Tuesday, November 27, 2012

The Golden Rule And Genetics -- Two Keys To Understanding Our World




What follows here is some thinking out loud, or more accurately to say, in print.  These thoughts were inspired by a series of articles and papers written on the premise that our political views may in fact be the results of genetics and not just how we were raised and educated.

Here are links to a couple of them.
Body Politic ~ The Economist
Major New Genetics Of Politics Study ~ Chris Mooney, in The Intersection

There are many many more examples of these to be found if you find reading more of them to be more than redundant,  but the point is that my thoughts here are in fact about a very serious possibility, that conservatives and liberals can no more agree on some issues than a fish can hunt gazelle in the African veldt.


I put this into a Christian context by using the Golden Rule, "Do to others as you would have them do to you", and how liberal and conservative Christians end up reading such a simple rule so very differently, and how that translates both theologically and politically.

Both believe in the general principal of treating others the way you want to be treated.  That much isn't missed by either.  The difference, and what I strongly suspect to be how the genetics plays itself out in our brain wiring, is how they interpret the context of the rule's application.

Genetic conservatives, I believe, see the rule is largely practical.  Following it will generally result in others treating you better than if you didn't follow it.  It's what some would call a win-win.  If you treat others well they will tend to return the favor, not always, but often enough for it to just make good sense as a regular practice.

Genetic Liberals  on the other hand believe the rule is largely moral.  You treat others the way you want yourself to be treated because it's the right thing to do.  There's no guarantee or even likelihood the favor will be returned, but good people just do it.

How these two different perspectives of the Golden Rule plays out is then perhaps counter-intuitive, but very much logical.


The Counter-intuitive Outcome


The Genetic Conservative follows the Golden Rule reflexively without thinking, while the Genetic Liberal follows it with greater hesitation.  Since the conservative believes there's a personal benefit to following it there is seldom if ever a question about following it, but since the Liberal believes it's pretty much a moral decision they think about it as a test of their character and so it's conceivable they may not follow it in a certain instance, but when they do they tend to pat themselves on the back or say, "I was good".

Now before my fellow conservatives jump to the conclusion our perspective is superior since we will be "good" almost without hesitation, consider what the liberal perspective on this difference is.  Liberals could claim their heart is more sincere and selfless in this since they have no expectation of reward for being "good".  They also will insist they're the more rational and realistic.


A Side Note On Atheists


One wonders why it is there are conservative and liberals within both the ranks of evangelicals and atheists, yet conservative evangelicals outnumber liberal ones and liberal atheists outnumber conservative ones.  Similar studies have suggested there's genetics involved between religious and non-religious people as well as Conservatives and Liberals.  Could they be the same?

Well, yes they could, and I suspect the Golden Rule focus works here as well.  Both conservatives and liberals pretty much agree the world is imperfect, but they differ as to whether being "good" is generally rewarded or not.  In order for conservatives to so confidently believe that following the Golden Rule will bring them benefit more often than not, they must at times believe the reward will be at the very least an ultimate one somewhere in the future.  Anyone who is confident in an ultimate reward would logically gravitate towards religious beliefs.  Now liberals on the other hand believe no one can be trusted to do the right thing and that it is the natural tendency of human beings to selfishly exploit others.  For them it is just a matter of maintaining sanity to anticipate this and it is irrational to expect otherwise.  Their mindset is to anticipate the worst of people and of life in general.  For them it is only through great caution guided by reason that they can maximize their personal experience and impact.  They tend not to count on things they can't see, feel, hear, or touch.  This mindset would logically gravitate towards a rejection or at least skepticism of religion.  The Golden Rule is for them, as said before, a decision they make to be "good" with no expectations of anything in return.  For them it is a sign of their personal enlightenment.

So many of the most common parts of many fruitless arguments back and forth between Christians and atheists makes a lot of sense in light of this analysis of how each perceives the Golden Rule.

Many atheists insist no caring god would allow all the suffering we see on Earth around us, and often Christians respond by saying the atheists are missing the bigger picture.  Both leave this exchange confident their reasoning prevailed and no minds or hearts are changed.

Christian conservatives see ultimate justice and reward as part of their lives.  There are near countless examples of it in their lives and those of others, and for them believing in the unseen is not so much faith as it is humility, indeed an exceptionally rational and logical belief that the universe is not limited to our abilities to perceive it, and that weighing and considering the testimony of others helps expand our understanding beyond what would otherwise be our limits.

