Left Libertarian Quaker

my new blog at PeoplevState.com

2009-04-29T01:07:00.002-04:00

Obviously, I've let this blog go into a state of suspended animation. I see from checking sitemeter, however, that people still do occasionally stop by to check out older posts. I'd like to let anyone who may drop by know that I've started a new blog, at peoplevstate.com. It's subtitle is "the philosophy and practice of law and liberty." Please check it out and subscribe, if you're into that kind of thing.

Rewriting the Constitution at The Volokh Conspiracy

2008-01-25T15:27:00.000-05:00

I've recently engaged in a lengthy discussion, primarily with one other commenter, in this comment thread to a post on "Human Imperfection and Governmental Legitimacy" by Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy. My first comment in the thread was the following:

The truth is that, as Lysander Spooner famously illuminated, in the world as we know it "consent of the governed" is a myth, a total legal fiction, as is governmental authority that purports to be based on such consent. We're better off to the extent that the culture -- including legislators, judges, voters and non-voters -- recognizes that truth. Recognizing that truth should lead to more humility on the part of legislators, should lead them to be absolutely sure that what they're enacting is not contrary to natural rights "retained" by the people, and should lead the public to demand such humility from "their" legislators. (Which natural rights have we "retained"? ALL of them.) "Consent of the governed" is less of a myth in the context of very local governments, and as Thomas Jefferson explained, this is the level at which the bulk of government should be carried on, with the people delegating to "higher" functionaries only what they deem truly necessary and beyond their competence. "Democracy" moreover took a wrong turn in its early infancy when it arbitrarily assumed that a mere majority of 51% was enough to confer legitimacy on measures that limit the freedom of those who have not explicitly consented to those measures or the process by which they were manufactured. The arbitary number should have been more like 90%. I bet you could get 90% of voters to agree that murder is a crime; you probably couldn't get 90% to agree that smoking marijuana is a crime, though.

As for how fallible judges should view "laws" passed by fallible legislators purporting to act on behalf of a fallible public, no one's said it better than Lysander Spooner in the 2nd chapter of his The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1860):

"Taking it for granted that it has now been shown that no rule of civil conduct, that is inconsistent with the natural rights of men, can be rightfully established by government, or consequently be made obligatory as law, either upon the people, or upon judicial tribunals ‑‑ let us now proceed to test the legality of slavery by those written constitutions of government, which judicial tribunals actually recognize as authoritative.
In making this examination, however, I shall not insist upon the principle of the preceding chapter, that there can be no law [*16] contrary to natural right; but shall admit, for the sake of the argument, that there may be such laws. I shall only claim that in the interpretation of all statutes and constitutions, the ordinary legal [*17] rules of interpretation be observed. The most important of these rules, and the one to which it will be necessary constantly to refer, is the one that all language must be construed "strictly" in favor [*18] of natural right. The rule is laid down by the Supreme Court of the United States in these words, to wit: "Where rights are infringed, where fundamental principles are [*19] overthrown, where the general system of the laws is departed from, the legislative intention must be expressed with irresistible clearness, to induce a court of justice to suppose a design to effect such objects." [*20]
It will probably appear from this examination of the written constitutions, that slavery neither has, nor ever had any constitutional existence in this country; that it has always been a mere abuse, sustained, in the first instance, merely by the common consent of the strongest party, without any law on the subject, and, in the second place, by a few unconstitutional enactments, made in defiance of the plainest provisions of their fundamental law."

Bringing the Good News of Anarchism to the Distributists

2008-01-21T16:40:00.000-05:00

Although I've continued to slack in keeping up with my project of recording and indexing here my comments on various blogs (not to mention shifting my attention over to my new blog at naturallawyer.blogspot.com), I have indeed continued to actively comment, particularly at The Distributist Review. I commented on the problems with licensure laws (re: inter alia, attorneys and doctors) here. The author of the blog, John Medaille, followed up with a post that addressed my comments, titled "A License to Steal?", in which he advocated the guild system as a "middle way." The thread for that post quickly evolved, or devolved, into a discussion of theoretical anarchism. [I won't copy my lengthy comments here, but you can find the discussion by clicking the link.] Interestingly, Medaille followed this discussion with a new post on "Zen and the Art of Traffic Control," where he seemed to imply that he was open to the idea that we don't necessarily need government even to regulate traffic (which is generally considered a pretty radical libertarian position). As you can see from the comments to that post, I evidently prematurely got the impression that he was, at least in part, coming around to a more libertarian frame of mind! Finally, the most recent post at the The Distributist Review is a guest post by Lindy Davies on "Henry George and the Earth Imperative," to which I've already addressed several comments. To my mind, Georgism (the idea that all taxes should be eliminated except a "single tax" on the unimproved value of land) is wholly consistent with theoretical anarchism. Most interesting to me is the following claim I'd found in searching around on the internet and included in my most recent comment (you can find the source by following the link):

"Rent -- in the classical economic sense -- has been estimated at 40% of the national income [7]. If the full value of that ground rent were publicly appropriated, total public revenues would come out around $16 trillion -- a sum large enough to cover the federal budget with no deficit, pay off the national debt, and still have plenty -- as in, trillions -- left over [8] [9] [10]. In fact, conservative commentators have faulted land value taxation precisely because it generates such large public revenues, thus increasing the size of government. One solution is simply to return a dividend to individual citizens, as Alaska does with the royalties from its mineral resources (which, like land, are a common resource whose value should thus be commonly shared)."

Bringing the Good News of Quakerism to the Anarchists

2008-01-21T15:40:00.000-05:00

In response to a thoughtful blog post on religion by athiest anarchist Professor David Friedman (son of the late Milton Friedman), I offered the following comment:

"Let me just put a plug in here for my own religion -- the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). What distinguishes Quakers for purposes of this kind of discussion is our aversion to reliance on creedal formulations of belief, a fundamentalist understanding of Scripture or the authority of an institution; and our reliance instead on the Light within. Also attractive to me is our Peace Testimony against war (though not necessarily, as is often misunderstood, against justified coercion in all instances) and our historical role in, e.g., the Underground Railroad and abolitionism. Unfortunately, many modern day Quakers tend to be liberals, whereas you'd think these testimonies just mentioned and our historical objections to such things as taking oaths in court and calling people by customary honorary titles that elevate them above their fellow human beings (e.g. "Your Honor") would have led to more anarchist attitudes."

In response to an earlier post by Friedman on "Ron Paul, Libertarianism and the Constitution," where he said "One of the issues that I do not think I have seen seriously discussed in libertarian literature is the tension between support for strict interpretation of the Constitution and support for libertarian legal outcomes," I said this:

I assume you're aware of Randy Barnett's "Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty"? I also find instructive this language from Ch.2 of Lysander Spooner's "The Unconstitutionality of Slavery" (1860): "Taking it for granted that it has now been shown that no rule of civil conduct, that is inconsistent with the natural rights of men, can be rightfully established by government, or consequently be made obligatory as law, either upon the people, or upon judicial tribunals ‑‑ let us now proceed to test the legality of slavery by those written constitutions of government, which judicial tribunals actually recognize as authoritative.
In making this examination, however, I shall not insist upon the principle of the preceding chapter, that there can be no law [*16] contrary to natural right; but shall admit, for the sake of the argument, that there may be such laws. I shall only claim that in the interpretation of all statutes and constitutions, the ordinary legal [*17] rules of interpretation be observed. The most important of these rules, and the one to which it will be necessary constantly to refer, is the one that all language must be construed "strictly" in favor [*18] of natural right. The rule is laid down by the Supreme Court of the United States in these words, to wit: "Where rights are infringed, where fundamental principles are [*19] overthrown, where the general system of the laws is departed from, the legislative intention must be expressed with irresistible clearness, to induce a court of justice to suppose a design to effect such objects." [*20]
It will probably appear from this examination of the written constitutions, that slavery neither has, nor ever had any constitutional existence in this country; that it has always been a mere abuse, sustained, in the first instance, merely by the common consent of the strongest party, without any law on the subject, and, in the second place, by a few unconstitutional enactments, made in defiance of the plainest provisions of their fundamental law."

Most recently, in response to an excellent and insightful Friedman post on "The Ron Paul Affair and Libertarian Culture Clash," I said this:

I think this is the best explication I've heard yet of the Ron Paul Affair. I swear I've thought the same thing but haven't seen it expressed anywhere else (and wasn't inspired enough to say it myself:). While I personally tend more towards "wimp" sensibilities, recognition that this is what was likely going on in the minds of the "boors" leads me to think it's not as big of a deal as those who are ready to throw Ron Paul overboard make it out to be. . . . And as someone who was once, by conversion rather than birth, a very traditionalist Catholic (Mel Gibson style), even though I've changed those friends for Quakers, I still consider myself "friendly" towards those people -- far more friendly than I've ever been with your typical liberal Democrat. I know from experience that us traditionalist Catholics would in social discourse amongst ourselves sometimes revel in our non-PCness. Those are the kinds of friends that the paleolibertarians have made, and I'm not inclined to fault them for it. Indeed, I'm of the school that thinks that a culture that emphasizes self-government of one's own life (through moral virtue and respect for the fundamental importance of family) is vitally important to the project of reducing the perceived need for government coercion and intrusion.

Butterflies of Uganda

2008-01-07T22:06:00.000-05:00

I've recently, what with the holidays and all, gotten out of the blogging groove, but fully intend to get back into it. I was blessed to see over the holidays an old high school buddy of mine, Darin Dahms, who now lives out in L.A. and is the Production Manager at the Greenway Court Theatre. He co-wrote Butterflies of Uganda, a stage play about the child soldiers of Uganda that Darin recently directed at the Greenway. Darin put a lot of himself into this project, and I was grateful for the opportunity to talk with my old friend at length about his experiences and impressions, both of Uganda itself and of all the effort that went into making this play a reality.

And, of course, we, along with Darin's dad (also an old friend of mine) and other friends, found plenty of time to discuss and argue the merits of Georgism, anarchism, etc., etc.

I have been spending some time commenting over at The Distributist Review, particularly in this lengthy thread about taxes. Copied below is my last comment in the thread:

I did want to just clarify what seems to me an imprecision in my use of terms in my comments above. I echoed the claim made by some libertarians that "taxation" is theft. However, in my view the Georgist "single 'tax'" on the unimproved value of land does not fit into that category, and is not theft, because it's taking from people what does not really belong to them and rightly belongs to everyone in society equally. The ordinary disposition therefore of what is collected via the "single 'tax'" should be to everyone in society equally, in the form of a "citizen's dividend." The government, however, would be completely justified in skimming of the top its costs in collecting and distributing this "rent," and since this presumably requires some substantial "muscle," this requirement of establishing said muscle goes a long way towards putting in place the machinery for national defense. The (national) government would be legitimately paying itself for in essence protecting property rights (including the property rights of the landless), and this protection could naturally and legitimately encompass national defense, as well as appellate adjudication. Moreover, for reasons elaborated by Hillel Steiner, the estates of decedents are in a similar position to that of the unimproved value of land, and theoretically are subject to the same distribution, and so I would not characterize inheritance "taxes" as theft either. (For good economic reasons, however, and to lessen the temptation of evasion and the inducement to avoidance through gifting or extravagant consumption, it seems that inheritance taxes should not be confiscatory but modest, perhaps in the neighborhood of 10% on all amounts inherited above, say, $50k, without the distinctions between various types of beneficiaries and their relationships to the decedent that are made now.)The national government (and state governments) should learn to live and budget within the above natural limits to what they can legitimately take "involuntarily." I'm not sure that after national defense is paid for there would be much or anything left over for a "citizen's dividend," but funding national defense and appellate adjudication solely from land value "taxes" and inheritance "taxes," while relieving those who own no land and who inherit nothing from all taxation (actually, it's not true that the latter would be paying nothing, since they in reality would be paying out of the dividends to which they would otherwise be entitled), would certainly seem to go far towards distributist goals. Certainly much farther than our current regime. The especially rich and the especially patriotic would be free to donate above and beyond these legitimately compelled forms of "taxation" to national defense (and other legitimate functions of the national government, if there be any) as they see fit. Local governments, which can be seen as voluntary associations because direct participation is more possible and people are freer to leave them than state or national governments, can arrange "taxes" (including, if they think it wise, income and/or other taxes that amount to theft if compelled by the national government) to fund police, schools, libraries, welfare, etc. as they see fit. It is true, however, that long injustice (perpetrated in large part with the assistance of government) has resulted in an unjust distribution of not only land and other natural resources but also capital goods, an unjust distribution which perpetuates itself and seems to result in even greater concentrations of wealth and power as time goes on. On the basis of such considerations, I can see the merit and even the legitimacy of involuntary taxes on, and redistribution of, higher incomes. My hesitation comes from the difficulty in seeing a principled basis on which to designate how high an income should be before it's subject to taxation. I would be happy, e.g., with a flat 10% income tax on all income above the U.S. household mean, but I don't see a firm basis on which to rest my perception of the justice of such a scheme, and in the absence of such clear principles we have found ourselves where we are today, with people of modest means taxed into near or actual bankruptcy. Moreover, I get the strong feeling that the rich and powerful have always had much more influence over what the government does than the less well off, and despite fancy rhetoric have always bent the government to serve their own vested financial interests, and I'm sadly skeptical of that changing in the future. Even now, the relatively high income taxes on high "earners" (i.e. theoretically, both with regard to "earning" and with regard to whether they actually pay higher taxes) are not spent to compensate the poor for what has been taken from them, i.e. towards distributist goals, but are spent primarily on battleships, etc., which disproportionately benefit the rich, who have the most to lose. (Who was it who said, "What need have the poor for battleships?") Better to get rid of income taxes entirely and denounce them as theft than to vainly hope that they might be redirected to distributist ends. This extreme skepticism, justified by history and the historical origins of States including "our" State, about the ultimate intentions and purposes of government with respect to the poor on the one hand and the rich on the other, points to the practical importance of theoretical "anarchism" (which seems to me philosophically sound even if we are quite reasonably unwilling to embrace wholesale all of its practical implications). Indeed, for these reasons, I see in thinkers like Lysander Spooner, Albert Jay Nock, and Henry David Thoreau friends of distributist goals.

Rut-Ro . . . Somebody from USDOJ.GOV in D.C. visited my post on tax evasion today

2007-12-01T00:15:00.000-05:00

Fortunately, they only stayed for 19 seconds and clicked through to the Becker-Posner Blog post I was commenting on. No indication from Sitemeter as to what brought them here and to that post. Just for the record, I would like at this time to clarify that, despite my fancy talk, I am a big supporter of Justice, and I have never advocated or suggested that anyone should even contemplate breaking any governmental laws that are Just.

Becker and Posner on Tax Evasion

2007-11-29T02:24:00.000-05:00

The Becker-Posner Blog has an interesting post on tax evasion. I found this particularly interesting from Becker's comment: "To some extent, people obey many laws, including tax laws, because most other persons are doing the same. If so, their behavior might change radically if they lost confidence that others would pay their taxes and obey other laws."

And I found this particularly interesting from Posner's comment: "Thus far I have focused only on punishment costs. But a neglected point in the economics of crime is the information costs of committing a crime. Evading taxes requires more knowledge than stealing a bike. Most taxpayers probably don't have a clue as to how to evade taxes without being caught. It might seem awfully simple--just list your cat as one of your dependents. But to know whether this would work, you would have to know whether the government has any independent source of information about the number of a person's dependents. You can't just go to a lawyer and ask him what the best way of evading taxes is." A better source of information might be the practical resources available at the website of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.

Posner also says: "Every dollar spent by the Internal Revenue Service on enforcement brings in several dollars in additional tax revenue, suggesting that an expansion in the IRS’s budget would be necessary to equate the marginal benefits of tax enforcement to its marginal costs. But this suggestion ignores the fact that the benefits are, as a first approximation, merely income transfers, whereas the marginal costs of tax enforcement are social costs. If taxes are evaded, the resulting shortfall in tax revenues is made up by increasing the tax rate, and there is no social loss unless the increase has worse misallocative effects than the evaded taxes would have had, had they not been evaded. One reason, therefore, that tax evasion is widespread is that it may be cheaper from an overall social standpoint to have slightly higher tax rates than to devote additional resources to law enforcement, though the first-best solution might be stiffer penalties, especially monetary penalties." These observations point to one of the classic rationales for and advantages of a land value tax: You can't hide land, and therefore the social costs of land value tax enforcement are dramatically less than those for income tax enforcement.

This also is an interesting comment from Posner: "I would be inclined to search as hard as possible for nonmoral costs before concluding that morality is a major motivator of behavior, especially with regard to crimes, like tax evasion, that do not have an identifiable victim." Posner-the-economist-and-federal-judge appears to find the solution in maintaining or stiffening the legal sanctions for tax evasion, without ever questioning the propriety of punishing people criminally for violating "laws" that Posner himself believes most people do not feel a moral duty to comply with. A "law" with criminal penalties attached that the majority does not feel morally obligated to obey? Sounds like the very definition of an immoral and tyrannical "law" to me.

A couple comments about the abortion-breast cancer link

2007-11-28T21:20:00.000-05:00

Posted today at the Althouse blog, in response to her post titled "Will the secular left soon attack the religious right for being pro-science?" My comments:

"Reason is reason and logic is logic. Just as you don't need to go through 3 years of law school in order to "think like a lawyer," you don't need a PhD in science to spot logical contradictions and weaknesses in "scientific" claims. For an example of good and bad legal and scientific reasoning by lawyers, scientists, and judges, all in one place, see the briefs and court opinion in Kjolsrud v. MKB Management dba Red River Women's Clinic, a false advertising case dealing with false claims by an abortion clinic re: the scientific evidence linking induced abortion with increased breast cancer risk, available at http://www.court.state.nd.us/court/calendar/20030023.htm

Your ordinary powers of reasoning should allow you to sort out which is which."

