(totally unedited sketched out recent thoughts…)

I’ve been introspecting what’s gotten me charged up about the need to not just sit back while the rights of those behind the Park 51 mosque plan are threatened.

It’s not because I have any special innate sympathy for any religious project, much less a Muslim one.

It’s not because I feel antagonistic to those who feel insulted and provoked by the presence of such a project near the former towers site.  On the contrary, whatever other motives the planners have, even I , a city-loathing suburb-dweller, feel the proposal as all but a slap in the face.

But two factors make we want to protect the rights of these people.

The first is well known and well understood.  It’s the same reason the ACLU defends neo-Nazis and the Klan (I’m not equating the Park 51 folks with either, just keep reading).  If rights were just for popular groups that everyone loved all the time, they wouldn’t need protecting at all.  Society must be kept safe for dissent and offense.

But there’s a second reason.  I believe all levels of government are trampling people’s rights all the time, so why would I be motivated to engage in a project to defend the rights of one group (with whom I share very few sympathies) against the potential thuggish behavior of another group of civilians?  Why not pick some government action to protest instead?

The answer is I trust in the bedrock civility of my fellow citizens in a way I don’t trust the government.  I trust in their capacity for shame and for reconciliation, their capacity to pull back from dehumanizing rhetoric and see their enemies as fellow humans.

But part of why I believe this is the simple fact that it’s much harder to ignore the reality of an action you have to tangibly confront the results of, as opposed to one you can order from afar.  Is it harder to kill a child with your bare hands, or to sign an order to bomb a village?

Vegetarians know this, and confront carnivores like me with the prospect of having to slaughter our own meat.

War protestors know this, and work to make sure images of destruction get broadcast for all to see and seared in our minds.

So why is it so hard to make people see how so many government actions trample rights?  Another pair of reasons:

First is the size of the number in the denominator.  The supporters of a given action are likely to be many, and as such, feel that their personal level of responsibility in any given action amounts to no more than a rounding error.  But that is not impossible to overcome.  Again referencing war protests, people can still be led to feel the importance of changing the direction of their support, even if it individually amounts to little.  People still want to be on the side of the right.

But the consequences of the action must be palpable to be motivating.  Thus the second reason why government action can be so hard to counter: its proximate effects are largely invisible.  And this is because the victims of the action are basically cowed into submission.

The victims have MADE themselves invisible.  Each thinks they have too much to lose, each expects no mercy (and by “mercy” here I mean a simple acknowledgment of the horrible injustice they face).  They know the force that can be brought to bear against them is overwhelming.  And they make themselves so easy to push around.

Again, a pair of reasons:

Many of us are disarmed, making resistance beyond token unlikely.

But far more important, is how much of our property (in the form of currency) is seizable with little more than a keystroke.  Liens and garnishments.  If the state needs to punish us, they merely need to reach out and take the sizable percentage of our livelihood that we’ve placed within their arms reach and tied with a bow and a note saying “Feel free to take this if you think we’ve stepped out of line, Love, Your Humble Subjects”.

No one sees the costs of this facilitated theft.  Hell, it’s just some numbers changing in a database to them.  Sterile, and cold.

What I want to do is to find how to make the victims more visible, less self-sacrificial.  That way, the victimizers, not evil people in their own right but deadly as a mass, can evaluate their actions in the full context of their consequences and choose appropriately.

Because when I think about it these two scenarios…

A) A relative of a Christian 9/11/01 victim relinquishes her hatred of Muslims and comes to embrace their right to live and worship alongside her, even near the site of an infamous crime committed in the name of Islam.

B) The IRS says “Okay, we’ll give you a pass” to someone who strenuously objects to money being spent on abstinence initiatives and purposely turns in ten cents (their computed individual share of such an initiative) less than their computed tax liability.

…the fact that the first seems much more likely, despite the stakes involved, really gives me pause.  In B, I’d say the highly probable outcome is that the person’s life would be destroyed if they attempted to keep those ten cents out of the hands of the tax man.

I have more faith in the potential humanity even of mobs than I do of the soulless machinery of gov’t.  But how to make ourselves in the role of the machine cogs aware of every life we grind up or carve off a slice of?

Liberals in particular are rightly aware of the US’s wanton projection of force internationally to compel others in distant lands to do things we want.  Why are they so sanguine about internal projections of force?  Does the faulty logic of “We gave you a chance to do this on your own, but you chose wrong, so now you’ve left us no choice but to make you.” somehow seem more compelling if you’ve formalized it in a vote?

Gotta work on this.

If I’m in a room with nine other people and nine of us decide we want almost everything from the richest one, should that one just surrender it?  If I’m in a country with 310 million people and 300 million decide they want almost everything from the richest 10 million, should they just surrender it?  If I’m on a planet with 7 billion people and 6.5 billion decide they want almost everything from the richest .5 billion, should those .5 billion just surrender it?  What’s different between these scenarios besides the numbers?  Why do so many act as though the first an third scenarios are unjust, but the middle one is just?

