But The Real Problem Is …

Ever try to advocate for a cause. I have, two of them, education and tax reform. You may have done for other causes. There are many fine one's out there, but as varied as they may be there seems to be one common drag on all of them, the guy or gal who insists everyone else is focused on the wrong root problem.

Here are some of my favorite tunes from the “but the real problem is ...” hit parade.

“Obama is a Muslim.”

“Obama wasn't born here.”

“Obama is a communist.”

“Obama wants to cut this country down to size.”

That's part of what I call the “Obama collection”, but there are others. Here are some from what I call the “don't fight fate collection”.

“God is punishing us for our lack of respect for human life.”

“All great nations fall, usually within two to three hundred years, so our time has come.”

“All governments follow a predictable pattern of inevitable decay, so revolution is just around the corner. Time for a reset.”

And last but not least of my mentions, the “everything's gone to you know where” collection.

“The Republicans are just as bad as the Democrats. They're all corrupt.”

“Every politician lies.”

“Big corporations own them all anyway.”

“We're not getting out of this mess. All is lost.”

Now allow me to address each category with why everyone shouldn't just stop everything their doing and refocus their efforts because of whatever.

The Obama Collection

It doesn't matter if Obama is a space alien who wants to saute our children in butter and feed them to us. What matters is he's president right now and there's an election coming up in which we have a chance to vote him out. If we do, he will go. If we don't he will stay, and the parts of his agenda that he makes public are devastating enough without us digging into his motivations for doing it. He must go, and whether Joe the commenter can convince us he's a foreign born Muslim-Communist with a vendetta against the United States isn't going to matter either way.

The only way knowing what Obama's ultimate motivations are will be useful is if we have to deal with him in a second term. Let's just not go there, shall we?

The Don't Fight Fate Collection

My response to this group is, I believe, simple and very to the point. If what they say is true, why are they even around talking to us. They should be off hiding in a hole or building their post apocalyptic fort in the woods, not wasting the time of people who actually want to fix what we've got. If you think it can't be fixed, fine, but leave those of us who think it can be fixed alone. We're obviously not prime recruiting territory for you. Even if you're right and the collapse is inevitable, do you actually think the people who manage to pick up the pieces are going to be people like you who sit around and say things can't be done? “We're toast” are not the words of true survivors.

The Everything's Gone To You Know Where Collection

This group is the most interesting to me. Some of them are libertarians who can't stomach the thought that either political party might be useful in achieving their ends. Others, I believe, are clever Democrats who realize such statements work to discourage conservatives more than they do liberals.

First off, liberals are fine with the ends justifying the means, so a lying politician and an effective politician are often one in the same to them. Liberals also see union thuggery as an appropriate response to corporate greed so politicians being in the back pockets of either corporations or unions is just the way the war is fought. And finally, an inevitable doomsday is the perfect justification for the kinds of radical changes the liberals dream of, so the more people believe we are doomed, the better for them.

Now there is a third group who contribute to this collection. They are neither liberals nor snooty libertarians who can't be seen associating with Republicans. They are actually two groups, the depressives and the dupes. The depressives hate to see anyone with hope or reason to be happy. The dupes see some element of good character in their mass condemnations, respect for human life, high moral standards that probably can't be met, or realism, but they don't realize their arguments are out of kilter and only help the wrong people.

Now For What I Didn't Say

I'd hate for anyone to get me wrong here. I'm not saying Obama's Marxist leanings aren't alarming, or that the games he's played with his birth certificate aren't suspicious. I'm not saying abortion isn't a huge moral problem. I'm not saying governments don't become corrupt or that the problems our current government has put us in aren't huge. And, I am most definitely not saying the Republican party is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and that it hasn't participated heavily in getting us into our current mess.

What I am saying is, like it or not, this two party system is what we've got to work with. After our problems jumped up and smacked us all in the face in 2008 both parties were clearly to blame. One party, the Republicans, got punished because it was perceived as the party in power at the time. The Democrats got control of all branches of government and proceeded to blame the Republicans for everything. They clearly didn't get it and based on how they continue to blame the Republicans for everything, it's clear they still don't get it. The only glimmer of hope in this two party system is the Tea Party reformation taking place within the Republican party.

Our choice in the near future is clear. We can vote for the party that clearly has yet to get it, the Democrats, or we can vote for the party that's starting to get it, the Republicans. Some people will say, “but I don't vote party, I vote for the person”. Fine, you do that then. Just make sure that person isn't actively cooperating with a political party that doesn't get it and may never. And oh yes, for the Johnson voters out there, I respect your convictions, but I don't think we can afford four more years of Obama in the White House. I'd rather tolerate Romney's iffy stances on gun rights than Obama's hostility towards them any day. Ideological purity is a fantasy, and unfortunately we don't live in one.

The only "real problems" worth our immediate attention are the ones we can do something about in the near future.  November can't come soon enough.

Advice About Non-fiction In Fantasy Fiction

(Yes, that "novelist conscience" part of my description does in fact mean something.  I wont always expound on political, social, and religious issues here.  Some times I'll be so kind as to share with you what I do for my clients.  Benefit from it if you will.  Here's your first chance.)

Fantasy fiction is a great place to discuss real issues, in fact that's why many of my clients write it. The typical reader's real life is just way too full of immediate every day concerns to be easily coaxed into thinking about other things, but if you make one of those other things part of the background of a fun fantasy story, you've got them. Thanks to the Harry Potter sequence, as an example (not one of my clients, I should clarify), millions of people have now thought a lot about the consequences of being an orphan raised by an aunt and uncle. While not all orphans raised by aunts and uncles are integral parts of major power struggles, they all still have potential issues that no doubt matter a great deal to them, and J. K. Rowling has likely already made a positive difference in at least a few lives just because of that choice of character background.