And:

"When One Hundred Authors Against Einstein, a collection of essays by 100 physicists attempting to discredit relativity theory, was published in 1930, Einstein reputedly responded to a reporter's query about the book with the remark: 'Were my theory wrong, it would have taken but one person to show it.'

This is why I'm not automatically convinced by claims that a purported "consensus" exists on some scientific question to accept that purported consensus. Some day I hope to have the opportunity to really dig into the debate between the Darwinists on one hand and the critics of evolution / the Intelligent Design movement on the other. But not yet having had that opportunity I reserve judgment. That doesn't seem to stop many liberal partisans (all of whom can't have truly engaged with the scientific debate), whose knee-jerk reaction to any critique or skepticism re: evolutionary theory is to accuse such skeptics of being fundamentalist neanderthals. (Notwithstanding the fact that natural intuition and common sense is arguably on the side of design rather than evolution, and that believing in evolution without actually engaging with the science is therefore itself a leap of faith, a blind trust in the "scientific community.")

On the other hand, I have had the opportunity to personally read and engage with the scientific literature on the link between induced abortion and increased breast cancer risk, and have had the dubious pleasure of personally cross-examining so-called scientific "experts" in this area on the stand and exposing their ignorance, contradictions, and deceptions. When I therefore read on the National Cancer Institute website that a "consensus" of scientists (who risk losing all that taxpayer money for their research if they don't toe the NCI party line) agree that there is no link between induced abortion and increased breast cancer risk (translation: "ladies, don't worry your pretty little heads about this, nothing to see here"), it carries zero weight with me. All it suggests is that if you have a few extra dollars lying around you're inclined to donate to philanthropic causes, you're better off directing it in some other direction than breast cancer research."

They haven't come to take me away

2007-11-27T10:29:00.000-05:00

In an earlier blog post I set a goal of more or less daily blog posts but sort of committed to at least one a week, suggesting that if you haven't heard from me in a week that just might mean that They have finally come to take me away. Well, Thanksgiving week went by quickly, and I noticed that my last blog post was a week ago today, so despite not having much to say or comment upon after my daily perusal of my blogroll at the right, I'm checking in so that my regular reader(s) know I'm still at large. (According to Sitemeter, I seem to have a few, including now my brother and maybe my dad after letting them know about this blog's existence over turkey last Thursday.) But by all means, if you want to contribute to my legal defense fund which I suspect I'll need someday in the future, buy one of those "Recommended" books through the Amazon links at the bottom of this page.

A couple items of note: this review over at the excellent blog The Distributist Review of the new movie No Country for Old Men, which I look forward to seeing soon; and this recent post at The Volokh Conspiracy about "a little scandal brewing in South Carolina over the state Supreme Court's decision to eliminate the results from one [bar exam] question, allowing several people to pass who would otherwise have failed, including the daughter of a influential local pol." A related post in my mind is this one, also at The Volokh Conspiracy, on "Why You Shouldn't Go to Law School." The biggest argument against going to law school is the time and expense involved. After the all, the "legal jobs and other attorneys suck" part of the argument is highly dependent upon personality and particular circumstances, and really not a big deal if you're not carrying on your back a boatload of law school debt and three years of missed opportunities. In the absence of these costs, you could simply learn on the job or in an apprenticeship and find out for yourself whether you like and are suited for the practice of law. If you find out that you're not, you simply move into another field, no big deal, nothing wasted. You could become a teacher, if that profession hadn't also set up draconian entry barriers around itself to protect its salaries. What a wonderful and freer world this would be if we were properly outraged and scandalized by these transparent conspiracies between various professions and the government to protect their turf and jack up prices at the expense of consumers through these licensing schemes. These schemes are not only a serious infringement on the very fundamental right to earn an honest living, but in the case of the typical "Unauthorized Practice of Law" statutes forbidding unlicensed attorneys from rendering legal advice probably also a violation of the First Amendment.

COMING SOON: Inspired by this post by "Quaker Ranter" Martin Kelley (especially this line: "I'm more tender and forgiving of other Quaker bloggers when I know more of their story: it puts what they say into a context that makes it sound more lived, less ideological."), a personal, less ideological explanation of the life experiences that have contributed to my present rather vitriolic contempt for "our" government.

Anarchism without anarchy

2007-11-20T21:36:00.000-05:00

Today I posted the following comment to this post on Ann Althouse's blog, responding to her observation that "Private citizens and business get stuck with the application of general laws, which they don't write":

All this thinking about politics and its inherent depravity will turn you into an anarchist yet!

Seriously, though, recognizing that our government has no inherent right to exist and that the "majority" has no natural right to rule over the minority does not necessarily as a practical matter entail quixotically advocating the immediate abolishment of the government. If the government prevents or punishes a genuine crime (e.g. murder or robbery, but not smoking pot, prostitution, gambling, or other mere vices), there is no injustice, even though the government has no real authority of its own, because it's not doing anything anyone else wouldn't have the right to do in the state of nature. And I think we can probably all agree that it's in fact preferable to have such justice carried out by a generally recognized "due process" than by vigilantes or private armies.

Does it have the right to take property from some in order that others don't starve? Maybe, on the theory, recognized by Thomas Aquinas among others, that stealing food from the bounty of others when there is no other way to prevent the starvation of one's self or one's family is not really theft at all. The government has no right to do what a private citizen has no right to do, but in this instance could be said to be doing what a starving poor person would have a right to do, on their behalf. But assuming this hypothetical poor person had a choice (as the government acting on his behalf presumably does), would he be morally justified in stealing from somebody who was himself struggling to make ends meet, when he could just as easily steal from someone with enough money in the bank to pay his own grocery bills many lifetimes over?

The most fundamental way to prevent poor people from starving in the first place would be to restore to them what they have a right to in the first place and what government has taken from them: a free and equal share of the earth and the earth's natural resources, or its equivalent in the form of a "Citizen's Dividend," funded by a "Single Tax" on the unimproved value of land and other natural resources. (A Google search will turn up several good explanations of these concepts.)

In these concepts is also found the only means by which this enterprise known as the government, which has non-consensually arrogated to itself the business of dispensing justice and protecting us, may legitimately pay itself for the "services" it bestows upon us. Since the unimproved value of land (even of that land which has improvements attached to it) belongs to every member of the society equally, the government is justified in collecting on behalf of society the "rent" associated with this value, in the same way that the government (like any private citizen in the state of nature) would be justified in recovering and returning to its rightful owner stolen property. (Inheritance taxes on property "owned" by a dead person and therefore by nobody could be justified on similar grounds.) Since this rent could not be collected and distributed in the absence of a government-type organization, the organization would be justified in skimming off the top its costs in collecting and distributing the rent, which presumably would include the necessary muscle to collect the rent and to maintain itself in existence against enemies foreign and domestic. Since that money would be coming out of each of our "Citizen's Dividends" to enable the collection of such Dividends, what we'd really be paying for is the protection of our property (and personal) rights -- and that's how a police, a military, and a "welfare" system (more precisely, a substitute for the welfare system grounded in justice rather than charity or policy) could be founded on a technically non-consensual but nevertheless just basis.

To reiterate, I'm well aware that the "utopia" I've sketched is ages away from the oppressive travesty we live under, and I'm not interested in vainly frittering away my life railing against something so brutal, stupid, and unresponsive to pleas for real justice. But culturally I think we would do very well to leave off our delusions and our myths, and to recognize the plain fact, just as our forefathers recognized with respect to the British Empire, that our present government has no "right" to rule over us. We "owe" it neither our allegiance, nor our "patriotism," nor our respect, nor our labor nor the fruits of our labor. Prudence, not duty, may dictate that we submit to its robberies (just as the convenience store clerk held at gunpoint may find it prudent to hand over the cash), until either the wider culture outgrows its submissive infantilism or the whole sorry mess collapses under the weight of its own corruption, as other empires and other tyrannies have before it.

Two Songs: Hallelujah Square, and How Can I Keep From Singing?

2007-11-19T06:17:00.000-05:00

I thought I would spruce my blog up with a little music. The first song I thought of was "How Can I Keep From Singing?" It's often identified as a traditional "Quaker" hymn. This is incorrect (Quakers, after all, traditionally don't sing as a group during Meeting for Worship), but it's nevertheless a beautiful song. The only versions that show up when I plug this title into the YouTube "Video Bar" page element Blogger offers is one by Enya and one by somebody named Chris Tomlin. I like Enya's version. I've never really listened to her. Her music has typically been categorized in the "New Age" genre, though according to her Wikipedia article she does not personally consider her music as belonging to that genre.

The other song I was inspired to search for is "Hallelujah Square," a song I fondly remember my then 16-year old Aunt Melody singing to me and my brother when I was about 5 years old, back when she was attending a Pentecostal Church. I haven't heard the song since, but somehow I've always remembered the song and the lyrics. It's one of my earliest and best memories. The two versions that show up from the YouTube "Video Bar" search aren't exactly the way I remember the song (I liked my aunt's version better), but they're close, and not too bad.

Both songs are in the YouTube "Video Bars" to the right. Below are the lyrics. Enya's version of How Can I Keep From Singing uses lyrics modified from the older hymn and made popular by Pete Seeger, which omit much of the Christian wording of the original. Here are the older original lyrics, written in 1860 by Baptist minister Robert Lowry. The lyrics below to Hallelujah Square are slightly different than any you'd find online, since I've transcribed them the way I remember my Aunt Mel singing them.

How Can I Keep From Singing?

My life goes on in endless song
Above earth's lamentations,
I hear the real, though far-off hymn
That hails a new creation.

Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear its music ringing,
It sounds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing?

While though the tempest loudly roars,
I hear the truth, it liveth.
And though the darkness round me close,
Songs in the night it giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm,
While to that rock I'm clinging.
Since love is lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?

When tyrants tremble in their fear
And hear their death knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near
How can I keep from singing?

In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging,
When friends by shame are undefiled
How can I keep from singing?

Hallelujah Square

(1) I saw a blind man, he was tapping along,
Losing his way as he passed through the throng;
I said to him, "I'm so sorry you can't see."
But with a smile on his face, he replied to me, "I'm gonna [chorus]

Chorus: "see all my friends in Hallelujah Square;
What a glorious time we'll all have up there.
We'll sing and praise Jesus, his glory to share,
(1) And there won't be one blind man in Hallelujah Square.
(2) And there won't be one cripple in Hallelujah Square.
(3) And we'll all live forever in Hallelujah Square."

(2) I saw a cripple, he was dragging his feet;
He couldn't walk like you do down the street.
I said to him, "I feel so sorry for you."
But he said, "Up in heaven I'm gonna walk just like you. And I'll [chorus]"

(3) I saw an old man, he was gasping for breath;
Soon he'd be gone as his eyes closed in death;
He said to me, "Now Boy, don't look so blue;"
He said, "I'm going up to heaven; now how about you? And I'll [chorus]"

This blog recognized by star blogger Ann Althouse

2007-11-19T02:37:00.000-05:00

First Eugene Volokh, now Ann Althouse, a former law professor of mine professing law at the University of Wisconsin whose blog averages as much traffic in one hour as mine has gotten in the last two months. Although her politics generally don't appeal to me -- she typically reaches hawkish and/or socially-liberal conclusions -- I believe her often-voiced claim that, contrary to the many oft-profane accusations from the liberal critics who troll her blog, she doesn't blog with an agenda and that her blog writing is an extension and expression of her pre-law prof life as an artist. Furthermore, the eclectic and generally interesting nature of her writing -- legal topics by her estimate constitute only about 20% of her blogging -- attracts a wide variety of readers and has correspondingly generated in my opinion perhaps the best regular comments section in the blogosphere of which I'm aware, with Volokh Conspiracy and Reason: Hit & Run a close second.

Althouse recently quoted one of my comments on her blog in a post titled "Do you want to be a star in the commentosphere?" This was the quoted comment (in the comments section of this post):

"I don't know about aspiring to be a star, but my blog now mainly consists of a running compendium of my comments on much higher traffic blogs. That way I don't run the risk of spending a lot of time on posts that nobody reads, and I'm basically doing what I'd do anyway. Thanks to Althouse for the idea (in one of her earlier posts) of blogging this way."

Later I made a few anarchic comments in this Althouse post relating to my choice of writing instruments were I appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court (i.e. crayon), culminating in this one, in response to another commenter who had said that ". . . the purpose of the Constitution was to limit the power of government":

"Alas, I'm afraid that in the actual historical context of the Articles of Confederation the purpose of the Constitution was in fact not to limit but to expand the power of government, and to bend it to the will and financial interests of the politically connected. Albert Jay Nock's classic book "Our Enemy, the State" has the lowdown. There's nothing especially admirable about the Constitution. As the great nineteenth century legal scholar Lysander Spooner put it, at the very end of his "No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority", "But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain --- that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist." And that was before the Sixteenth Amendment came along.Now the Declaration of Independence, on the other hand, that was something."

I promote further anarchy on this Althouse thread, where in response to a commenter who had criticized a passage I quoted from Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, I said this:

"Thoreau's words, at least the ones I've quoted from Civil Disobedience, carry "Authority" for me, not because Thoreau said them or because Thoreau lived for a time in a cabin by Walden Pond, but because they're true.You say "'consent' in this context means majority consent to what a government is and does." That is simply wrong, and a recipe for tyrrany [sic]. Did Stalin's USSR have majority consent? Did Hitler's Germany? It would have been hard to tell if you took a poll (fear of the Gulag, etc.), and Hitler at least seemed to enjoy the popular support of his "constituents" for much of his reign. Was a German who had retained his moral sense at that time in history bound to submit his moral sense to that of the "majority"? In America, our system of political campaigning funded by lobbyists and other Big Money interests is a poor, contemptible counterfeit for the will of the majority. In any event, the most important point is that a "majority" doesn't have some magical right to do something that it would be immoral for an individual to do, like steal or murder. Read Lysander Spooner's "No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority." Maybe then you'll have thought about this enough that we could have a meaningful debate."

Eugene Volokh responds to my previous comment in his latest post on Westboro "Baptist Church"

2007-11-14T01:12:00.000-05:00

Eugene Volokh quotes me and three other commenters in his latest post on the verdict against Fred Phelps and his Westboro "Baptist Church" for protesting the funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq. Here's my comment that Volokh quoted. Volokh proposes a hypothetical in which a public university decides to discipline students who hold a demonstration carrying posters that display the Mohammed cartoons, and suggests that upholding the verdict against the Phelpsians might lead to a slippery slope and the loss of First Amendment protection for the kind of speech in his hypothetical. I responded in the comments section of his latest post with the following:

"Or how about another hypothetical: protestors outside a Catholic Church on Sunday morning carrying signs calling the Catholic Church the "Whore of Babylon," or making the factual statement that "X number of priests have raped boys," or "This Church's bishop swept child rape under the rug," or any of many other things people could and do say against the Catholic Church. Perhaps some of them are carrying a defaced Crucifix or other image outrageously offensive to Catholics.

I raise this hypothetical as an alternative to the Mohammed cartoon hypothetical for several reasons: I was the source of the comment suggesting the family of the deceased's countervailing First Amendment "free exercise of religion" right to mourn their child in peace in point 10 of Eugene's post; the different examples of speech that might be exercised at the Church protest highlight the difficulty of drawing a bright line defining outrageous and unacceptable speech, particularly when you consider that one of the people holding such a sign might have themselves been abused by a priest and be justly angry at the Church and/or its policies; and the targeted nature of the protest and its encroachment on the space of people doing what they clearly have a right to do who presumably are unwilling recipients of the protest "speech," which for me has been key to my belief that the Phelpsians' funeral protest was not protected by the First Amendment, and which seems clearer in this Church protest hypothetical than in a Mohammed cartoon demonstration on a college green.

I raise the hypothetical to myself to see if I can indeed distinguish in my own mind what seems to me an even harder hypothetical than the one Eugene raised from the Phelpsians' funeral protests. As a former Roman Catholic, I consider myself for the most part "Catholic-friendly," but I do think the hypothetical protesters I'm contemplating would have the right to make such a protest on a public street outside the Church, and that the Mohammed cartoon carriers would have the right to make their protest (and I think current First Amendment jurisprudence bears that out), so long as the protests were not so loud that they could be heard inside the Church or inside the private dormitories on campus.

Nevertheless, I still think funerals are distinguishable in a way that may make them pretty much unique (making it rather problematic to apply to them "principles" which are supposed to apply to a wide variety of cases). Among their most important distinguishing characteristics for present purposes is the fact that those "celebrating" them are typically emotionally devastated, the fact that it is virtually impossible to sensibly argue that the ceremony itself hurts anybody, and the fact that they are celebrated only once for each deceased. Protesters therefore have the potential to ruin forever a religious ceremony mourning the deceased and praying for his or her propitious journey to a favorable afterlife. As I've suggested in other threads, it seems to me that the right to mourn one's dead child in peace is every bit as fundamental as the right to free speech itself. As such, it seems that this right would be worthy of an Amendment all its own, though it would seem rather odd to devote a Constitutional Amendment to something so particular that occupies only a tiny fraction of human life. Nevertheless, it's a pretty important fraction to those who have lost a child or other loved one.

I'm not necessarily arguing for the propriety of this particular verdict, but for the propriety of a statute prohibiting anyone from protesting a funeral within sight or hearing of the funeral. I'm no big fan of the Court's propensity for inventing fundamental rights where none exist, but it seems there is room for recognition of this particular actually existing fundamental right in First Amendment jurisprudence."

