people invest, poor people spend.
• Pitchers and Catchers
  Some people collect possessions, while others do not.
• Individualists and Collectivists
  Are you your own person, or part of a group?
• Free or Secure
• Arrogant and Humble
• Sinners and Straight Arrows
• Wolves and Sheep
• Dogs and Rats
• Pick up a Penny or Leave a Penny
• Learners and Veggies
  Do you have a thirst to understand for yourself, or would you rather be told?
  
• Workers and Clowns
  Are you more interested in accomplishment or fun? Which do you do first?
  
• Speeders and Creepers
  Do you want to get there first, or are you more interesting in getting there at all?
  
• Urban and Rural
  Do you want convenience or space?
  
• Labelers and Accepters
  There are those who classify people, and those who know that for most of these, and especially for those over which people have any control, there is a continuum from one side to the other.
  

Finally, I can't leave this subject without noting that there are really 10 kinds of people: those who understand binary, and those who don't.

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Lunactivism Kills Bambi

As usual, Eric at Classical Values provokes thought with his post on deer in the headlights and the lunactivists who keep them there. Commenting, I noted

It is difficult to engage in rational discussion with people for whom humans and non-humans have equal (or comparable and in within an order of magnitude) value.

If you ask people which would be a greater crime, killing 10 deer or killing one human, most would answer that killing one human is worse. The "stop the killing" lunactivist in your post would have to ponder it, and probably come up with the wrong answer.

I really don't know how to stop them, or even how to engage them. They derive tremendous emotional and even spiritual value from standing against the status quo, shaking their little fists against what they see as the teeming hordes of Evil, those of us who draw a value distinction between human and non-human.

To me, the value of animal life and human life is not comparable. (Yes, I know humans are animals, too; unless I specify, you can be assured that I always use "animal" to mean non-human animal, or those aspects of biology which distinguish humans and non-humans from spinach or quartz. ) What I mean is that other things being equal, I would accept the immediate extinction of deer (or any non-human species) if it meant saving one human life, even for a moment.

Of course, things are not equal, and the extinction of even one species of deer would have a cost in human life, and an impact on ecosystems that would in turn have unknown, and largely negative, effects on humans. So, the pathologically absurd situation I posed above would at some point involve a dilemma in which human life could be balanced against human life.

But back in the real world, burgeoning deer populations spill over into areas occupied by people and their vehicles. Deer, lacking the evolutionary foresight to be constructed from sturdier materials, meet their inevitable end more quickly than either their Creator or we their predators would have liked. In the process they do a great amount of damage to property, and indeed, cost human lives.

So the overabundance of deer, as well as their total absence, would be a net negative for humans. Deer are good, when their numbers are great enough to be stable but not so great as to cause problems for themselves (by the lack of food and space) or us (by trying to use ours).

But the animal rights crowd will have nothing of that, because they don't see the distinction between humans and animals. Despite efforts to deny it, the notion that non-humans have their own innate rights, rather than drawing their protection from our need to regulate our behavior, leads inexorably to devaluing humans. So instead of stopping at criticizing those who engage in the cruelty of dog-fighting or other ways to have fun hurting animals, they engender overpopulation, disease, and harm to the creatures they ostensibly wish to help.

Like all attempts to deny reality, attempting to keep people from using animals for food is doomed to failure.

Stay tuned here for more on lunactivists, their antics, and their intractable nature.

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The Planet is Underpopulated

Is the problem with the world that we have too many people?

Many liberals would be surprised that there is even a question: population should be reduced to medieval levels to fix everything from African Hunger to Global Warming. But rather than battle that particular straw man, let me restate my counterthesis by positing rather weakly that many of our problems, to the liberal way of thinking, are caused by overpopulation.

Assuming arguendo that all (or most) of the world's problems are caused by having too many people, is the prospect of having too many people one we have to address? That is, how should we address the threat of overpopulation?

Hopefully all of the answers to that will involve attrition this time, not mass slaughter as they did in the 20th century. Now, that wasn't fair. Sorry. Just because every Communist who has ever gained power has been a world-class mass murderer doesn't mean that the next one will be. And that all communists are liberals doesn't imply that all liberals are communists of the mass-murdering persuasion.

