Tuesday, October 28, 2014

My Acquaintance With Charlie Crist

It was 1998, back when I was still active in politics, a neo-con having worked on the campaigns of a generally libertarian city mayor.  I would eventually repent of my neo-con ways but that was still a few years off.  But it was then that I had the chance to shake hands with and speak with Charlie Crist, this year's Democratic party nominee for Florida Governor.

He was running for Senate against Bob Graham, another Democrat.  Crist was a Republican back then, and seemed an attractive candidate from a certain neo-con's point of view.  That was because like most neo-cons, he didn't shy away from a little "the ends justifies the means".  He was known as "chain-gang" Charlie back then because he didn't mind the ethical questions surrounding using convicted criminals for cheap forced labor, even it did cost some law abiding citizens job opportunities.  After all it struck a popular chord with voters at a time when Republicans needed as many conservative Democrats to come their way as possible in a Southern state like Florida.

I had reason to hope he'd be one of our champions, so when he attended a Republican County Executive Committee meeting, I was eager to talk to him.

As the meeting ended he stood almost alone in the back, and so my eagerness was mixed with considerable disappointment in my fellow Republicans.  They had given up on beating Graham and didn't want to waste any money or effort trying to help Crist.  I on the other hand had a bit of a grudge against Graham ever since he refused to condemn the Nicaraguan Sandinistas for their massacre of the Mosquito Indians (It was an issue I later regretted not suggesting Crist run with).  So I wanted anybody to beat Graham, and Crist seemed a pretty good anybody at the time.

 I shook his hand and introduced myself.  He seemed generally likable but there was something I couldn't exactly place that was odd.  His hand-shake was neither firm nor soft, though perhaps a little soft, but I wanted it so much to be firm.  I wanted him to be the man who could beat Bob Graham, and I did what I could to help his campaign, but unlike the Forbes, Dole, and various mayoral campaigns I had worked on before, there wasn't much for me to do other than stick a bumper-sticker on my bumper and watch him lose.

I supported him for Governor the time he won, and excused his pie in the sky proposals such as paying all teachers six figure salaries, and keeping homeowner's insurance affordable even in major flood zones.  I was still a neo-con, and I thought he was just setting goals so lofty as to be impossible so he could say they were his, and thus disarm liberals.  It was a classic neo-con tactic on steroids.  Where as Bush would actually attempt to take over traditionally perceived as liberal issues and actually try to solve them, Crist would simply make a promise in the same area that no one would fault him for not keeping because of its amazing scale.  Crist's tactic seemed to have the beauty of being able to disarm the left without actually doing anything.

But as his time as governor approached its close, a reality began to settle in with me.  Crist didn't realize what he was doing.  He actually thought his goals were achievable and set out in earnest to do just that.  The six figure salary for every teacher had nowhere to go in reality so no harm there, but his insistence on keeping homeowner's insurance rates down in major risk areas chased away private insurers and put the Florida sponsored substitute in financial jeopardy.  Florida was and may still be just two major hurricanes away from the state government becoming insolvent.  The clever neo-con take on Crist was no longer working for me and I had to start accepting that he was just incompetent at anything other than politics.

As time for him to run for re-election neared I was ready to hold my nose and pull the lever for him, but then came the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back  He essentially declared that more could be done for Florida in the US Senate than could be achieved by its own state Governor.  In other words he embraced one of the biggest things wrong in the country, the accumulation of power in Washington at the expense of local government.  And, knowing his general lack of thought on such matters, even if he just didn't realize what he was saying, the enormity of ignorance that must accompany anyone who could actually be a state governor and think he could achieve more as a US senator is tough to fathom.

Charlie Crist has no legitimate place anywhere near a governor's office, and heaven help us if he should ever manage to move beyond that.  I so dearly hope Floridians have the wisdom not to put this man back in the governor's office.  Not even my old neo-con self could support him over just about any other Democrat.  now that I have repented of my ways and become a libertarian I would encourage my fellow libertarians to not let this become a time to make a statement by being part of the 2% or so that vote for the libertarian.  Stopping this politically well packaged incompetent from advancing his career closer to national leadership where he could make Obama look immensely competent by comparison, it's just too important.

I know, you've grown tired of being told you should vote Republican because the Democrat is so much worse, but in this case, it may just be the only time it was true.  Check what I believe in.  Read my other blog posts.  I believe this is that one time if there ever was one.  Hold your nose or whatever you have to do and vote for Rick Scott.  It could be the most important vote you ever cast, for the entire country, yes even history.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

This Dyslexic's View Of Individual Liberty And Dignity

Dyslexia was my handicap in my youth but once I overcame it through sheer hard work, dyslexia has become a gift to me.  Because, unlike so many others, I never actually ridded myself of it, I constantly see the opposite sides of everything I think about, and seeing this I see connections that others miss.  You see that's what my form of dyslexia is, a mind that must see addition and subtraction at the same time, or any other set of opposites, and thus must answer two questions for every one that is posed, but more importantly must see the two answers as part of the same thing.