Becker-Posner talkin some sense about inheritance taxes

2007-11-12T02:29:00.000-05:00

Although the Georgist Single Tax on the unimproved value of land and other natural resources would be by far the "fairest" tax, by virtue of natural law and economic efficiency, inheritance taxes also find justification in natural law and economic efficiency (especially in comparison to the evil that is the income tax). The dynamic blogging duo of Gary Becker and Richard Posner recognized some of the economic justifications for replacing income taxes with inheritance taxes in their post yesterday.

Some nuggets of truth from Gary Becker, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Economics:

"To be sure, some of these "self made" billionaire businessmen accumulated some of their wealth from political connections that gave them protected markets. This category includes Carlos Slim, many of the richest Russians, and some others. They tend to be able businessmen, but there is a vast difference between the contribution to society from starting a Google, Microsoft, Wal-Mart's, Arcelor Mittal, or IKEA, and the extraction of profits from a monopoly position protected by government regulations."

"Still, there is pressure in most countries to tax heavily the very wealthy. One possible reason to do so would be to prevent their children and other descendants from having large advantages over descendants from financially modest families. But to help in equalizing opportunities, taxes should be on inheritances, not as in the US and many other countries, on estates."

"A heavy tax on the very wealthy would also raise tax revenue that could replace income and other taxes on the not so wealthy."

Then comes 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge Richard Posner talkin some more sense:

"I also agree with Becker that the benefits to consumers from the entrepreneurial efforts that produced Microsoft, Google, Apple, E-Bay, Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, private-equity firms, hedge funds, and other commercial successes that have generated large personal fortunes are much larger than the personal fortunes garnered by the founders and principals of such companies.
It does not follow, however, that these billionaires "deserve" their fortunes and therefore should be as lightly taxed as they are. As the economist Sherwin Rosen showed in a famous article, in certain circumstances a very small difference in ability can translate into an enormous different in reward. The key is the reproducibility of a product or service or innovation. If one pianist is slightly better than any other, his recordings may capture the entire market for recordings of the kind of pieces he plays best because the consumer has no reason to buy his rivals' slightly inferior recordings, provided prices are comparable. As transportation costs and tariff barriers fall and foreign countries become richer, the markets for the best American products expand, increasing the profit potential for producers with the lowest quality-adjusted costs. The greater output of the superior producer confers real value, but there is only a loose relation between that value and the reward to the producer. Bill Gates is extremely able, but not a thousand times abler than pikers worth a mere $50 million."

"Yet even without thinking these fortunes dangerous, or the product of anything more sinister that skill and luck, we might as Becker suggests see in them an attractive source of tax revenues. The ideal tax is a tax that produces large revenues but has minimal allocative effects. A uniform head tax, avoidable only by emigration, would have minimal effects on people's behavior but would generate only modest revenues, because if genuinely uniform the tax would have to be set at a level that the poorest person could pay. A highly progressive income tax, without loopholes, would produce a great deal of revenue but probably would generate significant misallocative effects by causing people to substitute leisure for work and riskless jobs and investments for risky ones.
In these respects the estate tax is somewhere in between the head tax and the highly progressive income tax. Death cannot be averted, and in that respect an estate tax resembles a head tax. But the potential revenues are much greater, especially in an era of large fortunes. Adding up the fortunes listed in the Forbes article for just the 10 wealthiest Americans yields a total of almost $600 billion. The estate tax has as many holes as a very large Swiss cheese, but they could be closed."

"So although a stiffer estate tax on large fortunes (which would not require an increase in the tax rate but merely a closing of loopholes) would probably impose some cost in loss of charitable donations, which could in turn increase demand for public spending, I believe the revenue potential of such a tax would offset the costs. The tax increase could be made revenue-neutral, enabling a less efficient tax, such as the personal or corporate income tax, to be reduced."

You have to be a Genius to understand this blog

2007-11-10T08:49:00.000-05:00

According to the Blog Readability Test, this blog's reading level is "Genius." I've put the badge that accompanies this "honor" on the sidebar to the right, but don't think I'll leave it there long, because if anything, I think this score probably just means my sentences are too long and I don't use enough paragraph breaks. Come to think of it, that last sentence was too long. I'll try to do better and get the reading level down to the "junior high school" level. After all, that's the reading level the Geniuses over at The Volokh Conspiracy apparently write at.

Modern Pacifist Philosophy and the Quaker Peace Testimony

2007-11-09T13:36:00.000-05:00

David Kopel, a collaborator at The Volokh Conspiracy, has posted his Working Paper on Modern Christian Pacifist Philosophy. I posted the following comment:

As a libertarian Quaker, I'm finding this paper a very interesting read, and appreciate your on-the-mark reference to the Quaker Peace Testimony in the opening paragraph (don't have time to finish it now, but will tonight). Thanks for posting it. BTW, the well-known Quaker Testimony of Peace is focused on war, and the passions, hatreds and lusts which lead to and accompany war. It's not completely pacifist in that it does not necessarily abjure the use of force. E.g., the use of force by the police in the genuine maintenance of peace, and even in the dispassionate punishment of criminals, is not frowned upon (at least it wasn't for most of Quaker history), and Quakers have served as constables and police officers without incurring censure from their religious communities (in my opinion the propriety of working as a police officer has become problematic in light of the many unjust laws on the books, such as those that authorize jail and prison for merely possessing or using marijuana, but that's another matter). Indeed, Caroline Stephens in her classic book Quaker Strongholds made the point that she had difficulty in finding fault with certain wars which seemed to partake of the same nature as that of police action (though she could still not conceive of any war which did not come from evil and lead to evil). But in any event, as the footnote cited in the opening paragraph of the Working Paper makes clear, the Quaker Peace "Testimony" is just that: a personal testimony, witness and aspiration towards perfection, rather than a theory or dogma purporting to define what is right or allowable for all people at all times.

The limits of the First Amendment: response to Volokh on the $10.9 million verdict against Westboro "Baptist Church" for protesting funeral of soldier

2007-11-08T11:28:00.000-05:00

The uber-smart law prof Eugene Volokh has a series of posts on the verdict in light of the First Amendment. I agree with much of what he says, except on what I think is the most fundamental issue. Here's the comment I posted in response to one of Prof. Volokh's posts:

Prof. Volokh:

Part of your argument is based upon what First Amendment jurisprudence currently says; and part is based on how you think it should be interpreted, the direction it should go, and policy / "slippery slope" arguments (which, as you identify as a libertarian, I'll assume are based on corresponding notions of natural justice). I'll defer to you on the former part of your argument but question your conclusions with regard to the latter part of your argument. Specifically, I don't think that natural justice and policy/slippery slope considerations require that "people would still be able to express their anti-American, anti-gay, cruel, unduly personalized, and just plain disgusting views . . . in picket signs that aren't right in front of the funeral but are visible from the funeral procession . . . ."

If I imagine an anarchist but for the most part just society that is not entirely pacifist, I think that family and friends of the deceased would be well within their rights to chase such protesters away from the vicinity of the funeral, clean out of sight and out of hearing. As things stand now, however, family and friends would get themselves in trouble with the government for doing so, and the burden is on people who would say that they should indeed incur consequences from the government to justify why this is so. On the other hand, in a just natural society that respects personal space and free speech, I don't think friends and family of the deceased would be justified in going out of their way to disrupt a protest taking place a mile away or across town, or to somehow prevent people like the Phelpsians from calling into radio stations, issuing press releases, or posting their hateful garbage on websites, and the like.

I wonder whether we haven't fetishized public protesting and overstated its importance in the discourse and truth-seeking that the First Amendment was designed to protect. Certainly when such protests intentionally, coercively and aggressively invade the space of the objects of their protest, even in public places, considerations of personal space and the right to be left alone are just as important from the freedom-loving point of view as the right to free speech. (And I don't think we can arbitrarily set the boundaries of personal space with something like a 300 ft. "buffer zone." Seems like it has more to do with whether the speaker is intentionally and coercively imposing his speech on another in a way that the other can't avoid, e.g., if the protesters in this case got advance notice of the funeral procession route and set up their protest and held their abominable signs along that route.)

I'm inclined to distinguish such things as abortion clinic protests by suggesting that people do have a right to protest conduct or speech with which they disagree as it is happening. Objectionable conduct or speech "opens the door", so to speak, to contrary speech and protest. Such a principle would preclude, e.g., residential picketing of an abortionist's home, which I don't think would be a bad thing -- i.e., I don't think the discourse of this nation would suffer because of such a preclusion (and I'm pro-life and as an undergrad participated in abortion clinic protests). I suppose the Phelpsians would respond by saying that they're not only protesting homosexuality but the actual celebration and "conduct" of this funeral, that this dead soldier should not be mourned by his family because he was part of the military of a nation which protected homosexuality. Now, that's just B.S., and maybe we'll just have to exercise our common sense and recognize the special case that funerals present by enacting a statute which prohibits protesting a funeral anywhere within sight or hearing of the funeral or the funeral procession. I don't see how such a statute could run afoul of the First Amendment properly interpreted in light of natural justice, because it seems that the natural right to mourn one's dead child in peace is every bit as fundamental as the right to free speech. Indeed, the right to mourn one's dead child in peace would seem to be protected by the other part of the First Amendment having to do with free exercise of religion. (Government action being implicated because in the absence of a robust recognition of this right family and friends of the deceased would be prevented from, or punished for, exercising their natural right to chase the protesters out of sight or hearing of the funeral.)

The Friendly Funnel on "Converging Upon Perfection"

2007-11-06T18:31:00.000-05:00

The Friendly Funnel has some interesting reflections upon "convergent" Friends and the idea that the concept of perfection offers us a way forward to convergence. She quotes the Introduction by Margery Post Abbott to her anthology called "A Certain Kind of Perfection":

Through my encounters with evangelical Friends and the consequent explorations of the roots of my own faith as a liberal Friend, I find a connection between these two traditions in the unlikely concept of perfection… we all believe that as we turn towards God, then are obedient to divine guidance, we will experience an inward peace and act with compassion, humility, and righteousness. We can, through the work of the Spirit, live out God’s reign on earth. All Friends seek to live out of the love expressed in the Sermon on the Mount… When understood as wholeness, spiritual maturity, soundness, completion, or even obedience, perfection starts to become more accessible to me. Other Friends who find the terms perfection and holiness difficult are more apt to speak of discipleship, obedience, baptism with the Holy Spirit, or the ‘Lordship of Jesus Christ’. For a few, spiritual formation or inner healing are the most expressive terms for perfection. ‘Teleos’, the Biblical word for perfection, means ‘end goal’ and suggests an orientation more than a fixed state of being.

I offered the following comment:

"I think something along these lines, i.e. finding unity in greater respect for ideals of perfection, was what I was trying to get at a couple weeks ago in my blog post titled “A further reflection on convergence and a proposal for a double standard” (a choice of title which was perhaps unduly undiplomatic). That post focused on issues of sexual morality, which unfortunately seem just as (and possibly more) significant in our ongoing Quaker divisions between liberal and evangelical as issues surrounding the proper role of Jesus and Scripture in Quaker spirituality. It’s unfortunate, and rather telling, that sexual issues have loomed so large in the religious disagreements and divisions that have affected not only Quakers but other religious denominations, particularly it seems since the 1960s. In a properly ordered soul and a properly ordered society, on the other hand, sex is seen simply as a natural part of life, which like other bodily appetites must be kept modestly subject to the head and the heart, and also as something which, in its potential to procreate new life and to hurt ourselves and other people, is fraught with moral consequences to a degree that, e.g., our bodily appetite for food is not."

"Progressive" libertarianism

2007-11-05T22:46:00.000-05:00

In my stroll down blog commentary memory lane, I also came across the following two comments on posts at Reason's Hit & Run blog, which got high props from other commenters. These comments predate my discovery of Henry George and my present geoanarchism.

From Feb. 20, 2007:

"It's very heartening to hear progressive ideas about taxes getting a fair hearing and sympathetic ear among libertarians here (of which I count myself one -- i.e. reducing out-of-control government spending is the most fundamental way to reduce taxes). I would add that the "repeal the estate tax" component of the Bush tax cut plan in particular highlights its evil and regressive nature. (See Andrew Carnegie's The Gospel of Wealth for a prominent historical argument from a libertarian capitalist in favor of inheritance taxes.) We should indeed counter the typical liberal's neglect of property rights in favor of civil rights by emphasizing, as libertarians readily do, that liberty is in many essential ways tied to and dependent upon property, but we should in the same breath also recognize and emphasize that this tie is closer the less property an individual has. Confiscating $3k from somebody making $30k a year infringes on his liberty (by keeping him closer to the realm of need and necessity) more than confiscating $30k from somebody making $300k a year, and a hell of a lot more than confiscating $30k from somebody's $300k inheritance. I submit that if the government needs $30k for some legitimate purpose, it's better for the economy and for society if that $30k comes from one person's $300k inheritance than in $3k chunks from 10 people making $30k a year. A Prof. Graetz (or Gaetz) from Yale Law School is advocating something he calls "Back to the Future" (since it's similar to how Americans were taxed prior to WWII), which includes a $50k standard deduction for individuals ($100k for married couples), combined with a reasonable VAT (value added tax) on consumption. Exempt farm products from this consumption tax and retain (and better yet expand) a reformed estate or inheritance tax, and I think we'd be well on our way to a fair federal tax system. For the vast majority of Americans, April 15th would be just another day, and that can't not be a good thing."

From March 8, 2007:

"[quoting another commenter:] 'The biggest threat to libertarianism is that you guys don't seem to grasp that it's a philosophy that's only attractive to people who either have lots of money or expect to in the future.' Indeed, I think libertarians are prone to an amoral, Darwinist, "greed is good" attitude that they mistake for libertarianism itself. The principle of "ordered liberty," as conceived by the Founders, is premised on the idea that a virtuous citizenry, which honors the two Greatest Commandments, is essential to a free society. (Brookhiser's biography of Washington, Founding Father, makes this point well, that true self-government begins with each individual citizen's government of his own soul.) Libertarianism is the salutary rejection of all unnecessary government coercion, along with all other forms of unjust coercion. It's founded on the self-evident truth that all men and women are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. We undercut that foundation, and make ourselves unappealing, when, in a misguided effort to demonstrate our libertarian bona fides, we talk and act like selfish hedonistic bastards or speak with disrespect and unconcern for the poor.I agree that government and government handouts are not the solution for the poor. But central to the libertarian concern, as it was to those who led the American Revolution, are taxes, and the justice or injustice of the coercive taking of property that they entail. Liberty is tied to property, but this tie is closer the less property an individual has. These truths support lower overall government spending and taxing, but also more "progressiveness" in the taxes we do have (e.g. in the form of a much higher standard income tax deduction, and the replacement of other sources of tax revenue with inheritance taxes, which are among the most progressive taxes of all). The Darwinists among us have a kneejerk reaction to progessive taxation, as it calls to mind the collectivist goal of redistribution. But this is not a matter of taking from the richer to give to the poorer, but of taking from the richer instead of the poorer. But alas, libertarian rhetoric typically obsesses with impediments in the way of the Randian superman, and not so much on the grievous assault on liberty that occurs each time the government confiscates big chunks of a working man's (or small businessman's) hard-earned labor. Democrats are known as advocates of the working man and as proponents of progressive taxation, but they don't want so much to reduce the tax burden on the poor and middle class as they want to tax the hell out of everybody, and then give bits and pieces back to the poor in the form of government handouts.Who's advocating a progressive libertarianism, which seems like it would appeal to a vast number of Americans, particularly Americans who vote? Pretty much nobody. Sounds like a wide-open opportunity for an ambitous political movement to me."

Commenting on other blogs about Westboro Baptist Church, Platonism, Georgism, and the Abortion-Breast Cancer Link

2007-11-05T18:29:00.000-05:00

I was glad to see this blog has been picked up by the Zebby libertarian blog aggregator and the Quaker blog aggregator. My readership, however, not surprisingly for a new blog, remains sparse. The real fun in blogging takes place in the back-and-forth that goes on in the commentary of those blogs that have gained a wide readership. For some time I've been an active blog commenter, at least sporadically, especially at Ann Althouse, The Volokh Conspiracy, and Reason's Hit & Run. As I suggested in an earlier post, I think for now I'll concentrate on using this blog as a running compendium of my commentary on other blogs, commentary which is often sharpened and benefits by the responses of other commenters. I'll still occasionally initiate independent blog posts on news items that speak to me or random philosophical reflections as the spirit moves me.

Most recently I offered at Althouse's blog a response inspired by Plato's Symposium to the question whether there can be marriage in heaven, and several comments on the $11 million jury verdict against Westboro Baptist Church for emotional distress and invasion of privacy intentionally inflicted by its protest of a dead soldier's funeral (involving signs saying, among other hateful things, "God Hates Fags") and the ramifications of the verdict for the First Amendment.

A couple of my more noteworthy and substantive blog commentary from the past are a lengthy interaction with other commenters at Volokh Conspiracy about the evidence linking induced abortion with increased breast cancer risk and this debate with other commenters about Georgist principles and fair taxation, also at Volokh Conspiracy.

What Privileges Do I Have?

