I wish to note that there are in fact, two huge issues at play for me in this discussion.

The first is the issue itself, which is the debate over whether we should support the immediate use of certain innately arbitrary legal powers (zoning laws) by government in order to stop the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero.  I will discuss this issue here.

The second issue, is how Objectivists handle disagreements like this.  That’s of greater long-range interest to me, and I will address it at some point; however, that will have to wait until I have gathered all the data and the discussion has more-or-less played out.

The very quick summary, to set the initial direction, is this:  I am in agreement for now with Paul and Diana Hsieh, in their posts here and here, and the reader may wish to also note my comments there.

For the Record:  I remain open to being convinced that the construction of the mosque represents a sufficiently immediate and pronounced danger to our liberty and country, that it should be stopped by *any* available means.

As yet, I have not yet seen the countervailing argument that meets the necessary conditions: to wit, that demonstrates a grasp of the opposing argument.  I have chosen to respond to this post by New Clarion co-blogger Embedded I to illustrate and clarify my position.

Writes Embedded I:

Against all of the above, cries to protect American property rights will be as a tea cup in a tornado. Those rights are so woozy now, it is better to stop the insidious horde at every turn, perhaps through well defined, vigorously enforced, peacetime anti-sedition laws.

This is the point I have raised elsewhere: when the principled response to the islamic threat — declaration of war and decisive action by our government — is off the table, decisions like this become tactical in nature: tactical decisions, by nature, are very pragmatic, and principled only in the most basic sense: life or death.

As I have noted elsewhere, decisions like these are analogous to deciding which of two assailants in a street fight to focus on at any given moment: the nearer one with the knife, or the accomplice some distance away who is loading a shotgun.  The *only* relevant guiding principle is immediate survival.

In this case, since the government is defaulting on its proper role (the safeguarding of a civilized order, where such things as property rights hold sway), we are placed in the position of considering the lesser of two choices, both of which are rotten when seen in the light of derivative principles, but nonetheless necessary.  Choices like this are of an emergency nature, like medical triage, and involve tradeoffs (NOT “sacrifices”) that morally we should never be asked to make.

In this case, the alternative we face is the following: permitting the enemy a symbolic success as Embedded I describes here, versus interdicting that symbol at the cost of emboldening the statists, our enemies in *this* country — and of further sanctioning the accelerating expansion of an out-of-control State.

Doing the latter vis-a-vis Islam bothers me a hell of a lot, for this reason:

“The dissolution of parties, the prohibition of public speeches — these were strangely violent measures of the state in defense of freedom. ‘The freest constitution in the world’ did not officially provide or allow for such brutal intervention of police power. But Hitler and his like had for years filled the country with violence murder and destruction, and the state has not found the strength to suppress them with the cold majesty of law; and now, having unjustly spared them, the state could no longer defend itself except by injustice. Where Hitler began to speak, murder could be expected as a result. Hitler forced the state to stretch the laws in a rather arbitrary way — this in itself was a success. When he attacked, a few drops of his own poisonous spirit dripped on the enemy and infected him. In all points of his career, in the most insignificant and the most important situations, this was his most dangerous power, though unfortunately least understood: that he lured or forced his opponent to imitate him, to use similar methods and even adopt the qualities which he really wanted to combat in Hitler.”

–Konrad Heiden, “Der Fuehrer”, 1944 Houghton-Mifflin edition, p261-262.  Emphasis mine.

That is my concern, which has not been addressed to my satisfaction anywhere, though it has at least been acknowledged as existing.

On the issue of the danger posed by Islam:  I am already sold on that point.  But that is only half of an argument.  Assuming a priori that my disagreement follows from my ignorance or failure to appreciate the Islamic threat, is not the other half.

I need to know that those who wish to stop the mosque are cognizant of the problems attendant upon squashing the mosque, that they too are fully informed.

For one thing, no one has addressed the egregious legal problems and precedents brought about by permitting war powers to a government that has not declared war — not the least of which is the consequent legal indeterminacy of when such powers are to end. How long is this to last?  Should we put out this fire at the risk of laying down tinder for who knows how many Reichstag fires in the future?

After all, the never-ending war against an indeterminate enemy is a known hallmark of tyranny, as dramatized in Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, and as seen in the propagandas of tyrannies both long gone and current.

There is ample demonstration from history of how an external enemy can be used by internal forces aspiring to destroy liberty.  Much as Hitler exploited the threat of Communist tyranny to enact his own version thereof, those statist elements in America — of which there are no shortage — are perfectly happy to use arbitrary State power to stop the mosque, thereby setting the precedent for them to use later against enemies of their choice.

After all, would that not be a rather powerful symbol itself?   Look, the Americans are so scared of Islamists that it is willing to contradict its own supposed principles,  to use similar methods and even adopt the qualities which he really wanted to combat in [Islam]!

Who do you think would be emboldened by that symbolism?

Note this line from Ed Cline:

We are living in an unprecedented time, when this country is under attack by secular jihadists in the White House, and religious ones from Mecca and Medina, both sides demanding unquestioning obedience from Americans, and no one is doing much about it. This is the larger picture — an aerial photograph of the battlefield, if you will — that must be grasped. It is and it is not about “property rights.”

I need to know why Ed considers Faisal Rauf to be objectively more dangerous than actual jihadists in the White House (!)

And again: I have read the words of our own Myrhaf, Embedded I, Amy Peikoff (twice) and , and their words are persuasive.  They have made their case on the nature and threat of Islam.  But without their comparative evaluation of the dangers of the alternative — of the “Weimar threat” as I have explained here — their argument is incomplete, and I cannot as yet accept their conclusions.

As Ed Matthews writes in a comment on yet another excellent post on this topic by Amy Peikoff:

I have no problem using nonobjective laws to shut down the mosque, on the grounds that it is a greater evil and more immediate threat than that posed by a US government even more capricious in violating our rights than it is at present…

Okay.  I understand and accept this.  Make that case, then, please.  Why is the mosque “a greater evil and more immediate threat than that posed by a US government even more capricious in violating our rights than it is at present“?

