The Eternal Revolution

I almost hate using the word “enemies” to describe fellow citizens, especially considering many of which would be willing to lay their lives on the line for our country.  Many of them are patriots, but I am not saying they are the enemies of the United States.  What I'm about to lay out rather suggests they are enemies of the cause that gave birth to it. Many of them love this country as much as I do but they also believe her founders and their ideas are losing relevance to today.  In other words they have abandoned the revolution and now work against it.

Now we must ask if those ideas are in fact still relevant to today?  Are they still worth our efforts, our passion, our commitment even unto death?  Or have realities of the present day forced us into a context where this nation's purpose can no longer be the same as it was at its founding?

This is an important logical point. Before I demonstrate that the modern liberal is a counter-revolutionary, I must first establish that the revolution hasn't lost relevance to our current times.  Being a counter-revolutionary to a past and irrelevant revolution wouldn't matter much, but if that revolution is still relevant and even ongoing, then it matters a great deal.

That first point is easily enough satisfied subjectively.  It can be safely said that millions of people here in the United States and around the world believe the cause of individual liberty still needs fought for and continues to be fought for to this day.  The American Revolution did not end with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, it did not culminate with the establishment of the United States government in 1789, and it has not yet achieved total victory even within the sovereign borders of the United States.  As many of the founders acknowledged, they only started the struggle, the struggle to maximize individual liberty within the minimum confines of government necessary to protect us from major threats both within and without.

I could just simply have said that as in the case with any cause the fact that we believe it is relevant makes it so, but instead I thought it important to more fully express that sentiment.  Suffice it to say that whether modern liberalism is a counter-revolutionary movement really does matter.

Now to the business of making the case that it is.  In order for me to demonstrate this I must first show what the founders sought to achieve, and then show that modern liberalism is set against it.

 

The founders intent.

It is argued that the founders were not of one mind and thus there is no such thing as any deep common cause or original intent to be drawn from what they wrote.  This argument is clever but depends on getting a logical fallacy past us.  Just because a group of people by necessity of the legacy of the Tower of Babel, can never have exactly the same understanding of even the things they came together to agree on, doesn't mean the meaning of their agreement is nebulous or elusive.  If that attempted logical fallacy were valid then we could freely disregard all laws and contracts or at the very least be able to “reinterpret” them to mean whatever was convenient to us and our causes.

Since past written agreements and other similar collaborations cannot be rendered so easily meaningless we can safely conclude that there is some degree of common cause and original intent to be credibly drawn from what the founders wrote.  Unless they were a bunch of irrational blitherers there would have to be.  So lets see what some of that was.

Now even most of those who buy into the "not so meaningful intent" argument will at least accept this much about what the founders were after.  They highly valued what they considered to be three fundamental rights, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.  They'd even be likely to grant that, “the pursuit of happiness” largely involves the right to own and control property.  Further still these three fundamental rights are all inseparable from each other.  Not that the modern liberal believes that, but that their scholars would likely grant the framers of the constitution believed this for the most part.  To do otherwise would be to take a departure from the facts of history even too radical for those loving to pound square pegs of historical fact into ideological round holes.

Now to take these pieces of my case they'll grant me and put them together with some stuff I definitely need to source.  The right to property and the inseparable nature of this with individual liberty caused James Madison, often called the father of the constitution, to worry.  He pondered a point we seem to be approaching today where all possible private land will become owned and most citizens will be unable to buy any in their lifetime (emphasis added by me).

"These (people without property) will either combine under the influence of their common situation; in which case, the rights of property & the public liberty, will not be secure in their hands: or which is more probable, they will become the tools of opulence & ambition, in which case there will be equal danger on the other side,"

Have-nots being banded together to threaten rights of property or otherwise being used by the very rich to serve their greedy ambitions?  Does this not sound like the world described by modern liberals today? But what seems to be their solution to the crisis?  They propose a powerful central government mandated by a majority to redistribute the wealth of a few to the many.  In Madison's words seem to describe this as a consequence of the problem, “ the rights of property & the public liberty, will not be secure in their hands”, not as a solution to it.  Modern liberalism seems to see it as a choice between two evils, tyranny by government or tyranny by wealthy private interests.  When if they were still friends of the revolution they would seek a choice absent of tyranny.

They don't see another way because they don't want to.  At best some of them think that with the right sort of indoctrination a collective could actually rule with respect for individual dignity.  Here they ignore some of the most sound advice of the founders.  That being that a government ruled by a majority or any collective's interests will by its very nature inevitably attack life, liberty, and property.

Madison wrote to Jefferson in 1788,

"Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.  In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents."