But people are writing (and purchasing) books about how wonderful the planet would be without us. What if Man were to be wiped off the face of the Earth? I've thought about that. Seeing the weeds that grow in the cracks in the driveway, it seems obvious that in a few short years, they would overgrow it. The roof of the house would soon start to leak, the leaks would lead to rot, and soon trees would take root in the attic. No, wait, that's how it is now. I really should patch those holes soon.

There is an undercurrent in progressivism that holds Man to be a locust, destructively feeding on The Planet to the misfortune of all other living, and non-living, things. Obviously, if there weren't so many people the damage would not be so great. Mankind (and by unavoidable extension, individual people) are parasites, an unpleasant blight on an otherwise perfect world.

But even without considering the damage to the planet, overpopulation (and of the "wrong" type of people) has been the left's bogeyman since Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood to do something about it. The efforts continued, branching from the eugenics movement to encompass the horrors of World War II. And it continues unabated.

According to a 1994 study at the site dieoff.org (yes, really), "U.S. agricultural productivity is already unsustainable". That quote is, fortunately, not supported very well by the study. A key logical error interposed itself, wherein the study notes that population growth is primarily due to immigration, but concludes that individuals must exercise family planning or the entire population will be at the mercy of nature. Nowhere in that study did they actually look at U.S. agricultural productivity due to technological advances over time, except noting in the conclusion

Given the fact that the supply of natural resources is finite and that the ability of technology to replace many of these resources is limited, we are left with the necessity of controlling population numbers. Certainly, diminishing consumption levels by stringent conservation programs will help slow depletion. But individual responsibility on the part of men and women to control family size is vital to control population numbers and maintain a high standard of living, otherwise the harsh realities of nature will impose its control on the population.

Another flaw in the logic employs the fallacy of Division: just because the whole population will suffer if everyone doesn't exercise "individual responsibility", that doesn't imply that anyone in particular will suffer, whether or not they choose to exercise "individual responsibility".

But a more basic problem with the logic is the assumption that resources are finite. New resources, and new uses for old resources, and new ways to avoid using resources altogether are found with a regularity and pace which blows that assumption out of the water. It's a case of failing to understand that what appears to be a constant is actually a curve that changes in ways we don't understand.

In a piece from 2005, Jeff Lindsay wrote

How can the "obvious" logic of the population control lobby be wrong? Because the resources of the planet are not a fixed pie that dwindle with each birth. The resources are whatever we can make of this planet - or solar system - and it takes the work of human beings to transform raw materials and energy into useful resources. Humans are not a liability, but a resource that we need!

Population growth is only a problem if your basis vectors are skewed. I look at population growth as the goal, and the lack of place to put the people as a problem to overcome. I want the human race to dominate the universe. That goal is unattainable at our current population numbers.

I am for any plan or technology that allows continued, sustainable population growth, and I reject any plan to artificially limit that growth. Even if the population growth curve is exponential, it doesn't mean we can't sustain it.

If the people are hungry, figure a way they can feed themselves. If that means skyscraper farms (beware the popup), or floating farms over the 70% of the Earth that's covered in seawater, then that's what it means.

Unrestricted population growth should be our goal not only because we want growth itself, but because the restrictions are worse than the growth. Artificially restricting growth is saying "I've got life, but you can't have it.", which is akin to stomping waterlogged hands from the rails of the lifeboat.

Furthermore, it has been shown that the populations of prosperous, industrialized societies naturally level off, all by themselves. Or perhaps that's all Margaret Sanger's doing, by birth control and abortion.

Humans have the right to procreate. Whether they do it well enough to suit us is irrelevant, because it isn't our call. To fret and bother about where we will get the food to feed their children is equally silly, because that is certainly not our problem, it is theirs. Is that irresponsible? No, it's simply practical. Responsibility is taking possession of the effects of your actions. Someone else's actions are not part of that.

The lifeboat metaphor fails in several ways, not least in that there is a very good chance that one extra person in the boat could drown everyone, and that is wholly unlike the effects of increased population. One extra person could be the one who saves the rest of us.

But all in all, it seems better to work on how best to keep the boat afloat, rather than telling anyone they need to swim ashore.

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