The Living Good Samaritan Deserves Our Votes

My amazement continues with some of my fellow Christians who think they're not only justified in voting for Obama but some how are doing what Jesus would want them to do in doing so. Here are two of their most common arguments (be sure not to mistake the stuff in italics as my beliefs as they are what I'm arguing against).

1. Mitt Romney is a Mormon and Barack Obama is an evangelical. We should vote for the man who's religious views are more Christian.
   – So we're assuming Obama is what he says he is, but in that case let's consider what Mitt Romney says he is. He believes in Jesus Christ as his lord and savior, so doesn't that make him a christian in his own words too. What's that you say? Mormons say they follow Christ but there are elements of their beliefs and practices that are definitely not Christian. As a seminary trained Methodist I will give you no argument there, but doesn't that mean if we are going to question Mitt Romney's relationship with Christ based on his other beliefs and actions we must question Barack Obama's as well? In both cases we must not just take their words for it, and once we come to that point we must then study their lives to see the evidence of the veracity of their words about following Christ.
   – Jesus Christ said in Matthew 7:16, “By their fruit you will recognize them. … ” Looking at what we know about the lives of these two men, which one has personally shown up to help those in need or who were suffering? Which one has shown up in this way again and again to such a degree that people who know him will tell you that it's just the way he is, he doesn't seem to put a thought to if he can, he just does?
   – The answer to that question is an easy one for all except those determined to believe what the other side says about the man instead of what is obvious to see, Mitt Romney is that man. If this isn't obvious then you missed the personal testimonies at the Republican National Convention. Perhaps the news source you chose to watch chose not to show them to you. They were important for any Christian to hear.
   – One might wisely ask why it is Barack Obama doesn't have similar testimonies being told about him. We can only wonder and conjecture, but he does have two auto-biographies out about himself and the evidence isn't there. That doesn't mean he doesn't do this kind of thing. He could be like Mitt Romney and not want to boast about his good deeds personally, but isn't it possible and even quite plausible that it's because Barack Obama just isn't that kind of person? How many of us are? Mitt Romney is the kind of person that puts most of the rest of us to shame for our lack of responsiveness to others in need. He's almost like a living breathing retelling of Christ's parable about the good Samaritan. Obama on the other hand is not an exceptional example of compassion for individuals. No fault there, just not evidence in support of his claims to Christian faith. The evidence here favors Mitt Romney.
   – Now what about the influence of Christ's teachings on their politics? What does it matter if a president is a Christian or not if he some how separates his politics from Christ's teachings? That brings us to another argument I hear to support the claim that voting for Barack Obama is somehow a Christian thing to do.
2. Christ teaches us that we should take care of the poor and needy and that we should stand up for those suffering injustice, therefore we must reject cold and heartless Republican public policies.
   – This argument is old and worn out, and by that I mean both sides of it. Our lord never wanted us to delegate our Christian duty of compassion to government, I keep saying, and these fellow Christian brothers and sisters of mine just keep right on as though I said nothing. The government is a wasteful and relatively heartless way to address these things, I keep saying, and they tell me that Christ's church just isn't up to the challenge. Christ's church is up to any challenge God presents us with, I keep saying, and they shake their heads and tell me I'm naive.
   – So I keep trying to find a way to get through to them. There's got to be some way they will come to see how government is only the rescuer of last resort and a necessary evil at best, so I keep writing and talking, and they keep voting for the wrong people.
   – My best argument so far is from Jesus's own words in Matthew 22:37-40, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” I point out how loving your neighbor as yourself cannot possibly mean getting the government to do it for you, at least not usually, government with its inevitable mission creep that eats up the liberty of those it tries to help, amongst other things. Christ's own instructions here pretty much insist that we not get government to help people unless there is absolutely no other way to help them. This is precisely because the people He wants us to love are individuals, just as we are individuals.
   – There perhaps is a reason why Barack Obama's PR people make absolutely no effort to show us him in a situation where he was confronted by the suffering of an individual and responded to it with great compassion. It's because, like these Christian brothers and sisters of mine who support him, he has been deceived into thinking that Christ's greatest commandment is telling us to love collectives, and to love individuals as part of collectives. How impersonal! How unloving! Did not our lord when entering a community burdened by a crooked tax collector choose to save the tax collector first? Did He not, when presented with an adulteress about to be stoned, save her without regard for the collective feelings of those gathered around her? Christ came for the 'least of these', those who were outcast, the individuals, yes the individuals. This is so missed on the believers in social justice. That's why the belief in such a thing as social justice is so very very dangerous, so very very perverse, something worse than heresy. It separates our efforts, our thinking, and ultimately our caring from the individuals our lord commands us to love.

Why must we choose between individuals and groups when groups are made up of individuals? If you start with groups in your heart and mind and then deal with individuals you will be too late. How many children raised up in churches go astray and never return? It's not because God's word was wrong where it says, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it”. It's because the child was never reached as an individual. Deal with individuals first and then, one individual at a time, reach groups. Then you will never be too late. It seems the obvious meaning of Matthew 22:37-40. It's what our lord commanded us to do.

