The invisible hand is caught in a reacharound.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bleeding Heart Libertarianism

Bleeding Heart Libertarian T-Shirt by webcarve
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I confess freely that I might be accurately described as a "bleeding heart libertarian."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This cannot be said of George Bush.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Standing O for LifeLock.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arghhh…..

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

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

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

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

Or if you prefer, you are tempting Murphy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christ Himself was arguably a Utilitarian ethicist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evangelical Repents Paving Road to Hell

Chuck Baldwin, a Florida radio preacher and evangelist, has come out and said the following. And the following is why he's supporting Ron Paul.

Unfortunately, it has been the Christian Right's blind support for President Bush in particular and the Republican Party in general that has precipitated a glaring and perhaps fatal defect: the Christian Right cannot, or will not, honestly face the real danger confronting these United States. The reason for this blindness is due, in part, to political partisanship or personal aggrandizement. Regardless, the Christian Right is currently devoid of genuine sagacity. On the whole, they fail to understand the issues that are critical to our nation's--and their own--survival.

Republican candidates have learned how to "talk the language." They know that Christians are basically compassionate and trusting people, and therefore prone to being gullible and easily manipulated. They know that Christians have short memories and are desperate to be accepted at the king's table (largely a result of the church-growth movement and mega-church mentality).

It is at this point that much blame should be cast at the feet of the leaders of the so-called Religious Right. They have proven themselves to be much more interested in enriching their "ministries" (and themselves in the process) than they are in standing uncompromisingly for the truth. The infatuation with power and success has made them weak and vulnerable.

As a result, George W. Bush and Karl Rove have made mincemeat out of the Religious Right. They have shown everyone that once you win the support of the Christian Right with rhetoric, you can get by with just about anything. Christians are horrible at holding Republicans accountable.

Hence, neocon Republicans such as Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, and even Rudy Giuliani are all currently receiving fractured support from the Christian Right. However, you can mark this down: the Christian Right (with few exceptions) will eventually coalesce around whoever wins the Republican nomination--no matter who it is. You see, it's all about political partisanship. Principles are only something we talk about during off-election years.

Indeed, that HAS been the problem, Sir; the willingness to abandon principle when presented with the dangling bait of an apparent victory over the heathen, the godless, the moral relativists. Surely God must approve any means that promise to achieve such ends?

And suddenly we are all on a smoothly-paved downward slope to what, if not literal hell, will certainly do until the real thing comes along.

Now, there are a lot of folks out there who will suggest that the support of "nuts like this," for Ron Paul, people they adjudge to be religiously intolerant, even bigots and racists means that people of genuine social conscience and enlightenment should not support Ron.

For myself, I see it to people of this ilk waking up and smelling the coffee, realizing to what extent they have been led around by their noses by people even less principled, even more willing to offend the liberties of others, and realizing that perhaps, just perhaps, playing within the rules established by the Constitution is a good idea after all.

And so long as we all do that, it matters little if I think he's a religious fanatic , ideologue and pinhead, or that he thinks I'm a Godless Liberal apologist for sodomy and goat marriage. Even if we are correct in our mutual understandings and each of us is as abhorrant to the other as our first impressions might suggest, - our ambitions are limited by the compact, and he can no more force me to enter into a covenant marriage than I can force him to marry a goat.

At this point, we heave a sigh of relief realizing that the only way the beliefs of one can affect the other is through persuasion and choice, having the constitution to rule out coercive rule by any temporary majority or influential minority.

And this allows us all to enjoy a richly diverse, constantly evolving culture that is responsive to ever-changing circumstances.

At some point, people on the Right started using "diversity" as a dirty word, conveying the idea that any different idea of any sort was a visceral threat to be stamped out, not something to be tolerated in others, considered respectfully and accepted or rejected for personal use as free persons have every right do do.

By the way, that's exactly how I have treated Chuck's faith. Nice folks, most of them, but as he observes, entirely too gullible, and entirely to easily deluded by the greedy, the evil and the manipulative.

People who believe that diversity and tolerance is a social evil are - in my mind - too stupid to breed and should be retroactively aborted lest they poison the very body politic with their bigotry. And millions agree with me, even if they wouldn't put it quite that strongly.

Now do you see why we have a Constitution? None of us are entirely immune to bigotry and prejudice. Let us celebrate then our compact to keep it within decent bounds, and to let no single set of prejudices dominate us all.

Odds are, there's only a few of us that would truly prefer the results. You see, ANY exclusive vision of how things "ought" to be, what values and beliefs people "should" have or what values they should have and hold that rise above the legally required minimum of nonviolence is incompatible with liberty. If you cannot tolerate the liberties of others, you should simply admit to yourself that some honestly authoritarian philosophy would be appropriate.

In a libertarian society, you are entirely free to be a Nazi, an Old Catholic, a Stalinist, or what have you. You just have to live with the fact that your only valid source of Authority is being persuasively authoritative. The moment you start demanding followers to do as you think they ought and the right to back up that demand by force, a libertarian culture reserves the right to leave you alone.