• “Plaintiffs’ assertion of a new ‘fundamental right’ to produce, obtain, and consume unpasteurized milk lacks any support in law.” [p. 4]

• “It is within HHS’s authority . . . to institute an intrastate ban [on unpasteurized milk] as well.” [p. 6]

• “Plaintiffs’ assertion of a new ‘fundamental right’ under substantive due process to produce, obtain, and consume unpasteurized milk lacks any support in law.” [p.17]

• “There is no absolute right to consume or feed children any particular food.” [p. 25]

• “There is no ‘deeply rooted’ historical tradition of unfettered access to foods of all kinds.” [p. 26]

• “Plaintiffs’ assertion of a ‘fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families’ is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish.” [p. 26]

• FDA’s brief goes on to state that “even if such a right did exist, it would not render FDA’s regulations unconstitutional because prohibiting the interstate sale and distribution of unpasteurized milk promotes bodily and physical health.” [p. 27]

• “There is no fundamental right to freedom of contract.” [p. 2 7]

This is the Food and Drug Administration, cavalierly tossing aside the entire concept of liberty and individual rights.  Not piecemeal, and not under cover of professed fealty to the principle even as they slit its throat… it’s as explicit as it gets.

The right of contract underlies the principles of free association — specifically, by asserting every individual’s right to set terms by which he will or will not associate with others.  The rest of us are free to accept or reject that person’s terms, and to propose our own.

This is easily recognizable as the basis of contract, but it goes deeper than that; in one form or another, all human relationships operate in this manner. The right to set one’s terms, to negotiate them and to accept or reject those of another, are the bedrock of freedom, and the essence of individual moral sovereignty.

This is the basic principle that was bludgeoned by the overreach of the Civil rights act — and here we reap the fruits of what was sown in 1964.

This legal brief just gainsays all of that as irrelevant — and to a level of brazenness that is truly disturbing. This isn’t yet another assault upon abstract principles that require explanations like the above: we are dealing with a blade to our esophagus that anyone can see.  Any idiot can grasp that  these fascists are taking over our food.

Notice how these passages are shot through with rationalizations and memes originating with both the Left and conservatism; as the two wings of anti-Americanism, they both bear culpability for creating this monster.  Let’s pick out a few of them in just the material quoted above:

The “finding a new fundamental right” locution comes straight from the same source as the “penumbras and emanations” attack on Griswold v. Connecticut: “strict constructionist” conservatives.

“unfettered access”… Mainstreamers sure do have a fetter fetish, don’t they?  “Unfettered” as a perjorative is a big ‘tell’ on the part of Leftists and conservatives alike.

“promotes bodily and physical health.”  That’s the “we know best/for your own good” premise.  Again — Leftists and conservatives alike are guilty of this one, though the Leftists get the lion’s share of late.

Last, but certainly not least, is that all the rights the FDA denies are covered by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments…  but that doesn’t concern the FDA at all, thanks to the work by the conservative/Leftist tag team, effectively reducing them to a dead letter.

As I sip my glass of raw milk tonight, I raise it in this hearty toast:

F the FDA.

(H/T Campaign for Liberty, via Billy Beck.)

Italicized Quotes are Cramer’s.

Especially in the South, state governments did not simply allow businesses to discriminate — they often required discrimination.
This is a key point that needs to be brought up over and over again: the main factor sustaining racism coming into the 1960′s, was government intervention.  By its nature, government discrimination flatly contradicts the principle of equality before the law, and in this respect, legal action was the proper (and overdue) solution (“states rights” be damned).

The real topic raised by Rand Paul, however, is racism on the part of private individuals.  That is the part of the CRA64 that advocates of liberty question, and for good reason.  Racism on the part of individuals is a cultural, not legal phenomenon — not unlike stupidity, or being left wing — and is a completely different beast.

In a free society, governments act by permission; the individual is sovereign, and acts by right.  The government may only act where positively given the privilege, by law; individuals may act as they choose *except* where forbidden by law (ideally, only where such action infringes upon the liberty of another.)

IMO no commentary that fails to acknowledge this key distinction in addressing Rand Paul’s comments is even on topic, let alone credible.

Would free markets have been enough to break this long history of governmental force in support of racism?

No.  The two are incommensurable; it is not the job of free markets to write laws.  That requires legislative action, based on free market, pro-individualist ideology.  That is what was needed, and long overdue — and notwithstanding its flaws, the CRA achieved this goal.

Free markets operate in the private domain, among individuals.  What they DO discourage is private, cultural racism, by various mechanisms, only one of which (“my money is just as green as the next guy’s”) is cited by Cramer.  It is not the only one, nor the most powerful.  Free market liberalism include the marketplace of ideas, in intellectual discourse and particularly in education.  These are the forces which drive culture — not laws (to the eternal chagrin of authoritarians everywhere).  It is this process which is impeded by government actions (e.g. in the form of socialized education, as well as the more obvious Jim Crow laws), both before and after the CRA — and has since been reversed by the Left.

And now we come to Cramer’s fatal weakness:  as sound as many of his points are, they remain undercut by the epistemological and moral pragmatism of the article’s conservative author:

On the one hand, there is a very persuasive theoretical argument that free markets will punish irrational discrimination.

Notwithstanding the evidence provided right there in the article that clearly establishes this “theory” as eminently practical and valid, Cramer cites its theoretical, “abstract” aspect as a disqualifier in and of itself.  This is the hallmark of the epistemological primitive who, not comprehending where ideas come from, automatically distrusts them — or takes them on faith — as his pre-existing biases (what conservatives term “prejudice”) — dictate.  As to where those come from, well, Cramer’s reference to Scriptural grounds for condeming racism is a big, if utterly predictable, clue.  Without religion, the is/ought dichotomy paralyzes conservatism in the face of normative claims.

…but I also know that the libertarian solution requires a population of rational actors prepared to look out for their own economic interests.  You let me know when you find a species that fits that model.

Humanity.  *tada*

Of course, Cramer is not referring to the Objectivist theory of free markets, but to a well-known, invalid theory of free markets which operates from the assumption of “a population of [100%] rational actors” (I add the 100% figure, as it’s a fundamental trait of the “rational actor” premise).

That is a basic assumption of a certain view of free markets, a highly rationalistic one which does not and cannot account for free will.   Cramer is freezing the abstraction, by citing an invalid theory to stand for *all* “abstract” theory, which he then regards as suspect in toto.