Now back to my brothers and sisters in Christ, who while being mislead by their belief in social justice, believe it right for them to vote for Barack Obama. I wont give up, even after this election is over and many of them vote for the opposite of what they claim to be dedicated to, for the reason many of them will vote against rather than for what is right will still be there, no matter who wins this election. This social justice that perverts the Gospel and neuters the Church in a world full of suffering and need must be confronted and sent into history's trash heap along with all the other great heresies. It will likely be the worst of them.

In the mean time I will not give up on brothers and sisters in Christ who are so mislead.  I will keep prodding them with the truth and come election day I will be voting for the closest thing I know of to a present day Good Samaritan, Mitt Romney.

The Everything Of Everything

A logical proof of what many claim cannot be proven

What's sillier than dogmatically believing something exists that you've never seen, heard, or touched? One thing is for sure, insisting the neighbor's dog, who he named 'Red', isn't named 'Red'. It gets even sillier when one labels their neighbor silly for disagreeing.

What is this I'm talking about? Well the question of the existence of God of course, and no, I'm not with the “blind leap of faith” crowd on this. The existence of any god is a self answering question. It takes little to no effort to prove it. In contrast it takes a bit of semantics analogous to some scenes from a particularly cruel game of Simon Says to make the proof challenging.

What is a god? It is something or someone to which we ultimately defer and/or honor above most, if not all other things or people. This is the practical definition of a god. Therefore if anyone ultimately defers to and/or honors something or someone above most, if not all other things or people, that something or someone is a god. Q.E.D. The god's existence is proven by definition. The only thing left to argue is if the god in question merits the status, not if he, she, or it exists.

I could leave it at that and tell myself how smart and clever I've been, but I haven't really addressed the question of God's existence, you know, the big 'G' god. That one is not all that much more difficult really though. Let me set up the proof and show you.

All proofs start with definitions and what we call givens, assumptions we ask others to accept that we then use as the foundation and other building blocks to our proof. There is nothing that has been proven in the world that doesn't start with granted assumptions. Our own existence, the existence of others, and the reliability of human perception are some assumptions fundamental to all science for example. Ideally the nature of one's assumptions should be such that if someone doesn't accept them they present themselves with a heavy burden to prove why not accepting the assumption is reasonable.

For my proof of God's existence I start with the following definitions and givens.

1. Definition, a god: something or someone to which we ultimately defer and/or honor above most, if not all other things or people.
2. Definition, God: the god above all other gods.
3. Given, human reasoning and perception is flawed.
4. Given, there is a such a thing as right and wrong.

If anyone wishes to argue against 3 and 4 I'm done, but I wouldn’t mind being so, since if any of those are wrong then we all must be terribly confused about our state of beings. So, baring any hyper-humanist extremism I will proceed with my proof.

• Since human reasoning is flawed and yet there is such a thing as right and wrong, it is possible for human perception of what is right and what is wrong to be wrong.
• Therefore what is right and what is wrong is determined by something independent of flawed human perception.

e.g. If everyone in the world suddenly decided it was okay and even right to kill everyone with red hair just because they have red hair, it would still be wrong.

• Whatever that is that is independent of flawed human perception that determines what is right and what is wrong is ultimately deferred to and honored, thus making it fit the definition of a god.
• If a conflict between the god that ultimately determines right and wrong and another god occurs, moral humans will always defer to the god of right and wrong. This makes this god the god above all others.

i.e. Civilized human beings are deferential to morality and ethics and since the source of these things transcends humanity, that is a god, and since we will defer to our best understanding of right more often than not, given any conflict, that god is the god of all gods, hence God.

Now perhaps you see what I meant about the dog named 'Red'. For someone to suggest the belief in God is silly because of a lack of tangibility, is itself the most silly. My theological studies lead me to conclude that God exists precisely because He exists, but even if He didn't exist for that reason, God exists at the very least because we need Him to. We need Him to save us from our faultiness that makes it possible for us to destroy ourselves.

“Missteps” Of A “Fact Checker”

For years I've been growing more and more skeptical of people who appoint themselves the task of “fact checking”. Any practitioner of critical thinking worth his salt should be quick to ask, who checks the fact checker? So when I saw an October 4^th AP article by Calvin Woodward “fact checking” the first Romney Obama debate, I decided I'd do just that, check the fact checker.

You can find his October 4th fact checking efforts here. 

Woodward chose to go back and forth between the two candidates in such a way that an uninformed neutral observer might conclude that he's found an equal number of what he calls “missteps” from each, but appearances can be misleading. The first problem I came across was when Woodward discussed the following line from Romney.

Obama's health care plan "puts in place an unelected board that's going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have. I don't like that idea."

Woodward wrote, “Romney seems to be resurrecting the assertion that Obama's law would lead to rationing, made famous by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's widely debunked allegation that it would create "death panels."”