Entirely alone.

Why I didn't blog for 9/11

There comes a point when you realize that there are some people who are so willfully contemptuous of reality that nothing can be said, and further, at this point everything that could persuade reasonable people HAS been said. If you are still a Republican, and you still support leadership that can say things like the following, the only rational response remaining is a swift kick to the frontal lobes.

And in this sort of Republican, those are located just below the penis.

This is the response House Minority Leader John Boehner had for Wolf Blitzer - a man hardly known for asking loaded questions. If you manage to look stupid by answering a Blitzer question, it's because you are stupid.

AlterNet: Blogs: Video: GOP Minority Leader Says US Casualties in Iraq Are a "Small Price" to Pay:

Here's the transcript of the exchange:

BLITZER: How much longer will U.S. taxpayers have to shell out $2 billion a week or $3 billion a week as some now are suggesting the cost is going to endure? The loss in blood, the Americans who are killed every month, how much longer do you think this commitment, this military commitment is going to require?

BOEHNER: I think General Petraeus outlined it pretty clearly. We're making success. We need to firm up those successes. We need to continue our effort here because, Wolf, long term, the investment that we're making today will be a small price if we're able to stop al Qaeda here, if we're able to stabilize the Middle East, it's not only going to be a small price for the near future, but think about the future for our kids and their kids.

To say the obvious - that this is a new definition of "pulling a Boehner" is beside the point. It's almost too obvious to observe that it's difficult to calculate which is worse, the possibility that he is sincere, or the possibility that he thinks he's more credible and convincing than the Iraqi Information Minister.

But the most truly disturbing thing transcends all questions of policy and partisan politics; and that is the question as how he became Minority Leader - and why he remains in that position. It would seem to me that being clearly mad as a hatter would render one ineffective in that role, and at the very least, the Minority Leader should be someone who does not provoke snickers and sighs of pity from the majority.

But then, the majority leadership, while not actually delusional, don't seem to be a great deal more connected with the will of the people or terribly interested in considering what is right over what is momentarily expedient.

9/11 and the response to it has exposed the rotting substructure of our national facade of Liberty, the depth of our commitment as a people to the principles expressed in the Constitution and the commitment of our leaders to communicating honestly with the people, according to their duties and oaths.

And on days like this, when the entire effort of communication with anything short of a large, heavy wrench seems pointless, I can do little other than explain that if my perception becomes general - there will be no United States, nor will any remainder or successor enterain such foolishness - for small nations cannot afford to suffer such fools, gladly or otherwise.

I will confidently predict that whatever the evolution of the next two years - the outcome will not leave those who seek to keep their power in power. In the end, there is more to being in power than just having the will to do what it takes to keep power. Even Stalin had to realize that if there was no Russia and no Russians, his "power" over them was meaningless.

And saner rulers and leaders realize that power is conditional upon meeting the needs and fulfilling the desires of the governed.

I will predict with equal confidence that those particular corporate entities that have profited the most from exploiting 50 years of constant warfare are approaching the end of their reign - though the final days may well be quite profitable!

But in the final frames, those corporations are nothing without their own people - and corporations have come to believe they are separate from both employees and clients - even from shareholders.

It is a fantasy - and it will come crashing down, as people realize that if governments and corporations interests cannot be trusted to take care of their own in return for loyalty and service that that loyalty and service will be withdrawn.

And with the web and other powerful ways for individuals to meet many of the needs that governments and corporations thought their exclusive domain, it's doubtful that anyone will be able to reclaim that which is, even now, being withdrawn.

There is a reason that public approval ratings for Congress are even lower than those of George Bush - we have stopped expecting common sense, much less any respect for the will of the people from Chimpy the Shrub. But we voted to return Grown-Ups to power in congress, expecting them to take some painfully obvious corrective steps to end the war and forestall the painful economic corrections that this drunken spree of debt-fueled misadventures had aimed us toward.

They have not even managed to come to the aid of New Orleans, much less end this disastrous war.

But if the terrified sheep that think they lead us and command our loyalty continue their delusions for many months - or truly, even weeks, much less assent to any of the plans for overthrowing the remaining shreds of our democracy that Bush is clearly contemplating - I, for one, will consider them as one with the Bushites.

Ignorable, insignificant, deserving of no respect, loyalty or attention. And should they insist on commanding my attention, thinking they are entitled to my obedience and that of my fellows, I think they will find themselves in for a rude awakening.

I'm not so much expecting a civil war as I am expecting widespread rude indifference. I expect States and local governments, in the face of federal malfeasance and utter irrelevance to more or less politely go their own way without benefit of any public delcaration of secession. I expect that over the next while, the weight of meaningful authority will gravitate to state and local governments, and that state and local laws will be passed to make it difficult or impossible for the Federal Government to fund it's activities.