Now I'm familiar with the common conclusions people jump to when I describe this, and no, I'm not saying I merely see what opposite sides of a cause have in common.  One wouldn't need a different mental wiring to see that.  What I see is the actual toggle, so to speak, or I could say the hinge the sides turn on, and their connection to that hinge is frequently quite enlightening.

Some opposites, like many philosophers have claimed through the millenia, need each other, but that's not true of all of them.  The Jedeo-Christian God for example has absolutely no need of the devil.  In fact they simply aren't opposites at all.  Other apparent opposites on the other hand are inseparable.  We human's are apt to mix these things up, and to our determent.

Here are some proverbs, so to speak, that have grown out of my brain's unusual wiring.

1: A child can't really learn to share until they first know what it means to own something and not share it.
-- You can't share what isn't yours to share, and you also aren't really sharing something if you're being forced to.
-- The option not to share must be real, or their can never be a choice to share and thus can never be true sharing.
-- It's more important to teach a child ownership than sharing, if you must teach only one, since the latter is impossible without the former.

2: Show me a truly greedy man and I'll show you someone who doesn't understand ownership.
-- If you own something, you care about it and you want others to respect your property.  If you want others to respect your property you understand how others will want the same for their property.  While it's possible someone may be so self-centered that they don't see the relationship between respecting others' property and the respect they want for there own, this level of self-centeredness borders on being a sociopath.  Yes, it's that unlikely.  The more likely cause by far is they never came to see anything as actually being anyone's property, including their own.  They're greed is that of someone wanting to dominate a buffet.  They have an irrational insecurity, most likely the result of parenting that failed to teach them a sense of ownership, and so they strive irrationally to get things before others do.
-- The absolute best government policies for countering greed is to protect and respect property rights, nothing less.

3: You can't have non-violence or even life without violence.
-- Violence is an inescapable part of life.  It's how organisms sustain themselves.  Even photosynthesis involves a violent bombardment by the Sun of the Earth.  Instead of teaching a child non-violence only we should teach them the difference between appropriate and inappropriate uses of violence.  The anti-spanking movement is raising generations of people who simply can't cope with reality.  It's only through a massive co-enabling that these unfortunate victims of warped child-raising are able to avoid becoming quivering balls of disturbed confusion the first time they're confronted with a situation requiring violence.  And as for those who still become violent in sheer nature, they lack any guidance that might tend to limit the degree of of their sociopathic behavior.
-- Show a child that tends towards violence what appropriate violence is and you show them a path to being a functional part of society.  Show a child that doesn't tend towards violence the same thing and you prepare them for those inevitable moments in life that might otherwise destroy them.
-- There is nothing nurturing about teaching zero tolerance of violence.

4: The individualist will usually be less selfish than the collectivist.
-- If you don't fully appreciate the value of your own individual dignity, liberty, or aspirations then you'll ignore those things in the lives of others as well.  It is easy to convince yourself that the greater good just so happens to work in your favor as you proceed to be very selfish.  On the other hand,  if you first appreciate and value your own liberty and dignity, it is relatively difficult to convince yourself that you are being less than selfish when the pursuit of your benefit runs over someone else's individual liberty or dignity.
-- I think this is one of the most difficult of the proverbs to grasp.  It's just seems to make so much sense that if we emphasize groups over individuals, we are being unselfish.  We miss the logical subtlety that groups verses individuals is not the same as others verses self.  We miss that others are individuals just as we ourselves are, and thus there is no equivalent relationship to groups and individuals.  We only understand others by understanding ourselves.
-- Once one grasps this important distinction between groups and others one will also begin to see why social justice is such a wrong concept, and how much harm it does.

5: Humility leads to greater command of one's talents as well as command of one's immediate environment.
-- A humble person sees both what things can be done and which of those things will be most advantageous to do.  Over time humble people will be more effective in their endeavors than those who are not humble.

6: Humility can maximize confidence.
-- Knowing one's limits teaches the full extent of one's capabilities, and knowing that makes one confident in what they do.  To know if someone is humble, you need to get to know them. A humble person could come off as cocky because they will tend to be confident.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

No Thanks To Them Abideth

Government is a limited tool.  I could almost stop with just those five words and have said as much as any writer would normally with pages of words.  But I need to at least explain some to be clear.