For Genetic Liberals things like justice must be obtained through human effort alone. Christian liberals see themselves as God's avatars.  It's up to them to get it done with God's help.  Atheist liberals just leave the God-talk out of it and see it as completely on them to get it done.


Back To Politics


Now we can swing back into the area of government policy and this Golden Rule idea follows there just as easily.  Liberals distrust human nature so much that they're inclined to favor government control over individual liberty, while Conservatives are so confident that people left to their own devices will tend to do good because it benefits them, that they have a hard time accepting government controls as justified.

Liberals tend to see the decision to do good as the result of high personal character and enlightenment, and conservatives tend to see it as a rational response to an environment where people being good to each other tend to prosper.  These different ways of seeing "good" and its consequences leads to very different politics.

If you believe good behavior derives from enlightenment then you're open to government enforced good behavior.  After all, the average person cannot be expected to have the kind of superior moral character and/or spiritual enlightenment necessary to make these decisions on their own.  And further, if someone compelled to do good becomes so enlightened they should have no problem with having been forced, since it would have been their decision anyway if they knew then what they know now.

If on the other hand you believe most people tend to act rationally and rational people will see enough personal benefit to good behavior that they will tend to do what is good, then you will also tend to see government enforced good behavior as generally unnecessary, demeaning, oppressive, and arrogant.  And further, seeing it as unnecessary, you will see the potential harm of government possibly getting things wrong as outweighing the likely possible good.


Conclusion


I summarize this thought exercise as follows -- the reader should keep in mind I am a conservative --.  The modern American conservative sees all things in life as connected and that means to be rational one must have the humility to not look down on the average human being, and perhaps more importantly one must see doing good as having a practical reward.  Humility and balanced rationality are what separates conservatives from liberals.  The left tend to see those who disagree with them as inferior in some way.  The modern American liberal sees a disconnect between the way things ought to be and the way they would naturally trend without the the intervention of the enlightened.  They see no need for balance in their reasoning since they see themselves as fixing a broken world.


A Call To Action For Christians (The Church Universal)


It's not that conservative Christians fail to see the world as fallen, it's that they have the humility to accept that it is Christ and not them who will fix it.  The liberal Christian may argue that we are Christ in this world and we should thus share in His purpose to redeem it, and the conservative view is little more than an excuse not to act.  The liberal argument however reveals its own failings.  It does this in three large areas.

1. Christ calls us to do many things in His name, but hubris isn't one of them.  If human effort, even that aided by Christ's inspirational enlightenment, was capable of redeeming this world He would not have had to die on the cross.  Justifying the use of governmental power to force people to act in "good" ways by saying it's what Christ would want us to do, well perhaps that's just nonsense, but I'd say it's more like a hubris born of poorly balanced reasoning.  This shows in the very use of the phrase, "we are Christ in the world".  No, Christ is Christ in the world.  We should be His humble followers, not His replacements.  If He needs us to be Him, our religion has a problem much bigger than a lack of active members.

2. The liberal argument is very unkind in its assumption that conservatives believe in sitting around and waiting for Christ to fix everything.  There are lazy Christians who can't seem to do much more than attend Church and accept the label, but their problem isn't theology or philosophy.  They may use a false humility of the sort that says, "who am I that I can make any difference?", but that's not because they're really humble, certainly not because they're theology is conservative.  And, there are many lazy ones who also use liberal sounding theological reasons for their laziness as well, like, "the church is full of hypocrites".  There are even what I call pseudo atheists who are really just people who's core beliefs are Christian but are too lazy to wrestle with the meanings and would rather not face their unfinished intellectual work on a regular basis, so they declare themselves to be atheist.  There is no theological position of any popularity that isn't used by someone somewhere to justify laziness.  My point being that one doesn't need to assume the mantle of Christ in the world to serve Him in it, and suggesting that anyone who doesn't must be amongst the lazy is insulting, and thus not a very Christian argument.