For instance, it may come in the form of state laws requiring state court orders for the IRS to garnish wages.

It may be in the form of states chartering their own banks - or even issuing their own currencies. It may come in the form of requiring that all federal agents be first credentialed as agents of the specific State to have authority in that state.

It will certainly come in the form of states increasingly preferring to make their own policy even at the price of sacrificing federal funds - especially in those states where federal policies come at a net loss to the state.

We have come to the point where we must coldly look at our extant federal system and ask ourselves, "who does it benefit?" And I, like many others, am aware that almost nothing it does benefits me more than it costs me, and that of all the good things it does, most could and should be done better and more cost-effectively at the state or local level.

What the Bush Years have made obvious is what various "nut cases" and "conspiracy theorists" have been ranting about for years - that our government is run, not for our interests, but for the limited and even self-destructive visions of a small, inbred, narrow-minded and fairly stupid plutocracy that cannot see beyond the range of a quarterly profit and loss statement.

Well, I suggest to you that it's not even in the interests of the fairly wealthy to permit this to continue, for it is obviously a very silly game that can end only one way, with a cry of "There can be only One!"

To hell with that noise. The only "side" I will chose is my own - within the bounds of conscience and Constitution. And I will selectively choose to donate power where it most effectively empowers me to mind my own business more effectively.

And I, for one, have no desire to replace a stern Daddy State with a disempowering Mommy State, as many committed liberals seem to consider the only possible alternative.

What about the simple idea of empowering people to simply take care of themselves? It may take tools, it may take systems, it may even require money - but what it does not take is being told what to do or jumping through hoops. Most of us are smart enough to do those things for ourselves, and those who are not are mostly able to find the help of someone who is. This leaves a vanishingly small percentage that does not require provisions that intrude upon everyone to ensure the minority have the minimum necessities.

The bottom line is this: Government must be of service to and of use to the people, or the people have every right to replace it with something that serves them better. Should it be so arrogant as to think there is an inherent right of power or position to impose itself on those it thinks weaker or inherently inferior, there will come a time when that assumption is brought to the test.

History tells us that it's best to forestall THAT outcome with a little humility.

What I do when I'm frustrated

I've been having a grand obsess, perseverating like hell on something that at first blush seems utterly unrelated to art, blogging, or Graphictruth, all because I don't want to get into ... hm.

Ok, I've just decided it - as much as I'm impressed with Wordpress - I don't have the spare kiloquads for the learning curve. Blogger and Google may celebrate.

However, back to what I was doing, because I was so rudely interrupted. You see, as an aspie, an interruption in my routine is damnably disturbing, leading to all kinds of bizarre things. I'm lucky, for me, the acting out is almost always creative. It's hell on the people around me, though.

This particular obsession came from a decision to give 2nd Life another try. I'd be happy to tell you what I've been up to, but it might just curl your nose hairs. For the most part, it belongs over on our sister blog, erotictruth.blogspot.com.

Even there, I may just have to include a NSFW warning. However - just as the Internet before it and then the World Wide Web - the sorts of places I have been is where the obsessive people who create the platform hang out, relax, share and develop new ideas in an environment that is neither mission critical nor subject to criticism based on anything other than performance.

If you can depict, simulate, transmit, record, or usefully participate in human sexual activity to the limits of the medium, the system itself is both robust and flexible enough to support eCommerce, government agencies and, of course, spam and "griefers".

2nd Life is now robust enough to support a degree of parasitic activity that is either not based on actively expanding the system and it's communicative and associative intents, or indeed directly aimed at screwing with people and what they would otherwise freely and benignly choose to do. Therefore, the republican mindset says that it's ripe for exploitation and domination. The problem is, you cannot strip-mine an intellectual property, nor meaningfully restrict access to it as a commodity. The commodity itself has a very large say in the matter.

Creative people tend to create contexts wherein they can do what they wish to do, governed only by their own ethics and morality, when that environment is (at least for a time) too challenging for those people who object to the rude rejection of social norms that authoritarian figures would impose by diktat.

So of course, 2nd Life is simply lousy with porn, eroticism, sexual imagery and people humping (virtually) like Bonobos.

One explanation for the sexual activity at feeding time could be that excitement over food translates into sexual arousal. This idea may be partly true. Yet another motivation is probably the real cause: competition. There are two reasons to believe sexual activity is the bonobo's answer to avoiding conflict.

First, anything, not just food, that arouses the interest of more than one bonobo at a time tends to result in sexual contact. If two bonobos approach a cardboard box thrown into their enclosure, they will briefly mount each other before playing with the box. Such situations lead to squabbles in most other species. But bonobos are quite tolerant, perhaps because they use sex to divert attention and to diffuse tension.

Second, bonobo sex often occurs in aggressive contexts totally unrelated to food. A jealous male might chase another away from a female, after which the two males reunite and engage in scrotal rubbing. Or after a female hits a juvenile, the latter's mother may lunge at the aggressor, an action that is immediately followed by genital rubbing between the two adults.