“Widely debunked”? Really? The word “debunked” is a very strong word. It means something has been shown to be factually incorrect to the point it should no longer be taken seriously, and yet the Cato Institute takes Sarah Palin's allegation very seriously as is explained in the linked article, Death Panels- Sarah Palin Was Right.   I wont dispute that the Cato Institute has a clear bias, but its support for Palin's analysis with its own belies the use of a strong word like “debunked”. A difference in analysis between those that see “death panels” rising out of Obamacare and those that don't is not a dispute of facts but of interpretation of facts and perhaps semantics.  Now unfortunately for Calvin Woodward or anyone else who uses “debunked” to describe Sarah Palin's assertion, he is the one being factually incorrect.

A lesser problem with Woodward's so called “fact checking” was where Romney said there were 23 million Americans out of work, and Woodward said Romney was getting to 23 million by adding under-employed and those classified as having given up looking to just 12.5 million officially classified as unemployed. I don't know if Woodward knows what it's like to be under-employed or unemployed so long that the system starts to lose track of you, but in my book the distinction between that and unemployed is a very fine one, not enough of one to call Romney on it. As a matter of fact, I very much suspect that most of those suffering were glad to hear Romney acknowledge their unfortunate plight. When Romney says 23 million unemployed instead of the official technical 12.5 million, he says that unlike Obama, he sees our plight. That's the number of us with expenses greater than our income, no matter how some bureaucrats may choose to break us up beyond that very fundamental reality. No fact checking needed here.  Romney was right on the mark.

Those were the two big ones. The rest seemed pretty fair though a tad nitpicky, so I then read the responses to the article. The pro-Obama people seemed to be the most upset with Woodward. Many comments argued Woodward was equating out right lies from Romney with questionable analysis by Obama, and that it was Woodward trying too hard to seem fair. Of course I didn't share their views. There were no lies from Romney to bring out, and Woodward seemed to agree with me at least to that extent.

This led me to do a little research on the kinds of reactions Calvin Woodward has gotten beyond this one article, and I was surprised. Both the right and the left have qualms with his “fact checking”.

Jim Naureckas of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) seems to think Woodward is biased towards Romney and against Obama. You can read some of what he has to say about it here. Some of his points about Woodward mistaking a difference in analysis and sources with "missteps" I agree with. But, from the examples Naureckas gives I don't see clear evidence that Woodward is particularly biased for or against either candidate. By all appearances Woodward isn't holding either man to any different standard. It is the reasoning within that standard that may be the problem, not any direction it may tilt.

Coming from the other direction, Tom Blumer of Newsbusters.org seems to see Woodward as biased against Republicans. You can read some of his points here. Like Naureckas and myself, he catches Woodward picking and choosing the analysis and sources he'll consider valid and declaring assertions based other sources as misleading. Where I don't necessarily agree with Blumer is that Woodward slants his analysis towards Obama or necessarily against Republicans. I may change my mind on this, given yet even more facts, but for now I think Woodward's bias is primarily in his reasoning and methods.

The two points from his October 4^th “fact checking” make good enough examples to illustrate my conclusion. In the Sarah Palin “Death Panels” example Woodward was caught trusting certain circles of sources too much. Just because all the people you talk to who you think are smart and educated tell you something has been debunked, doesn't mean it has been. That goes for just about anything else you may be tempted to run off and treat as fact. Consensus shouldn't offer a sense of comfort to an earnest fact checker, rather it should make them all the more suspicious. Woodward seems to have missed this thus far in his noble pursuit.

In the 23 million people without jobs example, Woodward must have seen ample cover in just being technically nitpicky, and trying not to allow any affective thinking to muddle his objectivity (Yes, I meant “affective” not “effective”). The problem with this approach seems to me to be twofold. How far do you technically nitpick? At what point do you stop? There's almost not a conversation or communication to be found that can't be picked to beyond comprehension if one chooses to be hyper-technical. You have to stop at some point just to be reasonable. The other part of the problem is that you simply cannot avoid making some kind of subjective decision in your analysis, either by not getting hyper-technical in the first place or in deciding at what point you will stop.

My suggested answer to the technical nitpicking conundrum is to allow a little affective analysis to inform the rest, just be sure to acknowledge it.

e.g. “Romney's reference to 23 million out of work seems to refer to the total number of people who are either unemployed, under-employed, or have become too discouraged to look, since the official number of unemployed is ...”

I could probably put my advice more succinctly by simply saying, “have a heart”. To the fact-checkers out there I say, be ever so careful not to abuse the trust people place in you. And to everyone else I'd say, don't take the fact-checkers' words for anything. Benefit from their research and thought but please do your own thinking and where you deem necessary, your own research.

The Christian Choice In This Election

How could any Christian vote for Obama and feel good about it? One might seem to put it simply that they believe him when he says he cares about the less fortunate, but that alone wouldn't justify their decision. They have to believe something else besides just his words.