3. The logical ends of this "we are Christ in the world" theology is that we stop acting as persuaders and become more like dictators, authoritarians, patronizing.  This is clearly evident in the results, yes even the very results our liberal Christian brothers and sisters are more than happy to point at and claim.  Government grows and grows to add to and sustain programs designed to be everyone's salvation from misery, and it tells us more and more what we must and must not do for our own sakes and that of others.  Even as we all see how impersonal and dehumanizing many of these programs, laws, and regulations become, even as we see how they undermine individuals seeking even the slightest sort of self-actualization, they see all of this as just acceptable collateral damage.  The Christian Church as a whole keeps losing more and more ground in a nation, yes in a world, filled more and more with people who want to be treated and seen as individuals, and we lose ground because we have become trapped in the misconception that when Christ told us to take our message to the nations he some how meant we were supposed to convert their governments and their government policies and essentially just skip over the actual individuals who live there, or that they would just come along.  In a world where more and more people are losing their faith in their rulers, liberal Christians seem to think it good policy to work out the Gospel from the top of government down to the people.  It is little wonder that fewer and fewer people associate themselves with the Christian message.

So am I saying liberal Christian teachings are to blame for our current failure to connect with people?  Not in the sense that they are to blame alone.  Who amongst us is earnestly reaching out to the individual?  There should be more.  The lonely unreached poor of John Wesley's time are now embodied by the lonely people who sit alone and use web-based media for most of their socialization.  Who are today's Methodists who are reaching out to these people?  If Paul were walking the Earth today instead of when he did, his dream in Troas would not have been of a Greek, but a geek.  In today's world, more and more people are waiting for the next Paul or Wesley to bring the gospel to them, and not just in word but deeds, and to do this the message must be one aimed at individuals, not collectives. You know what I'm talking about, like Christ's message was and is?

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Dyslexic Wisdom


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

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

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

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

1: A child can't really learn to share until they first know what it means to own something and not share it.
-- You can't share what isn't yours to share, and you also aren't really sharing something if you're being forced to.
-- The option not to share must be real, or their can never be a choice to share and thus can never be true sharing.
-- It's more important to teach a child ownership than sharing, if you must teach only one, since the latter is impossible without the former.
 
2: Show me a truly greedy man and I'll show you someone who doesn't understand ownership.
-- If you own something, you care about it and you want others to respect your property.  If you want others to respect your property you understand how others will want the same for their property.  While it's possible someone may be so self-centered that they don't see the relationship between respecting others' property and the respect they want for there own, this level of self-centeredness borders on being a sociopath.  Yes, it's that unlikely.  The more likely cause by far is they never came to see anything as actually being anyone's property, including their own.  They're greed is that of someone wanting to dominate a buffet.  They have an irrational insecurity, most likely the result of parenting that failed to teach them a sense of ownership, and so they strive irrationally to get things before others do.
-- The absolute best government policies for countering greed is to protect and respect property rights, nothing less.
 
3: You can't have non-violence or even life without violence.
-- Violence is an inescapable part of life.  It's how organisms sustain themselves.  Even photosynthesis involves a violent bombardment by the Sun of the Earth.  Instead of teaching a child non-violence only we should teach them the difference between appropriate and inappropriate uses of violence.  The anti-spanking movement is raising generations of people who simply can't cope with reality.  It's only through a massive co-enabling that these unfortunate victims of warped child-raising are able to avoid becoming quivering balls of disturbed confusion the first time they're confronted with a situation requiring violence.  And as for those who still become violent in sheer nature, they lack any guidance that might tend to limit the degree of of their sociopathic behavior.
-- Show a child that tends towards violence what appropriate violence is and you show them a path to being a functional part of society.  Show a child that doesn't tend towards violence the same thing and you prepare them for those inevitable moments in life that might otherwise destroy them.
-- There is nothing nurturing about teaching zero tolerance of violence.
 
4: The individualist will usually be less selfish than the collectivist.
-- If you don't fully appreciate the value of your own individual dignity, liberty, or aspirations then you'll ignore those things in the lives of others as well.  It is easy to convince yourself that the greater good just so happens to work in your favor as you proceed to be very selfish.  On the other hand it is relatively difficult to convince yourself that you are being less than selfish when the pursuit of your benefit runs over someone else's individual liberty or dignity.  That is, if you first appreciate and value your own liberty and dignity.
-- I think this is one of the most difficult of the proverbs to grasp.  It's just seems to make so much sense that if we emphasize groups over individuals, we are being unselfish.  We miss the logical subtlety that groups verses individuals is not the same as others verses self.  We miss that others are individuals just as we ourselves are, and thus there is no equivalent relationship to groups and individuals.  We only understand others by understanding ourselves.
-- Once one grasps this important distinction between groups and others one will also begin to see why social justice is such a wrong concept, and how much harm it does.
 