An example from one of my clients is a story idea he has temporarily shelved, where a fourteen year old boy is being treated chemically for mood swings related to his parents' divorce. That's the background. The fantasy story is that these drugs he's on have a side effect that causes him to wander into magically powerful peoples' minds when he sleeps, where he is the helpless observer of what they do and think. Like the Harry Potter sequence, this novel would draw readers with the fantasy elements and the issue of chemically treating children for various things would be that added bonus that might not otherwise have received as much thought. If he ever does pick this one up again, and if he follows the rest of my advice below, he'll have a good chance to positively impact the lives of children around the world and across the ages.

No Ax-grinding

Here's what Rowling didn't do and my client must not do as well, with any of his works. No ax-grinding.

If we measure the success of good fiction entirely by its current readership we could find many examples of successful ax-grinders. Many science fiction writers do it all the time, going out of their way for example to say religion is a thing of the past in their stories. They're grinding their ax against organized religion and seem to be getting away with it. That is if the standard is only current readership.

What they're actually doing is betting their legacies on their predictions of the future. If 2412 rolls along and most of the people in the world's most powerful country are still believers in some god, any god, the works of these 20^th century authors will be almost assuredly irrelevant and long forgotten. And, while that is generally true of most centuries old works of fiction, it's not true of the great ones, and that's what good fiction writers should be aiming for, long legacies that span multiple centuries. As far as I'm concerned, if you're target audience is only the current living population, you don't need me. You can freely write whatever junk will sell, and more power to you for that's an impressive talent in itself, but money can't buy you self-respect. It also can't buy you a legacy that truly has a part of you in it, a name on a building perhaps, but not a piece of you.

The more obvious problem with ax-grinding is it turns off potential readers right now. A successful writer will come to know fairly specifically who their readers are, and it's tempting to take chances offending what they assume to be their non-readers. Many science fiction authors for example can't imagine many religious people liking science fiction, so making fun of people who believe in a deity seems safe to them. Many of these writers might be surprised if they knew just how many science fiction fans go to church or attend attend synagogue. Many such fans tell me they simply forgive such a writer if his story is good enough, but that forgiveness still comes with a price. Their standard for that writer keeping their interest is raised, and even worse for the author's cause, the reader's a lot less likely to recommend the book to someone else, even if the story was pretty good. Word of mouth is huge in this business. Ax-grinding, no matter what your favorite ax may be, is a drag both on your book's market success and on your legacy.

Avoid direct politics : Keep time in perspective :

This final bit of advice should probably been placed up front. If I'd done that everyone who even glanced at this post would have come away with the crowned jewel of legacy building in fiction writing. Of course I couldn't place that up front, since I don't want mere glancers to get this. Here it is, and I wont even highlight in any way like has become my style to do everywhere else. Just for the actual readers, this jewel is. A good piece of fiction has a longer life span than politicians and their political causes, so don't tie your fiction to either. To do so is like chaining yourself to an anchor. It will go down eventually and when it does, so will the relevance of your work. God didn't create story tellers so they could get co-opted by mere politicians.

An artist's snobbish bluster you might say? Well consider this. I'll name two people from history and you tell me which one has effected the most people across the years, Alexander the Great or Homer? Let me name another pair, Elizabeth I or Shakespeare? There is no arguing that Alexander and Elizabeth didn't have huge impacts on human history, but the influence of Homer and Shakespeare continues very directly even to this day and transcends them. These authors of fiction influence us even when we don't fully realize it. Thanks to Homer, people around the world have a greater appreciation for balance in their lives than they would have without his works. Thanks to Shakespeare millions of people today, not counting all those who've lived before us, know of the internal torment that comes from “having blood on your hands”. I could go on and will, a tad anyways.

I would be amiss if I didn't add the example of Robert the Bruce and Robert Burns. One liberated Scotland from English tyranny, the other reminded us of the mess we make of our lives when we “practice to deceive”, and Burns even put the inspiring words in Bruce's mouth at the battle of Bannockburn in his poem by the same name. Here are some of my favorites,

“By Oppression's woes and pains! 

By your sons in servile chains!

We will drain our dearest veins,

But they shall be free!”

Not all writer's works live on to shape future thoughts, but by comparison no world leader's legacy does at all. When we set out to tell stories we should realize the gravity of our art. It is nothing small and we should never lower it to the level of nations and their leaders. Our stories speak to them, and they only speak to our stories when they themselves tell stories.

The Internet : Revisiting The Tower Of Babel

[Whether one believes the story of the Tower actually happened or not, it's existence tells us the ancients knew something many of us only recently re-discovered.]

A good friend of mine was one the pioneers of modern computing. Not one anyone would likely recognize, since his role was to computer age pioneering as that of a typical homesteader to pioneering in the old west. While Bill Gates was chasing down the details of dos and Steve Jobs was toiling with his friends in a garage, my friend was literally playing with IBM's prototype personal computer. That was the late 70's. In the early 80's he was very possibly the first psychology major at his college to secure official access to the college's computer lab. There he loved to challenge programmers to write more and more complex programs, while hacking into a few himself to see what chimera he could create by cutting out some pieces, modifying others, and combining multiple programs together. Other than a few good careers, nothing huge came of all of that, other than one thing I find quite interesting, an insight.