Madison takes it a step further in this quote, describing a completely unrestrained democracy in Federalist No. 10 (emphasis again added by me), "A pure democracy ... can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction.  A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party... Hence it is that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

Thus from the point of view of at least the founder described as the father of the constitution, the one who by his own telling, never missed a meeting in the process of the constitution being worked out, the solution offered by modern liberalism is not a solution at all but a surrender to collective rule, the sure enemy of individual liberty.

I underlined and bolded that because it is such a key point.

Now modern liberalism's water carriers in the towers of academia insist that the reduction of individual liberty, greater and greater government intervention in property ownership and wealth distribution is the inevitable direction of things in a world ever more crowded and still possessed of finite resources.  The founders definition of individual liberty can't be relevant in a world where only a few can own land and thus ones liberty must only exist to the extent that governments can manage to allow it while still assuring subsistence for all.  

One could say, using their reasoning, Europe is the way it is because it had to face the reality of finite resources centuries before the United States did, and the United States really doesn't have a choice but to become more like Europe.  In essence, via the demographics of population growth it already has.

Thus I can understand their feeling justified in doing what they're doing to this nation, but then I never thought modern liberal collectivists realized that much of what they do is evil.  Like almost all other collectives that have practiced evil in history they believe they're actions to be both good and rational.  

I dare not list actual examples since all of the collectives ever proven to be evil have since come to be seen as wittingly so, their members all the willing participants in evil.  It seems an unfortunate sociological defense mechanism that we look at any large group of evil-doers and refuse to consider that given the right context of despair, peer pressure, and/or bad information we ourselves could become involved in such things*.

This grows lengthy so I will conclude with this.  The revolution for individual liberty and dignity is ongoing and modern liberals have set themselves against it.  They are enemies of the American revolution.

-----------------------

*Counter-lynching:  A great example of my point about us all being vulnerable to falling into a bad collective is the crowds of protesters calling for what would in essence be a counter-lynching of George Zimmerman.  The facts of the case didn't in any significant way point anywhere else but at justifiable self-defense but due to a combination of past collective grievances, current despair, and bad information they want an innocent man punished just like so many innocent black men had been lynched in the past.  The members of these crowds of protesters are no different than any of us.  They have been pulled into a bad crowd seeking a huge injustice, and no doubt for many of them they think they act in the name of justice.  This is a clear example of the bad side of collectivism that motivates us to accept perversion and evil as good.

What The Detroit Bankruptcy Has To Say To The World

My travels this Summer were as tiring as they were personally rewarding.  I visited with relatives.  One of them I never met before and I'm very happy I got a chance to meet her as well as the ones I already knew.

I also visited the graves of three beloved relatives who I had not gotten a chance to attend their funerals.  In case anyone of my readers isn't already aware of this, it it very important to one's psychological and spiritual well being to say your fair wells to those who have passed before you.

Feeling like I owe it to my readers to give them something of substance this week in spite of my weariness, I've decided to direct you all to a friend of mine's pod-cast, Consider This .  And I am very pleased that the light of providence seems to have shown upon us this week as this week's pod-cast has unusually great relevance to my international readership.  Also, if anyone's English isn't quite up to understanding what my friend is saying, he has the transcript on the page for you to use your favorite web-translator on.

Here's the link one more time --> Consider This: What The Detroit Bankruptcy Has To Say To Us

Hopes For This Week

Still on the road but almost home again.  I'll make another late week entry, but for now I'll just say this.  Some times the best persuasion is quiet and still.  I can only hope.

War On Coal Equals War On Freedom

 

One year ago I was also on the road and I posted this article.  Today, unfortunately the war on coal which is essentially a war on freedom continues.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On The Road And What Is This?

Travel is  adding a lot of challenge to my schedule, today especially.  The day's driving took much longer than planned.  Expect a more complete blog posting later this week.

In the mean time, since when did the stretch of Interstate 95 across Maryland become a toll road?  I asked a booth attendent that question and he looked at me as though I had asked since when have we humans begun using calandars.

He laughed, but it wasn't funny to me.  And no, it's not that I'm a cheapskate.  It's a constitutional issue.

If every road was a toll road then only those of some significant means could afford to use them.  And that in and of itself is not a constitutional problem since public money isn't generally used to maintain toll roads.  They're usually private entities approved by governments with no constitutional obligation to make their roads accessible to the general public.

But if the toll road is an Interstate Highway that's supposed to be accessible to the general car-driving public ...  What does making it a toll road do to the purpose of that road, and what does that say about public money being spent to provide amenities to an exclusive class?

Fortunately I'm currently in that exclusive class of folks that can afford $12.00 in tolls, but what about the people who live in remote rural areas where they found a low cost of living and an income that fits it?  They might be able to afford the fuel to travel across Maryland but maybe not the tolls as well.  Interstate 95 is supposed to be there for them just as much as it is for me.