5: Humility leads to greater command of one's talents as well as command of one's immediate environment.
-- A humble person sees both what things can be done and which of those things will be most advantageous to do.  Over time humble people will be more effective in their endeavors than those who are not humble.
 
6: Humility can maximize confidence.
-- Knowing one's limits teaches the full extent of one's capabilities, and knowing that makes one confident in what they do.  To know if someone is humble, you need to get to know them. A humble person could come off as cocky because they will tend to be confident. 

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

The End Of Marxism And Capitalism


"Mr. Marx, meet reality.  Reality, meet Mr. Marx.  I'll send in the cleanup crews after you're done."


[This is a repeat of post 2 from 11/12/2012.  I am re-posting it because it seems too important to leave it shrouded in the directory behind a more time specific post on the same day.]

If your ideology defies reality you must call reality an ideology, so as to create an illusion of plausibility.

Based on my reading of both domestic and foreign journals on our current economic state, worldwide, and on the results of last week's election, something has dawned on me.  The debates between the Capitalists and the leftists needs to stop.  Unlike any fair and honest debate, it has not served in any way to advance our knowledge or understanding of economics.  Instead it has only served to deceive us.
 

Through it the world has been cruelly deceived into thinking we can defy reality.  It's as if a bunch of adults had taken up the habit of telling every child they see near a precipice they will fly if they jump off.  Only in this case, while the potential consequences are just as horrible, there can be no authorities to tell the real deceivers to leave the gullible alone.  The deceivers I speak of are, to be fair to them, self-deceived, but not all of them are unaware of the disingenuous tactic they've been using to advance their cause.  They just believe the ends can justify the means.

Their disingenuous means is to set themselves against a mythological ideology they call Capitalism.  The reason Capitalism is a myth is because it is an attempt to explain the natural phenomenon of market forces within human civilization by a means other than objective observation and study.  Instead of treating the facts of how market forces operate as the facts that they are, they stuff them into a fabricated ideology called Capitalism, so they can debate reality itself and not look ridiculous.

Like real isms it may have some purely ideological/philosophical elements, but they also make it include things that are factual and thus should be ideologically neutral.  e.g. Quality of goods and services naturally trends upward with higher compensation.  Competition does usually produce more favorable price to quality ratios for consumers.   Centralized decision makers intervening in market decisions tend to make services less sensitive to individual needs.   These are not the facets of an ism or ideology, they are part of reality.

Marxists and other leftists needed to create this label, "capitalism", in order to give their ideas which flew in the face reality the illusion of merit.  Or from their perspective, the delusion of merit.   I should add, as the recent re-election of a leftist president in the United States seems to indicate, this intellectual slight of hand has been very effective. It seems most of the world is now fooled by it.  A world-wide delusion has set in.  One where the above realities about how goods and services best get distributed can be treated as just someone's unenlightened or poorly informed opinions.  They're part of an ideology after all, right?  So the leftists can claim they have no more merit than there ideas that happen to fly in the face of such things.

Of course we cannot dismiss these factual ideas about product distribution by simply attaching them to a made up straw-man-like ideology and then posing another ideology against it, but why do I say contemporary leftist ideologies fly in the face of reality? Because they do.

The most fundamentally flawed of them is the one that laid the foundation for the others.  Marxist economics is based heavily on what has come to be called Marx's Labor Theory of Value.   In fact, according to my reading of Das Kapital, this was the base assumption of the book.   Marx pretty much came right out and said so.  'All value is ultimately derived from labor' would be my paraphrase.  While this is a great place to start if one wishes to argue workers are being unjustly exploited, property owners have no intrinsic right to their property, and all property is ultimately that of the community's, it's none the less a horrible place to start if you want your ideas to withstand any respectable application of critical thinking.

If all value derives from labor, what does that say about ideas that dawn on people while their not working?  What does it say about forests, rivers, mountains, and other natural wonders?  What does it say about talents that only a few people have at certain levels, like leadership, craftsmanship, artistic ability, creativity?  What does it say about human dignity? It's not a matter of having caveats for things in order to save the Marxist assumption about value from being untenable.  Value either derives from labor or it doesn't.  If it doesn't then Marx's Labor Theory is wrong from the very start of its argument.  If value does derive from labor than individual worth and dignity is nonsense and I have some cardboard homes to sell that should catch me a high price.