Besides being a psychology major and strong history minor, he is also a masters level biblical scholar, a man after my own heart, which gave him what I'd call a trans-historical perspective on our age. He saw the things that were happening in perspective of the full span of human history much more so than others. So when he saw the internet develop from a Department of Defense data sharing system into a private sector revolution he wondered about something others didn't, though perhaps should. Was the Tower of Babel “curse” about to be lifted?

The Story Of The Tower

For those less familiar with the Biblical story, it basically says that Noah's early descendents came under the leadership of a man named Nimrod, who directed them to build a tower into the heavens. The exact purpose of the tower is debated but it seemed to my friend to be Nimrod's attempt to reach God on his own terms, possibly even to make his own demands of him. In other words, hubris to the nth degree. Nimrod was the ultimate example of a powerful central government without limitations.

He notes that the authors of the story came from a culture and time that didn't use the words we translate as “heaven” to mean something as general as we use “heaven” for. For them it meant specifically the space between earth's sky and the stars. Yes, interestingly enough the ancients conceived of space, and this tower then was very possibly intended to grant access into this space, something described in other ancient writings as the sea beyond the sky, across which one might travel to the stars.

I know, some may be thinking this is crazy talk and/or a set up for some New Age nonsense, but don't panic. I'm not going there and nor does my friend ever intend to go there. The fact that the ancients conceived of a sea between our atmosphere and the stars may seem to shake up the typical chronocentric perspective of ancient peoples, but it most certainly does not mean the ancients were space travelers or anything even more far fetched. It's just a testament to the power of human deduction, that even without telescopes, rockets, and satellites, there are enough facts to be observed with the human eye to figure out there's an altitude beyond which the atmosphere ends and something else begins, and that these stars and planets we observe are in fact both very distant and very large.

Now back to the internet and the Tower of Babel.

In the Biblical story God sees what Nimrod's followers are doing as bad. He seems to use the 'absolute power corrupts absolutely' argument and very matter of factly at that. Of course, God is the one sentience in existence that can always safely speak matter of factly. So, citing this argument, He “confuses” their language so they can't understand each other, and scatters them across the Earth.

The Internet

Believing this story to be true, my friend watched the development of the internet with great interest. The internet was about to make it possible for human beings all around the world to communicate pretty much whenever they wanted. Translation programs make spanning the gap between languages almost trivial. Was this the undoing of what God did to the builders of the Tower? If so, what was going to happen when this undoing was done?

The answer he says, “we had it wrong”. Once again chronocentrism, our natural predisposition to assume the simplest of meanings in ancient records, led us to an incorrect conclusion. Language is not the only communication barrier between humans. “Come let us go down and confuse their language so they don't understand each other”, is what the most authoritative English translation says. Note the languages are not just made different, but they are “confused”. And, indeed that is what the internet's coming to apparently unite the world in communication has demonstrated. Even when we speak the same language, confusion runs wild.

Anyone who uses the internet for research should know by now that many are the people who offer answers to questions, authoritative sources on subjects ranging from science, technical matters, literature, and religion, and many of these people are offering severely biased or just completely inaccurate or even false information. There's no way to control the information offered without giving some group of people undue power to control information, and that would pretty much undo the whole point of it.

Most contributors sincerely believe their offerings are sound, but somewhere along their path of learning they may have been misinformed or mislead. Many of these misinformed or mislead contributors are even highly respected members of the the academic community, so simply checking their credentials doesn't cut it either. It seems the more we gather information, the more we see we don't necessarily even know what we thought we knew. More information and more communication seems to mean just more confusion. The internet has come to shine the proverbial light on our confusion and ignorance and revealed to us that we confuse ourselves.

So where do we go from here? Do we abandon the internet as Nimrod's followers abandoned their Tower? Is human progress impossible? Of course not. Human progress is clearly possible as we can look at history and see examples of it, such as technology and the expansion of individual liberty across the ages. The confusion we see on the internet is just a revisiting of an ancient lesson, one that points us to a way forward.

Whether one believes the story of the Tower actually happened or not, it's existence tells us the ancients knew something many of us only recently re-discovered. Collectives, whatever they may be, unlimited democracies, religious organizations, political factions, corporations, or Nimrod and his followers after their language was confused, eventually and inevitably fail due to an inefficiency that grows as their numbers grow. The only ultimate solution to any problem can be achieved though individuals. Thus the way forward is through maximizing individual liberty within the framework of the absolute minimal amount of government as to facilitate it.

Individuals free to make their own decisions drive progress, not governments or any other collective. So as you see, once again, it all comes back to that, the individual.

American Individualism – Yes, Really

We're not the big individualists – Really?

While doing my due diligence in preparation for last week's post, Enemies Of The American Revolution, I came across an article from the Boston Globe that in turn drew from a piece written by Claude S. Fischer, author of the book Made In America and a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He in turn drew heavily from a study done by the International Social Survey Programme. The gist of both Fischer's piece and its legacy piece in the Boston Globe is that Americans aren't more individualistic than any other culture in the western world.

My studies in Political Geography beg to differ with this conclusion, but it's not the conclusion that inspired my response here. It's how the conclusion was drawn. The conclusion depended heavily on two things, an impractical definition of individualism and questions in a survey based largely on that impracticality.

[If the collective of the moment is the group that happens to occupy a sinking ship's life boat, you join them, but apparently not Fischer's understanding of Ralph Waldo Emerson.]

I'll share the questions later, but for now it's important to explain what I mean by an impractical definition of individualism. Fischer defines individualism by quoting Emerson's Self-Reliance (1841) where he wrote, “No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.” “I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. . . . I will do strongly . . . whatever only rejoices me, and the heart appoints.” He then concludes, “Emerson rejected any suggestion that the individual submit him- or herself to the control or even the influence of any group or its traditions.” This definition however has huge problems if we are to take individualism seriously.