I once observed a young male, Kako, inadvertently blocking an older, female juvenile, Leslie, from moving along a branch. First, Leslie pushed him; Kako, who was not very confident in trees, tightened his grip, grinning nervously. Next Leslie gnawed on one of his hands, presumably to loosen his grasp. Kako uttered a sharp peep and stayed put. Then Leslie rubbed her vulva against his shoulder. This gesture calmed Kako, and he moved along the branch. It seemed that Leslie had been very close to using force but instead had reassured both herself and Kako with sexual contact.

During reconciliations, bonobos use the same sexual repertoire as they do during feeding time. Based on an analysis of many such incidents, my study yielded the first solid evidence for sexual behavior as a mechanism to overcome aggression. Not that this function is absent in other animals--or in humans, for that matter--but the art of sexual reconciliation may well have reached its evolutionary peak in the bonobo. For these animals, sexual behavior is indistinguishable from social behavior. Given its peacemaking and appeasement functions, it is not surprising that sex among bonobos occurs in so many different partner combinations, including between juveniles and adults. The need for peaceful coexistence is obviously not restricted to adult heterosexual pairs.

The Chimps find this behavior both confusing and distracting from their goals of social domination, which generally includes the idea of who gets to do what with whom - and who has to put up with taking it up the ass. Or in other words, authoritarians see sex along with everything else as being about "winners and losers," a world filled with a vast pool of obedient submissive citizens and a few very powerful Alpha figures who display their dominance by some form of symbolic or literal anal rape - and the fact they control the system well enough that they cannot be held accountable in either legal or extralegal senses.

Me, I'm more of a bonobo. Social contexts in which intimate contact, sexual or otherwise - are welcome as an alternative to conflict/dominance models feel a great deal safer to me. I would rather be at a BDSM/Fetish party than a corporate culture retreat or holiday destination for that class of person, even though in both cases, I probably wouldn't get all that intimate with anyone I didn't know, I understand and respect the ethics and social customs of the former better than the latter.

And in general, I've found that the people who populate the fringes tend to be much more honest and with better ethics in general. This may seem paradoxical, but I could and have written reams on the topic.

But, believe it or not, the Justice Department was concerned enough about the specter of gambling in 2nd life to put pressure on Lindon Labs. Their response has been mixed and confused, as they are not really quite sure if their open source platform is really a proprietary content site (such as AOL pretends to be) or a "common carrier," such as any internet access provider. The difference? A common carrier cannot be held accountable for your activities.

I personally think that Second Life has grown way, way too big for LL to realistically even think of controlling content - and they certainly don't have the time to enforce dictates that governments would like to impose. But more on that later. Right now, I'd suggest that Lindon Labs seriously consider the implications of what they have already made possible, with whole areas of Second Life run on independent, sponsored servers, such as Brazil's virtual nation, which, if subject to law at all, are certainly NOT subject to US law.

Second Life - if it's to be governed at all - must be governed from within by the people who "live" there and according to the needs, desires and of course, the available time of the people there. Even more radically, the Internet as a whole depends far more on self-regulation than society does simply because it's realistically impossible to prevent access or demand compliance. We have hand an Anarchic Internet for - well, goodness, since it began, and it's nature is to oppose and network around pesky strictures. There were competing models that were much more government-like, such as Fidonet, but the people voted with their feet when the Internet became widely available.

There are still many safe, protected preserves, where you can pay through the nose for the privilege of being exposed to content and advertising that you are demographically and socially determined to need. In Second Life, I'm sure there are equivalent virtual "gated communities," intended to keep out riff-raff such as myself and the writers of the US Constitution, where all that is not mandatory is prohibited. All of these safe havens are based on code and protocols developed by people who would not bother to tarry there if they were not exceedingly well-compensated - and who generally do contribute to other areas of the network and internet culture with great generosity.

The beauty of the Internet is that anyone can set up their own little kingdom - and nobody can be compelled to stay within it's borders. It had best be a viable, interesting and worthwhile place to be - or people will leave. Increasingly, this is a realization that entire, literal nations are learning. It's easy to control the majority of the people - but it's the minorities that makes a nation work - the people who are exceptional in some way - and who could be equally exceptional anywhere. And on the Internet, "exceptional" does not just mean "rich."

I remember making that point in an AOL "Room" - just before I was banned, that it was not a "privilege" for me to post there - there are any number of far more prestigious fora where I'm quite welcome. By taking the time to post, I was doing THEM a favor and I expected to be treated in light of that reality, with the courtesy and respect due my contributions of time and insight into the issues being discussed.

I was banned nearly instantaneously, just as I was banned from a 2nd Amendment forum there for pointing out that the second amendment exists to protect an implicit social duty of all citizens, to serve as an armed, competent and credible deterrent to government intrusion, so when activism is reduced to slide-jacking and posturing intended to manipulate government in favor of some people - as opposed to opposing it's intrusion on people as a matter of principle and duty - it becomes pointless.