2007-11-04T17:54:00.000-05:00

Jeanne at her Social Class & Quakers blog suggests the following blog game based on an exercise developed by some folks at Illinois State University, where you highlight / boldface possible indicators of privilege. Here's my list:

Father went to college (father was in prison when we were very young; mother died when I was 2; raised by aunt and uncle)
Father finished college
Mother went to college (aunt who raised us went for a couple years but quit when she took me and my brother in)
Mother finished college
Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
Were read children's books by a parent
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 (swimming)
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs (I'm still paying for all of it, except for what the G.I. Bill covered)
Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
Went to a private high school
Went to summer camp (one week wrestling camp in high school)
Had a private tutor before you turned 18
Family vacations involved staying at hotels
Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
There was original art in your house when you were a child
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
You and your family lived in a single family house (we moved from apartment and lived with grandmother at her house after age 8 or 9)
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home (not sure what mortgage status was; house was left to aunt after grandmother passed away when I was 10 or 11)
You had your own room as a child
Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
Had your own TV in your room in High School
Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your family
Went on more than one cruise with your family
Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up (remember going to King Tut exhibit in Chicago)
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family

Love, the Testimony of Integrity, and the Government

2007-11-04T09:46:00.000-05:00

In my last post I broadly referred to the government as a "criminal gang" and to those who use government to promote and protect their or others' illegitimate financial interests as the "robber class." In the interests of charity, some clarification is in order. Quakers have traditionally voiced support and respect for the "civil magistry," while at the same time being one of the most conspicuous of Christian denominations in their insistence on "obey[ing] God rather than men," e.g. in their opposition and conscientous objection to war, in their refusal to swear oaths in court, and in their refusal to adhere to customs bestowing honorific titles upon some individuals (including those holding government office) which elevate those individuals above their fellow human beings. In light of this, I think the traditional Quaker emphasis upon respect for the laws and the government should be understood as respecting the fact that people don't have the right to aggress against the persons or rightful properties of others and the role of the government in enforcing that fact. Moreover, as a pragmatic and prudential matter, early Quakers may have been quick to respect publicly the laws and government authority where they conscientously could because they so often were finding themselves in trouble with "the law" for violating specific ordinances that they could not conscientously respect. On the other hand, my understanding is that early Quakers were also unfortunately all too ready to petition the government to outlaw and attach criminal penalties to things that in their opinion were obviously immoral and impure, e.g. alcohol.

One of my oldest friends is a police officer. I highly respect his willingness to put himself in harm's way to protect the public in apprehending murderers, rapists, robbers, thieves, etc. The police officer has as much of a natural right as anyone else to apprehend such criminals, and is being paid to take on the duty of doing so. On the other hand, the Testimony of Integrity compels me to assert that when a police officer arrests and jails somebody who is merely in possession of marijuana, it is the police officer who is committing a crime and not the possessor of marijuana, even though the police officer is acting pursuant to laws and orders which purportedly require or legitimize the arrest. Though the analogy of Nazis who vainly tried at the Nuremberg Trials to excuse their murderous crimes by saying they were just following orders is wildly disproportionate, the same principle applies. (For the record, I do not myself smoke marijuana, and I regard the use of marijuana as morally imperfect, but no more imperfect than the use of alcohol, which I do occasionally imbibe.) Anyone contemplating becoming a police officer today should carefully consider the kinds of orders and laws he or she would be agreeing to enforce.

Do I regard those who advocate or support such things as federal and state funding for public libraries and public education (and local police departments, for that matter) as members of the "robber class"? In light of our present unjust system of tax collection, the Testimony of Integrity compels me to say "yes." I was going to qualify this by writing "albeit in a Robin Hood sort of way," but upon reflection refrain from doing so because our present tax system steals not only from the rich but also, more egregiously, from the poor. The only taxes which government has a right to levy is the Georgist "Single Tax" on the unimproved value of land (in fact it has not only a right but a duty to collect such tax), and arguably inheritance taxes, gift taxes (more tenuously), "luxury" taxes (much more tenuously), and "use" taxes (e.g., sales taxes on gasoline and automobiles to pay for street and highway building and maintenance). But you then run into the very important issue of how such tax money is to be spent, because the forementioned taxes (primarily the Single Tax) are justified by the fact that what is collected really belongs to the community, and so the first and most natural disposition of these funds would be directly to the members of the community in the form of a "citizens' dividend." The government may legitimately skim off the top its costs in collecting the "tax" (more precisely this is called the "community collection of rent," or CCR), because without its operations the tax could not be collected, but it has no right to dispose of a citizen's right to his or her dividend out of what is left over without that citizen's explicit consent. As imperfect and artificial as democracy as we've known it generally is (because a majority has no magical right to do what an individual has no right to do), I think its use is justified and can be quite salutary on the very local level (i.e. more local than the State level), where citizens can meaningfully consent to and actually participate in the democratic process, and can more easily dissent from the majority by picking up and moving to another community which is more congenial to their values. This is the level at which public goods such as education, libraries, poor relief, police protection, etc., etc., should be funded out of the citizens' dividends in a manner to which they've meaningfully consented. Indeed, on this very local level, there is not much of a problem with additionally imposing ordinarily unjust taxes such as income taxes, when the community has by a democratic process agreed to such taxes and when individual members of the community are free to leave the community in favor of other communities. Ideally, local communities would freely contract with higher levels of "government" for such things as military defense from large-scale invasion. Arguably, communities which decline to contract for national defense present an economic "free-rider" problem. I'm not convinced that the free-rider problem justifies non-consensual uses of the citizens' dividend, but if it does, national defense is about the only thing that might justify it and should be the sole function, along with appellate judicial functions, of the federal government. Even so, national defense can only be justly funded out of the aforementioned legitimate forms of taxation. (A truly defensive military would be much cheaper than the one we have now.)

The Testimony of Integrity has compelled me to assert that a police officer who arrests and jails someone for possessing marijuana is acting criminally, and that someone who, even with the best of intentions, supports unjust forms of taxing and spending is de facto a member of the "robber class." It's necessary to put things that strongly to give things their true names. Indeed, not only the Testimony of Integrity, but also the Testimony of Love, leads me to tell it like it is and like I see it, and to point out where real harm and real injustice are being done. Nevertheless, and accordingly, I have much love for police officers and political activists who are trying to do the right thing, even those whose own measure of Light has not led them to the same conclusions that my own measure of Light has led me.

Billionaire Warren Buffett wants to pay more tax

2007-10-31T10:56:00.000-04:00

Actually, the main thrust of his complaint seems to be not that he is not paying enough taxes, but that everyone on his staff, including his receptionist, pays a higher rate of tax than he does. According to Buffett, the second-richest man in the U.S., "The taxation system has tilted towards the rich and away from the middle class in the last 10 years. It's dramatic; I don't think it's appreciated and I think it should be addressed."

Predictably, the robber class defends its interests: "Mr Buffett's remarks drew a robust response from the US Chamber of Commerce, which said the top 1% of US earners accounted for 39% of tax revenue - and the highest earning 25% of the population delivered 86% of the tax-take. The chamber's chief economist, Martin Regalia, said: 'Mr Buffett has made an awful lot of money and if he wants to pay more taxes, I think that's fine. But I think he should get his facts straight.'"

What this criminal gang, which operates at the behest of those with the wherewithal and willingness to pay for its election campaigns, refuses to admit is that taking $6k per year from somebody earning $30k per year impacts that person's very freedom, viability, security and independence a lot more than taking $60k per year from somebody making $300k per year (and a helluva lot more than taking $60k or more from somebody inheriting $300k), that our government-enforced property-rights regime denies to the unpropertied their natural birthright to an equal share of the earth and its natural resources, and that much of the income of those in the highest tax brackets comes from "unearned increment." Read this.

Why isn't this being shouted from the rooftops?

2007-10-31T10:19:00.000-04:00

A mechanic in Wichita, Kansas with an eighth-grade education has been modifying Lincolns, Escalades and Hummers for years to run on vegetable oil and electricity, cutting emissions by 80%, DOUBLING horsepower, AND getting upwards of 100 mpg. One of his concoctions smoked a Lamborghini in a drag race televised on MTV. Clients include Arnold Schwarzenegger and Neil Young.

This is the kind of thing that Detroit, the oil companies, and the military-industrial complex don't want you to know. After all, how would Bush and Co. justify forcing Americans to pay for all those aircraft carriers and tanks if our "national interests" are no longer held hostage by oil tycoon sheiks in the Middle East?

Via Fark and Daily Kos.

Illinois Yearly Meeting's statement on abortion

2007-10-30T15:00:00.000-04:00

Mirror of Justice, "a blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory," has several posts today on the immorality vs. the illegality of abortion. This discussion was in turn prompted by an earlier post, where contributor Eduardo Penalver stated the issue thusly: "[T]he Church normally distinguishes between a practice's morality and its legality, as it does in the case of, say, the just wage. But in the case of abortion, it has by and large skipped over that distinction, asserting that there is no room for prudential disagreement, not only as to abortion's morality, but also as to its legality."

I've stated previously my dissent from the 1992 Minute concerning abortion of Illinois Yearly Meeting, of which my own monthly meeting is a member. (I've only been an attender at Quaker meeting for a few years, and only became aware of this Minute a couple months ago.) What exactly do I find objectionable about this Minute, in light of my basic agreement with the implications of Penalver's observation and the libertarian view on abortion expressed here?

The pertinent language in the Minute is as follows: "Neither abortion nor pregnancy should be compulsory nor illegal. A pregnant woman forced by legal or economic means to act against her own leadings is an abused woman. We hold that it is morally wrong for the federal or state governments to take upon themselves the power of compelling women to complete or terminate pregnancy, whether such coercion be done by legal or economic means."

Part of my objection has to do with the confusion and ambiguity caused by the use of the word "economic" in the phrase "legal or economic means." To the extent that it contemplates the situation of a pregnant woman who feels compelled by lack of financial resources to have an abortion, I agree that such a situation implies injustice (the injustice of our economic system, primarily, which denies to the poor what rightfully belongs to them) or at least a lack of charity in the wider society. But IYM's ambiguous statement just as clearly suggests that governments have used or may use economic means to "compel" women to complete pregnancy. What economic means could IYM be referring to here? The meaning that immediately occurred to me, an interpretation that will also naturally occur to other readers of this statement in the absence of any obvious alternatives, is that IYM is talking about the issue of government funding of abortions, and implying that not providing such funding for poor women who want abortions somehow coerces them into carry their pregnancy to term. That is, according to this interpretation, it is "morally wrong" for the government to not force its putative subjects to pay doctors to perform on other putative subjects a medical procedure that very many of the would-be payors consider immoral. I hope this interpretation of IYM's intent is incorrect, but the ambiguity of the language makes it impossible to know. Certainly IYM's statement comes across as a "pro-choice" document, and the issue of federal funding for abortions has historically been an important one for the pro-choice movement, so this interpretation is reasonable. What else could this allusion to economically -coercing-women-to-complete-their-pregnancies be referring to? Informed consent requirements? I'm not aware of any proposals ever having been made to fine women for having abortions. If nothing else, the statement would benefit by plainer speech.

My most fundamental objection to the statement, however, is that while it goes so far as to say that it is "morally wrong" for the government to prevent a woman from having an abortion (without any qualifications, e.g., for late-term abortions) , it scrupulously avoids saying anything about the morality of violently preventing an unborn child from being born, a child who, except in cases of rape, was the natural fruit of consensual sex and has the status of an "invited guest." It doesn't say anything about the morality of engaging in sex in situations where an unplanned pregnancy is likely to end in abortion.

There are real prudential reasons for not outlawing most abortions. These reasons do not make abortion moral, and it's an abuse of language to speak of it as a "right."

Far be it from me to judge anyone. I've acted immorally and taken the easy way out on too many occasions to presume or be tempted to do that. But if we have Light enough to declare coercive laws or proposed laws to be "morally wrong," we have Light enough to make moral judgments about other coercive human acts, including abortion. It's particularly important that we do so when our pronouncements about the morality of laws or proposed laws strongly imply a view about the morality of those human acts that would be subject to the law.

"Master, to whom shall we go?"

2007-10-27T21:14:00.000-04:00

In fiddling around with this blog I've endeavored, in the Recommended Reading section at the bottom of the main page and in the introductory "Note to Self" at the top, to cover all the important bases, to highlight and provide some justification for those ideas and ideals that appear to me of the highest importance. In doing so I've detected a relative absence of supporting material for the most important ideal of all, which is expressed in the commandment to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul."

To those who don't believe in God in the first place I can't offer any proof of His existence that I think would be compelling. I can only offer the testimony of my own perhaps incommunicable sense that we can directly know and experience the existence of God, and the argument of so-called Reformed Epistemology, that it is rational to believe in God independently of evidence or argument. But I would also hold up for consideration the first part of Peter's response to Jesus' asking the Twelve Apostles whether they wanted to join the many disciples who, because of His hard sayings, had stopped following Him (John 6:66-69). Peter's response was, "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God."

Of course, I don't have in mind a scriptural argument for those who don't believe in God, let alone believe in Scripture. Rather, what I have in mind is the insight, characteristic of Plato and the neoplatonists and the many others who have followed in their philosophical footsteps, into the relative unreality of all of the temporal, changeable, and corruptible things that make up the world. It seems to these philosophers that a beautiful or wise person, who is here today and gone tomorrow, has less of the characterisitics of reality than the idea of Beauty or Wisdom by which we recognize and appreciate instances of beauty or wisdom. Meister Eckhart put it thusly: "All creatures are a pure nothing. I don’t say they are insignificant or a something: they are absolute nothing. Whatever hasn’t essence does not exist. No creature has essence, because the essence of all is in the presence of God. If God withdrew from the creatures for just one moment, they would disappear to nothing." And: "God is not only a Father of all good things, as being their First Cause and Creator, but He is also their Mother, since He remains with the creatures which have from Him their being and existence, and maintains them continually in their being. If God did not abide with and in the creatures, they must necessarily have fallen back, so soon as they were created, into the nothingness out of which they were created."

So, again, "To Whom shall we go?" The deepest conclusion to which the above reflections lead is not the unreality of all creatures and things but our essential "identity" with, through our participation in, the unchangeable Be-ing of all beings, the Ground of our reality, in Whom "we live and move and have our being." The realization in time of this abiding Truth is our salvation, while apart from God we can do, and are, nothing.

Such truths by their metaphysical and mystical nature are better understood through insight and experience than through words. Nevertheless, to help complete the philosophy collection I've found myself assembling on this blogspot, I've linked, in the Recommended Reading section and in the "Note to Self," to Angelus Silesius' Cherubinic Wanderer, a 17th century collection of short mystical verses that I've long found congenial to my sense of reality. Here is one couplet that speaks to me:

Not first upon the Cross God let Himself be slain,
For see! He lieth dead there at the feet of Cain.

The Passion of the Christ

2007-10-26T13:33:00.000-04:00

"All we know of Love is that Love is all there is." I was reminded of this paraphrase of a line from an Emily Dickinson poem (which I first came across several years ago on the front of a greeting card), with all of its metaphysical, epistemological and moral significance, by this article on Strike-the-Root titled The Earthly Lesson of Jesus' Crucifixion. The author, Glen Allport, concludes his article with these thoughts:

The fundamental importance of love; the understanding that a loving world requires better treatment of children, and the flat assertion that "the kingdom of God is within you" are what I see as the most real and powerful of Jesus' teachings – or of anyone's teachings. These three teachings are the best short summary of human wisdom I have ever seen.

Jesus knowingly added a fourth teaching – of Power's hatred for all that is loving, decent, and real – by arranging for and allowing Roman soldiers to arrest, torture, and murder him. By the most vivid and courageous example possible, Jesus thus taught that the coercive State is an evil almost beyond imagining.

Allport also has some good things to say about Mel Gibson's artistic representation of The Passion of the Christ that ring true for me. Contrary to many of Mel's critics within not only secular and non-Christian but also liberal Christian circles, I have a lot of respect for the man, perhaps partly because before my convincement to Quakerism I was part of an (allegedly) schismatic Catholic society with views that appear similar to Gibson's, and I still see a logical consistency and merit in such traditionalist views. I think Allport captures a more fundamental basis for my continuing respect, despite my abandonment of Catholicism, for Gibson and The Passion of the Christ:

In "The Passion of the Christ," Mel Gibson focuses on the cruelty and violence directed at Jesus by those in power. Gibson was predictably attacked for doing so. “All that violence; how distasteful! How disgusting that a film director would sell a movie about Christ with blood and torture and murder!” And so on. Yet “Passion” is defined as “a. The sufferings of Jesus in the period following the Last Supper and including the Crucifixion. b. A narrative, musical setting, or pictorial representation of Jesus's sufferings.” (The American Heritage Dictionary, third edition).

The emotional damage of Jesus’ contemporaries, and their cruelty – especially as empowered by coercive government – formed the milieu that Jesus lived in, and this milieu was the reason for his ministry in the first place. The New Testament details some of the unhealthy, violent, coercive, and corrupt aspects of life that Jesus was working to change. Jesus was willing to die on the cross – he knew that he would, in all likelihood, be murdered in that exact fashion – because he felt and believed that every person needed and desired, with all their heart, a compassionate and healthy world, instead of the corrupt, violent, hate-drenched world of coercion and pain that every new child of his time was born into. That reality was clearly so painful to Jesus that even the threat of his own death could not keep him from starting a ministry aimed at changing the world for the better.

In fact, the violence, torture, and murder are essential elements of the Christ
story; without these elements, there IS no story. Without these elements, there
would have been no need for Jesus to champion love and compassion at the cost of
his own life. Without these elements, Jesus would have simply lived a healthy,
compassionate life among his family and friends, dying in bed at a ripe old age,
and two thousand years later we might never have heard of him.

Of Mel Gibson’s other films, "Braveheart" in particular parallels "The Passion" in that Braveheart’s hero, William Wallace, knowingly risks his life (eventually losing it, after being tortured in public) for the sake of a better world – in particular, for love and freedom.

This linking of love and freedom is another powerful insight on Gibson’s part. Love and freedom truly are linked; indeed, like Yin and Yang, love and freedom are two sides of a central duality in human life. To champion Love is to oppose coercive Power, which is to side with Freedom. Love and freedom must be kept in a reasonable balance, and at high levels, for a healthy society.