Mark Elliot, one of the nation's leading scholars in the area of Soviet Studies, while Professor of History at Asbury University, once explained a similar problem he saw with Nazism. It can't be a true ism if it's defined primarily by what it's against, communism and influences of foreign and extra-cultural origins. For if an ism is defined by what it's against and not by what it's for, it is then essentially controlled by its enemies. This Emersonian definition leaves individualism in just such a state. It makes it reactionary and hardly an ism at all.

Besides making it reactionary, it also makes it impractical, more like a prejudice than an actual functional approach to life and social policy. No rational person would responsibly be an individualist if that's its definition. If the collective of the moment is the group that happens to occupy a sinking ship's life boat, you join them, but apparently not Fischer's understanding of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Fischer's Ralph would go down with the ship as a matter of his individualistic principal, or maybe he would never have gotten on the ship in the first place, for the same irrational principal.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting Fischer has Emerson wrong. It really doesn't matter if he does or not. What matters is he's using a definition of individualism that is irrelevant unless one assumes individualism to be less than rational.

Allow me to provide a definition that respects the intellect and reasoning of those who are individualists.

Individualism*

• a belief that the individual (third person) is more important than any collective, individual (first or second person), ideal, cause, or human (inevitably flawed) understanding of the divine.
• a belief that manifests itself in a high respect for individual liberty and dignity.

Now let's look at some of the questions from the International Social Survey Programme.

Question – “In general, would you say that people should obey the law without exception, or are there exceptional occasions on which people should follow their consciences even if it means breaking the law?”

Result – Americans were the most likely to believe they should obey the law even if the law was wrong, something Fischer believed was antithetical to individualism.

A sound conclusion using the Emersonian definition but not when allowing individualism to be be a true rational ism. Having "a nation of laws, not of men", as is attributed to John Adams, protects the individual from its two greatest threats, unlimited political power in the hands of collectives and other individuals. For laws, once established, are impartial and their restrictive effects can almost always be avoided**, but empowered collectives and individuals can respond to every effort to evade their tyranny. Thus a well thought individualist appreciates the value of laws and how even bad ones can often be better tolerated than people acting solely on their own consciences. In the United States we change or eliminate bad laws, and defying them is an act of absolute last resort. This is precisely for the sake of the individual.

Question – “ Right or wrong should be a matter of personal conscience,”

Result – Only Norwegians were more likely to say this statement is wrong than were Americans. Once again this fit Fischer's conclusion if going by, what I consider to be an impractical and irrelevant definition of individualism. The question of how we determine what is right and what is wrong is an intellectual can of worms, but you can't revere the individual above all human things unless you believe there are in fact things bigger than us all. It is logically consistent with individualism to believe there is a sense of oughtness, yes even perhaps a source, that transcends all of us. What is it otherwise that tells us the individual is important to any degree? Individualism, whether it be Emersonian or Fontaignian depends on a universal sense of oughtness for its very existence. It should be a matter of course that individualists would believe right and wrong is definitely not a matter of personal conscience. We should be free to live by our own understanding of right and wrong, but if that understanding is wrong, we are still wrong.

Question – “People should support their country even if the country is in the wrong,”

Result – Once again Americans were most likely to answer this in a way that supports Fischer's conclusion based on his Emersonian definition of individualism. Another example of Fischer's Ralph going down with a sinking ship in order to avoid joining a collective on a lifeboat, that is individualism as a powerful ruling prejudice but not a true ism.

At the core of any practical individualism, according to our nation's founders, are the rights to life, liberty, and private property, and these rights usually do porly in the absence of civil order. Look at almost any riot and you will see that not only do protections for core individual rights such as life, liberty, and property go away but they are attacked. Property gets stolen, damaged, and destroyed. And individual liberty only exists at the mercy of the mob or at the very least their lack of notice that you have it.

Individualism is incompatible with civil disorder and thus it must make a calculated deal with governance where government is given just enough power to keep relative order and no more if at all possible. The three basic rights of life, liberty, and property are interdependent and inseparable***, and the protection of private property rights is the most common role of government as an effective support of individualism. From this it follows that a government must establish and maintain a jurisdiction over the areas where private property is owned and may come to be owned. That, on the largest scale, is a nation. If a nation loses or has its jurisdiction compromised, it's ability to protect property is also diminished.

It logically follows that even when one's country is in the wrong, it is often preferable to support it than to risk its sovereignty. This isn't just a selfish preference, as much as it may sound that way to some. If forces external to any nation are allowed as a matter of some international policy to compromise its sovereignty, that policy then logically supersedes private property rights. Thus “my country right or wrong” is more than just a nationalist slogan, but a rational individualist one as well.

Question – “Even when there are no children, a married couple should stay together even if they don’t get along”

Result – Emersonian individualism is once again defied by a greater proportion of the Americans polled than those in most other western nations. How can Americans being more loyal to marriage be in any way consistent with them being more individualistic? No need for a long discussion here. It was answered above. Marriage is a legal contract and we are a nation of laws to the benefit of the individual. Also individualism is not selfishism. There are things bigger than all of us and the individual (third person) is one of them.

Question – “a married person having sexual relations with someone other than his or her husband or wife” is “always wrong, almost always wrong, wrong only sometimes, or not wrong at all.”

Result – This is the point when if this were a lecture I'd be noting the yawns from my students and feeling for them. What does the marriage contract say? How do we feel about laws and a sense of oughtness? I think we've got it now.