They have to believe that government is a viable answer to the problems of critical social inequalities and that volunteerism and other expressions of philanthropy and compassion are inadequate to the task.

To believe that they must also believe either that government can be trusted with more and more power, or that democracy is sufficient to keep an immensely powerful government from abusing its power.

To believe that democracy is a good way to keep a powerful government in check, they must believe democratic majorities are disinclined to oppress minorities, and that they wouldn't disrespect life or property.

Or they believe that the constitution is sufficient to check the immoral potentials of democracy. To believe that they must either be unaware of just how far federal judges stray from the constitution's original intent, or they believe these judges to have god-like character that makes it so we can trust their interpretations of what they see as an evolving or living document. The idea that any significant number would either be so ignorant of history or have such foolish faith in mere mortals is too incredible for me to accept as likely. Thus I am back to the set of beliefs before the 'or'.

The Viability Of Government As The Best Answer To Human Suffering

Any Christian who could vote for Obama and feel good about doing so must either have more faith in government than their fellow human beings, or be foolish. I would want to ask any such Christian where they think Jesus invests most of His confidence.

He no doubt understands the imperfection of individuals but He also understands that governments are worse. Do we forget that God gave a government a chance at redemption once, Israel, and that didn't work out, and it wont, the scriptures indicate, not as long as it's a government of human beings. The means for the redemption of the individual is available now, but the means for the redemption of government is nothing short of replacement of human practitioners with God Himself, and that wont happen until the second coming.

Government is not the answer in our present age, we are.

The Effectiveness Of Democracy As A Check Against The Abuse Of Governmental Power

I know many Christians who think democracy equals respect for individual dignity. Even George Bush has suggested that a world full of democracies would be one where human rights are more respected. While I agree democracies do seem to be less likely to go to war with their neighbors, history does not support the assertion that democratic societies have greater respect for individual dignity. Actually, quite the contrary. Does the name Socrates ring any bells? He was sentenced to death by a democratic government for mere ideas. And what about the Jim Crow laws. They were products of democracy as well. Democracy empowers majorities, but there is absolutely nothing about being a majority that adds virtue to them. A majority in a democracy is just another source of power. How it gets used is no more morally predisposed than how any other source of power may be used.

And more than that, I would suggest, democracy is a source of power that easily deludes its beneficiaries into ignoring both individuals and reality. Unlike say military force or financial power, which both are far more dependent on reality.

Of course I'm not saying democracy is bad. What I'm saying is what the founders said in essence. Democracy is like any other source of power, one that needs to be checked by other forces. It doesn't guarantee rational or moral policy, not even close, and to believe we can allow governmental power to grow, simply because that government answers to a democratic process, is foolish.

We as Christians should be more interested in limiting government power, especially when it's being driven by democratic forces, than in what we think we may achieve with it.

Now What About Romney?

What must a Christian believe to feel good about voting for Romney? First they must believe what has been said about Mitt Romney by his friends and associates, that he is an amazingly decent man. That almost alone could swing it, but they must also believe his ideas about how to govern are moral.

To do that they must believe that maximizing the freedom and opportunity of individuals to make decisions for themselves will allow more good to be done for those less fortunate than would empowering a government subject to the whims of all who seek power over others.

For me it's as simple as Jesus's words (Matthew 22:37-40, emphasis added by me), “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” You can't love your neighbor as yourself if you seek to solve her problems using a fickle and intrusive government, for is that how you want you're own problems solved? Many of us know people who are so controlling and so likely to be busybodies that we hate to ever be at their mercy, and that is exactly what governmental social solutions become in one way or another. They also inevitably decay into wastefulness and other inefficiencies as a result of becoming too large and too dependent on rules and regulations. One would certainly not refuse a rescue from death just because the rescuer was a wasteful-controlling-busybody, but nor would one willfully expose anyone to such a person in good conscience. That is especially true if one seeks to “love your neighbor as yourself”.

What Could They Possibly Be Thinking?

I'm not sure I see how some of my fellow Christians can miss this point. I honestly suspect they've allowed something to corrupt their theology. They almost seem to think the United States is the Kingdom of God and that for some reason God's decided to retry the whole nation of Israel thing with a bunch of gentiles in North America, many of which don't even share our beliefs.

I've read and heard some of them suggest that we are called to rule today, that the Kingdom is here and now, and thus, some how, that means we should treat governments as though they are there to do our bidding as Christians. Perhaps they get from there to the idea that if the government isn't doing all it can do to look after the poor and needy that reflects on us and our own attitudes on the subject.

The above is nothing short of a perverse argument if that's even close to what it is. If when confronted with human suffering, we hire a wasteful and potentially oppressive third party to deal with it for us, can we seriously think we are doing good? Perhaps if we had no other choice, but we do. In this election that choice will be represented by the place on the ballot with Mitt Romney's name by it. And when we vote for Mitt Romney we wont be voting to delegate our responsibilities toward our fellow human beings in need to him or government.  We will be fully embracing the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself”. We will be saying to ourselves, 'let's get to work' and to the needy, 'here we come'.