Put this together with his carefully sloppy conflation of the legal versus the moral aspects of racism, and where do you think Cramer ends up?

In the same sin bin where all pragmatists end up:

Sensible libertarians acknowledge that a free market is not enough to end all racial discrimination — and that a certain amount of it is the price we pay for living in a free society.  This is a fine argument to make as an abstract principle – but it isn’t a path to political victory.

…. dismissing moral principle in favor of  range-of-the-moment political expediency, of course.  Never mind the morality, he just wants his side in power.

How like a Leftist that is.

(Minor edit I: changed “break” to “discourage” in “What free markets DO break is private, cultural racism”.  Markets do not fix stupid, they only punish it.)

(Minor edit 2: changed “conservatives” to “Conservatism” in “paralyzes conservatives in the face of normative claims”, to reflect the fact that individual conservatives can and do stray from conservatism from time to time — much more than individual Leftists do, to conservatives’ credit.  See Stephen Green, for example.)

What are all those people counting on? If a [Greek] factory goes bankrupt, the equalizers will find another factory to loot. If that other factory starts crumbling, it will get a loan from the bank. If the bank has no money, it will get a loan from the government. If the government has no money, it will get a loan from a foreign government. If no foreign government has any money, all of them will get a loan from the United States.

What they don’t know—and neither does this country—is that the United States is broke.

–Ayn Rand, “Egalitarianism and Inflation”, June 1974

That one led to this one, echoing the same theme:

What were they thinking now, the champions of need and the lechers of pity?—she wondered. What were they counting on? Those who had once simpered: “I don’t want to destroy the rich, I only want to seize a little of their surplus to help the poor, just a little, they’ll never miss it!”—then, later, had snapped: “The tycoons can stand being squeezed, they’ve amassed enough to last them for three generations”—then, later, had yelled: “Why should the people suffer while businessmen have reserves to last a year?”—now were screaming: “Why should we starve while some people have reserves to last a week?” What were they counting on?—she wondered.

Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged” Part Three/Chapter V

Those who cannot say no to the open mouths of altruism, shall be swallowed thereby.

Living here is a privilege, not a right that every human being on earth is born with.

This is the end-of-road for conservative anti-immigrationists:  the selective  degradation of the liberty to live in a particular place from a right to a “privilege”.  As a hostile commenter put it sarcastically (albeit a tad illiterately) at LegalInsurrection:

“Nothing says freedom from government interfernce like “show me your papers.”. Of course, limited government only applies to people who are real americans,not to mexicans.”

Let us examine the conservatives’ trip down the anti-immigration road, and see how it ended there — and what it means for conservatism’s purported fealty to Americanism.

The invocation of national sovereignty as justification for arbitrary immigration controls operates on the unstated  premise that individual rights (to life, liberty, property etc.) are contingent upon citizenship (a state-granted status), instead of being inalienable to the person.

This viewpoint is very common these days; it’s not restricted to conservatives.  There’s a good reason for that: it rests on the Leftist, collectivist conception of government, installed into the culture around the same time that democracy was substituted for freedom, and it is profoundly un-American.

Apparently, conservatives have decided to retire God from the rights-giving business in favor of the State.

They are wrong.  Individual rights are not contingent upon citizenship.

Under the American view, basic freedoms such as freedom of association, of communication (speech), of thought, of self-defense etc. are based upon the rights of man, not of the “citizen” or other group memberships, such as race, national origin, gender etc.)  A proper government, constrained by a constitution based on the principle of individual rights, is  *subject* to these freedoms, and exists solely to secure them.

In doing so, the State derives its legitimacy and its sovereignty, from that primary fact which are the rights of the people.  It is the people — individuals — who are ultimately sovereign; the sovereignty of any State is derivative of that of the people, and therefore forfeits it to the extent that it violates that of the people.  (This is why it is morally proper to invade a dictatorship, should a free nation choose; dictatorships have no claim to sovereignty).

If an American seeks to hire a Canadian or to have him as a guest on his property, all the same freedoms apply as when he seeks to do so with another American.  The government has no right to interfere with this arrangement, anymore than it does to interfere with such arrangements between Americans.

In other words, “sovereignty” is not a blank check to do whatever the government wishes, even if democratically elected.  The government is only free to do what is permitted to it by the principles of liberty.

Declaring entry into the United States as a “privilege” for those not born here inverts this arrangement; it operates on the premise that rights inhere to citizens, not humans — instead of the Rights of Man (based on the nature of man), they become the Rights of the Citizen (a status granted by the State).

Conservatives fancy themselves as heirs to the Constitution of 1787, but when it comes to immigration, the principles of the one written up in 1793 are evidently more to their liking.

Now to head off some of the usual arguments that conservatives use to obfuscate the matter:

1.  So we should just let anyone in, criminals, carriers of disease, enemy armies..?

Of course not.  The State does have an interest and a moral sanction to secure the borders.  This authority, however, derives from the mandate from the sovereign people to protect their rights against forcible aggression — in this case, foreign invaders.  It is proper, in my view (here I am at odds with some Objectivists, such as Harry Binswanger) for the State to screen entrants for potential threats to those residing within the borders.

However, the things for which it screens are sharply constrained by its mandate.  Screening for disease, enemy combatants (during war) and for criminals is within that mandate; keeping out foreign labor competition, is not.  If someone is plainly not a threat, the State has fulfilled its mandate and has no further authority (no discretion) to obstruct passage.

2.  So anybody can just walk in and vote?  Oh great, Obama can just go ahead and import 50 million new Democrats!

No.  Open immigration is not the same as open citizenship.  Because of the Leftist premise behind their viewpoint, conservatives fail to distinguish between the two even while citing the Founders who *did* distinguish between them.  See for example Michelle Malkin, who conflates the two even while citing the words of men who did understand the difference.

Note also from that post, this telling quote from Malkin:

“Why should we extend rights to someone here illegally that they wouldn’t enjoy in another country?”

See the collectivist premise?  Since when do “we” “extend” rights?  Governments, be they the royal or democratic “we”, may only recognize or deny rights; they do not grant them.