By spending $30 million of his own money on a film about Jesus that nearly everyone thought would fail, and which (to no one’s surprise) brought Gibson much criticism and even insults, Gibson showed hints of the same willingness to risk himself for what is right that made his protagonists interesting and positive figures. Because he does not live in China or some other country that murders or tortures or imprisons people for their religious beliefs, Mr. Gibson was probably never in physical danger for producing a film about Jesus’ last days, but Gibson was not treated kindly in much of the press, and this was surely something he knew would happen before starting the project.

Furthermore, despite complaints to the contrary, I do not believe that "The Passion of the Christ" shortchanges Jesus’ message. The brief scene in which the doomed Jesus tells his followers to love one another would be enough, by itself, to convey the essence of Jesus’ teachings. (“So love one another” reads the English subtitle). Keeping this scene short, poignant, and without distractions gives it all the more emphasis. Also, the official trailer for the film**, which includes that line, also includes a text panel reading: “His message was love.” The film makes that message clear in a variety of ways, mostly by the actions and demeanor of Jim Caviezel, the actor who plays Jesus.

According to Allport, "Supernatural elements are optional, in my view: an afterlife, a deity, reincarnation, or an eternal soul, for examples. I have no quarrel with those who believe in such elements; to each his own. But the core importance of love is, in my opinion, far more basic, more in the present, more real, and more important." This idea is similar to what I've tried to express in a couple of previous posts and what Robin M. has recently put very well:

Because that’s my main point of view about the history of Jesus: I don’t know. I don’t know enough to dispute with any of these authors about their historical analysis. On the simplest level, I wasn’t there, and I don’t believe any one really knows what really happened 2000 years ago. And that’s okay with me. Borg empowered me to admit that I don’t know the truth about the virgin birth or the physical resurrection of Jesus. And to accept that it doesn’t matter to me, at least not right now, because my faith doesn’t rest on these propositions being literally true. My faith is built on the truth of Jesus’s existence in my own life and the transformative value of what is written about Jesus. I’m not caught up in whether it’s all myth or history or a combination of both, although I tend towards the “some of each” position, if you really want to know.

Allport's essay also helped bring a couple other essential things home to me. First, it's helped me to rethink my agnosticism about the propriety of physically disciplining children. I cannot recall an occasion when I've felt called upon to spank or otherwise physically discipline a child in my life, but I haven't necessarily been opposed to it in principle. On the other hand, I do think children need some measure of "discipline," and am on occasion perturbed by parents who apparently let their kids run wild and have not instilled in them and (as necessary) "enforced" respect for other children and adults. Nevertheless, I think there are extremely few if any situations in which physical punishment is warranted. I think the solution to many disciplinary problems is more love and attention, and that this love and attention should occasionally be expressed with firm or even angry words. When firm words are called for, ideally they would be motivated by zeal for the rights and feelings of others, whom the child might be injuring, and this awareness and concern for others should be brought home to the child. I'm not ready to agree that spanking a child should be criminalized, but it would be a good thing if our society and culture continued in its direction of casting serious disapproval on such methods, and of making sure children subjected to such measures are okay and that their parents think twice about using unwarranted corporal punishment. Children need love and compassion, and if we want to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and to make our present and future society a better and happier place, one of our first concerns should be to make sure we give them what they need and have a right to expect.

Today is my wife's and the world's birthday

2007-10-23T10:25:00.000-04:00

Worldnetdaily is marketing to homeschooling parents of hapless kids a modern English translation of the 17th century Annals of the World, by an Anglican bishop named James Ussher. According to this book's calculations, based on its interpretation of the Bible and secular sources, the universe is 6010 years old today, October 23rd!

I'm willing to believe that this book might be an interesting and historically-significant curiosity, and that a brief perusal of its contents could have a place in a well-rounded curriculum. Worldnetdaily's marketing, however, implies that the book is something more, and makes its appeal to those deluded souls inclined to believe that the book's conclusions are historically accurate and valid.

The intelligent design movement is to my mind a different animal altogether than such misguided creationist fundamentalism. I'm not saying that I dismiss the theory of evolution (especially the non-controversial parts of the theory which apparently really have been demonstrated) as untrue; just that I have not yet had the opportunity or impetus to really study the evidence pro and con for myself, so I'm not ready to just "believe" anything on the authority of some supposed consensus among scientists, especially because I know from personal experience with the scientific establishment that a lot of scientists can be collectively wrong and can support each other (even willfully and dishonestly) in their wrongness.

I'm willing to believe, though, that my wife Julie's date of birth is supported by satisfactory evidence. And come to think of it, today is as good a day as any to celebrate the Creation of the world, in whichever way God may be creating it!

Reforming law school

2007-10-22T11:25:00.000-04:00

I first became acquainted a few years ago with the world of blogging by reading and commenting at Ann Althouse's blog. She is neither left, libertarian or Quaker, but was one of my professors at the University of Wisconsin Law School, and writes a very good and very popular blog. Today she writes: "Hey! I finally thought of an answer to TaxProf Paul Caron's question: 'What is the single best idea for reforming legal education you would offer to Erwin Chemerinsky as he builds the law school at UC-Irvine?' Set the whole thing up according to the principles of a video game."

She explains what she means at the link, but it seems like this idea would serve to only make law school even more competitive than it already is, to no good purpose. I offer the following counter-suggestion in the comments section of her post:

"I've got a less hip but better and more realistic idea: Set the whole thing up according to the principles of a law review. All students are on 'law review' and must produce a publishable article (i.e. comment or note), and help edit other student articles. Articles must be geared towards subjects of actual interest and value to the legal profession. Everybody gets published in a fully-searchable online edition of the law review. (See my own online Wisconsin law review article geared towards the med mal plaintiffs' bar by following the link from my profile or blog.) The best articles make it into the print edition. Faculty's main job is to guide student research and perhaps lead seminars on related law review topics. That's all the law school is. One intensive year or at the most two (rather than three) should do it. Students would thus feel that they're doing something productive while learning, rather than just jumping through hoops. Big firms will have to find another way, on their own dime, to sort their particular brand of wheat from the chaff."

A personal note on the direction of this blog

2007-10-21T12:57:00.000-04:00

Anyone who has visited this blog more than once over the last week or so will have noticed that, while I haven't posted anything new for a few days, I've been tinkering around with the blog's look and format, including a revamping of the intro message and the sidebar "about me." Any comments or suggestions would be most welcome.

My original thought on starting this blog was that I would try to post at least once a day. However, so far I've been mostly drawn to larger philosophical topics that have seemed to call for longer treatments than are do-able on a daily basis. Part of the impetus for these lengthy essays has been the felt need to explain what the heck I mean by a "left libertarian Quaker" and provide upfront something of an apologetic or justification for the peculiar combination of beliefs that are now summarized above in the welcome message. I've still got a couple such "big topics" in mind that I'd like at some point to get off my chest: e.g., my specific objections to my own Illinois Yearly Meeting's endorsement of abortion rights, and how that dissent squares with a libertarian perspective on abortion; and the attitudes toward Quakerism of my hero Thomas Paine (whose father raised him Quaker), Paine's positive and devout affirmation as a Deist of God's benevolence combined with his negativity towards the Old and New Testaments, and his claim in Part II, Chapter III of The Age of Reason that "The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the only reason that can be given for it is, that they are rather Deists than Christians. They do not believe much about Jesus Christ, and they call the scriptures a dead letter. Had they called them by a worse name, they had been nearer the truth." (Maybe I've said enough just by offering these topics to the reader's consideration, so I may or may not feel the need to examine them more closely in a later post.)

I need over the next couple weeks to spend more time developing a commercial web site for my law practice to accompany a yellow pages ad that is coming out at the end of this month and references my domain name at johnkindley.com. (Yes, I am, at least so far, a duly licensed attorney in good standing, despite my willingness to freely express my views - which are unfortunately "unorthodox" - about the legal profession and the conditions of government legitimacy. I am of course not the only attorney who holds or has ever held such views, and the great Lysander Spooner is an inspiration in this regard.) Right now johnkindley.com only has a law review article I wrote while a law student at the University of Wisconsin (addressing a controversial subject that was also the basis for litigation I was involved with for several years after law school), and I need to update the site to provide info about my current areas of legal practice -- primarily wills, trusts and criminal defense (though I will always be willing to bring new litigation along the lines outlined in my Wisconsin Law Review article, given the right case).

Many blogs, such as Glenn Reynolds' widely-read Instapundit, consist mainly of links, with very brief commentary, to other blogs and interesting news items. Instapundit typically has very many such links throughout the day, but I think a more do-able goal for me and this blog, at least at this point in time, is to try to post one brief comment per day. The comment might link to another blog or news item or it might just be some random observation. As time and inspiration allows I might post something longer at the end of the week. We'll see how things develop. I'm not committing to daily posts, but if you don't see anything here for more than a week, that just might mean that They have finally come to take me away;)

Quaker anarchists in Pennsylvania

2007-10-16T14:10:00.000-04:00

Here's a fascinating and amusing short history by Murray Rothbard of the early years of William Penn's Holy Experiment, in which Penn and his co-religionists often seem to have rather different views about the prerogatives of government.

Libertarianism and the Quaker Peace Testimony

2007-10-14T14:39:00.000-04:00

In an earlier post, titled John Woolman's Plea for the Poor, I promised in a subsequent post to try to make the case that "the political philosophy historically known as Georgism recommends itself to Quakers as the one most consistent with the Quaker social testimonies of Peace, Equality, Community, Simplicity and Integrity." That's a pretty tall order, a worthy subject for an entire book rather than a single blog post, and one I think upon reflection this blog can best address post by post from time to time, probably indirectly, as occasion suggests. Today I would just like to offer a simple idea that pithily suggests how Georgism / geoism / geolibertarianism (essentially equivalent terms) follows from our Quaker Peace Testimony against war. As stated in my earlier post on John Woolman's Plea for the Poor, the geoist principle is simply this: everyone owns what they create, but everything supplied by nature, most importantly land, belongs equally to all humanity. (The connection with the Testimony of Equality is therefore evident.)

Caroline Stephen explains the Quaker Peace Testimony and its relation to the Testimony of Simplicity in her classic Quaker Strongholds (1890) in a way that rings true for me (The excerpt that follows is rather long, because she says a lot of things that are very good and essentially interrelated, some of which also provides a corrective balance to my recent posts regarding "superfluities." If you're already familiar with the Quaker Peace Testimony and how it relates to the Testimony of Simplicity, you can skip ahead.): "The question upon which we Friends differ from other Christians is not the question whether peace be desirable -- whether it be not, in fact, the goal of all political effort -- but what are the means by which it is to be attained or maintained. Other Christians do not deny that quarreling is contrary to the spirit of Christ, and we do not deny that a holy warfare is to be continually maintained against evil in every form. But we regard the opposing of violence by violence as a suicidal and hopeless method of proceeding; we feel, as Christians, that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. We cannot, by taking military service, place ourselves at the absolute disposal of a power which may at any time employ its soldiers for purposes so questionable and often so unhallowed. . . . It is commonly supposed that Friends have some special scruple about the use of physical force in any case. This is, I believe, by no means true of the Society at large, although the popular notion may very likely be founded upon fact as regards individuals. . . . It is not, as I understand it, the use of physical force, or even the suffering caused by the use of it, which really makes war hateful in Christian eyes; but the evil passions, the 'lusts' from which it springs, and to which, alas! it so hideously ministers. The dispassionate infliction of punishment by an impartial and a lawful authority surely stands upon a quite different footing from that 'biting and devouring one another' which, whether between nations or between individuals, it is the very aim and object of law to suppress. Suffering inflicted for the purpose of maintaining peace cannot, I think, be condemned by the advocates of peace unless it be on the ground of failure. I own that I personally cannot but recognize that upon this view certain wars appear to be not only inevitable but justifiable, as partaking of the nature of national police operations. I cannot, therefore, regard all war as wholly, and unmitigatedly blamable, although I can hardly imagine any war which does not both come from evil and lead to evil. . . . A protest against strife and selfishness; not only against strife, but against 'the greedy spirit which leads to strife.' If we are willing to go down to the root in this matter, if we truly desire to do what in us lies towards ridding the earth not only of wars and fightings, but of all forms of oppression and cruelty, must we not recognize that the very first step is to be ourselves freed from covetousness? For who can doubt that it is mainly about outward and material things that nations or individuals are led into quarrels? Who will venture to say that, if none of us desired either to get or to keep more than our share of this world's goods, there would be anything like the amount of fighting, or of preparation for it, which now devastates the earth? . . . It seems to me that in struggling to rise and to raise others more and more clearly above the greedy spirity which leads to war, is the best hope for many of us of contributing in any real sense to the cause of peace on earth. It was long ago recognized by Friends that (to use the words of John Woolman) 'in every degree of luxury are the seeds of war and oppression.' The connection between luxury and cruelty is, indeed, almost a truism, but it is one of those truisms of which is it unfortunately easy to lose sight; and I fear that even amongst Friends the familiar testimonies against all war and against superfluities are apt to be held without any vivid sense of their vital connection. No one, surely, will deny that the selfish desire of mere pleasure, when allowed to rule, will feed itself at the expense of suffering and privation to others; that it does cause that scramble for gain in which the weak are trampled upon, and every furious passion is stimulated. The difficulty in regard to bearing a practical testimony against superfluities is not that which some of us feel in the case of war -- that we do not know where to take hold, that our personal and daily conduct seems to have no immediate bearing upon questions of international policy, and that the whole problem eludes our grasp by its very vastness. It is, rather, that we do not like to put our shoulder to the wheel of simplifying life for ourselves and others; that we do not see the beauty of severity; that we love softness, or yield to it for want of any purifying fire of hope. . . . It is, indeed, not easy to define the precise kind or amount of luxury which is incompatible with Christian simplicity; or rather it must of necessity vary. But the principle is, I think, clear. In life, as in art, whatever does not help, hinders. . . . The higher our ideal of life, the greater, indeed, must be the sacrifices which it will require from us. As we rise from the lower to the higher objects of life, many things of necessity become superfluous to us -- in other words, we become independent of them, or outgrow them. This is a widely different idea from that of ascetic self-discipline or self-mortification; and it is surely a sounder and a worthier idea. . . . If we bear in mind the essentially relative meaning of the word 'superfluous,' it is obvious that such a testimony against 'superfluities' does not require any rigid or niggardly rule as to outward things. To my mind, indeed, this view of the matter seems to require at least as clearly the liberal use of whatever is truly helpful to 'our best life' as the abandonment of obstructing superfluities. No doubt a testimony against superfluities is very liable to degenerate into formality, and to be so misapplied as to cut off much that is in reality wholesome, innocent, and beautiful."

The "pithy" idea I referred to in the first paragraph of this post is simply the flip-side of the military theorist General Carl von Clausewitz's famous dictum: "War is the extension of politics by other means." It seems to me that not only is this dictum evidently true, but that the converse is just as true: "Politics is the extension of war by other means." (This inference from Clausewitz's dictum seemed to me so pithy and true that I guessed it must have occurred to others, and a quick Google search reveals that it indeed has, to a number of people.) Virtually all States have their origin in war and conquest, and politics are the means by which the spoils of that conquest are divided over time by the conquerors' successors in power. (See Albert Jay Nock's book Our Enemy, the State, which is linked in the Recommended Reading section below and discussed in my post "Why be a libertarian?".) Behind every government law is physical force and the threat of punishment for those who disobey. So long as this sword is simply used for the maintenance of peace -- i.e. for the prevention and if necessary the punishment of aggression -- there is no injustice (as recognized by Caroline Stephen), but the strife inherent in politics as we know it reveals that the sword of government is used for much more than that. People fight over politics because things have been made subject to it which are not naturally subject to it, and willingly or not are driven to engage in its war-like processes because there is much to win that does not belong to them, and also much to lose that does belong to them. The greed and covetousness that Caroline Stephen speaks of as the seeds of war are such not only in the field of international relations but also in the battlefield of domestic politics. A certain stripe of small-minded libertarian is prone to decry the covetousness and "envy" of the poor, with their petitions for government "hand-outs," but the far more dangerous and operative covetousness is the coveting of what does not belong to them by those who actually have political power, among whom the rich are disproportionately represented.

If the abuses perpetrated by the politically-powerful through the means of our present government were cataloged the list would extend at least as long as that list of grievances filed against the British Crown in the Declaration of Independence. The first thing the government does (which all governments have done before it) is to lay claim to ownership of all the land within its power and territorial jurisdiction, most of which it sells off to private individuals and corporations over time, thereby depriving successive generations of inhabitants of their equal right to the earth and leaving them with nowhere to live or work without paying somebody for the privilege. (See "Why be a left libertarian?" ) The government might also, at the behest of a politically-powerful guild, protect the vested financial interests of that guild by forbidding the practice of a certain honest livelihood unless the would-be practitioner spends a substantial number of years in higher education and indentures himself to pay for the privilege, even though most of that education has precious little relation to the actual practice of that livelihood. (See, e.g., the articles "The Lawyer Cartel" and "Why Law School Costs So Much," written by a lawyer, linked to in the Recommended Reading section below.) Finally (though this by no means exhausts the list of abuses that might be named), on top of the unjust rents and the unjust extortion of payments for the privilege of earning a living, the government confiscates between one-third and one-half (when all taxes are taken into account) of the labor of its already over-burdened "subjects," to pay for . . . what, exactly? War, and the dividends of those who profit by it? The salaries of politicians, and the pet projects of those who bought them into office? It's noteworthy that under our Constitution as amended there is no limit to the amount of taxation that the political class might levy upon the fruits of our labor under the color of "democracy," and that they have already succeeded in imposing on us, without significant protest, tax burdens that would make Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson roll in their graves and that are many times greater than the impositions that were cited by the Founding Fathers as justifications for the American Revolution. The fact that the government could, but chooses not to, finance itself in well-known ways that would be consistent with and contribute to justice (see, e.g., half the links in the Recommended Reading section below) is proof positive that the government as we have known it is grounded not in justice or in some kind of social contract, but rather in war and the "lusts" of war.