Individualism In The 21st Century

What I've Written So Far

I write about many things at 3PI Eddie Fontaigne, politics, fiction writing, ethics, but mostly individual liberty.  That's what usually gets my dander up and also what tends to tie into all the other subjects.  I might even argue that much of what life is about is being an individual defined separately from any collective, of course a good one who helps other individuals in their own life's-quests, and who try not to hinder others in this same quest.

Common Questions

Some of my fellow Christians may wonder how I fit that into my faith, and I will tell them it's quite easy in fact.  Christ didn't come to establish a relationship with that person over there's community, He came to establish a relationship with that person.

Likewise some of my fellow travelers in academic circles may wonder how I fit strong individualism with being a Christian, or even one who likes tradition in general.  Once again it's not hard at all.  Christ's church as He and the apostles speak of it is made up of individuals who's only necessary commonality is that they have a positive relationship with Him.  Many books of the Bible are radical documents in that they emphasize individuals over collectives, and those that don't share this emphasis don't contradict it.  If you don't believe me, try reading any part of the Bible that you are told emphasizes collectivist oriented things like social justice or holy nations, then read them through and in context.  You will inevitably come across something addressing individuals who will be blessed or cursed in spite of and not because of what the community they happen to be in is up to.

I'd recommend Habakkuk and the Beatitudes as a great examples of my point.  In Habakkuk God is speaking of the punishment he will bring upon the nation of Israel.  The social justice crowd of today love to point out how Israel is being punished because so many of its rich had neglected laws designed to help the poor and needy, but they of course miss the meaning of the part where God speaks of blessing those who have been obedient and merciful.  The meaning isn't obscure at all, and it is that individuals are accountable for their own individual character, not that of some collective they happen to be a part of.  Then in the Beatitudes Jesus lists one statement after another promising blessings on individuals with good character, ultimate though not necessarily contemporary blessings, but blessings for all the traits one can only rationally ascribe to individuals, not collectives.

Tradition in general is also something I easily associate with strong individualism, and that's because traditions are, when they're practical, very practical, and many of the ones seen as impractical are often later to be found as practical.  That practicality makes them things individuals can empower their own quests with, as they choose or don't choose.  The point of individualism isn't to just be different for the sake of being different.  It's to be different in whatever way seeks to maximize one's own value to others.

"Value to others?", one might ask.  Yes.  If the only thoughts you can afford is about getting food, finding shelter, and reproducing, you may as well be living the life of a single-celled organism.  Just to have the time and opportunity for individual expression requires help and cooperation from others.  The difference between an individualist and a collectivist is in where one seeks to concentrate the power and the benefits of a community.  The collectivist seeks to empower the collective while the individualist seeks to empower every individual they may come across.  Another way of saying it is in terms of tools.  For the collectivist the individual is a tool that serves the collective.  For an individualist the collective is a tool that serves the individual.  Getting back to the point, all individuals can only be empowered if we serve each other, and in serving each other, if we do it to empower individuals, each individual, so benefiting, has the best chance to benefit others.

3PI in other words.  Individualists cherish the individual liberty and dignity of other individuals, for to do otherwise would be hypocritical.  Communities made of 3PI individualists are synergistic.  Each individual is better off, having greater freedom to be themselves and make their own decisions.

Some of these issues I just discussed, I did so very generally and quickly.  Below is a list of links to more detailed discussions I've presented on various issues and questions related to the individual.

A Day My Life Changed
-- How I first became the avid proponent of individualism that I am.

The Individual's Ancient Enemies
-- The collectivists claim to be the newest greatest thing is flat wrong.  Their ideas are, at the core, ancient.

American Individualism? Yes
-- I address a study that claims other countries are more individualistic than the United States.

Enemies Of The American Revolution
-- The revolution never ended.  Those who seek to take us in a direction away from that set by the founders are not vanguards of anything.  They are counter-revolutionaries.

Heresy Of Social Justice
-- Last but certainly not least, I explain why the use of the term social justice and the pursuit of it is not only wrong but extremely harmful.

The Individual's Ancient Enemies

There Is Nothing New About Collectivism Or Progressivism

As long as human beings have been social there has been a struggle between individual liberty and those extreme tendencies that pull us away. These enemies of the individual fall into two categories, self-centeredness and group-centeredness. Both of these enemies take on and have taken on many names throughout history. Today I'm going to name a few of them.

The Worthy Struggle

First I feel a need to point out why this epic struggle matters. Individual liberty is the prime enabler of individual expression, individual thought, and ultimately innovation and invention. While those who don't share my zeal for individual liberty may disagree, it is none the less for me and millions of others, the engine of progress and hope for a brighter future. Without it we may manage some things, but with it we speed into the future with a well founded confidence that we will meet whatever challenges it may hold and be at least adequate to them. And even if with some greatly diminished individual liberty we might achieve some greater thing, there would be no point in it, for as Patrick Henry so memorably suggested, even death is preferable to life without liberty. And further, even if some catastrophe over-comes us because of our unwillingness to abandon liberty, we would have taken the better option between extinction and survival as something less than human.* In short, the struggle for individual liberty is the struggle both for a life worth living and a struggle for the best that we as a species can do, for the pursuit of that latter is what makes the former.