Citizenship does not confer rights; rather, it confers to the individual a specific and narrow set of privileges: the vote, and the option to seek public office.  It is proper for a government to restrict citizenship for those who reside here for a minimum number of years.

3.  I’m not anti-immigration, I’m anti-ILLEGAL immigration.

This is a common dodge.  It substitutes a different topic entirely, to wit: the rule of law. The purpose of the dodge is to avoid the uncomfortable necessity of justifying their desire to legally discriminate against foreign nationals.

When I stick to the topic and ask whether the rule-of-law supporter would be fine with resolving the illegality issue by *changing the law* (to make immigration open), the honest ones answer yes (or at least that it’s a separate question).

Far more common, however, are the ones who say “Hell, no, we need less immigration!”… in which they confess what they sought to obscure: that they are anti-immigration, with all that implies about their basic political premise.

UPDATE 05/01/10:  I did a touch of tightening up of the text above, moving one line and snipped a redundancy.

Gus Van Horn has also written a fantastic editorial at Pajamas Media on the topic of immigration, focussing on the welfare state as being the root cause of problems that conservatives blame on immigration.  Tellingly, the conservatives are more interested in bashing him in the comments for being pro-immigration, rather than recognize his alignment with their purported distaste for the welfare state… or insisting on straw men of their choice.

A shout out to commenter Ashley: here is an example of an “airstrip“: the conservatives’ morally slipshod, unprincipled “opposition” to the welfare state, exposed as a shallow imitation of the Objectivist position, and tossed aside for the nonessential it is when juxtaposed with what they really care about.

Priorities, you know. 

And now, with a tip of the hat to commenter madmax at Gus’ place, here’s a bunch more of the usual conservative anti-immigration arguments, dealt with scattergun style (as it’s all it takes, for the most part):

* foreign labor takes away American jobs

Translation: Americans can’t compete economically.  Were I an American, I’d find that insulting.  This one often comes from people in specialized disciplines who are used to their high salaries and don’t care to make the effort of adapting to increased competition (by skills upgrades, or cutting their prices).

* eliminating the welfare state will not end Mexican immigration because American work pays more so there will still be illegal immigration

But the *kind* of immigrants you attract would be the kind that are willing to work. In light of the proportion of native-born moochers, that’s a net improvement.

* America has too many people as it is and can not accommodate any more.

Evidently, those spouting this one have never been to Europe — or Tokyo.  Or in the Western USA for that matter.

* There will be inevitable tension between whites and Hispanics

“Inevitable”?  Racist/collectivist determinist.  These ones need to google “melting pot”.

* Hispanics, at large, will resist assimilation and Hispanize America

Translation: American ideas and culture cannot compete in an open marketplace of ideas.  Hogwash; see above.

There *is* a problem here, with hyphenated-Americans etc… but anyone who is paying attention knows that it is not melting-pot American individualism that is failing us.

The simple solution here is for Americans to rediscover what “being American” really means.  Hint: it’s not an accident of birth, nor is it a matter of mere citizenship.

* The Southern border needs to be militarized to prevent an invasion

I don’t disagree with this in principle — the government does exist to secure the lives and rights of Americans, and the recent murder in Arizona points up definite failure on this front by the government.  But in degree, this idea is ludicrous.  Large-scale militarization is unnecessary in light of what’s happening in Mexico.  At that level, there is no threat there.

I mean, obviously, someone who thinks the world is going to end any time now must be crazy.

Right?  Actually, no — Left.

Well, at least Leftists can still walk around claiming to be the vanguard of society against racism, yes?  I mean, if it weren’t for the Left, nobody would ever have detected all those racists hiding among the Tea Party and the Republican Party.

Right?  Actually, no — Left, again.

Jeebus! Can things get any more obvious?

Well, okay, they may be cultish and more than a bit racist, but you don’t see them taking the final, easy way out for  those who lose the intellectual debate — threatening violence.  At least the remain the side of peace.

Right?  Whoops… sadly no.  Left once more!

Pssst, Leftists — your soul is showing.  Cover up with something, why don’t you… nobody wants to see that.

As I’ve occasionally heard and said, you know you are over the target when you start receiving flak.  This action confirms to me that the Left is extremely scared of the Tea Party movement — and as is usual with these things, the surface details being fed to us by the mainstream media are meant to obscure and misdirect, not to inform.

As we all know, if the Tea Party really were the sort of racists that the Left says they are — if such people really were “the core” of that movement –  the Left would not be this frightened.  Racism of that sort remains on the fringe — and the sort of racism that IS given a pass is Leftist in origin anyhow.  The Left is comfortable with this sort of “enemy”.

What they fear, is the potential return of their old, genuine foe:  Americanism, and the Enlightenment notion of the morally sovereign individual it expresses.  It’s not the bigoted crazies that they are afraid of –  it’s the politically sane people who might be there amongst the Tea Partiers; actual Americans, who know at some level that the alternative facing us is individualist liberty, or collectivist bondage — not merely a choice of rulers.

They are afraid of those who might pass this simple test.

Of all the sleeping dogs that might wake up, those are the ones the Left wants to stay asleep — permanently.

Does the Tea Party in fact portend a revival of Americanism?  I don’t know.  Conservatives are already moving to co-opt them, and I think that the common, misguided association of conservatism with Americanism greatly facilitates that.

But the Left doesn’t seem to share that expectation.  They clearly fear the potential return of Americanism — and I hope that fear is justified.

I do not yet agree with Billy.  America is not dead yet.

However, the knife is at last on its jugular.  Americans must now face the final alternative: to renounce liberty in favor of duty to others — or to summon up the moral courage to say No.

No to whom?  Seeing as I’m an Objectivist, the expected answer is no to altruism.  That is correct — but I am not operating at that level of abstraction here.  Objectivists have been making that point for over half a century now, and sadly, the mainstream epistemology is sufficiently crippled such that people still insist that liberty and duty can coexist.

I’m going to put the alternative to everyone, in terms of a plain concrete, one that lays it out in no uncertain, clear-cut terms, that will separate the moral adults from the altruist children.

It runs as follows:

There is someone in front of you asking for help, and you have plenty of money.  Do you have the moral right to say no?