Governments govern by force while sneeringly asking, "whatcha gonna do about it?" Well, on the Internet, at least, the alternates are nearly endless. With the aid of such networking, this is increasingly true in Real Life, by reducing the knowledge and communication barriers that make it difficult for individuals to avoid dependence upon government.

"Christians" attack another book that expodes cultural myths about childhood.

Activist says Nobel laureate's book could be 'child porn' (OneNewsNow.com)

Via Digg, where I hope a lively discussion will ensue.

A pro-family activist in Michigan says legal action against a school district may be necessary after high school students in that district were given a reading assignment which could amount to child pornography.

The president of the American Family Association of Michigan says it's an outrage that officials in one public school district have asked students to read a book that involves the sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl.

Officials in the Howell Public School District were flooded with calls from angry parents after high school students were assigned to read The Bluest Eye by 1993 Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison. The book, originally published in 1970, focuses on Pecola Breedlove, an 11-year-old black girl who, according to comments at Amazon.com, is "spat upon, ridiculed, and ultimately raped and impregnated by her own father."

The top amazon reader review says this:

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful: I would give it a million stars if I could, June 12, 2007 By haile gebre "Rahwa Gebre" (Arcadia, CA) - See all my reviews


Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, I can safely say, is my favorite novel of all time. It's depressing, complex, and downright tragic as an innocent little girl is destroyed by a vicious society set on convincing her that she is both ugly and worthless. Through a brutal rape by her own father, Pecola's life is ruined as her childhood is permanently destroyed and the one pathetic hope that keeps her alive is her strong desire for blue eyes.

Morrison refuses to depict this story in chronological order, as the narrator explains that it is not the "why" that we are able to answer but rather the "how." With that in mind, Morrison quickly summarizes the story and then dives in to the analysis of how this little girl's tragedy was made possible. We, as readers, are then opened up to a broader explanation of not merely this girl's tragedy on an isolated, individual level. Rather, she is the physical manifestation of the psychological problems faced by African-Americans living in a hostile society that told them they were inferior. Pecola's problems are slightly mirrored from those considered at the high ranks of black society (Geraldine), all the way to black society's most tragic victims (the Breedloves). Morrison refuses to allow the reader to simply pity Pecola's mindset. Instead, she forces us, no matter the background or race, to feel guilty. We, a society that has not yet completely embraced people from all portions of our community, are completely responsible for her downfall. Because, Morrison argues, in a world that continually controls us into believing that all minorities are inferior, we have left her to suffer.

But Toni Morrison doesn't stop there, a point that would already label The Bluest Eye as an amazing novel. Morrison expands the picture from psychological racism into a rarely considered topic of psychological sexism. All of the main female characters in this story are in some shape or form sexually assaulted by the dominant male figures. Morrison brilliantly expands the picture to fearlessly explore sexism and how it has damaged the psyche of our nation's society.

I won't lie, I was initially disgusted by several of the scenes in this novel, the main one being a brutal rape described in great detail. But I realized that this book was meant to horrify me and open my eyes to what Morrison was exposing. The book is incredibly complex, so it deserves your utmost attention. I can not overrate this book; you must read it.

Of course it's worth reading the negative reviews. I kind of get the picture of the usual HS lit requirement that any book that is enjoyable or that doesn't "enlighten" you in some way is no better than reading comic books in class. So, if the objection were that such trenchantly depressing and admittedly complex and difficult-to-follow literature might well sour students on reading for pleasure, I'd be jumping up and down with agreement.

However, many objections seemed to focus on how horrible and dirty it was - equating all descriptions of sexual activity with "porn," no matter what the intent of the artist. And that, of course, is the reason stated by AFAM in pushing to get it banned.

It always seems that these efforts come up when it seems like such a book might get children to disclose similar abuse. My wife, an elementary school teacher, has several stories about that, where a book or video provokes disclosure from 5 or more kids in a class of thirty.

As a long time online sexual abuse and sexual rights advocate, I'm very familiar with the depressing fact that scenes such as the book describes are very real, and far more common than we would like to believe. They are crimes that also tend to be perpetuated by a certain type of person; generally an authoritarian personality.

Ever since the publication, half a century ago, of The Authoritarian Personality (Adomo, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford, 1950), the idea that social and political beliefs could be understood in terms of basic personality structure has captured the imagination of psychologists. A gripping issue in the era of World War 11, authoritarianism was conceived by these early researchers as the potential for fascism. Then and now, the authoritarian could be characterized as conventional, submissive to authority, and aggressive toward deviants and outsiders (Altemeyer, 1981). [emphasis mine]
Personality and emotional correlates of right-wing authoritarianism;

Social Behavior and Personality, 2000 by Bulter, J Corey

Attempts to discuss such crimes or disclose such events are often attacked viciously with well-funded smear campaigns and claims that it's "an attack on the family." An examination of the origins of the "False Memory Syndrome Foundation"is highly interesting, as is this Noel Packard paper about their tactics, which might start to seem familiar in the context of this particular controversy.