Now for the enemies list.

Self-centeredness

Whenever I read scholarly works on individualism I see this repeated error, mistaking the avid pursuit for individual liberty for a totally self-centered self-interest. There are even those who favor individual liberty who mistakenly believe that if everyone looks completely out for themselves, without regard for most anyone else, the world will be a better place. It is in their belief system that some how everything will work out for the best this way. Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged is often associated with this sort of view, though I personally would not say if the characterizations of her philosophy are fair or not. I just haven't read enough of her works to do my own analysis.

The term for this sort of philosophy as characterized is Social Darwinism. Whoever may be the source of it, it is just one of the latest masks worn by this particular ancient enemy of individual liberty. This ancient enemy, no matter what mask it chooses to wear, always uses the same tactic. It essentially argues that everyone should be free to do whatever pleases them, and that will allow the strong to have their way and the weak much less so, and in the process the best of humanity will rise to lead us to our best as a species.

The power of this argument is that it resembles the argument for individual liberty so much that many individualist fall for it, the parts about letting people do what they please and the being led to be our best as a species. The problem with it is that it doesn't actually say what it sounds like it's saying. For this philosophy, when it says everyone should be free to do whatever pleases them, it really means no one should try to stop the strong from picking on the weak. That's a far cry from cherishing individual liberty, not to mention a recipe for civil disorder.

Logically there's a huge problem with this as well. You can't be for the individual if you want your own interests to run over someone else's, since they are an individual too. The logical ends of Social Darwinism is also antithetical to the struggle for individual liberty. Once the strong rise to the top to lead, what are they? Their power over other individuals is as absolute as their acknowledged superiority. They are virtual despots. While it is true any individual would be free in a society based on Social Darwinism to challenge those at the top, their actual individual liberty would be limited not just by their willingness to exercise it, but by the strength of their personal resources to overcome those established before them. How can this be individualism? Can an individualist be in favor of a system that by design only grants liberty to some, but not most? Social Darwinism is just another excuse amongst many for the supposed right of some to rule others.

Another common mask of this enemy today is the “do your own thing”, “live and let live”, “everyone just leave everyone else alone”, and “do what feels good” philosophy. For some this is a not so well thought out philosophy but one they follow none the less. For others it is one of considerably deeper thought. The ancient Greeks formalized this in the philosophy called Hedonism.

Unlike Social Darwinism, there is supposed to be no conflict of interests in a Hedonistic society. This is because everyone's goal is to maximize personal pleasure and minimize pain, and it is in that part about minimizing pain that people are expected to avoid conflicts with others whenever possible.

In spite of the negative connotations associated with the term Hedonism, the actual core of the philosophy has a lot of appeal, but I see a few problems with it none the less. One big one in particular as is relevant to the struggle for individual liberty is it looks outward in only a passive and selfish way, that of avoiding pain. What happens if your neighbor's liberty is threatened? Why should you care?

To Hedonism's defense, in a totally Hedonistic society your neighbor's liberty would never be threatened, but the problem with that defense is we don't live in such a society, and without a lot of caring about more than just pleasure and pain, we have little chance of ever living in one. Hedonism is essentially, in a way, trying to live as though individual liberty has been secured and continues to be safe whether that's true or not. And as any psychologist can tell you, pretending a problem isn't there or can never be there only helps the problem.

Then of course there is just raw self-centeredness and self-indulgence. There is little long-term value to any philosophy that centers on these things. Perhaps if there is no meaning to our lives, our existence, these could be worthy center-pieces to a serious philosophy, but for those of us who struggle earnestly for anything beyond our most basic physical needs, we at the very least believe we know better, so on that very large common ground I'll say no more about this, the least reputable expression of self-centeredness.

Group-centeredness

The pursuit of maximizing individual liberty is a balancing act. Self-centeredness is one direction to fall in where only the strong end up with liberty, for lack of protection for the weak. The other direction to fall is Group-centeredness where the individual is diminished in the name of the group.  They are the two extremes of a spectrum.  Interesting to me is that which ever way we fall, if we fall, we end up in essentially the same place. Here are some of the recent masks of this other extreme.

Collectivism is one. I tend to use this term to describe all of the group-centered systems across the ages, but most think of it only in its contemporary form, which justifies itself as looking out for the least fortunate in society (See the Wikipedia entry for a relatively neutral definition). One of the arguments of collectivism is that there is a common good that over-rides individual liberty and dignity from time to time. Some of its proponents go on to make a moral argument that it is wrong for an individual to not share wealth and/or property with those less fortunate. This, they argue, then justifies some degree of forced confiscation and redistribution.