My response to this reality of the State, and the response I recommend to others, parallels Caroline Stephen's observation that, while the problem of war may seem too vast for us and disconnected from our daily lives, "in struggling to rise and to raise others more and more clearly above the greedy spirit which leads to war, is the best hope for many of us of contributing in any real sense to the cause of peace on earth." Similarly, while I see little prospect for a political or electoral solution to the entrenched and institutionalized greed which is the State, the best hope for us of contributing to peace on earth is, along with rising above the greedy spirit which leads to war, to disentangle any patriotic attachments we might have from the machinery of government and pledge our allegiance instead to the people who labor under its unjust burdens. We should withdraw from the State as we know it our moral support and sense of moral obligation, rendering to it only what justice and prudence demand. Hopefully, with God's grace, this might be done with a peaceful and confident heart and with less rancour than my language in this post might suggest. And in the meantime we can pray and work for a better society, through which one day by the grace of God might be formed governments worthy of our respect.

Conservative Quakers of America

2007-10-13T00:35:00.000-04:00

In my last post I mentioned I'd found this site, Conservative Quakers of America, which seemed to be very well put together and to have a lot of good information and links about conservative Quakerism. On closer inspection the site seems to be part of a webring which, at least presently, does not represent any substantial organization of people but appears to be largely or entirely the brain-child of a rather youthful-looking 35 year-old man in Calgary, Canada by the name of Jim Heil. (On the Conservative Quakers of America site he seems to be working with a Friend who is a member of a meeting in Athens, Greece that is affiliated with Ohio Yearly Meeting.) The fellow's motivations and inspirations for going to all this work and expense seem quite laudable. A large part of his idea seems to be to create an online community of conservative-minded Quakers (but inclusive of Quakers in general). I found this explanation noteworthy on his/their Quakers Online page:

"Why Quakers Online? Quakers are a diverse and sometimes scattered lot. Our numbers are not significant and many of us go without fellowship. I am a Wilburite (Conservative) Quaker and only can say this because of the study I have done through the Internet. Many, like myself, will make the same realizations, become convinced, not by human contact, but by searching online… a restlessness inside of them may lead them here or to another Quaker site in search of answers… in search of inner peace. Quakers Online hopes to be a refuge for believers, unplugged or otherwise, or for those simply hoping to expand their network of Friends. This website Quakers Online is the first of many interactive Quaker websites we plan on creating in the next couple of years. I have mistakenly noted in the past that “we are not officially linked to the Religious Society of Friends”, but I was wrong in this statement. We are Friends and this website is a community (or society) of sorts. We are inclusive to all forms of Quakerism and sincerely hope that all will be represented here."

I applaud this work and wish it success. The writing and info on these sites seems to be quite good, comprehensive, and correct. It serves as a reminder that the Quaker tradition and spirituality, which gives to our present forms of organization their identity as Quaker, is prior to and can exist independently of the official organizations in their present forms. After all, over the centuries various Quaker organizations have been formed and divided and laid down, but Quakerism itself has remained and been conserved throughout.

New-found treasures on the internet

2007-10-11T10:10:00.000-04:00

Seems like I'm always finding great new stuff on the internet that I had somehow missed before. Just now I found the website for Conservative Friends of America, which for some strange reason did not turn up when I did a Google search for "Conservative Friends" a few days ago. It's really a good site with lots of good info about Conservative Quakerism. I found this site by following links from Bill Samuel's Quakerinfo.com. I was in turn drawn to Quakerinfo.com by Bill Samuel's very good "seamless-garment" article linked to at the site Friends for a Pro-Life Peace Testimony (another very good site) and by his comment on my post about Convergent Friends, in which he provided a helpful explanation of the "Emergent Church." (I also found yesterday a very helpful blog post by Scot McKnight titled What is the Emerging Church?) In addition to a lot of good info about Quakerism in general at Quakerinfo.com, I found especially noteworthy the Quaker News section on the main page, since I haven't run across or noticed on the internet a similar compendium of recent Quaker news stories.

I'm running a little short on time so I haven't linked to these sites from this post, but all the sites in italics above are linked to from the Recommended Reading section at the bottom of this page.

A further reflection on convergence and a proposal for a double-standard

2007-10-09T09:03:00.000-04:00

My previous post on convergent Friends implies something of a "double standard;" i.e., it's okay for a Friends meeting or organization to say that, e.g., pre-marital sex or having an abortion are wrong, while another Friends meeting or organization that believes that either of these things are not wrong, or are not wrong given certain circumstances, should refrain from declaring that belief, or at least think thrice before doing so.

It seems to me that there may actually be something to be said for such an apparent double standard, and not only because it would if followed obviously have a salutary tendency towards convergence and unity among Friends. (We're not seeking an artificial "unity for the sake of unity" that vainly asks Friends to dampen or deny the Light within.) It seems to me that the justification for this way of looking at things is not solely or primarily grounded in what the Scriptures may or may not expressly forbid, but in the First and Greatest Commandment, which may be known by an open mind and an open heart prior to familiarity with Scripture, to "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your mind, and with all of your soul." Our Quaker Testimony of Simplicity, and against all superfluities, follows naturally from this Greatest of Commandments. Conservative Friend Lloyd Lee Wilson likewise describes what he calls "the first great theme" of Quaker spirituality, the "path of spiritual subtraction," as follows: "The spirituality of subtraction makes room in our lives for the type of direct interaction with the Divine that George Fox reported and that we wait for, expectantly, in meeting for worship. As it is hard to hear one another in a noisy room, it is hard to hear God in a noisy life. As our heart-longing for God grows, it is only natural that we should be continually simplifying our life, subtracting whatever is not God or not of God so that our awareness is single-pointed and competition for our attention is minimized. A noisy life not only competes with the Divine message, it distorts what it can not drown out completely."

Why in the world might a liberal Friend go along with such a double standard? First, and most obviously, the declarations concerning sexual morality of Conservative and Evangelical Friends meetings are not binding on him or her, and it's not imagined that they would be in a more convergent Quakerism.

Second, a greater appreciation of the Greatest Commandment, the Testimony of Simplicity and against superfluities, and the spirituality of subtraction (all of which I think liberal Quakers already naturally appreciate) may lead the liberal Friend to become less scandalized by "prudish" conservative Quaker declarations concerning sexual morality. Isn't there a sense in which all sex is superfluous (particularly when closed to procreation), and don't we recognize its power to focus the mind away from God, not to mention its potential (often actualized) to hurt both ourselves and other people? Now, of course, there's another very important and beautiful side to sex, but the aspect I've just mentioned is nevertheless valid and real.

Third, the liberal Friend may come to see that, with regard to acts that are morally ambiguous or controversial, the chances and the consequences of error are less serious, spiritually and socially, when a community of Friends declares that such an act "appears distinguishable from perfect purity," than they are when another community of Friends declares or implies that the act is not wrong.

Note the reference in quotes above to the diplomatically-worded formula often used by John Woolman. While I think Friends and Friends meetings should be ready and willing, in love and brotherhood, to warn our members and the wider society against particular perceived spiritual perils more often than we now do, it seems we should in doing so express ourselves in words such as these, with modest recognition of our own fallibility and without the "judgment" Jesus enjoined us from. (With regard to things that are obviously and horribly wrong, like war, we should and do speak more forcefully. Some Friends also, according to the Light given them, may be be led to speak as forcefully against other things.)

By contrast, and keeping in mind the Testimony of Integrity, how sure can we be that we're right when we say or imply that some act is not wrong? It's hard to go seriously wrong when we simply say that something "appears distinguishable from perfect purity," which could reasonably (though perhaps over-scrupulously) be said of things like wasting time watching a TV show or other frivolous pastimes, as well as of more serious things, i.e., it could be said of anything which is not of God or leads to God. But how do we know that God agrees with us when we affirmatively declare or imply, e.g., that it's morally acceptable for an unmarried person to engage in sex or for a woman to have an abortion? Do we want to be responsible for any consequences to that person's soul and the social effects in the wider society if we're wrong? Much better to exhort our brothers and sisters towards perfect purity, to humbly and non-judgmentally tell them our thoughts if we think they're going seriously astray, and to leave to the Light within them the rest.

Convergent Friends

2007-10-09T01:41:00.000-04:00

I'd heard offhand of convergent Friends sometime in the past but didn't know until researching it yesterday what it's all about. (Roughly, convergent is conservative Quakerism coupled with Emerging Church thought.) From what I've learned it appears that I am indeed a convergent Friend and have been since I first began studying Quakerism and attending Quaker meeting several years ago. I recall at some point in my reading about the factions that have historically arisen among Friends coming across a discussion of Conservative Friends and thinking "That really sounds like what I believe; too bad it appears that Conservative Friends appear to be a small minority of Friends and none are around here." (That was before I became attached to my own local unprogrammed FGC-affiliated Friends meeting, which I am quite happy with.) I'm less clear at present about the "Emergent Church" part of "Convergent," despite having read the lengthy Wikipedia article on the subject. One thing that did catch my eye and intrigued me, though, is the postmodern epistemology of the Emergent Church which according to the Wikipedia article rejects claims of certainty. In my post "Why be a Quaker?" I explained that one factor in my turning towards Quakerism was that while I think we can know that God exists by an immediate apperception of the intellect (independently of evidence or argument), I have to admit to myself that I will likely never in this life attain the same kind of certainty with regard to the propositions of Christian faith. I am strongly persuaded of and "believe" the central propositions of Christianity (by a preponderance of the historical evidence and the apparent beauty and truth of Jesus' life and teachings), but because I am not certain of those propositions I resist the notion that salvation depends upon believing those propositions or the truth of those propositions. Rather, I believe that salvation consists in loving God with all our heart, mind and soul and our neighbor as ourself, a commandment which was taught to us by Jesus as the Greatest Commandment but which I think we can also know the truth of in the same way we can know that God exists. (I wonder what Conservative Friends would say about that way of looking at Christian faith?)

From this perspective, my earlier post today suggesting that all Friends and all groups of Friends should respect more fully (if not in deed then in word, and if not in word then in refraining from words) the moral ideals (including those concerning sexual behavior, disagreement about which appears as a significant obstacle to unity among Friends) which Jesus enjoins in the Gospels strikes me as very much a "convergent" attitude, in that it suggests "moving closer together towards some common point on the horizon," and that this common point is to be found in the general direction of Conservative Quakerism with its measured reverence for the Gospels as the foundational standard for Quaker faith and practice. It's difficult to see in what other direction a common point that could provide a basis for Quaker identity and unity might be found. Such a movement towards unity would not seek to shut out the Light or liberty of individual Friends. A liberal meeting with a concern for greater unity among Friends might not be inclined to interfere with or elder a member actively working through secular channels to further pro-choice causes (indeed many of its members might be thus engaged), but why should the meeting itself take the affirmative step of putting the collective stamp of Friends on a public statement supporting the right to choose abortion (as my own Yearly Meeting does), which even pro-choice Friends should recognize is fraught with grave moral ambiguity? What need is there to implicate Friends (and therefore the name of Jesus Christ) in such a business, when many secular organizations are already working for the pro-choice cause? Conversely, of course, moving towards unity does not imply that such a meeting must make public statements supporting laws against abortion, either. And certainly a meeting will want to make available clearness committees or more private forms of counseling for individual members who might be struggling with difficult decisions relating to pregancy, and what I've suggested above would not preclude such a committee or such a counselor from supporting a woman in a decision to have an abortion (though the Light itself might).

The issue of same-sex marriages under the care of the meeting is less clear to me, and I appreciate the weight of the arguments that have been made to the effect that Scripture (and particularly the Gospel) does not clearly and unequivocally proscribe committed monogamous same-sex unions. It seems relevant to me that in Quaker marriages it's understood that it's the parties themselves, rather than the meeting, who effect their marriage to each other, though the marriage is "under the care of" the meeting. I know that for my own part I would not hesitate to attend and witness and share in the joy of a same-sex union approved and celebrated under the care of my own monthly meeting. That said, it seems unnecessary and very un-convergent to criticize other meetings or Quaker organizations which find in Scripture a prohibition of homosexual activity and decline to give sanction to same-sex unions, or to call for the recognition and sanction of same-same marriages by the State (though the latter clause must be qualified by the kinds of considerations discussed, e.g., in the article I've linked to below in the Recommended Reading section titled "'The' Libertarian View on Gay Marriage").

Blogging can be tougher than it has to be!

2007-10-08T10:15:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I spent a significant chunk of time working on a post whose thesis was that respect, if nothing else in the form of lip-service, for the ideals of perfect purity (specifically, those dealing with sexual morality) enjoined by Jesus according to the Gospel is essential to Christian and Quaker (and indeed human) unity, even where we find it very difficult to live up to those ideals or indeed doubt that strict adherence to its injunctions are the better part of Godly wisdom, and that to the extent that the liberal faction of Quakerism depreciates those ideals by (sometimes subtle) cultural attitudes and unnecessary public positions and statements the dis-unity that we so deplore can be attributed to it.

Now that wasn't so hard, and I pretty much just now said what I was trying to say in yesterday's labored unpublished draft. Of course, in yesterday's effort I endeavored to expound and explain, to make necessary qualifications in order to avoid giving unnecessary offense, to point out examples of what I was talking about, to consider consider contrary "arguments:, etc. But it's occurred to me (with some outside help) that in writing blog posts and in many other situations where we're proposing an idea it's best to not try to say everything, and to leave much to the hearer's own Light. It's better to risk being misunderstood and trust in the hearer's forbearance and charity, and to thereby leave room for a response that may increase our own understanding.

John Woolman's Plea for the Poor

2007-10-04T20:31:00.001-04:00

In a subsequent post I will try to make the case that the political philosophy historically known as Georgism recommends itself to Quakers as the one most consistent with the Quaker social testimonies of Peace, Equality, Community, Simplicity and Integrity. Georgism takes its name from Henry George (1839-1897), who as the author of the eloquently-written and best-selling Progress and Poverty (1879) was and is the philosophy's most famous and influential proponent. But the principle behind the philosophy was not invented by George and predates him, and is more universal than the thoughts of any one man. The principle is simply this: everyone owns what they create, but everything supplied by nature, most importantly land, belongs equally to all humanity. (The "single-tax" on the unimproved value of land was the specific policy proposal George advocated as necessarily following from this principle.) Therefore, many modern day Georgists have taken to calling themselves geoists or geolibertarians instead, with "geo" still honoring George's historically-important contribution, but also referring to the earth, and thus more descriptively reflecting the philosophy's concern with ownership of land and other natural resources. [I have provided links to Progress and Poverty and information about geolibertarianism, Henry George, and the "single-tax" at the bottom of this page in the Recommended Reading section.]

By my lights, the geoist philosophy, in its simplicity, universality, and evident truth, is worthy of endorsement and advocacy by Friends (and other religious societies) in the same way we now collectively advocate and testify against war and other social injustices, because if the geoist principle is indeed true and a natural law, then the pervasive violation of that natural law in today's society is working a grave injustice, and is a likely cause of much of the poverty and gross inequalities we see around us. The geoist philosophy is not an obscure anachronism from a bygone era, but a timeless truth. Relative to geoism, the Catholic Social Teaching [also linked below], while espousing many good things, appears as a rather complex mix of exhortations and proposals, as evidently man-made, and as incomplete in crucial respects [see, e.g., Henry George's Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII, linked below]. Geoism should be our "Quaker Social Teaching," or rather a significant element of it, as a corollary of our Quaker Testimonies!

There is good and solid precedent for such a Quaker attitude towards geoism / Georgism. As I understand it, Georgism was disproportionately influential among Quakers during the late 1800s and early 1900s. In fact, the board game Monopoly (in an earlier version called The Landlord's Game) was invented and designed by a Quaker woman named Elizabeth Magie Phillips to teach the principles of Georgism, and originally was played and developed and became popular in Quaker Georgist social circles. I have come across a couple other references which suggest the widespread influence of Georgism among Quakers during that period of history, but I would be very grateful if any Friends might be aware of and able to point me in the direction of any information which further illuminates historical connections between Quakerism and Georgism.

As mentioned above, geoist principles predate Henry George. Thomas Paine in his essay Agrarian Justice [linked below] famously proposed a plan that would fund lump-sum payments to every person turning age 21 and an early version of social security through a system of inheritance taxes on land, which he explicitly and eloquently justified on geoist grounds. But even before Thomas Paine and before Henry George there was John Woolman. According to the Introduction to The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman, edited by Phillips P. Moulton, "Woolman's economic views, expressed chiefly in A Plea for the Poor, have inspired many individuals to live simply and without luxury. Some of his ideas -- e.g., that each man has an inalienable right to land and other necessary material goods -- were expressed by Thomas Paine and (a century later) by Henry George, but no direct influence is evident." Woolman's A Plea for the Poor therefore itself constitutes an important historical linkage between Quakerism and geoism, as well as, by its salutary influence on the predispositions of Quakers, a likely contributing factor to the later historical connections alluded to above.

I have been unable to find on-line A Plea for the Poor, except for Chapter 10. Therefore, as a service to the internet, and to help make the case that geoism follows naturally from our Quaker Testimonies, the remainder of this post will be a transcription of Chapter 13 in its entirety, where Woolman expressed his geoist ideas:

While our minds are prepossessed in favour of customs distinguishable from perfect purity, we are in danger of not attending with singleness to that Light which opens to our view the nature of universal righteousness.