I think the tactics and strategy the FMS Foundation uses is a formula approach to make people feel unsafe about debating issues about a common sense of truth or morality, or even a personal sense of truth. I think such tactics help set the stage for people to need authority figures such as parents, scientists, doctors and politicians to dictate to them what is truth, justice and trustworthy. Weber
might have called such a network of authority figures a “status society” (1978: 305-6)
History shows us that sometimes people allow others to dictate them - as if they were
“adult-children.” -

Without making any direct accusations, I do observe what anyone can confirm for themselves: the American Family Association of Michigan is the group that is publicly gloating about taking away same-sex benefits from the spouses and children of gay parents.

Personally, I think there should be a special place in hell for those who deliberately and maliciously take actions they know will harm children. In a state the size of Michigan, some spouses and some children will die or become disabled due to their activities as a statistical certainty.

It's also enlightening to read their "religious freedom" page, in which they warn readers that it may become illegal for their kids to beat up "fags" if anti-bullying statutes are passed. The advisory is code-worded, they are not fools - but the message is clear enough, simply by placing the topic ON the "religious freedom" page. They are claiming that they have the right to harass, confront and abuse homosexuals as a legitimate free exercise of religion.

I believe Jesus had something to say about that sort of thing, involving leaping into the ocean with millstone around their neck being a better option than to cause a child to sin.

For myself, I don't find flinging bible quotes to be persuasive, but some do, and whatever else one may say about it, the Bible is a fine guide to practical ethics.

Matthew 18:6
But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
Matthew 18:5-7 (in Context) Matthew 18 (Whole Chapter)

If you teach your child to blindly follow authority, to trust it above their own sense of right and wrong, you will be doing just that, for they will, sooner or later, be led by the nose to do something vile. So to shield children from a practical understanding of what right and wrong is, within their own social context, is an evil thing.

But clearly, harm to children in the service of an authoritarian, self-righteous cause gives the good folks at AFAM no difficulty sleeping at night. They link to James Dobson's Focus on the Family. Dobson is the author of one of the milder "baby beating manuals', Dare to Discipline."

(IMPORTANT NOTE: In researching this article, it has come to my attention that the Focus on the Family site has dramatically changed it's tone. Any hint of advocacy of physical discipline is gone, as is the emphasis on the domination of wives and children by husbands. It remains legitimately conservative - as well it should - but is nonetheless much improved and with a range of information that now includes useful advice on speaking to children about sexual abuse.)

Alas, I have had personal experience compelling many who know first hand how far such a self-righteous sense of possession and entitlement can go, and how much psychological damage can ensue, even when the abuse does not involve overt incest, literal beatings or both. But far too often, it does.

Please do not confuse this with a condemnation of even the most Conservative form of Christianity. Believe what you will, or do not. My objection is to those who use Christianity to excuse and justify their actions to themselves and to deceptively gain support for those actions from believers. My only criticism is that Christians are far to quick to accept professions of faith at face value, while too quickly forgiving and forgetting manifest and profound violations of trust without requiring serious and credible atonement or recompense.

The same reluctance to "know the tree by it's fruit" seems to be extended, culturally, to those in political office who claim to be serving Christian values.

I have long maintained that the thrust of child porn laws, as written, seem more effective at covering up the prevalence of such crimes or even speaking frankly about the crime than addressing the repulsive fact that certain people - mostly heterosexual males, mostly within families or other structured contexts - tend to use the abuse of children to enhance their own sense of power and self worth. Doing it, getting away with it, and taunting the victim with their powerlessness seems to be a large part of the thrill.

These same people are often those attracted to positions of authority and power - priests, pastors, politicians, police officers - and they tend to co-operate to stifle discussion, investigation and inquiry. For instance, should a reporter choose to do an investigative report on the prevalence of child porn and where it might lead to, they will be hysterically waved off by corporate council. There is no safe way for the media to legally investigate the existence, nature or distribution of child porn in the US or Canada.

You just have to take authority's word that they are taking all necessary steps to thwart a problem that you cannot independently investigate. In any other context, a photograph of a crime is considered evidence. In this case, possession of the image is very often a greater offense in law than the act itself.

I by no means defend the production of child porn. I encourage tracking down those who do produce it to hold them accountable. But such laws make such investigations very difficult indeed, and impossible for any of the actually injured parties who might otherwise be using cheap computer power and face-recognition technology to document evidence of their abuse.

But we are not even speaking of real events. Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye is a work of fiction.