The obvious problem with this moral argument is that it takes a moral decision away from the individual by forcing compliance with someone else's very un-individualized decision. Allow me to illustrate with an example. If an old lady with a walker needs to cross a busy street, it seems the right thing to do to help her across if you are able. That is a moral and charitable decision. Now what if someone else orders you to stop whatever you're doing and help her? Are you now doing what is morally correct if it wasn't your decision? What about the person who ordered you? Do they know for sure that there may not be some reason you shouldn't help, like maybe you're having a heart attack or stroke and need to call 911 and wait for an ambulance? It doesn't need to be that serious of an obstacle of course. There are many others of a lesser nature, some obvious obstacles and some more subjective, but the point is it is best to allow you to make the decision yourself.

Anyone who, believing they know what's best for you or society, who then uses the force of law to make you participate, and thinks they are morally justified is walking through a figurative field of land mines. The mines are of a logical and ethical nature. Can you build a moral society out of amoral rule followers? Is it ethical to make someone act charitably? Even if you aren't technically steeling their wealth and property from them with redistributive government policies, aren't you at least stealing their opportunity to truly act charitably?

For a more pointed discussion of the moral aspects of this see my June 19^th entry The Heresy Of Social Justice .

More to the point of individual liberty and dignity, collectivism's assertion of a greater common good gives it undue justification to run over the individual. There is no such thing as a good, at least as determined by human means, that can be clearly said to be so much more important than another good, that it justifies forcing any individual to sacrifice theirs for it. If there was, then we should all seek some great enlightened group of people to direct us in the details of our lives, and history should already be replete with great societies who found such leaders and followed them to their betterment, but that is not the case.

History instead is full of examples of how whenever a nation or society has sought some higher goal, some greater good, some common good at the expense of individual liberty or dignity, that nation has ultimately left a legacy of horror and suffering. This is because whenever we as human beings pretend that our ideals and best understandings of the divine are greater than the individual or equal to God, we become monstrous fools. We forget or never think to ask this basic question If no two of us can always see everything the same way, how can any one of us be worthy to make decisions for the rest of us? We fail to recognize that someone else may see something differently than we do, and when we do, we fail to respect them as a human being separate from ourselves.

Many have rightly argued that just because the Nazi's philosophy was a combination of Social Darwinism and Collectivism does not mean all followers of these things are ready and willing to send millions to death camps. They also rightly argue that it insults the memories of those who survived such atrocities to suggest such, but it also insults their memories to pretend that it was a group of non-human monsters who did this, and not real human beings like ourselves.

Let us not just look at the holocaust which is so painful and awful a memory that it's hard for us to accept it happened, though we must. How about the aftermath of the French Revolution as described so graphically in Tale Of Two Cities. Groups of people, especially when they see themselves as in line with their societies in general are capable of horrors against individuals that they could never consider as individuals. Yes, let's put that more personally. We are capable of these horrors whenever we allow ourselves to be convinced that we are part of a group that by virtue of being a group has some common good that supersedes what some individuals may see as good or precious to them.

“Ridiculous!”, some may say, and I can see their likely point. What about national sovereignty and laws against thievery and sociopathic behavior? Are they not examples of a common good superseding some individual's perception of good? No, those are examples of lesser evils, not common or greater goods. That's a very important distinction that many who argue for collectivism miss. The choice between two evils is some times necessary for a society, for such situations happen, some wars for example, but the choice between goods is never a necessary choice for a society. Good by its definition neither harms by its presence or absence. For a government to make any decision for an individual that it doesn't need to could be the simplest functional definition of tyranny.

Other recent masks are Communism, Socialism, Progressivism, Fascism, and Absolute Monarchies. I'd consider throwing in Corporatism as I believe it is yet another mask of the same thing, but explaining that may require an article unto itself. As different as these things may seem to be from each other, even to the point that their adherents kill each other at times, they are all at fault for the same reason from the individual liberty perspective. They all depend on the invention of the the common greater good to justify running over the individual. Yes, even absolute monarchies justify their power ultimately with a common greater good argument. They rule for the sake of their nation's people and that their power was absolute was justified as being in their people's best interest. The divine right argument may seem at first to be different but essentially it says God decided it was in the best interest of the people that a given monarch rule them.

One could also follow the money, so to speak, to see this same point. With a mere formal exception for Fascism, not a functional one, all property and wealth in a nation under these systems is ultimately that of the nation. Individuals may be allowed to operate to an extent as though it's there's, but given the perceived needs of some common greater good anything and everything can be taken from an individual. Whether one says the wealth and property belongs to the people, the nation, or the crown it's all the same insult from an individual liberty perspective. It is also all the same essential false argument, that some common greater good exists.

The Ancient Struggle

And so the ancient struggle goes on. It's very ironic, if not out right perverse, that Progressives, Socialists, and other collectivists assume the mantle of human progress and accuse people like myself of wanting to “turn back”, as one President Obama has taken to putting it. It is after all those like myself that work towards the maximizing of individual liberty who fight against the tyranny and horrors that inevitably result when people like him use governmental power to advance what they think is best for us. We are the only ones actually pointing the way forward, not him.