Obviously value does not ultimately derive from labor.  Labor is just another part of the set of goods and services that we human beings endeavor to distribute between ourselves and benefit from.  This isn't capitalism.  This is just how things work.

Marx may have been attempting through this base assumption to give individuals more dignity, but he actually did the opposite by equating their whole value to their ability to work, and even worse for the plausibility of Marxism, he forced it to stand on a foundation of dehumanization.  If your ideology's base assumption quickly falls apart, or even worse becomes monstrous, when confronted with both reason and reality, then your ideology is implausible.

It is this implausibility that made it necessary for the straw-man called "capitalism" to be created, so that the facts and realities that make Marxism implausible could be dismissed as just being part of its rival ideology, Capitalism.

The other major contemporary leftist ideologies, Progressivism and socialism, don't escape the same implausibility of Marxism.  It's not that they necessarily can't escape it, but they simply don't try.   It's too convenient for their causes to reject reality and pretend that anyone who tells them free market forces will ultimately maximize the effectiveness of the distribution of goods and services is simply part of a rival ism, "capitalism", and thus it's actually possible for them to know a better way.   As if someone may know a better way of dealing with gravity than assuming you'll fall if you jump off a bridge.

It's a titanic slight of hand and it's worked.  Now it seems most voters in the United States believe reality is just a nasty ideology they need not agree with.   My advice to the rest of the world is to stop depending on us.  Whether you agree with the leftists in this country or not doesn't matter.  Reality is not an ideology you can argue with.   If you defy it, as the left will insist on doing, everyone who depends on you will lose.

My advice to my fellow travelers in the struggle for individual liberty is to lean on one of our surest allies, reality.  She can be a harsh mistress, as the saying goes, but we gave it one really good try this election cycle to help our fellow citizens see what the left is doing and most of them chose not to see it, so now they have to deal with that harsh mistress.  There is much suffering ahead and I for one will not be shy to say, "I told you so".

As for all the people about to lose your jobs, we so called "heartless conservatives" will be doing whatever we can to help you, within reason of course.  Look to churches, synagogs, and other volunteer organizations if you have need.  We are all going through very rough times and we all will get through them the best if we come together and help each other. 

I just wish so many of us hadn't bought into and played along with that "capitalism" trick the left used.  Will these be the last words of a great nation to warn others who come along after us, "reality isn't an ideology!"?

Monday, November 12, 2012

Worldwide Debate Over The Economic Crisis

Post 1 : About The Election


Are We This Stupid?


An amazing thing happened last week in the United States.  In a very low voter turnout the majority of the people said they either don't see a problem with the last four years, or they don't believe anyone can do any better than the current set of leaders we've had the last two years, or they just don't care.  In this election they had the opportunity to express themselves, to put their government in a position to get things done, to at least try to end the paralysis it's been in.  Instead they both re-elected the Democrat president and strengthened the Republicans hold on the House of Representatives while doing nothing to weaken them in the Senate.  One side or the other needed to be significantly weakened or at least in some way sent a clear message to cooperate with the other.  Instead the voters and non-voters conspired to help the two sides dig their trenches all the deeper.  It's as if the majority of the American people decided to give reality the finger, or maybe just refuse to take responsibility for their role in self-governance. 

We've been blaming our leaders for not being able to put aside partisanship to get things done, but when we had a chance to correct that, we essentially allowed our own partisanship to reinforce there's.  We actually seem to have asked our leaders to go right on not getting anything done while our government heads towards fiscal oblivion and our economy has all the symptoms of D.C.S. (dieing civilization syndrome).  Just as President Obama will most certainly no longer be able to justly blame future economic woes on President Bush, the American voters will no longer be able to justly blame the politicians in general for our government's inability to get anything done.

If we cease to be a great nation in the next few years, let future historians know that it wasn't any of our leaders' fault.  It was ours, we the people, or at least the majority of us.



Post 2 : Worldwide Debate Over The Economic Crisis


We Are Not Alone If We Are


If your ideology defies reality you must call reality an ideology, so as to create an illusion of plausibility.

Based on my reading of both domestic and foreign journals on our current economic state, worldwide, and on the results of last week's election, something has dawned on me.  The debates between the Capitalists and the leftists needs to stop.  Unlike any fair and honest debate, it has not served in any way to advance our knowledge or understanding of economics.  Instead it has only served to deceive us.
 