Conclusion

From a rational point of view individualism is not about ignoring or defying all sources of information, but about considering as many as is reasonable and practical, and then arriving at one's own reasoned conclusions without automatic deference to recognized experts. As much as many in academia may accredit what I call the Emersonian definition as valid, it functions to do little more than try to make individualism rationally and responsibly irrelevant, by circular logic. Of course if you define something in a way that makes it irrelevant it will be irrelevant. It is convenient for its critics that one recognized as a proponent of individualism, one Ralph Waldo Emerson, should offer up such a definition, but well recognized or not, if his definition destroys his own cause, what use is it to a fair discussion with those who don't accept it that definition?

Now I have used Karl Marx's own statements to demonstrate what I believe to be communism's fatal flaws, but if any communist insists as I do about Emerson, that Marx was wrong, I wont pretend his reasoning must live or die by Marx's words. No one is a prisoner to someone else's words, as much as academia tries to make it so.  We all must answer to reality, no matter what words are said or unsaid.

So are Americans typically more individualistic than Europeans? I can't answer that for sure. Perhaps we Americans take what the Bill of Rights have served to guarantee us for granted, perhaps we don't, but there is nothing in this survey to suggest anything other than that many in academic realms don't really understand what individualism is. Students beware!

3PI, Coal And True Compassion

When your mind loses contact with your heart you become a fool

Did you know all the states touching the Appalachian Mountains from Pennsylvania to Tennessee and North Carolina are Obama's “No Job Zone”? Well I didn't until I drove my parents through there this last week. I pride myself as a critical thinker so when I saw the big billboards, mostly in West Virginia, I thought their words were a bit of hyperbole. From the laid off coal worker's point of view there is probably little if any hyperbole on those billboards. For some of them at least, the letters on those signs could not be big enough, at least not until they reached all the way to the White House and crashed down on the president's desk. The most powerful man in the United States didn't just pursue policies that had the side effect of threatening their jobs, he directly targeted their jobs for extinction.

In 2008 Obama said in the context of describing his desired policies toward the use of coal, “If someone wants to build a new coal-fired power plant they can, but it will bankrupt them because they will be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

Apparently many people thought that was just tough talk from a candidate pandering to so-called “green” voters, and once in office he would take a more rational approach to environmental regulations and energy policy, yes even a more humanly sensitive approach. Now that his EPA has started to move ahead with unreasonable carbon dioxide restrictions on power plants that achieve exactly the meaning of Obama's words in 2008, building a coal-fired power plant will bankrupt whoever builds one and, even worse, those plants already in existence will need to be closed.

West Virginia's economy sits on the brink of something far worse than a depression. If the EPA and the president who sent them on this path of destruction aren't stopped, West Virginia could become a ghost state, and Appalachian areas of other states could become ghost regions.

I suppose some “green” people will see this as “environmental justice” and hope the absence of jobs in these places will cause the people to stop living there, and thus remove the human blight from the land, but I must believe these green Grinches have hearts buried somewhere in their beings that they just aren't listening to, and no, their hearts aren't wooden. No human being, being true to themselves, should want what is about to happen to these coal workers.

But I know how people can allow high ideals to separate their minds from their hearts. I've had it happen to me and I can tell you when your mind loses contact with your heart you become a fool, probably the worst kind of fool, a heartless fool. Long story short, I was once a neo-con who believed American workers losing their jobs to foreign workers was a “good in the long run” and “greater good” kind of situation. While I acknowledged the fear and suffering involved, I had so much faith in my ideals and the goal of world-wide economic opportunity and success for all through free trade and open markets, that I believed the bad was worth the pursuit of this “greater good”. Walking through ten to twenty virtually empty industrial and business parks and talking to those still desperately clinging to a means to feed and house their families cured me of that mental dislocation that had it out of touch with my heart.

Thus was born in me what I call “third person individualism” or 3PI. The simplest way I can describe it is that I believe individual dignity and liberty are more important than myself or any ideal I may hold to, for even if I believe in something greater than everything, my understanding of that is still less significant than the individual. Pursuing any ideal at the expense of individual dignity and liberty is heartless foolishness, if not worse.

In the case of President Obama's coal policy I cannot help but wonder if it isn't worse. At least the neo-cons believe in individualism. They may not appreciate its true significance when they welcome the migration of manufacturing jobs into the third world, but at least individual liberty is their professed cause. Obama's progressives seem to have no appreciation for individual liberty, and many of the greens seem willing to sacrifice, not just jobs but human lives to achieve their ends.

For 3PI the coal fight is about as close to the core of what matters as it gets. Coal is a cheap and plentiful source of energy. If, as 3PI does, you want to empower as many individuals as possible to achieve their personal goals, cheap and abundant energy helps with that like few other things can. Cheap resources promote individual independence. In contrast, when something becomes expensive, like health care for example, individuals are driven towards dependence. Thus the EPA's current path of destruction will cripple the cause of 3PI. More importantly, the EPA's current path is running over and destroying the lives of millions of people, some more directly than others.

It's a bitter irony that the Obama re-election campaign is currently trying to blame Mitt Romney for outsourcing American jobs while the president, through his EPA, is actively and very directly targeting American jobs and lives for destruction. A few billboards proclaiming “Obama's no jobs zone” can't seem to speak loudly enough. Individuals are suffering and the president's heart is clearly out of touch with his brain. That's right I said it. Too bold you think? Many West Virginians wouldn't think so. Think of them, pray for them.

Apologies, And So A W.I.P. Review

Due to a family emergency of sorts my duties will find me elsewhere this week. I know I told folks on Twitter that I would be writing directly about third person individualism in this Tuesday’s post, but that will have to wait until next week (which reminds me I should take my laptop with me to write with).