In the affairs of a thick-settled country are variety of useful employments besides tilling the earth: that for some men to have no more land than is necessary to build on and to answer the occasions relative to the family may consist with brotherhood; and from the various gifts which God hath bestowed on those employed in husbandry, for some to possess and occupy much more than others may likewise. But where any on the strength of their possessions demands such rent or interest as necessitates those who hire of them to a closer application to business than our merciful Father designed for us, this puts the wheels of perfect brotherhood out of order and leads to employments the promoting of which belongs not to the family of Christ, whose example in all parts being a pattern of wisdom, so the plainness and simplicity of his outward appearance may well make us ashamed to adorn our bodies in costly array or treasure up wealth by the least degree of oppression.

The soil yields us support and is profitable for man; and though some possessing a larger share of these profits than others may consist with the harmony of true brotherhood, yet that the poorest people who are honest, so long as they remain inhabitants of the earth, are entitled to a certain portion of these profits, in as clear and absolute a sense as those who inherit much, I believe will be agreed to by those whose hearts are enlarged with universal love.

The first people who inhabited the earth were the first who had possession of the soil. The gracious Creator, and owner of it, gave the fruits thereof for their use. And as one generation passed away, another came and took possession; and thus through many ages, innumerable multitudes of people have been supplied by the fruits of the earth. But our gracious Creator is as absolutely the owner of it as he was when he first formed it out of nothing, before man had possession of it. And though by claims grounded on prior possession great inequality appears amongst men, yet the instructions of the great proprietor of the earth is necessary to be attended to in all our proceedings as possessors or claimers of the profits of the soil.

"The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord" [Ps. 37:23], and those who are thus guided, whose hearts are enlarged in his love, give directions concerning their possessions agreeable thereto; and that claim which stands on universal righteousness is a good right, but the continuance of that right depends on properly applying the profits thereof.

The word right is commonly used relative to our possessions. We say a right of propriety to such a dividend of a province or a clear, indisputable right to the land within such certain bounds. Thus this word is continued as a remembrancer of the original intent of dividing the land by boundaries, and implies that it was designed to be equitably or rightly divided, to be divided according to righteousness. In this -- that is, in equity and righteousness -- consists the strength of our claims. If we trace an unrighteous claim and find gifts or grants to be proved by sufficient seals and witnesses, this gives not the claimant a right, for that which is opposite to righteousness is wrong, and the nature of it must be changed before it can be right.

Suppose twenty free men, professed followers of Christ, discovered an island unknown to all other people, and that they with their wives, independent of all others, took possession of it, and dividing it equitably, made improvements and multiplied. Suppose these first possessors, being generally influenced by true love, did with paternal regard look over the increasing condition of the inhabitants, and near the end of their lives gave such directions concerning their respective possessions as best suited the convenience of the whole and tended to preserve love and harmony, and that their successors in the continued increase of people generally followed their pious examples and pursued means the most effectual to keep oppression out of their island. But [suppose] that one of these first settlers, from a fond attachment to one of his numerous sons, no more deserving than the rest, gives the chief of his lands to him, and by an instrument sufficiently witnessed strongly expresses his mind and will. Suppose this son, being landlord to his brethren and nephews, demands such a portion of the fruits of the earth as may supply him and his family and some others; and that these others, thus supplied out of his store, are employed in adorning his building with curious engravings and paintings, preparing carriages to ride in, vessels for his house, delicious meats, fine-wrought apparel, and furniture, all suiting that distinction lately arisen between him and the other inhabitants; and that having this absolute disposal of these numerous improvements, his power so increaseth that in all conferences relative to the public affairs of the island, those plain, honest men who are zealous for equitable establishments find great difficulty in proceeding agreeable to their righteous inclinations while he stands in opposition to them. Suppose he, from a fondness for one of his sons, joined with a desire to continue this grandeur under his own name, confirms chief of his possessions to him, and thus for many ages, on near a twentieth part of this island there is one great landlord and the rest generally poor oppressed people; to some of whom from the manner of their education, joined with a notion of the greatness of their predecessors, labour is disagreeable; who therefore by artful applications to the weakness, unguardedness, and corruption of others, in striving to get a living out of them increase the difficulties amongst them; while the inhabitants of the other parts who guard against oppression and with one consent train up their children in plainness, frugality, and useful labour live more harmonious.

If we trace the claim of the ninth or tenth of these great landlords down to the first possessor and find the claim supported throughout by instruments strongly drawn and witnessed, after all we could not admit a belief into our hearts that he had a right to so great a portion of land, after such a numerous increase of inhabitants.

The first possessor of that twentieth part held no more we suppose than an equitable portion; but when the Lord, who first gave these twenty men possession of this island unknown to all others, gave being to numerous people who inhabited this twentieth part, whose natures required the fruits thereof for their sustenance, this great claimer of the soil could not have a right to the whole, to dispose of it in gratifying his irregular desires; but they, as creatures of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, had a right to part of what this great claimer held, though they had no instruments to confirm their right.

Thus oppression in the extreme appears terrible, but oppression in more refined appearances remains to be oppression, and where the smallest degree of it is cherished it grows stronger and more extensive: that to labour for a perfect redemption from this spirit of oppression is the great business of the whole family of Christ Jesus in this world.

Of Friends and Angels

2007-10-01T13:20:00.000-04:00

I received an e-mail today from a Quaker who wrote: "I have to admit I'm still scratching my head about the whole St. Michael imagery and references but hey, happy birthday!" This leads me to believe I may have underestimated how incongruent and even jarring such imagery and references on a blog billing itself as Quaker might appear to other Quakers. For the record, I did look for an image of St. Michael carrying only the scales of justice, without the sword, but couldn't seem to find one (though the imagery of the sword is not off-limits to the disciple of Christ, who according to the New Testament famously proclaimed "I have come not to bring peace but a sword").

As readers of earlier posts might have guessed, I'm a former Roman Catholic (of the traditionalist variety), having converted to that faith (from no faith at all) at the age of 18 after reading The Brothers Karamazov, the Book of Ecclesiastes, the Book of Job, and the Gospel of John (in that order). Everything that initially attracted me to the Roman Catholic Church hasn't necessarily disappeared since my convincement to Quakerism a few years ago, which was preceded by a period of several years during which I gradually had to admit to myself that I didn't believe many of the dogmas which are essential to Catholicism. But despite my apparent nostalgia for Catholicism and the respect I still accord it where respect is due (which is quite ecumenical of me, don't you think?), I am truly and unreservedly a Quaker!

A belief in the existence of angels is supported by Scripture, and so far as I know is not contrary to Quakerism. An angel is a pure spirit, and when I think of St. Michael I'm not thinking of the spirit of violence (unless it be violence against the dross in one's own soul), but of the confident and victorious spirit that overcomes evil through its fidelity and adherence to God alone, expressed in the name of Michael itself, which in Hebrew means "Who is like unto God." That said, in my spiritual life I don't pray to, or for the intercession of, angels, saints, or the Mother of God, which I think would be contrary to Quaker spirituality. On the other hand, thinking about Mary, or an angel, or Jesus, or other manifestations of God's Goodness, can be a spur that elevates the mind towards a pure contemplation and worship of God, just as a written word evokes for the intelligence the idea of which it is merely a symbol.

I also hope no one misconstrued my rather cryptic (because uncritical) reference to the legend about Pope Gregory seeing a vision of St. Michael sheathing his sword and taking it as a sign that God's wrath (manifested in the plague) had passed. Upon reflection I can see how it might have come across as perilously close to an endorsement of that twisted view, occasionally espoused by TV evangelists, which sees in things like 9/11 and AIDS God's punishment for those particular sins of society which most offend the TV evangelist. Far be that view from my meaning. When I was a philosophy undergraduate at the University of Dallas I did my senior thesis on "The Metaphysical Nature and Cause of Moral Evil." The conclusion to which these kinds of reflections (or simply reading the Bible) lead is that everything except our own sin comes from the hand of God, not only those things we perceive and experience as good but also those things we perceive and experience as evil, because "without Him was not any thing made that was made." It may be rather primitive to see in the natural and man-made evils that beset human life on all sides the "wrath of God," but if we believe in the Omnipotence and Goodness of God then such evils exist for a reason (and therefore from the highest point of view must somehow be Good). We find wrath in our own souls, and wrath in the natural and social world around us. Perhaps the latter is connected to the former, and perhaps this connection is the kernel of truth that the old controversial doctrine of Original Sin is trying to get at. What is undeniably true is that to the extent we extinguish our own wrath we lighten the wrathful countenance of the world.

Merry Michaelmas, and Happy Birthday to Me!

2007-09-29T13:46:00.000-04:00

Today is the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel. It's also the birthday of me, Bryant Gumbel, Lech Walesa, Madeline Kahn, Jerry Lee Lewis, Anita Ekberg, Stanley Kramer, Gene Autry, most notably Miguel de Cervantes, and presumably many other less famous people. I'm hereby reminded to add Cervantes' wonderful Don Quixote to my profile's list of favorite books. In honor of Cervantes and Don Quixote, here's some poignant lines from the end of G.K. Chesterton's poem about the Battle of Lepanto, in which Cervantes fought:

"Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain"

Speaking of setting swords back in sheaths, one of my favorite stories about St. Michael is of the vision that Pope St. Gregory in the tenth century had of the Archangel doing just that, during a penitential procession the Pope was leading through the streets of Rome for the end of a plague that was devastating the city. The Pope took it as a sign that God's wrath had passed, and indeed the pestilence abated after that day. In honor of the occasion, the Pope re-named the mausoleum of Hadrian over which St. Michael had appeared the Castle of the Holy Angel, which is still known by that name today and over which stands a statue of St. Michael sheathing his sword.

I'll refrain from speculating about the metaphysical and theological implications of this legend, but it certainly provides a different perspective than the one we're used to!

On a lighter note, St. Michael is traditionally seen as a protector against the dark of night and the administrator of cosmic intelligence, making appropriate the occurrence of his Feast Day at the beginning of autumn and the shortening of days. Tune up them snow-blowers with chins up!

Court TV's "13th Juror Question" of the Day

2007-09-28T10:58:00.000-04:00

In the context of its coverage this morning of a criminal trial of parents accused of causing the death of their young son through child abuse (the parents admit to physically disciplining their son but claim the death was caused by a skin infection), Court TV asked its audience "Should the government determine whether and to what extent parents may physically discipline their children?" [My memory and transcription of the question is not exact but close.]

This is an important question from a libertarian perspective. Benjamin Tucker, the turn-of-the-century editor and publisher of the journal Liberty, who was in many other ways a good thinker and is a major influence on many left libertarians, infamously argued that a child (at least until reaching the age of being able to contract and provide for himself) is the property of his mother and the mother therefore had the right to throw her child into a fire (though he did say that "it is highly probable that I would interfere in such a case" -- what a guy!).

On the other hand, answering Court TV's question in the affirmative brings us to the brink of many "slippery slopes": If the principle is that the government may prevent and punish harm caused by parents to their children and determine what constitutes "harm," does this not provide a basis for government determining that homeschooling and thereby depriving a child of public education harms the child, or determining that even grounding the child or sending him to his room (let alone spanking him for punching his little sister in the eye) constitutes harm?

My own view (which to non-libertarians may seem utterly uncontroversial) is that we have the right and sometimes the duty to stand up not only for our own rights but also the rights of others, especially those not in a position to assert their own rights; that obviously children have rights independently of their parents; and that even animals have certain rights. I agree with Thomas Paine in his The Age of Reason, "That the moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God manifested in the creation towards all his creatures. That seeing as we daily do the goodness of God to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practise the same towards each other; and, consequently, that every thing of persecution and revenge between man and man, and every thing of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty."

When it comes to the relationship and potential conflict between the rights of children on the one hand and the rights of their parents to direct their upbringing on the other (which I believe are primarily derived from and determined by their duties towards their children), things are complex and uncertain, and to avoid error it is right and proper that the limits of those respective rights be determined by the judgment of the community (which for better or worse is assumed to be reflected in the judgment of the government), rather than be left solely to the judgment of any individual or pair of individuals (including the child's parents). From that perspective, an undue emphasis on "parental rights" appears misplaced, since about the only parental right I can think of off the top of my head that is not derived from parental duties is the right to expect help around the house (or the farm, as the case may be). On the other hand, it makes sense to think in terms of parental rights insofar as the very complexity and uncertainty mentioned above argues for deference (within the limits established by the community) to the judgments of the people most directly involved in the upbringing of their children, and whose primary duty it is to provide for their moral and physical well-being.

These reflections lead to no definitive absolutes. But it is nevertheless important for the community to protect the rights of children by setting some limits, and equally important for the community in setting such limits to recognize its own fallibility concerning differing philosophies about child-rearing. The community should set the limits for parental conduct at things that are obviously and excessively cruel, obviously counter-productive, and/or obviously likely to lead to permanent harm (including withholding important medical care because of religious beliefs). My own view is that a parent should never take down a child's pants and spank him with a belt, and it would not strike me as beyond the pale if a community outlawed such parental conduct. On the other hand, it would strike me as outrageous if a community outlawed all corporal punishment, even though by my lights I think such punishment should rarely if ever be used.

These issues appear particularly important to me because theoretical anarchism is at the heart of my libertarianism (see my post "Why be a libertarian?"), and anarchism at first glance does not seem to provide for the protection of the rights of children and others who are not in a position to assert their own rights. In an anarchist society personal security and corrective justice would be provided by private protection agencies and mutual protection societies, less preferably by a group of friends and neighbors formed in response to a particular threat or injustice, and if necessary and feasible by self-help. A child obviously would not be able directly to avail himself of any of those means of protection. Any sensible mutual protection society, however, formed say at the neighborhood level, would provide for what happens when an individual becomes aware of child abuse in a neighbor's home and exercises his right or duty to stand up for that child's rights, and would protect and support that individual's intervention. More specifically, it would likely provide for the intervention of the society as a whole when such abuse is brought to its attention, to preclude the neighbor of the child from taking matters into his own hands with potentially violent results. On the other hand, the written policies of a respectable and viable private protection agency, like today's modern cost-conscious insurance agency, would not protect its clients from the consequences of any damned thing the client might do, and certainly not from the consequences of abusing a child (though it would of course ensure that due process is followed).

Incidentally, hearkening back to Tucker's view that an unemancipated child is the property of the mother, libertarianism per se has nothing to say about abortion, contrary to common perception. I was heartened (though this doesn't necessarily say anything about my own views on the legality of abortion) to see this admitted recently by Brian Doherty (who is generally a socially-liberal libertarian) of Reason Magazine:

"[Ron] Paul does, though, believe some things many libertarians don't, and some libertarians think these issues are so important that his libertarian credentials should be revoked. For example, he'd like to eliminate Roe v. Wade and would be happy to allow states and localities to ban abortion -- and personally considers abortion a moral crime. But this position, however hard to explain to one's liberal friends who ask a libertarian about this Ron Paul guy, doesn't place him outside the libertarian pale. If you see a living human fetus as a human life the same in morally significant respects as any born human, then supporting a ban on it is as consistent with libertarianism as laws against murder."

Why be a "left" libertarian?

2007-09-26T13:54:00.000-04:00

What is the real difference, if any, between a "left" libertarian and a "right" libertarian? This is a matter of some debate, as evidenced by the Wikipedia article on the subject, so I will define at the outset of this blog what I mean by the distinction. Assuming libertarianism simply means that people have a natural right to their life and property and to pursue happiness in whatever way they want so long as they don't infringe on the equal rights of others, my belief, and what I take to be the simple common denominator of "left" libertarian philosophy, is that a correct understanding of and adherence to said parameters of natural justice would lead to a far more equal distribution of property than a "right" libertarian might think is just. Note that hardly any libertarians will ascribe to themselves the label of "right" libertarian, but if there is such a thing as a left libertarian, as I maintain, then there must be such a thing as a right libertarian. In large part the difference comes down to differing conceptions of natural property rights.

For example, while both right and left libertarians generally recognize that people own themselves and their talents and the fruits of their labor, a left libertarian generally considers land (but not any man-made improvements upon it) and other natural resources to be owned equally by all, while a right libertarian generally considers such resources to be the exclusive property of whoever first appropriated them or received them from such person through a series of exchanges or gifts. Therefore, by the lights of a left libertarian, a person finding himself marooned on an inhabited island where all the land had already been appropriated and divided among the inhabitants (or a propertyless young person finding himself in a similar situation upon attaining the age of majority in these United States) would nevertheless in justice have rights equal to the other inhabitants to the natural resources of the island, and the rights of those original inhabitants would be correspondingly limited by the equal rights of the newcomer. If it were impossible or impractical or unfair to give the newcomer an actual equal physical share of the land and other natural resources, then he would be owed compensation from the others to make up the difference, as a matter of justice rather than charity. A right libertarian would tend to disagree with this conception of natural justice. But what is the alternative? That the newcomer be forced back out to sea? That he be afforded some less than equal pittance in an amount determined arbitrarily by the original inhabitants out of the "goodness of their hearts" (cf. welfare)? That he be allowed to live and work on someone else's land so long as he pays out of the fruits of his labor as much rent as the landlord can get out of him? None of those alternatives are just, since they all deny him access to his natural share of the resources God has given to all.

Likewise, a left libertarian might view the property of a person who has passed on to his eternal reward as having fallen back into the realm of unowned things and as having a status analogous to that of unimproved land and other natural resources to which everyone in the society has equal rights, as opposed to viewing it as somehow still belonging to the decedent and whoever he posthumously transfers it to through the agency of the state and the legal fiction of an executor. A just but humane and practical custom and policy would provide for minor dependents of a decedent, take account of the personal value of things like family farms and businesses and heirlooms, and allow a substantial percentage of the property formerly owned by the decedent to pass to beneficiaries designated by him, but would be based fundamentally on the above conception of property rights and notions of distributive justice.