His need is genuine.   Do you still have the moral right to say no?

It’s not his fault.  Do you still have the moral right to say no?

It’s a very pressing need.  Do you still have the moral right to say no?

It’s a child.   Do you still have the moral right to say no?

If you do not answer “Yes” all the way down the line — if you do not assert your individual moral sovereignty, if you do not assert your right to choose as being morally prior to anyone’s need –

– than SHUT UP and get out of the way.  You are not morally equipped to partake in this battle, let alone win it, and you are wasting your time.

Now PAY ATTENTION, please.

Notice that I am NOT asking what you believe you should choose.  I am NOT asking you whether you should give to the needy.

I am asking you whether the choice is morally yours, all the way down the line.  I am asking you whether you believe that you still have the moral right to exist after saying “No”.

Do not trifle me with waffling exceptions.  Whatever they are, they can and will be used against you.  Liberty is indivisible; if you cede your moral sovereignty anywhere, you cede it everywhere.

See what was done to this Tea Party protestor?  Expect more of it.  Lots more.  You’ve heard of human shields; the needy are the enemy’s shield, spear and dagger aimed right at your soul.  Don’t let them be used as weapons against you in this way.

No entitlement program has ever been repealed in the United States.  This is why.  If the Tea Party wishes to make political history, they must first make moral history.

Repealing this bill — and more: repealing the welfare state in toto –  requires nothing less than the willingness of each Tea Partier — hell, each American — to gaze past the outstretched hand of need, to look the blackmailers behind them all  in the eye and declare:

No.

The comments, as usual, are full of the usual pragmatism that shows up when an Objectivist op/ed shows up at PJM.  They are usually of this sort — a conservative who chides the writer for “errors” which are merely artifacts of his own incomprehension.  (The most advanced of these are the ones that dimly recognize that principled thinking is afoot, but chide the writer for burdening his point with “amateur philosophy”.)

What suddenly jumped into my head was the realization that this sort of thing exactly parallels a well-known phenomenon from history, which not only concretizes the “epistemological primitivism” I’ve been writing about, but is an instance of it: the Cargo Cults of the South Pacific.  (Ironically, the reason why it was fresh in my mind was because I’d read some comments on conservative blogs recently, aptly applying the label to some Leftists.)

From the Wikipedia article:

“A cargo cult is a type of religious practice that may appear in traditional tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures. The cults are focused on obtaining the material wealth (the “cargo”) of the advanced culture through magic and religious rituals and practices, believing that the wealth was intended for them by their deities and ancestors.”

Lacking any kind of grasp of the nature of what they saw, including its causal origins, the islanders imagined that by re-creating the accidental surface details of American military personnel — i.e. what they could perceive — they could somehow enjoy the full benefits of their presence once more.

That isn’t merely an apt description of how conservatives view the U.S. Constitution — and liberty itself; it’s precisely the same phenomenon (even down to “traditional”,  “Deities” and “ancestors”).

The only difference, is that the ignorance of the South Sea natives was not deliberate.

Last week, Daniels penned an article critical of Ayn Rand at The New Criterion.

Yawn.  Nothing new there, right?  It’s just Whittaker Chambers all over again.  But something different happened this time.  Objectivists shot back.  They did so in enough numbers that Roger Kimball, editor of The New Criterion, found it necessary to cherry-pick some of the nastier ones for mockery over at Pajamas Media.

But there is one comment there that he did not address at all.  It may very well be due to his not having seen it, but an equally plausible explanation — one that I consider to be equally as likely, in the absence of any other information — is because it eviscerates Daniels and his pretenses to competence in discussing Rand, by means of that weaponry which forever relegates conservatism to to pretender status in the realm of the intellect: ideas.

It is a devastating critique — so much so that Diana Hsieh posted it in its own article at Noodlefood.

Go read the whole thing.  It is meaty, and argues throughout from the Objectivist position of strength: our epistemology.  Marshall uses it to hammer home his core point, always coming to it from different angles but delivering the same blow to which conservatism has no answer.

“Daniels, however, demurs from looking too deeply into the matter. But while he steers clear of the ideas in the cultural milieu…”

“Daniels, however, does not attempt to identify or explain why the current fad of intellectual snobbery is an obsession with nihilism…”

“Daniels never examines what ideas the “totalitarian mindset” consists of, or what philosophy underlies it. In fact, apart from vague notions of “inhumanity” and “authoritarianism,” I don’t believe that Daniels knows what a “totalitarian mindset” is, which is why he can be so flippant with the label.”

“Mr. Daniels does not ask such questions nor offer answers. He does not write about ideas.”

“Daniels does appear to have read The Fountainhead (alas, apart from skimming The Virtue of Selfishness that seems to be the extent of his reading from Rand), but he is unable to name its theme: individualism as intellectual independence…”

“What is clear in his analysis of The Fountainhead is that Mr. Daniels can’t get past his hang-up on the details of architecture to evaluate the ideas at its core.”

“Again, this is the whole of his case. And again Daniels does not write about ideas, but superficial non-similarities–Stalin also spoke Russian and had a respiratory system, don’t you know.”

“Such superficial and baseless evaluations are the closest Daniels gets to Rand’s ideas. He spends the rest of the article attacking a straw man.”

This is the end result of pragmatism: a crippled intellect, so incapable of handling ideas that its only possible defense while still attempting to maintain at least a pretense of intellectuality, is to pretend that they don’t exist; the famous “Blank out”.  We saw that pattern on this blog in Clayton Jones’ comments on this post, and Marshall lays it bare with Daniels.

In those rare times when conservatives actually do try to address ideas, the most bizarre — and revealing — things result.  With Jones, the one time he risked dealing with the *principles* of American government, he ended up equating the principle of limited government to anarchy (!)  Daniels does this several times, most notably in his declaration of Ayn Rand as being “Soviet”.  And who can forget Whittaker Chambers’ hysterical screeching, thirty-four years before Godwin: “to the gas chambers, go!”

But Marshall goes even further; via Daniels’ own words, he eloquently reveals the conservatives’ emotional motivation for their avoidance of ideas: they fear them, and the black art (epistemology) that involves them:

“If Daniel’s had read her works or listened to her lectures, he would have observed that she made her case by laying out the evidence that led her to draw the abstract conclusions that became her philosophy. But why bother thoroughly investigating someone you are going to critique when you believe that ideology as such is just window dressing for dark, bestial impulses?”