I'm an individualist which makes me largely a libertarian but at the same time requires me to appreciate a legitimate role for government in civilization.  Without enough government oppressive thugs and inconsiderate fools come to dominate everyone's lives.  And a world dominated by oppressors and/or full of hazards created by fools is definitely not a world that most individuals are likely to thrive in.  I think this is pretty much self-evident reasoning.

Where things become less clear is the point at which there is too much government.  In other words, at what point does government become the oppressive thugs and inconsiderate fools?  Here lies the debate of our age.  There is a growing trend for more and more people around the world to conclude their government has moved beyond the point of keeping the thugs at bay and the fools under control, and has actually become the thugs and the fools that need stopped.  At this point anarchy almost seems preferable since at least in anarchy there are no laws prohibiting resistance.

The problem for the individualist is that there is no right choice between an oppressive/foolish government and anarchy.  Both severely limit and otherwise attack the dignity of the individual.

The only right choice is less government but not the end of government.  Government must be used for what it is for and nothing else, and that means that not only must government's physical size be limited but its very definition must be minimized.  

And there should be no fretting about this.  Humankind have long recognized that government always inevitably disappoints us whenever we have expected more of it than just the bare minimal task of keeping a bare semblance of order and safety.  Martin Luther wrote in his time about this disappointment with the following lines in a hymn,

"The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.

That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth;"


Most big things, even those smaller than vanquishing evil in the world should never be trusted into the hands of government.  Keeping criminals and inconsiderate fools from ruining life for the rest of us is the only big thing government is meant for.  And for that task it is the right tool for the right job, but no other.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

The Three States Of Deity

I've grown bored with debates between atheists and theists.  More and more they seem like watching cats play with balls on a billiard table.  They have no idea what the table is for but the balls are fun to knock around.  And if one of the balls actually gets knocked into a hole, like it should be, from the cat's point of view the fun is diminished.

That's my way of saying the debates miss the point and those participating in them seem to actually be determined to keep missing.  The point you see is one where a decision must be made at the core of our being.  It's a place where both reason and emotions must merely stand at the door.  Only the heart can go in.

The debaters also talk past each other.  That is they operate with incompatible definitions.  But considering the point they seem determined to miss, this makes sense.  If they found definitions of key terms like "god" that they both agreed on the debate would be over, rendered moot.  At least if they found definitions I could agree on.

You see once one starts to debate the existence of something that is bigger than the universe, transcends the universe, and is at the same time omnipresent in the universe, certain standard logical relationships turn inside out and outside in at the same time, that is as they relate any postulated existence of such a god.

"Can God make a rock so big he cannot move it?" is a question intended to point out a logical flaw in the idea of omnipotence, but instead illustrates how the positing of an omnipotent god requires a special logic in order for logic to be relevant to the subject.  And I for one believe logic must be relevant, so thus it needs special rules that account for the posited god.  God isn't the question but the given, for if the god were the question the answer would be impossible to reach either in the positive or negative.  For if the posited god exists the rules of logic must be modified to account for that god, and if the posited god does not exist, the logical quandary proves nothing other than maybe that someone's god is the current rules of logic without any modification.  And there lies the rub as they say.

I would suggest that there are three states of deity, or I could say three ways that a god exists, all of which are pretty much beyond rational debate.  They're beyond debate because they are definitions of godhood, and any debate over definitions is outside empiricism, generally though practical perhaps, they are still subjective.

One of the key points about these states is that each one by itself makes something or someone a god.

The Three States Of Deity
(1) Perceptual
(2) Practical
(3) Independent

Perceptual State
If someone sees something as a god then whatever that is, it is a god.  Even if everyone else in the world insists whatever it is isn't a god it is still a god to the person who perceives it as such, and the relationship to the individual is all that matters for godhood.  Unless or until their perception changes, that god exists.

Practical State
Many people defer to and/or revere someone or something almost completely without question.  This makes whoever or whatever that is a god.  Even if one is an atheists and insists there are no gods, if their deference to something goes almost completely without question, they have a god on their hands.  This god is one by practice or i.e in the practical state of deity.

Independent State
Now if someone actually is a god then they are such whether anyone perceives them as such or if anyone treats them as such.  Thus all three of these states of deity can constitute a deity independently.

And so what's the point of these states?  It is that whether we care to admit it or not, gods exist.  The only question left for us to debate is do some of them or at least does one of them matter.  Or perhaps more to the point is why has it always mattered to human beings?  Is the god question just a chemical fluke of genetic origins that wastes our time?  Is it an early state of an advanced trait we have yet to fully evolve?  Is it a residue of a more oppressively collective past, or as I have come to believe, a universal awareness of the ultimate champion of us as individuals?  That would be the God of the universe who created us.