Through it the world has been cruelly deceived into thinking we can defy reality.  It's as if a bunch of adults had taken up the habit of telling every child they see near a precipice they will fly if they jump off.  Only in this case, while the potential consequences are just as horrible, there can be no authorities to tell the real deceivers to leave the gullible alone.  The deceivers I speak of are, to be fair to them, self-deceived, but not all of them are unaware of the disingenuous tactic they've been using to advance their cause.  They just believe the ends can justify the means.

Their disingenuous means is to set themselves against a mythological ideology they call Capitalism.  The reason Capitalism is a myth is because it is an attempt to explain the natural phenomenon of market forces within human civilization by a means other than objective observation and study.  Instead of treating the facts of how market forces operate as the facts that they are, they stuff them into a fabricated ideology called Capitalism, so they can debate reality itself and not look ridiculous.

Like real isms it may have some purely ideological/philosophical elements, but they also make it include things that are factual and thus should be ideologically neutral.  e.g. Quality of goods and services naturally trends upward with higher compensation.  Competition does usually produce more favorable price to quality ratios for consumers.   Centralized decision makers intervening in market decisions tend to make services less sensitive to individual needs.   These are not the facets of an ism or ideology, they are part of reality.

Marxists and other leftists needed to create this label, "capitalism", in order to give their ideas which flew in the face reality the illusion of merit.  Or from their perspective, the delusion of merit.   I should add, as the recent re-election of a leftist president in the United States seems to indicate, this intellectual slight of hand has been very effective. It seems most of the world is now fooled by it.  A world-wide delusion has set in.  One where the above realities about how goods and services best get distributed can be treated as just someone's unenlightened or poorly informed opinions.  They're part of an ideology after all, right?  So the leftists can claim they have no more merit than their ideas that happen to fly in the face of such things.

Of course we cannot dismiss these factual ideas about product distribution by simply attaching them to a made up straw-man-like ideology and then posing another ideology against it, but why do I say contemporary leftist ideologies fly in the face of reality? Because they do.

The most fundamentally flawed of them is the one that laid the foundation for the others.  Marxist economics is based heavily on what has come to be called Marx's Labor Theory of Value.   In fact, according to my reading of Das Kapital, this was the base assumption of the book.   Marx pretty much came right out and said so.  'All value is ultimately derived from labor' would be my paraphrase.  While this is a great place to start if one wishes to argue workers are being unjustly exploited, property owners have no intrinsic right to their property, and all property is ultimately that of the community's, it's none the less a horrible place to start if you want your ideas to withstand any respectable application of critical thinking.

If all value derives from labor, what does that say about ideas that dawn on people while their not working?  What does it say about forests, rivers, mountains, and other natural wonders?  What does it say about talents that only a few people have at certain levels, like leadership, craftsmanship, artistic ability, creativity?  What does it say about human dignity? It's not a matter of having caveats for things in order to save the Marxist assumption about value from being untenable.  Value either derives from labor or it doesn't.  If it doesn't then Marx's Labor Theory is wrong from the very start of its argument.  If value does derive from labor than individual worth and dignity is nonsense and I have some cardboard homes to sell that should catch me a high price.

Obviously value does not ultimately derive from labor.  Labor is just another part of the set of goods and services that we human beings endeavor to distribute between ourselves and benefit from.  This isn't capitalism.  This is just how things work.

Marx may have been attempting through this base assumption to give individuals more dignity, but he actually did the opposite by equating their whole value to their ability to work, and even worse for the plausibility of Marxism, he forced it to stand on a foundation of dehumanization.  If your ideology's base assumption quickly falls apart, or even worse becomes monstrous, when confronted with both reason and reality, then your ideology is implausible.

It is this implausibility that made it necessary for the straw-man called "capitalism" to be created, so that the facts and realities that make Marxism implausible could be dismissed as just being part of its rival ideology, Capitalism.

The other major contemporary leftist ideologies, Progressivism and socialism, don't escape the same implausibility of Marxism.  It's not that they necessarily can't escape it, but they simply don't try.   It's too convenient for their causes to reject reality and pretend that anyone who tells them free market forces will ultimately maximize the effectiveness of the distribution of goods and services is simply part of a rival ism, "capitalism", and thus it's actually possible for them to know a better way.   As if someone may know a better way of dealing with gravity than assuming you'll fall if you jump off a bridge.