The root and meaning of conservatism’s insistence upon being an “anti-ideology” is its deep-seated, fundamental mistrust of the human mind, of reason and of everything that proceeds from it.  For such minds, “black art” is a precise description of epistemology.

So it should be no wonder why conservatives should find themselves confused and frightened by ideas.  They lack the tools required to comprehend them as such.  Like primitive tribes who rely on faith to ameliorate their helplessness in the face of physical nature, conservatives do the same to address their helplessness in dealing with ideas.

In closing, I can do no better than to close with Paul Marshall’s last line, which is an epitaph for the intellectual pretenses of Anthony Daniels and of conservatism itself:

“”Anthony Daniels’s writing can sparkle. He can entertain with erudite and obscure trivia. But he seems unwilling to think deeply about ideas. Consequently, his intellect is as wide as an ocean, but as shallow as a puddle.”

(A key spoiler follows below the break.  It is not necessary to read the story first to grasp my point, but I highly recommend it; it is a good one.)

The story dealt with a future where there was a world named Vexvelt, which was shunned by all the other civilized planets in the galaxy because incest is not only accepted there, but actively encouraged.  When the protagonist in the story visits Vexvelt, he finds that it is a virtual utopia — and that its rejection of the incest taboo is in fact precisely why it has achieved such prosperity and peace.

There is a line spoken at one point by a magistrate, one of the few outside Vexvelt who knows the truth about the planet.  At one point after the protagonist describes the “sanity” of the Vexveltian society, the magistrate said a line which still sticks in my head:  (paraphrasing from memory)

“I would rather go stark, raving MAD than ever endure such sanity!”

Sturgeon later explained that the particular taboo was not the point of the story.  From Wikipedia:

“Sturgeon wrote the story with an afterword that makes it plain that [the taboo] is not the real issue here, but rather how we manufacture falsehoods and turn them into perceived ‘truths.’ How we often take something harmless, then add and build on the perceived ‘truth’ to the point of creating something that is positively harmful.”

The funny thing for me, is that as much as incest is seen as repulsive by nearly everyone, writing a story like that did not damage Sturgeon’s career.  If you examine his Wikipedia page, there is no mention of any big controversy over it.  His writing career continued, and to this day Sturgeon is regarded as one of the stars of science fiction, and rightly so IMO.

Ever wonder what might have happened to him if he had made Vexvelt the only egoist society in the galaxy — if the harmful idea the Vexveltians rejected had been altruism?

I don’t have to wonder.  Paul Shirley, a former ESPN basketball writer and former player, questioned altruism in clear terms recently in connection with the Haiti disaster, and the responses were (not to put too fine a point on it), batshit crazy.  Evidently, altruists too would rather go “stark raving mad”.

As much as I respect Sturgeon’s writing, I can see why he might have seen the risk of being construed as an advocate for incest to be less dangerous than to be seen as questioning that other, far more harmful taboo.

I don’t expect them to actually precipitate one on purpose, but the basic premise — that the American Left is in a do-or-die position — is very likely correct.

Objectivists have been saying for years that the Left is at the end of its intellectual road, and that its position in control of the academy is slowly slipping away.   I think the Left knows this as well.   I believe that the core Left is afraid that if they don’t succeed in pushing America over the tipping point during this administration, they may never get this chance again.

What is this goal — this “tipping point” to which I refer?

I see it as that point where “tax eaters” — those dependent upon government handouts, in one form or another, and their enablers — permanently outnumber and outvote the tax payers and their allies.  Europe is already past this point, and a few US states — California, for example — are as well.

The Left knows that tax-eater constituencies are permanently beholden to them, thanks to what the conservatives call the “liberal ratchet”.  How many times have we heard the whine “but if they take away our handouts, we’ll have nothing”?  Once a government program is ensconced in the economic structure of the country, it is well-nigh impossible to extract (given our current cultural climate), much like an inoperable tumor.   The expectation is that once this voter base is sufficiently large, the trend will become irreversible, and liberty will be permanently removed from the mainstream.

This is the real motivation behind the push to install socialized medicine now.  This was the point of the Left’s substitution of “democracy” for freedom over a hundred years ago: to set the country on a path towards the initial type of tyranny that bears the closest superficial resemblance to freedom: the tyranny of the majority.

Once this happens, The American Left can finally start down the same road towards permanent struggle and war that the Left has followed everywhere else in the world.  The only way out for the producers will be to revolt — go on strike — or enact a literal revolution.  These are extreme options, all but certainly entailing the loss of the comforts of modern society — the threat thereof which which all but the most James Taggart-ish of the core Left will count on to keep them under the yoke.  “Oh, you’ll do something, Mr. Rearden.”

That’s the crossroads we are at right now.  Down one road is Weimar… the other, America.

We were last here in the late ’60′s and ’70′s, when the Great Society was installed, the government was openly debasing the currency, and “malaise” was prevalent.   It was, however, too soon.  Ronald Reagan derailed the Left’s train in the 80′s with an unexpected resurgence of conservatism (due to the temporary migration of the not-sufficiently-dead Enlightenment ideas over to the Right).

Still in possession of the mantle of American liberalism, the Left in 1980 was confident in its ability to wait out the Reagan effect for a generation, and they did.  As expected, the conservatives ran out of steam (thanks to the logically necessary rise of the religious wing of conservatism), and by 2008, the Left was ready to pick right up where they left off.

But something’s gone wrong.  Those pesky Enlightenment ideals, mangled as they are by 40 years of identification with conservatism, still won’t die!  They are still breathing, as the rise of the Tea Parties and Ayn Rand’s rising profile clearly signal.

And last but not least, the mask is falling off; American left-”liberalism” is past its expiry date.  The left is now seen as what they are — socialists — by greater and greater numbers of Americans.  Caught between the false alternative of socialist Left and theocratic Right, millions of Americans are finally smelling the left-right trap and declaring themselves as Independents.