So in lieu of my post this week I am posting, with my friend's permission, a chapter from a work in progress. As Hans tells me, it's one of those that starts out and gets put in a drawer while projects agents suggest are more salable get worked on.

Consider this a sort of writing feedback experiment. The question both Hans and I want answered is, does this chapter leave you with a wish to see the next? The feedback will help him with other projects. He tells me he may even finish this novel if the feedback is good enough.  I warned him, considering my readership is political, he shouldn't get his hopes up.  He said to that, "Hey, I'm the one doing you a favor bud.  There are no hopes up on this."

Comments are open to all who view this post so feel free.  Maybe I can repay Hans the favor for giving me something to post in a pinch.

The Boy Who Ran Through Time

by Hans Mengis

Chapter 1

Death Is Behind You

“You there boy, can you get me some water for my master?”

Hasani was suddenly sorry. Now the woman was returning his stare, and even worse she thought he was a servant like she was.

“I don't know where the well is”, he told her.

It embarrassed him. He passed by the well many times in his life but couldn't remember how to get there. Now the tall thin woman was looking at him sternly and he hated looks of disapproval from adults. Even worse, she spoke as if she thought he was lying to her.

“You don't know where the well is? Are you not from here?”

Hasani was on the verge of tears. The six year old prince never had a reason to remember where the well was.

The attendant just stared sternly at him for what seemed an eternity, but then her eyes came upon his wrists. Looking at his bracelets, her face changed from stern to something very different, something like fear. She fell to her knees.

“I am so sorry my lord. Please forgive me. I did not realize who you were. Please please forgive me.”

She almost cried the words.

Hasani thought he'd be much happier once she realized he was not a servant, but he wasn't. The look on her face bothered him. He didn't want to be feared.

“I forgive you.”

She backed out of the room on her knees.

“I hope you find the water”, he said to her as she returned to her feet in the hallway and ran off.

He waited there for his tutor and tried to recall his last lesson, but he couldn't get the look on the attendant's face out of his head. Why was it there?

He lost sleep over the next few days because of that look, but in a strange way it may have re-payed the stolen sleep. One night's first watch he lay awake and overheard two servants in the hallway. They were both women servants. Hasani couldn't tell one from the other. All the woman servants sounded about the same to him. He usually didn't care what they had to say to each other but the excitement in their voices attracted him.

“The general will be here soon. We should leave now.”

“Should we take the little prince?”

“No, the general needs to get rid of all of the family tonight.”

“I'd feel sorry for him but that prince is so dull-headed he probably wont even notice his own death.”

Then there was laughter.

“Traitors”, Hasani said angrily but under his breath.

He wanted to run to his father and warn him but he knew the women would realize he heard them if he left too soon. His heart beat quickly as he waited for them to leave like they said they were going to. Then he heard another woman. He knew it was a different woman because her voice came from down the hall near where his father was.

“The general is already in the king's chambers! We need to leave now!”

The words seemed to pull Hasani to the doorway. He saw the backs of both men and women servants as they ran down the passage way towards the palace gates. The thought of following in the servants' wakes came and went quickly. Something inside him told him he needed to go where no one would expect him to run, the place he was always told never to wander into, the desert.

Hasani ran the opposite way from where the servants had run. There was a narrow courtyard on the palace's desert side. It was empty when he got there. Making his legs go as fast as he could, he darted across the courtyard. The gate swung open with much less effort than he expected it to, and he ran out into the sand.

Looking back he saw flames rising from the part of the palace where his father slept and he heard the sounds of angry men breaking things near his room. He redoubled his efforts at running. He stumbled a few times but when he did it seemed to him as if he could have run on his arms as well as his legs. No matter what he just kept moving forward. It was like floating in a dream, a nightmarish dream.

Then there was a sound ahead of him, a roaring sound. A few dozen paces in front of him he saw sand swirling in a huge cone. It went all the way up into the sky. With death and the general's soldiers behind him, Hasani ran into the monstrous whirlwind.

Sand blew into his face and found his eyes. Blinded he stumbled forward, shaking his head and wiping at the sand. His eyes stung and watered as he freed them. He turned his head away form the wind and began to see again. It wasn't much more than sand in the air and his hand in front of him, but it was enough for him to keep running.

The storm was even larger than Hasani first thought. One of his tutor's lessons told him that half of a whirlwind blows the opposite direction from the other. It seemed to Hasani that he had been running for while now and the wind was still blowing the same direction. He was beginning to worry he was some how just running in place when suddenly the sand stopped hitting him.

He stopped too. For the first time since he fled the palace he stopped running and took a long look around him. Just behind him the wind still blew the desert sands sideways. So intensely did it blow that he couldn't see the palace. That's good, he thought to himself, if he can't see the soldiers they can't see him.

Looking ahead he saw the sand was being blown about in a great circle around a calm area as wide as his palace. So the air must be blowing the other way over there, he thought to himself, looking across to the other side. He forgot himself and spoke out loud.

“But what is that?”

In the middle of the still area he saw a small pyramid. It couldn't have been more than a dozen worker's paces to a side and was made of something that looked like gold. It had a flat area on top of it that looked like it was on fire. The smoke from what looked like fire was white and glowed.

It clearly wasn't anything to do with the general so Hasani approached it. The storm is hiding me in this place, he thought to himself, so I am safe to take a closer look. The thought of touching and climbing the little gold pyramid amused him more than taking a closer look at the fire and smoke, but he was about to do both at the same time.