It's a titanic slight of hand and it's worked.  Now it seems most voters in the United States believe reality is just a nasty ideology they need not agree with.   My advice to the rest of the world is to stop depending on us.  Whether you agree with the leftists in this country or not doesn't matter.  Reality is not an ideology you can argue with.   If you defy it, as the left will insist on doing, everyone who depends on you will lose.

My advice to my fellow travelers in the struggle for individual liberty is to lean on one of our surest allies, reality.  She can be a harsh mistress, as the saying goes, but we gave it one really good try this election cycle to help our fellow citizens see what the left is doing and most of them chose not to see it, so now they have to deal with that harsh mistress.  There is much suffering ahead and I for one will not be shy to say, "I told you so".

As for all the people about to lose your jobs, we so called "heartless conservatives" will be doing whatever we can to help you, within reason of course.  Look to churches, synagogs, and other volunteer organizations if you have need.  We are all going through very rough times and we all will get through them the best if we come together and help each other. 

I just wish so many of us hadn't bought into and played along with that "capitalism" trick the left used.  Will these be the last words of a great nation to warn others who come along after us, "reality isn't an ideology!"?

Monday, November 5, 2012

Why We Will Win


This election is far too important. Too much unchecked power has been given to our federal government and, as was inevitable, it has come to be abused, yes by members of both parties, but this election is not a choice between two wrong parties. It's a choice between those who wish to expand government's power further and further into our lives, and those who at least tell us they are ready to start putting on the breaks and roll it back. The inevitable ends of continuing as we have is slavery to those who govern us.

This has been the case throughout human history. People settle in places away from tyranny and over time due to the needs of security and civility that rise with growing population densities, they gradually give up liberties to governors. One liberty after another is taken away in the name of the greater common good until tyranny becomes the rule rather than the exception. This repeated pattern is a depressing thought.

Very fortunately for us in the United States, our founders anticipated this very pattern and set up the government in such a way as to make it possible to break it. The elements of their design are many. The constitution and its “Bill of Rights” carefully defined the government's power. The government is set up in separate branches that each have the power to stop the others from acting, thus no great thing can be achieved by it without consensus. Further we are empowered to amend the constitution so as to further define government's limits and further ensure the individual rights of liberty and respect for dignity. But most importantly, they established the general governing philosophy of minimal government intended to maximize individual liberty while always respecting individual dignity.

That last part is what is often called “the American ideal”. This ideal is why many of us, including myself, believe America is not a specific nation. It just so happens that the ideal that is America has become part of the very fabric of this nation. If that governing philosophy ever becomes abandoned by a governing majority in this nation then it will cease to be the true America and those of us who remain faithful to the great experiment in self-governance will then be America, wherever we may live.

Many things encourage me about this election. I am encouraged by the apparent momentum for Romney and his apparent large leads amongst independents. The likely electoral count should all states polling within the margin of error split just evenly gives Romney the edge, and historically troubled incumbents lose more than half such races.

If Romney wins, some rightly say the fight has only just begun. Things need rolled back and constitutional amendments need proposed and passed onto the states for approval. But if he loses, I say the fight continues, just in a different context. The United States of America may no longer be the true America at that point, but the American ideal cannot be defeated.

It has existed in one way or another even before the first pilgrim set foot on American soil. Our founders may have put it all together into formal institutions, but the ideal has existed as long as human beings have had time to think and be inspired. Below are the words of Scottish poet Robert Burns describing what he imagined the words of Robert the Bruce as he addressed his men before the Battle of Bannockburn on the 24th of June in 1314.


Scots! wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots! wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victory!

 Now's the day, and now's the hour;
See the front o' battle lour:
See approach proud Edward's power -
Chains and slavery!

Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!
 
What for Scotland's king and law
Freedom's sword will strongly draw?
Freeman stand, or freeman fa'?
Let him on wi' me!
 
By oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
 
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow! -
Let us do or die!
 
The Scots fought that day for freedom and liberty, yes liberty, that crucial part of the ideal that is the true America, long before this nation was born.  How similar is that last line to the words of Patrick Henry, “Give me liberty or give me death”. Burns words that he appropriately put into Robert the Bruce's mouth are those of a warrior, “Liberty's in every blow! - Let us do or die!” We aren't to the point of violent action. Today we vote to save this nation for America, but we know if it ever came to it, we would fight. That's because the true America cannot be defeated. We are not immortal, we can die, but that which is the true America cannot be killed.

Let's go vote. – To victory!