>> Notations <<

* “ we would have taken the better option between extinction and survival as something less than human”, should not be taken as an argument for euthanasia since the measure of what it means to be fully human is not in our physical state of being, but in that we endeavor to do the best we can with whatever we have and can ethically obtain.

Looking For New Ideas At Obama's Convention?

President Obama has accused Mitt Romney of having no new ideas and I see right through the president's words. He's deploying a tactic that he should realize is just that and nothing more, no substance, no sincerity, and not very intelligent when used as long as he has done it.

Here's how it works and how it's been employed since 2008. First take a crisis that was created by both political parties, the banking collapse and great recession, and claim it's all the out-going party's fault. Then declare every economic and governmental principle of that party, that you don't like, to have been proven wrong. The proof you point to for this depends on your first assumption that one party's actions alone caused the crisis while the other sat on the sideline with halos over their heads. This would be tough without the help of an academic community infected with a liberal bias so strong it should offend any sincere seeker of knowledge, but fortunately for Obama he's got just that. You might even say they created him. It also helps to have a large part of the journalistic community ready and willing to carry your water, which he does. This all sets up the impression of a check-mate with one last bit of semantics. He declares any idea the other party had before the crisis to be old and part of the problem, and any new idea to be extreme.

It's a check-mate that completely aces out your opposition. It's a clever way of saying everything they do is wrong and they can never be right. Although “clever” is only descriptive if enough people are fooled by it. Enough people bought it at first, but it's the sort of thing you can't allow people a lot of time to think about, and four years is lot of time. Only a fool or someone not smart enough to realize their using it would continue to use it to this day.

As For What Romney Actually Said

What Romney did say was jam-packed with ideas. They just were ideas that Obama apparently wants us to reject. I'll not go into a segment by segment analysis to show this. Instead let me just present one. In this one little part is probably the core of what he said and it was intense in content.

“President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans, and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”

Some analysts, many I respect, said he was simply contrasting Obama's grand vision with his own pragmatism, in hopes that people in today's economy will find that appealing. But, there is so much more being said in this. It's a statement about the proper role of government and that of the president of the United States. Government as Clint Eastwood said, “they work for us”. We shouldn't elect them to lead our families, rather instead they should serve our families so that our families can achieve our goals.

Every president's promise should be “to help you and your family” for that is the only job government has, but for people like our current president and far too many before him, they saw their job as being the shapers of society and the saviors of the world. You can't give governments such high goals without seriously flirting with hubris, probably the most dangerous vice a government can fall to. History is replete with atrocities committed by nations believing themselves to be in the process of transforming society for the better or saving the world from an approaching cataclysm, and I should add, is completely devoid of any lasting good achieved by nations believing such things of themselves.  Social hubris is evil's game and evil has always won it.

With that one little segment, Romney showed his heartfelt commitment to restoring government to its proper role, helping individuals and their families, and at the same time suggesting that his opponent's world-view is dangerously inappropriate in a nation that cherishes individual liberty and dignity.

Now Let's See What New Ideas The Democrats Have

The line of the Obama campaign about how old the Republican ideas are is itself the most worn out idea referenced by it, so it will be interesting to see if Obama's team presents the nation with anything that isn't truly worn out this week. Here are things that should be demanding attention.

They've admitted Obamacare is flawed, so will we see details about how they intend to fix it?

How does Obama plan to work with a divided government if he gets another four years? Does he plan to keep getting nothing done except by executive orders, or does he actually plan to compromise with the Republicans? He's shown little to no history of being able to do that effectively (unlike his Republican challenger), so wouldn't it make sense for him to explain what new approaches to this he has in mind?

The absence of a budget would certainly seem to demand some new ideas to come out of their convention, like what will the first budget capable of getting at least most Democratic senators to vote for it look like?

Oh and while we're talking about this whole general concept of new ideas, if the Republicans need to be presenting new ideas in order to be taken seriously, doesn't that suggest that most of the ideas currently being implemented aren't working? Who's been implementing those?

The task before Obama at this convention is huge. He must show he's not part of the problem and that he understands that government's proper role is not to lead but to follow.

Oh, what's that you say? Am I saying in essence that unless President Obama becomes an individualist like myself he's wrong? Well what do you know. You caught me. See, I told you that tactic of Obama's has long since been over-used. You and I may believe that about government's proper role, but Obama doesn't, so of course he will have little if anything to say to us. Hopefully the independents and moderates will agree more with us than him. If he keeps up the same old tactics, our hopes will likely be fulfilled.

Will he abandon his old tactics? That's what will be most interesting for me to see. It will answer the question many have been asking. Is this guy really as intelligent as he's been perceived to be? If he sticks with this “they have no new ideas” or “their ideas are extreme” tactic we will know the answer is 'no'. Let's see, shall we?