These are all signals that the Left itself is in serious danger of being irretrievably marginalized, and I think they know it.  The Left is reaching the end of its road faster than America is reaching that tipping point.  This wasn’t supposed to happen!

So it should be no wonder that they are going for broke now.  They fear what we hope — that they will run out of gas before America is brought down.  They know that the time for a Hail Mary pass to get us over that tipping point, is now — and success in this regard outweighs the short-term political pain that will follow.

This is the root of the split on the Left regarding the current bill.  Those core Leftists who support it have concluded that they won’t be able to achieve socialized medicine this go-around, and so are hoping that another Cloward-Piven round of mucking up the system with further regulations and mandates will induce the country to demand a full takeover out of frustration.  Others, however, are afraid that this classic pattern may not occur — that the changes in America that I have noted here, will result in a completely different reaction against government control that will marginalize the socialist Left for good.  This faction wants the public option back in *now*.

Which of them is right?  I do not know.  That’s the nature of a crossroads…. it could go either way.  In either case, I don’t believe that times in America have ever been as interesting as they are now, in my lifetime.

Adventures in Activism: A True Story of Protest, Arrest, and Release

The Greenville News — Corrupt from Core to Top

The next time some conservative invokes state’s rights or some other such variant of “locality of government power” as a check against government power, slap him (or her) with this one.

Via Diana.

Yes, the policies Obama wants to pass are likely worse than what McCain would have done (though certainly not the gaping differences that many conservatives would have us believe). The tradeoff involved with the risk of such policies being passed, however, is that even if you grant that McCain’s less socialistic version of health-care reform (for example) would have done less damage in the short term than Obama’s, McCain’s would likely have passed.

It would have been sufficiently watered-down to avoid generating much of any reaction; the moderate conservatives would be useless as any sort of check on things, because it’s “their guy”.  And what serious Leftist would oppose a Republican doing their work for them, even if it isn’t moving as fast as they’d like?  Moreover, McCain’s statist policies would have helped add to the ossified dead weight of entitlements that weigh this country down, as did Bush with Medicare Part D.

Electing McCain would have worked as the political equivalent of the bailouts: deferring risk now, at the expense of greater risk later.  What mandate Obama received in 2008 is nothing compared to the bottled-up landslide we’d have seen in 2012 after four more years of Republican rule.

But since it’s Obama, the story is completely different. Where McCain would have kept the water muddied, Obama clarifies it. Where McCain would have maintained the status quo of ordinary partisanship, Obama’s explicit Leftism has energized the Left’s actual opposition: not conservatives per se, but Americans — individuals asserting a modicum of moral sovereignty. Obama clarifies and energizes a truly *American* opposition, one defined along the correct lines of individualism versus collectivism, instead of the meaningless one of left vs. right.

This is why the Obama presidency, despite its clearly greater downside risk compared to McCain in the policies that he seeks to implement, nonetheless has an upside for which there was no chance with McCain: that little or nothing gets done during his administration, the best possible political outcome available for this four year term.

Obama is playing for much more than McCain would have — but unlike McCain, Obama stands to lose it *all*.

And that’s the nub of it right there.   For the supporters of freedom, voting for Obama was an act of doubling down on America — a willingness to risk electing the most statist candidate yet seen in this country, to bet on the rise of a genuinely American opposition (as opposed to merely conservative), one strong enough to defeat him.

By contrast, a McCain vote amounted to nothing more than an “insurance bet“.  It’s the move you make when you expect to lose, and seek to cut your losses.

The bet is not yet won. However, as uncertain as I am for their long-term prospects (in particular the likelihood of their being eventually co-opted by conservatism), the Tea Parties have already exceeded my highest initial expectations, in terms of both duration, and in resisting co-option by the usual suspects on the Right (though these particular expectations were quite low). I and others remain cautiously optimistic.

Against that backdrop, now observe how a Leftist builds upon the mainstreaming of the defanged view of the Ninth and Tenth Amendment in coining a new epithet: “tenthers”, which is a classic smear of the principled view as being on a level with 9/11 “truthers” :

More important, there is something fundamentally authoritarian about the tenther constitution. Social Security, Medicare, and health-care reform are all wildly popular, yet the tenther constitution would shackle our democracy and forbid Congress from enacting the same policies that the American people elected them to advance. After years of raging against mythical judges who “legislate from the bench,” tenther conservatives now demand a constitution that will not let anyone legislate at all.

The author, Ian Millhiser, is telling us, with a straight face, that a clause which restricts State authority, is “fundamentally authoritarian“.  Earth to Millhiser: “shackling our democracy” was literally the precise and exact point of the entire Constitution.  Millhiser has just told us that the Founders were authoritarians.

This, I submit, is obviously insane, and conservatives will simply dismiss it as the usual Leftist insanity.  But they evade the real point here in doing so.

What IS the point, is that Millhiser is in fact correct in describing the principled view of the Tenth Amendment as “fringe”.   This Orwellian insanity is mainstream — the “American Prospect” is hardly fringe, and neither is The New Republic, who echoes their dismissal of the principled view as “mad ravings” (!)

What sets the stage for Millhiser’s bold-faced contradiction?  What — or who — is responsible for the “fringe” status of the so-called “tenther” (principled) view?

You get one guess.  Without this marginalization of the principled view by pragmatists, it would be Millhiser and his insanity which would be on the fringe.

The left-right synergy of the insanestream marches on.

Among those seven votes supporting ACORN was junior New York senator Kirsten Gillebrand:

“While Senator Gillibrand finds the actions of certain ACORN employees to be reprehensible and will ask ACORN leaders for a full investigation and plan to prevent any further abuse, the truth remains that thousands of New York families who are facing foreclosure depend on charitable organizations like ACORN for assistance.”

As always, altruism is the great whitewash, the ultimate shield for evil of any size.  “But they help people!” is the whine of ACORN’s apologists everywhere.  This isn’t new.

The real story here is the wider pattern of which ACORN is merely a small part: how altruism deters and disarms our culture’s moral immune system.

Observe, for example, the mainstream media, who have been pilloried again and again in the conservative blogosphere for ignoring this story.  It’s easy to see this as mere MSM leftward bias, and that undoubtedly exists… but the political aspect is a mere surface manifestation of a much deeper problem: the altruist bias of the entire culture.