To equate a fictional depiction of all-too-common events written to make the harm such things cause with "child porn" is bizarre. Porn is meant to titillate, and from the description of this book by readers, pro AND con, any judge that got an erection from it clearly would need psychotherapy. This is an attempt to suppress an idea and forestall any discussions or disclosures that idea might provoke. I find their motives repulsive, immoral and essentially if not literally Unconstitutional.

Is child rape indecent? Damn straight it is. And any child suffering it or knowing of another child suffering it should KNOW that it is indecent - and that they can ask for help and be believed. Stories like this serve that task and therefore are very often attacked by such "Family Associations."

It does make one wonder aloud about what their "family values" are, and what the genetic consequences have been over the years.

At this point, drawing attention to the fact that the protagonist is a black girl experiencing life in a segregated town in the 40's seems redundant. It's not that I'm afraid of pointing out the possible racism here, the reluctance to underline that blacks suffer from abuse "just like real white Christians." (I quote from childhood memories.)

I have found that racism is only one small part of the Authoritarian disorder. And without discounting the damage racism does to all those affected by it or tainted with it, it's simply one manifestation of a syndrome that affects all of us every day, limits our freedom, demands our compliance and assigns arbitrary and excessive punishments for failure to conform to Authoritarian demands.

You see, I keep tripping over the same small circle of people who all seem to tie into the activist Christan Right Wing, Social Conservatives, if you prefer to distinguish them from People Who Follow The Words of Christ. It's a very tight network - and if you do not actually belong to that network, they quite likely have an issue with what you are, who you are, what you believe, or things you like to do.

And I'm sick of it. I am going to say right out loud, right here and right now, that one cannot be either a Libertarian or a real Christian without respecting the rights, freedoms and dignities of others, no matter how wrong or profoundly silly they may be.

Libertarianism centers around the ethical concept of the "non-initiation of force." I will take it a step further. Any sensible reading of the Beatitudes underlines a very significant, universal principle found in many other religions and indeed, non-religious ethical systems; that even to think of committing an imposition upon another person - angry thoughts, lustful thoughts, hateful thoughts - is ethically and morally equivalent to committing the act itself.

Therefore, a Libertarian - if we may be doctrinaire about it - does not hate, does not promote hatred and never speaks toward the idea that "some people" should be "rounded up," any more than a Christian would speak lies or demeaning allegations about the behavior or motivations of others.

The foundation of both Christianity and Libertarian philosophy is a system of personal ethics, a personal accountability to one's own conscience and (again, reading the scorn for the Religious Authorities of the day conveyed by Jesus) at best a skeptical regard for what religious authorities say the Bible says.

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Authoritarian Personality Disorder (DSM) (note ironic sourcing)

Cluster D Personality Disorders

301.92 Authoritarian Personality Disorder

A. A pervasive pattern of power abuse marked by the compulsion to control others and nullify their civil rights while glorifying one's own imagined societal role, usually indicated by at least nine (or more) of the following behavior traits:

1) A compulsion to categorize, label, measure, and control other human beings.
2) An obsession with class, accompanied by the delusion that he/she is in a class above others.
3) A grandiose sense of self-importance, i.e. feelings of omnipotence and omniscience. Believes he/she knows the psychological and spiritual functionings of others. A persistent belief that he or she is "special" in the sense that he or she is "a healer", "has all the answers", has more knowledge about the mind than others, etc.
4) A fascination with writing and embellishing disparaging fictions about others.
5) A delusion that all people with whom he/she comes into contact are "sick", accompanied by a need to talk about that "sickness" in a compulsive manner.
6) Fetishism: Over a period of at least 6 months, an obsession with wearing expensive and fashionable attire that specifically excites (either sexually or non-sexually) a personal sense of power and control because it raises his/her imagined social plane and advertises the delusionary class difference between him/her and others.
7) Fear of human emotions, accompanied by the strong desire to subdue the emotions of others through the administration of drugs, restraints, electroshock, incarceration, etc.
8) Shows arrogant, haughty, and/or sadistic behaviors or attitudes.
9) Requires excessive admiration and seeks constant proof of being needed by others, usually demonstrated by acquiring larger caseloads.
10) Unconsciously projects his/her own unresolved psychological issues onto others within his/her care.
11) Engages in fictitious gestures of caring and concern (i.e. provoking a false sense of trust), while lacking empathy: is unable to recognize the true needs of others.
12) Commits frequent boundary violations, while at the same time displaying an obsession with the perceived boundary ‘irreverence' of others. Sets arbitrary, pre-mature, bizarre, and/or compulsive limits, as an excuse to humiliate, berate, control, and de-humanize others.
13) Exhibits a fascination with making money off the psychological pain of others.

B. The symptoms of Criteria A developed during, or within a month of graduating from, a clinical training period in Psychology, Psychiatry, Social Work, or Counseling Psychology.

C. The disturbance is not better accounted for by Substance Abuse, Shared Psychotic Disorder (Folie `a Deux), a Manic Episode with delusions of grandeur, Paranoid Type Schizophrenia with delusions of grandeur, or other Psychotic Disorder.