Some left libertarians have also addressed critically the limits of society's obligation to recognize an individual's entitlement to property received by inter vivos or lifetime gifts. This issue is less clear than the problems with the putative right to inherit, and is an example of a topic I might explore on this blog. Like Catholic Social Teaching's "preferential option for the poor," left libertarianism as I conceive it implies a rebuttable presumption in favor of equality. Clear natural property rights, truly conceived, may rebut the presumption. Today's typical leftist / socialist / "liberal" may purport to enlist and expand the power of the state to help the poor and/or promote equality, but does so as a matter of public policy and without much regard for individual property rights or natural justice. What distinguishes a left libertarian is the belief that a simple adherence to natural justice, truly conceived, both fosters and limits equality. Indeed, a left libertarian believes that such simple adherence to natural justice would foster equality and relieve the poor to a far greater extent than the government programs of the socialist / "liberal." For example, while a typical "liberal" appears to have no problem with current heavy taxation on the modest incomes of the poor and middle class, so long as some of the proceeds are doled back to the needy in the form of government programs, a left libertarian views such confiscation, i.e. of the fruits of one's own labor (and/or capital) that are needed to establish and maintain a decent and reasonably secure lifestyle, as robbery, and as the cause of many of those thus taxed falling into the class of the "needy" in the first place.

Why be a libertarian?

2007-09-25T23:12:00.000-04:00

The libertarian political attitude is expressed concisely in the motto endorsed by Henry David Thoreau at the beginning of his essay Civil Disobedience -- "That government is best which governs least." Its central tenets are the principle of self-ownership and the principle of non-aggression, which holds that the initiation or threat of physical force or fraud upon persons or their property, by a person or a government, is illegitimate. The principle of non-aggression does not preclude defending against or responding to aggression. In the words of Thomas Jefferson: "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’, because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual," and "No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him."

The first question that must be asked about any government is: By what right does it exist in the first place, and from where does it derive its "just powers," if it indeed has any? "The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation," observed Albert Jay Nock in his great book, Our Enemy, the State. With regard to the origin of the American State specifically, after a survey of the historical circumstances surrounding it, Nock had this to say:

"It is clear that while in the nature of things the British State's interventions upon the economic means would stir up great resentment among the interests directly concerned, they would have another effect fully as significant, if not more so, in causing those interests to look favourably on the idea of political independence. They could hardly have helped seeing the positive as well as the negative advantages that would accrue from setting up a State of their own, which they might bend to their own purposes. It takes no great amount of imagination to reconstruct the vision that appeared before them of a merchant-State clothed with the full powers of intervention and discrimination, a State which should first and last 'help business,' and which should be administered by persons of actual interest like to their own. . . .
The main conclusion, however, towards which these observations tend, is that one general frame of mind existed among the colonists with reference to the nature and primary function of the State. This frame of mind was not peculiar to them; they shared it with the beneficiaries of the merchant-State in England, and with those of the feudal State as far back as the State's history can be traced. Voltaire, surveying the debris of the feudal State, said that in essence the State is 'a device for taking money out of one set of pockets and putting it into another.' The beneficiaries of the feudal State had precisely this view, and they bequeathed it unchanged and unmodified to the actual and potential beneficiaries of the merchant-State. The colonists regarded the State primarily as an instrument whereby one might help oneself and hurt others; that is to say, first and foremost they regarded it as the organization of the political means. No other view of the State was ever held in colonial America. Romance and poetry were brought to bear on the subject in the customary way; glamorous myths about it were propagated with the customary intent; but when all came to all, nowhere in colonial America were actual practical relations with the State ever determined by any other view than this."

The Founders of the newly-born United States government, although they drafted a Constitution that allowed them and their successors to exercise the "full powers of intervention and discrimination" in furtherance of their own interests, tried to locate its legitimacy somewhere other than in raw self-interested power, i.e. in the myth of the "consent of the governed" -- a myth rigorously debunked by Lysander Spooner in his indispensable treatise, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority.

A reasonable objection to the above considerations is this: Even if the government is illegitimate, a government is necessary, and that in a sense makes it legitimate, despite its dubious origins. There are two responses to such an objection: First, it is not at all certain that a State is necessary, and many have argued that it's not and tried to show how a Stateless society might work. (See, e.g., David D. Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom. Quakers might be particularly interested in Murry Rothbard's history of the anarchist conditions and attitudes prevalent among the Friends who colonized Pennsylvania.) Second, if necessity is going to be the justification for the existence of the State, then necessity should be the standard by which all of the State's laws and acts should be judged. If you believe a State is necessary for national defense and building roads, for example, then the only State functions such a belief justifies is national defense and building roads. It doesn't legitimate anything else that a bunch of politicians or the people who bought them into office might want to do. There's no magic in a "majority" that gives them the right to do anything that any one of them acting alone wouldn't have the right to do (with the important caveat that trial by jury and due process when available is always preferable to vigilante justice, since less subject to error and passion).

That's the crux of the matter: The government has no right to do anything to you that no other person or association of persons has a right to do, or would have a right to do in an anarchist society. No one has or would have a right to throw you in jail for victimless "crimes" like smoking marijuana or non-fraudulently giving legal advice for money without a law degree, and neither does the government, though it pretends to. In an anarchist society like that projected by David Friedman private protection agencies and mutual protection societies would fulfill (probably more effectively) the police functions monopolized by government today, and would have the right to exact restitution and punishment for assaulting or killing one of their clients or members, assuming due process. To the extent that the present government merely does the same thing -- i.e. enforce the non-aggression principle -- there is no injustice. In an anarchist society one or several of the mutual protection societies or private protection agencies would likely attain, because of the mutual need for arbitration between such organizations and defense against large-scale invasion, a position at the top of a hierarchy of such societies and agencies. All that is needed to approximate such a state of affairs is for the present federal government and more importantly the people who now prop up its pretensions and usurpations by their complacency and misplaced patriotism to begin to think of the federal government as having a status no more exalted and no more privileged than that of a private protection agency at the top of such a hierarchy, with no rights other than what it obtains by freely-entered contract and actual explicit consent.

The most obvious difference between that conception of government and the illegitimate conception of government we have now is our present acceptance of pervasive armed robbery in the form of involuntary taxation. It is not only unjust in itself but is the source of the bloating and concentration of governmental power that in turn finances all of the other governmental aggressions against the rights of the people that are now carried on. There are in fact well-known ways by which the government could fund itself without resorting to robbery and that would actually serve to remedy rather than aggravate injustice. As discussed in my post titled "Why be a left libertarian?", for example, the land (apart from any improvements on it) and other natural resources in a community and the economic rent associated therewith (as well as, arguably, the estates of decedents) belong equally to all in the community, not just to those who presently hold title and possession. Since the necessary collection and distribution of this rent could ordinarily not be administered without the agency of some kind of governmental organization, it is legitimate for that governmental body to keep that part of the revenue which is needed for its necessary services before distributing the remainder equally to the members of the community (the Georgist "single-tax").

To close with something of a corrective, Albert Jay Nock did not have only bad things to say about America's Founding Fathers. In this passage in Our Enemy, the State he regarded Thomas Jefferson as a visionary:

"What is it, [Jefferson] asks, that has 'destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all powers into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate.' The secret of freedom will be found in the individual 'making himself the depository of the powers respecting himself, so far as he is competent to them, and delegating only what is beyond his competence, by a synthetical process, to higher and higher orders of functionaries, so as to trust fewer and fewer powers in proportion as the trustees become more and more oligarchical.' This idea rests on accurate observation, for we are all aware that not only the wisdom of the ordinary man, but also his interest and sentiment, have a very short radius of operation; they can not be stretched over an area of much more than township-size; and it is the acme of absurdity to suppose that any man or any body of men can arbitrarily exercise their wisdom, interest and sentiment over a state-wide or nation-wide area with any kind of success. Therefore the principle must hold that the larger the area of exercise, the fewer and more clearly defined should be the functions exercised. Moreover, 'by placing under everyone what his own eye may superintend,' there is erected the surest safeguard against usurpation of freedom. 'Where every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward-republic, or of some of the higher ones, and feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year, but every day;... he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte.'"

Why be a Quaker?

2007-09-23T21:16:00.000-04:00

It's almost a tautology that the most important part of a person's philosophy is his or her view of the meaning and purpose of human life and of his or her own life, whether that view be grounded in Quakerism, Catholicism, Deism, athiesm, agnosticism, etc.. Most of the discussions about politics and economics that are carried on on the web and elsewhere seem impoverished by the absence of this most essential and fundamental of considerations. Where the discussions are nevertheless carried on fruitfully, there is often an unspoken meeting of the minds about these underlying assumptions. Where the discussions seem to talk past each other, there is often an unspoken and usually unconscious disagreement about these underlying assumptions. My aim in titling this blog as I have is to make my premises explicit, and to accord to the spiritual dimension of life the prominence and priority that justice and truth demand.

One of the first corollaries of the spiritual life is that materialism is flat wrong. Yet for all practical purposes materialism is normally the level to which politics, concerning itself with worldy power, and economics, concerning itself with worldly wealth, stunt themselves and fall short of reality. But spiritual reality has enormous implications for both politics and economics: A man may be spiritually free though deprived of power even over his own body, but woe to the slavemaster; A woman may be spiritually rich though deprived even of the wealth to which nature entitles her, but woe to the oppressor who causes her impoverishment. Spiritual reality, awareness and judgment therefore determine the happiness and fate of the slave, the pauper, the slavemaster and the oppressor alike, in this life and the next.

But backing up, how do I justify my belief in a spiritual reality, as opposed to agnosticism or athiesm, and my adherence to Quakerism (also known as the Religious Society of Friends) specifically? Or more importantly, why should you believe in God, take to heart the Christian message, and/or visit a Quaker meeting to see if it might be right for you? Vast amounts have been written elsewhere on these subjects, and there are a number of good links to information about Quakerism in the sidebar of this blog (Barclay's Apology might be particularly relevant in this context). I can only here touch on some of the considerations that have appeared particularly important to me in my own spiritual journey.

I don't think there is any special merit in "believing" per se. Belief has merit when it is based on something else we know. For example, it is right and good to believe something that a person we know (usually by experience) to be trustworthy tells us, particularly if we also know that person loves us and has our well-being at heart. There is merit in knowledge, and more merit in knowledge of the highest things, for knowledge of what is true is the basis of wisdom. More precisely and fundamentally, there is merit in the love of wisdom, for it is what leads to wisdom, to following (courageously if necessary) what wisdom commands, and to worship of the highest and Truest Truth. The love of wisdom proceeds from God and has God for its object.

I know that God exists and is Good. I know this by experience, and not by any rational demonstrations or "proofs" of the existence of God. The Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain put it well:

"When St. Paul affirmed that 'that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; His eternal power also, and divinity . . .', he was thinking not only of scientifically elaborated or specifically philosophical ways of establishing the existence of God. He had in mind also and above all the natural knowledge of the existence of God to which the vision of created things leads the reason of every man, philosopher or not. It is this doubly natural knowledge of God I wish to take up here. It is natural not only in the sense that it belongs to the rational order rather than to the supernatural order of faith, but also in the sense that it is prephilosophic and proceeds by the natural or, so to speak, instinctive manner proper to the first apperceptions of the intellect prior to every philosophical or scientifically rationalized elaboration. . . . Here everything depends on the natural intuition of being -- on the intuition of that act of existing which is the act of every act and the perfection of every perfection, in which all the intelligible structures of reality have their definitive actuation, and which overflows in activity in every being and in the intercommunication of all beings. Let us rouse ourselves, let us stop living in dreams or in the magic of images and formulas, of words, of signs and practical symbols. Once a man has been awakened to the reality of existence and of his own existence, when he has really perceived that formidable, sometimes elating, sometimes sickening or maddening fact I exist, he is henceforth possessed by the intuition of being and the implications it bears with it."

I think with St. Thomas Aquinas that the discursive reasoning and syllogizing faculty of man grows out of man's experience and dealings with the multifarious sensible world of physical objects, that it is particularly adapted to that world, and that when it embarks on metaphysical or theological speculations, including attempts to prove or disprove God's existence, it is out of its natural element so to speak. That's not to say that we should or can refrain from moral reasoning, which partakes of the metaphysical, or that metaphysical thinking is useless or impossible. (St. Thomas certainly didn't think so.) It's just to say that such philosophizing is necessarily tenuous and uncertain, and reveals far less about God than is revealed by the "creation of the world." God, even according to the best metaphysical speculations, is One and Simple, and to be true our knowledge of Him must likewise be One and Simple. Philosophical attempts to prove that God exists or that He has certain attributes, like other experiences of the God-created world, just might in certain individuals foster the intellect's direct and instinctive apperception of God's existence, but reasoning about God is far from knowing God, and can sometimes even be an obstacle to such knowledge.

Such considerations as these led me to become very circumspect about pretending to know things about God that I didn't really know, including things like the Divinity of Christ, the Resurrection of Christ, and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. To make a long story short, these considerations, as well as Quakers' venerable history of resisting slavery, war and other injustices, were what led me to the Religious Society of Friends, a Christian community which eschews credal formulations of what its members are required to believe. I'm not simply a Deist, because I do in fact believe that Jesus rose from the dead and is the Son of God. I believe it because I am persuaded by a preponderance of the historical evidence, by the beauty and truth of Jesus' life and teachings as depicted in the Gospels, and by the "answer" it provides to the mystery of why evil exists in a world created by a Good and Omnipotent God -- that whyever evil exists, our Creator is with us and shares in our sufferings, and has shown us by His Incarnation in the world how to overcome evil and death. I just don't know those beliefs to be true, and I resist the notion, which is essential to most mainstream Christian denominations, that salvation hangs upon both believing those things to be true and the truth of those beliefs. Instead, I put the emphasis where Jesus Himself seemed to put it, when He taught that the Greatest Commandment is to "Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." I know the Wisdom and the Truth of that Commandment, and so in God alone my soul finds its security.

What's with the sword-swinging angel on the front cover of your new blog?

2007-09-22T08:34:00.000-04:00

It does seem odd that a blog that bills itself as leftist and libertarian and Quaker would choose an image to represent it (at least for the time being) that connotes militarism and Roman Catholicism.

The first explanation is that I have a lot of respect for Catholicism. There's something to be said for its uncompromising upholding of moral ideals in the face of today's pervasive moral relativism. (Libertarians recognize with Lysander Spooner that "vices are not crimes," but the majority of us also recognize that that fact doesn't make them anything other than vices, which may pollute not only the individual's body and soul but society as well.) I also recognize that the Roman Catholic institution was responsible for carrying the Gospel message up through the centuries to the time of the Protestant Reformation, and that it remains today the most visible embodiment of that message, the "City set on a hill," and I agree with the assessment of Paul Johnson at the end of his History of Christianity that despite all of the Church's lapses and abuses Western Civilization would have been far worse off without it. Finally, the Catholic Social Teaching, as expressed by, among others, Pope Leo XIII, John Paul II, G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and especially Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement, has been a beacon in the darkness, a check on the pretensions and propaganda of communist and capitalist alike. The respect I have for the Church will of course be correspondingly diminished if the current Pope actually goes out of his way to promulgate an encyclical preaching everyone's moral duty to pay whatever taxes are demanded by the State, as it has been reported he will do in the near future, unless in the same breath he takes the trouble to preach also that many taxes are unjust and therefore illegitimate.

The second explanation is that St. Michael is a patron of mine of sorts. I remember a conversation I had with a very nice liberal professor back in law school. I told her I had a reputation of being very conservative, but went out of my way to express good will towards all and recognition of my own utter lack of qualification to judge anyone. She asked what my astrological sign was, and when I told her I was a Libra, she said that made sense, that I struck her as someone who strove to be balanced and see both sides of an issue. I responded, quite Libra-like actually, that I thought that was true to an extent, but that on the other hand I was also born on the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel (September 29th), and that I had more than a little of the crusading spirit about me! (Indeed, during my first several years out of law school I used my law degree to embark on a legal crusade that challenged a certain politically-explosive segment of the governmental, medical, and scientific establishments, the outlines of which can be readily found by anyone interested via a Google search of my name. The government won that campaign and stopped the truth in its tracks, at least for now. If it hadn't, you would have heard about it.) Along with the circumstance that I was born on Michaelmas, there is also the consideration that the scales of justice traditionally represent not only my astrological sign but also my profession, and that they just look more colorful and dramatic when wielded by an Archangel, as they are in the attached image.

The third explanation is that, while war and preparations for war are an abomination, the martial image reminds me that we should be at least as energetic and courageous in waging peace as big business and its government lackeys are in waging war and exploiting the poor and powerless. As many before me have explained, the Christian injunction to "resist not evil" means in context that we should not try to fight fire with fire or hopelessly return evil for evil, but that we should fearlessly combat evil effectively with all of the good we can muster, that we should return good for evil. In my younger and foolisher days, I served the government for six years in the U.S. Navy, before I woke up halfway through the Naval Academy and resigned my commission as a midshipman. There were at least two good things about military life: the camraderie and the spirited potentially sacrifical effort on behalf of something bigger than one's self. The problem was that the camraderie was based on slavish obedience and the sacrificial effort was on behalf of something that, though "bigger" than the self, is no good. The challenge for men and women of good will is to create the same kind of camraderie in the spirit of liberty rather than slavery, the same spirited effort in the service of good rather than evil. The battle-cry of St. Michael in his contest with Lucifer, "Quis ut Deus?" ("Who is like unto God?"), destroys the pretensions of all usurpers, all those people and things that claim authority over our lives, and shows us the way to that selfless camraderie and that spirited effort.