My tutor would be so proud of me, he was thinking. But was his tutor one of the traitors? If he wasn't, did the general have him killed? Then a voice made Hasani jump.

“You there boy, hurry up here!”

A man with a long gray beard leaned out of the smoke. He was bald and his eyes looked like glowing embers. They did have pupils though. Hasani could tell because they were looking at him. The young prince stopped at the pyramids base, unable to move, such was his fear.

The old man studied Hasani and raised an eyebrow.

“Don't fear me when death is behind you.”

The words freed Hasani's feet and he half leaped, half climbed up to the man's outstretched hand. His feet flew as the man pulled him into the glowing smoke.

Let's Cut The Baby In Half

Illegal Immigration In The United States

Can a nation exist without borders? Is it possible to humanely uproot millions of people and send them back to a country that lacks resources and opportunities for them? The answer to both of these questions, unfortunately, is no. So the United States seems to be presented with a choice where both options are wrong. It is as if we must either forfeit our property rights and rule of law, or go ask Balkan governments to instruct us on the do's and don'ts of ethnic cleansing in the modern world. Although in this case, since the United States is an ethnically diverse nation it would be more of a civic cleansing. With options like these it should be no surprise we can't find a consensus on what to do. We are a nation that has fought and worked too hard to just stop existing and with too much moral certainty to suddenly lose that either.

As you may have guessed from the title I'm going to attempt to use one of King Solomon's tacts to move the dialogue on this closer to a solution. I'm going to intentionally propose a solution that should equally horrify elements of both of our political parties. Some of these elements, I suspect, are not so much tied to the core issues of national sovereignty and treating people humanely as they claim with their rhetoric, and how they may react to the following solution could reveal that.

My proposal requires that we pass laws contingent on the United States and Mexico (the primary source by far of our illegal immigrant population) signing a treaty. The laws and the treaty together would solve both the sovereignty and human rights problems.

The Treaty And The Laws

The treaty would make it so citizens of both countries can freely travel, live, and work in both countries without the need of visas. Both nations may require these foreign residents and workers to register for purposes of tracking taxes and government services but unlike visas the registrations would have no standards for issuance beyond the registrants being law abiding residents or workers. This would make all Mexican illegal aliens in the United States effectively legal.

The laws that should be passed in the United States before the treaty is signed would be as follows.

1. Require all former illegal immigrants to register with the government. Failing to register would result in deportation and possible jail time.  Due to the ease of registration, the number of those failing to register would be very small and manageable.
2. In order to assure that illegals don't cut ahead of legal immigrants, all formerly illegal immigrants would be required to wait an amount of time equal to the time they were in the country illegally before they could apply for citizenship (exemption for military service).
3. All federal agencies must cooperate with states endeavors to remove and keep non-citizens from their voter rolls.
4. Require all United States employers to report the citizenship of all of their employees.

How this deals with both core problems

The sovereignty issue is solved both in the short and long term. The treaty makes it so the only illegal aliens from Mexico would be those who refuse to register or who break other laws and thus can't be registered. The currently huge number of illegal aliens is the greatest challenge to enforcing our immigration laws and that would go way with this treaty. Also, the treaty would make it such that no new illegal influx from Mexico would be at all likely. The ease of registration when compared to the potential consequences of not doing so would make it very unlikely that someone wanting to live or work here would choose not to register.

The laws protect and restore currently lost sovereignty by registering the foreigners, penalizing those who were here illegally in terms of a path to citizenship, and requiring federal agencies to help rather than hinder state efforts to make sure foreigners can't vote. The requirement that employers report their employees citizenship is already being applied in places with great success through E-verify, and it assures that employers don't attempt to use an employee's illegal status as a means to pay them under the table. The combination of E-verify and a foreign worker registration system would discourage this from both directions.

Now as for treating the millions of illegal immigrants humanely, that is also achieved. The treaty would legitimize their current struggles just to make a living, just as long as they weren't getting payed illegally small wages or breaking other laws. The laws would all be fair and of minimal burden to the people involved. They're only suffering would be from having a longer path to citizenship than those who came here legally, and from the inevitable consequences of formerly illegal employment practices suddenly having to meet legal standards or go away.

Sources of expected opposition to this proposal

Now that I've proposed cutting the proverbial baby in half, let's hear from those who would object. Of course I'm only speculating here but I've heard enough from all sides of this issue over the last six years to make a pretty good guess.  After each number I will first state the objection and then after a "↔" I will make my own comment about what I suspect the motives behind the objection are.

From the right, the side I'm most familiar with, would come the following objections.

1. Amnesty is amnesty, no matter if you delay their path to citizenship or not. They broke the law so they shouldn't have any path to citizenship at all. ↔ The anti-amnesty hardliners are clearly wanting to be uncompromising on the national sovereignty half of the baby, and seem willing to let the other half be harmed.
2. A treaty like that effectively eliminates our border with Mexico. That's a loss of sovereignty pure and simple. ↔ Those who object to foreign treaties in general have their hearts in the right place, and I suspect they aren't even thinking about any other part of this issue, just a general principle. It's tough to determine their motives towards the baby because they just aren't thinking on that small a scale. They probably should but they aren't.
3. We need to be able to pay the people who pick lettuce and other crops less than the legal requirements in order to keep produce prices from shooting sky high. ↔ Any real solution that addresses both halves of the baby will probably force farmers to pay their pickers more than they do now. These farmers are similar the cotton farmers before the Civil War. They seem to depend on a source of labor working under conditions morally unacceptable to most Americans.
4. Programs like E-verify are too onerous on smaller businesses. ↔ E-verify is only onerous if your typical employee will leave if you use it. The treaty part of the solution makes this objection just misguided, and as for the added work for the business, the E-verify system is a national database that any business with internet access can use in minutes. As added paperwork from the government goes, this is insignificant.