Ron Paul encourages distrust of political power.

Here's some back-catalog wisdom from Ron Paul, via his article archive on Lou Rockwell which serves to explain something I'd wondered - what his idea of government (and governing) might look like.

Political Power and the Rule of Law by Ron Paul Annotated

[P]oliticians are not supposed to have power over us – we're supposed to be free. We seem to have forgotten that freedom means the absence of government coercion. So when politicians and the media celebrate political power, they really are celebrating the power of certain individuals to use coercive state force.

Remember that one's relationship with the state is never voluntary. Every government edict, policy, regulation, court decision, and law ultimately is backed up by force, in the form of police, guns, and jails. That is why political power must be fiercely constrained by the American people.

The desire for power over other human beings is not something to celebrate, but something to condemn! The 20th century's worst tyrants were political figures, men who fanatically sought power over others through the apparatus of the state. They wielded that power absolutely, without regard for the rule of law.

...

Aside from the lack of ethical self-interest shown by voting for a candidate based on their "strength" and perceived "toughness," we should all realize that in choosing that path we are abandoning our own duty to participate in, comment upon and know about the issues of the day. It also displays an appalling ignorance regarding the Constitution and our rather unique political system.

I very much understand the seductive vision of a Government that Does Good things, but the trouble with that is that in order to do Good Things, we empower them to do Bad Things as well, at least, unless we are very vigilant and careful in crafting limits on that power. The power we delegate is attractive to the very people who will be tempted to do Bad and Stupid things to us, often For Our Own Good.

Those who hold political power, however, would lose their status in a society with truly limited government. It simply would not matter much who occupied various political posts, since their ability to tax, spend, and regulate would be severely curtailed. This is why champions of political power promote an activist government that involves itself in every area of our lives from cradle to grave. They gain popular support by promising voters that government will take care of everyone, while the media shower them with praise for their bold vision.

My personal view of the role of government as a useful tool is probably somewhat broader than Dr. Paul's, but we have had so few spokespersons coming from a position of Constitutional fundamentalism that I'm loathe to ignore his observations and insistence upon the fundamentals.

And therefore, let me state that I see the government as a tool, belonging to every citizen, legal resident, tourist and even every illegal alien that exists solely to protect individual rights and liberties that our Constitution recognizes to be inherent in each person, regardless of status, position, citizenship, sexual orientation, race or creed. To that end, and to that end alone, it is empowered to guard our liberties.

But I'm also a realist. If government exists only to say no and does not somehow facilitate the correction things that trouble, inconvenience or anger a majority of the American people, it's not unreasonable for it to be discarded as rusty and useless.

And I observe that while government has become a dire threat to the freedom and legitimate private choices of all Americans, it's due largely because Government has ceased to consider the rights of individuals, instead heeding only the voices of corporate bodies, such as military contractors, trade organizations, big pharma and religious pressure groups.

These various corporate interests hold power in their own right that rivals that of state and even many national governments. Many of them (Haliburton leaps to mind) are quite literally above the law - and others seek to write law regardless of it's impact upon the liberty of citizens. Indeed, many of them have effectively limited my liberty in some of the most basic ways, through economic coercion. This is particularly noticeable in our food supplies and consumer goods; a handful of corporations determine what we will be able to buy and where we will buy it. Bluntly, they have stolen the commons - save, of course, in the areas where other giant corporations (such as eBay) find a profit in enlarging it.

But as much as I value such free-enterprise solutions to such problems, it's my guess that had others seen it coming, they would have stomped all over Ebay. Nor can we ask corporations, structured as they are under the laws that apply, to put the interests of the consumers and their workforce even on a par with that of the shareholders. This is simply a fact - and those facts must change if we are to change that reality.

You may be tempted to view that as "anti-capitalism" and "anti-free market," but on the contrary - I wish to see a regulatory climate that actually favors individual enterprise and rewards the risk of capital. I wish to see a lowering of regulatory barriers to the markets that are rigged to favor big corporate interests. And ultimately, I see this as a vital component in a truly viable and affordable national security policy.

The real key to national security in this day and age is an infrastructure that cannot be easily disrupted by a few sticks of dynamite, so we need to look at, for instance, encouraging widely redundant, small scale energy production using local resources. This is quite aside from "green" fuel initiatives, but that's where the technology is.

We need to have our essential defense forces, our first-responders here, instead of "over there," with a broader base in our social fabric. Most importantly, we need to cultivate a culture of participation and tolerance.

So, we don't need a Department of Education. We DO need a national standard minimum curriculum which is the basis of our citizenship. That minimum common basis of understanding is vital - but beyond the requirement that it be successfully taught, we really do not care how, where or by whom, do we?

Universal access to health care is vital, both politically and personally, when unexpected health care costs have become the leading cause of personal bankruptcy. HOW we go about that - what choice of mechanism, what happens between need and delivery need not have a single a