It is not only politics which steers most reporters clear of targets like ACORN; as altruists themselves, they are reluctant to sink to such depths of “cynicism” as to question the motives of those who are “just trying to help people”.  Altruism makes even the hardest heads go soft.

As for those few with sufficient integrity to forge ahead, there is the derision and ostracism to be expected from their altruistic colleagues, and from altruistic readers, even should they turn out to be right (let alone if they turn out to be even slightly wrong.)

I have every reason to believe that Charles Gibson of ABC really did have no knowledge of the story; he didn’t dare look, lest he see. Who’s an altruist going to believe — ACORN, or his lying eyes?

Journalists are supposed to be the eyes and ears of a free society; what good are they when they refuse to see or listen?

Many are aghast at the willingness of how comfortable the ACORN workers were with the idea of aiding and abetting the “pimp and prostitute”.  Much has been made of the idea that the workers just went along with it all as if this was something they did every day…  but what I saw was the openness of those who see little or no risk in what they are doing.

Even the fact of ACORN’s demise is problematic; they were only brought down because of their political ideology.  That gave their conservative enemies the “get-out-of-altruism-free card” they needed to dismiss ACORN’s altruistic activity as merely a front to hide their real agenda.

What they certainly do not grasp is that this is the entire point of altruism — to provide moral cover and justification for immorality.  Altruism works very well for this purpose, because that IS it’s purpose.  That’s what it is for.

It is a dead certainty that there are hundreds and thousands of organizations and individuals like ACORN, that mainstream media is equally reluctant to question  — not only Leftist ones, but religious conservative ones too, all of them relying on altruism as a weapon to disarm their victims, and as a shield to deter suspicion.  Even the most cynical of potential investigators will see their resolve weaken, even when in possession of substantial evidence(or even proof) of wrongdoing, when faced with an individual or organization that is well cloaked in the mantle of altruism.

Other ACORN-like groups might take the warning, but few will bother, or need they… in particular the non-partisan ones that lack the political vulnerability.  The gap ACORN leaves behind will be quickly filled by others, now forewarned, while the media continues to not look, and not see.

O’Keefe and Giles have indeed whacked themselves a big altruist mole, but unfortunately that’s all they did.

In it, Paulhus attempts to claim that the stories of misery in Canada are emanating primarily from Alberta and Ontario, where there are smidgeons of private health care being permitted for the moment — so therefore, those little smidgeons of private health care must be the root of the problems there!

While Mr. Paulhus catches up on his basic logic skills, the rest of us can dig into the facts he’s evading.

But first, let us give him some credit: by trying to tell us that Ontario and Alberta don’t count anymore, he nonethless admits thereby that things really aren’t all candy-stripers and balloons in the Great White North.  Instead of telling us how nice the system is in Canada, now it’s all about how great things are in Saskatchewan!

As I am familiar with this playing field, this moving of the goalposts by Paulhus will avail him no good.  The facts on the ground must be pretty bad in Alberta and Ontario for the Canadian socialists to be chewing their own legs off in the trap like that.  Of course, what Paulhus fails to note for our non-Canadian audience is that Ontario and Alberta together contain half or so of the population.  Those are big legs.

The stories like this that I know of through personal connections and direct experience all predate the advent of that smidgeon of private medicine that is currently permitted in Ontario.  This privatization was undoubtedly prompted by the Chaoulli case in Quebec that I noted earlier; that case is only binding in Quebec at present, and yet Ontario and Alberta have since found it necessary to permit that smidgeon to order to alleviate the ongoing slow collapse (and likely Chaoulli-inspired legal consequences) of the system. This failure has been long in coming, and was thoroughly manifest long before the privatization; the latter is obviously  a *response* to the crisis, not its cause.

(I’d be interested in knowing more about what is going on in Quebec, where Chaoulli has legal force. That Paulhus fails to mention it makes it a good bet that Quebec also breaks his narrative to some extent.)

But wait, there’s more! (with apologies to Billy Mays, RIP): the “transfer payment” subsidy.

These payments are part of an interprovincial welfare program, which the federal government uses to redistribute tax wealth from the “have” provinces to the “have-not” ones. You can bet that Alberta (oil) and Ontario (manufacturing base) are “have” provinces… while Saskatchewan, the birthplace of Canadian socialism, has long been a “have-not”.

The extent to which things are medically “better” in Saskatchewan is the extent to which their system is subsidized — by Alberta and Ontario. Paulhus and his ilk are no better than those Easterners in the early ’80′s who crowed about the National Energy Program and the low gas prices it brought about… while carefully failing to look too deeply into what that cheap gas was costing Albertans.

UPDATE: well, I’d almost have lost that bet; Saskatchewan has been a relatively small net recipient of transfer payments of late, and won’t even qualify for any in 2009-2010.  Ontario and Alberta, however, remain the net losers in this deal.

Recently, Stephen Hawking made this error when he said that “he would not be alive if it weren’t for NHS”; he does not account for what would have existed in its place: the superior medical facilities that would have existed in the unseen free market.

The irony of all this is that despite Mr. Hawking’s protestations, the fact remains that one of the things that was very nearly “unseen” by the NHS was in fact Dr. Hawking himself.

(Via Billy Beck)

Whether they meant to do it or not, this “cleansing” of the children’s book market in favor of books printed after 1985, will do the same for the ideas printed after that date.

Note in particular this comment from the linked article at The Atlantic:

Burning or banning books is one of the worst things that can happen in an open society. But in this case it is not the CONTENT of the books that is being restricted, but the potentially dangerous materials that were used to create the books.

The following simply could not be more apt:

You don’t want some recalcitrant hacks to come out with treatises that will wreck our entire program, do you? If you breathe the word “censorship” now, they’ll all scream bloody murder… But if you leave the spirit alone and make it a simple material issue – not a matter of ideas, but just a matter of paper, ink and printing presses… [y]ou’ll make sure make sure that nothing dangerous gets printed or heard – and nobody is going to fight over a material issue.

– Dr. Floyd Ferris discussing Directive 10-289, from Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”.

This passage was already close to the mark vis-a-vis McCain-Feingold (“Money is not speech”); it’s nearly literal in this case.