From the left would come the following objections.

1. The registration process would be intimidating and smacks of oppressive practices in other countries. ↔ Concerns about how the registration process will look seem aimed at protecting the human rights half of the baby, but human rights is not a superficial thing. Rejecting a workable solution to a huge problem, just because it reminds one of something it clearly is not, suggests a less than sincere interest in solving the problem.
2. The registered foreign worker would be an institutionalized second class person. ↔ The second class nature of the registered foreign worker should only be problematic if one doesn't care about the sovereignty half of the baby (note #1 from the right). Of course citizens should have it easier in their own country than foreigners.
3. Registration enforcement would inevitably tend to profile people based on their ethnicity. ↔ The idea that the role played by the ethnicity of Mexicans is some how significant implies that if poverty stricken lite skinned Canadians made up most of the problem, few would see the problem as significant.  This seems silly to me.  It's as though they don't believe sovereignty is a real issue. As if we invented it to cover up our bigotry. For the sake of the proverbial baby the issue isn't whether they respect us, it's that they don't seem to care about sovereignty. That's half the baby.
4. The loss of jobs for people working for illegal pay would cause too much suffering and could result in a sort of de facto ethnic cleansing where the former workers leave the country for lack of income. ↔ The issue of hardship for those currently employed illegally who would lose their jobs if their employers had to pay them legally is a legitimate concern for the human rights side of the baby, but like the #3 from the right, any real solution will probably result in these low pay situations ending. There is something inherently unsustainable about an industry that requires workers with clearly inferior labor rights to the rest of the country.
5. Purging the voter rolls will result in errors which will intimidate some citizens from voting. Those wrongly purged will be disproportionately from disadvantaged minorities. ↔ Voter intimidation is when poll workers try to close the polls while people are waiting in line, or when mean looking thugs stand outside polling places. It is not the inconvenience of having to vote with a petition because one was mistakenly purged from the voter rolls. This concern is suspect as to the sincere concern the objector has for both halves of the baby. A potential inconvenience to a voting citizen cannot compare to the potential that a non-citizen may be able to vote.

It's clear there would be considerable opposition to this proposed solution from both sides. What I want to determine is which objections stem from a legitimate concern for national sovereignty and human rights and which don't. In other words, who should get the baby before it's cut in half?

So who gets the baby?

Solomon gave the baby to the mother who was willing to lose the baby in order to save the baby's life. Where's that mother in this?

No one side of this issue, as the political lines are currently drawn, completely owns that proverbial mother.  Who is willing to let their own partisan or financial interests go in order to protect both national sovereignty and human dignity?  While both sides have their extremists who keep insisting on hard lines that make consensus impossible and lose at least half the baby, there are those who show sincere concern for both national sovereignty and human dignity.

To get to a real solution both sides must make some of their members unhappy. They both can start with those who don't want the underground illegal labor market to end. Some on the right don't want certain industries to incur the greater labor costs and some on the left don't want to lose the incentive that draws in a new underclass for their political exploitation. Both are placing their own financial and political interests ahead of national sovereignty and human dignity. Both poison the dialogue.

Those who should be talking are those who sincerely care about at least half the baby. They should be able to convince each other that both halves are needed. National sovereignty and respect for individual human dignity are inseparable. You can't respect individual human dignity unless you respect a person's right to own things and keep the things they own. You can't ensure this right without some degree of government and that government must have a sovereign jurisdiction in which it operates. If that sovereignty is threatened so is the protection of the individual's property that it provides, and thus the individual's human rights.

Another way to look at is this. Governments exist to serve the individual. Thus a government cannot justly be more important than the dignity of the individual. If a government is preserved at the expense of individual dignity, for example, forcibly relocating millions of people, that government's legitimacy is potentially compromised. While if having to choose between its own citizens and that of another country it should choose its own, it should also sincerely seek the lesser of all potential evils. One group's interest may be more legitimate than another's in a given situation but no group's interests outweigh the dignity of the individual.

By now you should see where I as a third person individualist come from on this issue, nations are important because they protect individuals but the individual is paramount.

I fabricated this solution to illegal immigration intentionally to be objectionable to some on both sides. I strongly suspect the Mexican government would also never agree to such a treaty either, based on their current restrictions on foreigners. It is my hope this exercise will reveal who the ones on both sides are that don't actually want a solution. They would rather let the baby be cut in half. I believe if we could weed them out of the discussion those remaining would have a reasonable chance to achieve a reasonable solution.

Those who dream of new voting blocks or don't want to lose cheap labor, no matter what you think of their motives, have no interest in a solution here. They benefit from the problem continuing. Anyone who cares to listen to them should obviously feel free, but never forget their motives. The solution is going to come through a dialogue amongst those who actually want one. They are the people who care about the issues of national sovereignty and individual dignity.

By the way, I strongly suggest caution when it comes to the social justice crowd. Their respect for national sovereignty is conditional depending on whether the nation involved is advantaged or disadvantaged, and their respect for individual dignity is self-delusion at best. The phrase, “their heart is in the right place” was practically invented for them, as almost nothing else of theirs, when it comes to true justice and individual dignity, is in the right place (see The Heresy Of Social Justice, from Tuesday, June 19, 2012).

As I believe with all civil and international issues, cherish individual liberty and dignity and the best human solutions possible can be found. Put any other natural or human thing ahead of the individual and the Tower comes crashing down and we stop understanding each other.



Next week, it seems high time I explain third person individualism itself.