The existence of the Interstate 95 tolls is not a laughing matter.  It's just one more reminder to me that my America may be losing its way.

"Walk Like an Egyptian" / When Is A Coup Not A Coup?

In our current age we seem to have elevated democracy to god-like status.  It is spoken of as if it's the be all and end all of political progress in any given nation.  We see photos of woman in Iraq and Afghanistan holding up purple thumbs as evidence they just voted in free elections and we tend to conclude those nations have arrived politically.  Then we seem to forget those conclusions when we see blatant evidence to the contrary.  People still kill people over politics there and even worse, over religion.

Then we see a similarly failed election result in Egypt, only worse because in Egypt the violence against politically and religiously different people was being fostered by Egypt's democratically elected government.  Our perception of reality is challenged.  In our world democratically elected governments are inclusive and some might even say good.  

Much of the world press tries not to pay too much attention to it all because it doesn't fit their templates where democracy is the right of passage into our current enlightened age.  Then when the Egyptian military steps in and dissolves the Morsi government most so called news sources have no idea how to process it.

It's almost as if they're asking themselves in their heads, "how can Pinochet be right?"  But no one dare speak such a question out-loud.  The answer must be that the premise of the question is wrong.  And perhaps it is.  Perhaps Pinochet really was just a monster and not a cure to a democracy gone wrong.  Maybe Egypt's military's action here is a lone exception to an otherwise hard rule that militaries should never undo the results of free elections.  Nothing and no one should ever undo the results of free elections.  To do so is a crime against humanity.

Okay, now I've had enough of acting like I share in this popular deification of democracy, because I don't.  Winston Churchill once very wisely said, "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others".  Some who lack life experience and/or insight might have seen this quote before and thought Churchill was just griping about democracy's imperfections but otherwise cleverly praising democracy.  But the rest of us see his point more clearly when we consider that no government, no matter what its form, is ever good.  It can only at best be the lesser of evils between itself and civil disorder.

So what Churchill was saying was that of all the lesser evils between themselves and civil disorder, democracy is the least evil, but it is still evil.  And I would pick up from there to say that democracy like all evils, if we leave it unchecked it will do horrible things.  And once those horrible things become horrible enough and/or lead to the very civil disorder all government is supposed to be preferable to, that government loses its justification to exist.

So what's my take on what has happened in Egypt?  Some times a military must act to undo the results of free elections, but deciding when that is should be very difficult.  Asking when should a nation's military overthrow a democratically elected government is like asking when one should cut off a person's limb.  It's a horrible thing to do that must only be done when it is clearly the lesser of evils.

On Facebook I saw a meme showing the anti-Morsi protests in Egypt and the caption, "Hey America, walk like an Egyptian".  As I saw it I thought perhaps we could substitute Venezuela or Nicaragua for America there and it would have been equally fitting.  Honduras has already in that sense walked like an Egyptian before Egypt even did.  But I cannot fault militaries from seeing the idea of overthrowing democratically elected leaders as abhorrent.  So I chose not to share that meme and I can't recall if I even gave it a like.

In the United States all military personnel are required to swear an oath to the nation's constitution and that constitution is written so as to limit the nation's government and any popular will as much as possible from doing evil to those citizens that don't agree with them.  This oath is the American people's last line of defense against forces that may chose to ignore the constitutional restraints placed upon our government.  Thus it's an oath I pray they take very seriously and never scoff at the possibility it could ever come down to that.

If a government ever sees itself as more important than individual liberty and dignity then it may just be time that nation's military consider walking like an Egyptian and doing what Honduras did with one such leader and leave him standing in ankle chains on the tarmac of a foreign nation.

Independence Day Comes This Week But Every Day Is A Day To Celebrate The Individual

Every July 4th we in the United States celebrate our independence from England  but for someone like me who sees the whole point of nations is to empower and protect the individuals within them, this is one especially bright day amongst every day of the year that we should honor the individual.  So this week I see it as appropriate to discuss what this blog is all about and that is mostly, need I repeat it, the individual.

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 a person's community, He came to establish a relationship with that person.  He already has a relationship with every community in the same way any of its members do.  He didn't need to become a man and die for our sins in order to do that.  He is after all omnipresent.  His coming was about individual relationships and all the collectives that were and will be involved are so because they happen to be there.  We are to go and teach all nations because that is where the individuals are.

Another similar question from some of my fellow travelers in academic circles is how I fit strong individualism with being a Christian and a traditionalist.  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 their communities are or are not doing.

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.  I think you'll see why I believe the Bible is a very radical book both for the times it was written but for today as well.

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 one seeks to maximize one's 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 (third person individualism) 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.