How does one determine if a person is paying his or her fair share of federal (or state, county, local, etc.) taxes?  Does the implied meaning of word “fair” in that context resemble its use in other contexts?  I’m really hoping to get some good insight into what people mean by a fair share of taxes.

This is an acronym for the punchline “What you mean ‘we’, Paleface?”.  Search around for various versions of the joke, which involve the Lone Ranger and Tonto being surrounded by Indians, and the Lone Ranger saying something like “Looks like we’re in trouble, Tonto!”.

I prefer WYMWP because it’s easiest to pronounce (“whim-whip”). Like TANSTAAFL and NIMBY, these fine acronyms can address a wide range of fallacious arguments with deft economy. Use WYMWP when someone’s use of “we” is designed to obscure more than it illuminates.

The fact that an individual mandate to purchase health insurance — health insurance — is even up for a vote tonight means that the defenders of liberty have lost this battle.  Why we’ve lost is no mystery.  Those of us who should have known better have not only failed to respond to these ruffians the way ruffians should be responded to back when we had a chance of winning, but we have also continued to produce for them.

Knowing how we lost does not necessarily make it blindingly obvious how we can realistically win again.  I don’t want martyrs.  And if martyrs are required, I want as few as possible, or better yet, a way for the beneficiaries to absorb a small, manageable amount of martyrdom.  But I don’t know how yet.  I’ve been thinking about it for over a year now, and while I’ve had some important insights, I still don’t know the best way.  Everyone keep working on it.

It should come as no surprise based on my previous writings, explicit admissions, and the title of this site that I am not just politically libertarian, but philosophically objectivist.  It’s a philosophical position that repels some because it is misunderstood, and repels others because it is understood.  I’m not going to discuss the abstract beliefs of objectivism in this post, but I wanted to reflect on a common personality characteristic of objectivists in general: a combative, adversarial communication style with philosophical opponents.

For many objectivists, battling other viewpoints is seen as a matter of simple justice.  The thinking goes that error should not be tolerated, but should be exposed and energetically opposed wherever it is found, in much the way that a garden should be aggressively patrolled for evidence of weeds.  But what are the weeds in this metaphor, the errant ideas, or the holders of those ideas?

To simplify, and hopefully not oversimplify: What we may call the objectivist orthodoxy has long held that there are very few innocent mistakes; that most errors come from a willful refusal to consider the ramifications of one’s desires.  As such, a person in error is not to be trusted, nor given the respect of acting in good faith.

An alternate strain of objectivist thought posits, and I believe correctly, that the scope of honest error is actually quite large, and at any rate, the mere fact of error is not enough to conclude bad faith on the part of the person in error.  Thinking is hard work, and there are many ways in which a conscientious thinker might veer off course for a time.

These differing interpretations on the nature of error result in differing default standpoints regarding how an objectivist should treat someone holding a mistaken position.  The former might say “They should know better.  They’re a scoundrel.”.  The latter might say “They don’t know any better.  They’re misguided.”.  However, both would join in condemning one who has actually demonstrated their knowledge of the truth, and has yet chosen to advocate error instead.

So how does this pertain to my current advocacy of libertarian political policy (which I take to be the correct and proper policy for the country and humanity, not just my preference) and my attitude toward those who advocate political forms characterized by state control of personal or consensual behavior?  For starters, while I give not one inch in my actual convictions, I give immense latitude to those who cannot imagine liberty “working” — it is an extremely foreign concept, utterly at odds with not only what they’ve been taught, but also how they’ve been taught.  What is school if not the top-down dissemination of truth from establishment to the passive masses?  Most people barely trust themselves to form a correct opinion without reference to recognized authority, so it’s little wonder that they do not trust their peers to do so.

But they can form correct opinions.  They need living proof of another way of regarding the individual’s relation to society, a way I do my best to model.  What they do not need is condescension: I’ve learned that they are likely to be as smart as my ideological fellow travellers, and that my fellows’ awareness of certain truths is unlikely to stem primarily from their unique gifts, but rather largely from fortunate exposure to the right ideas at the right time.  For the most part, the opponents of freedom are still people who desperately want to do right, who are motivated by a sense of morality and fairness, even if their position on what constitutes morality and fairness differs from mine.

Humiliation and frothing rage are never appropriate (unless we’re talking about totalitarian dictators, torturers, etc.).  Not even in response to the same.  Some people have some odd notions as to what constitutes the proper form of intellectual advocacy and debate, and it leads them to say some pretty wild things.  It’s fair to insist on a certain level of civility in discussion, but it doesn’t make sense to actually get angry with strangers.  Because I believe in my ideas, it’s to my advantage to keep the discussion about the ideas, not about my feelings or my motives.

I haven’t always lived up to my own ideals.  There’s a too natural tendency to personalize ideological disputes, to make these arguments of ideas and ideals contests of personality.  But I try to keep my cool.  In the end, it’s not personal.

Since beginning this blog, my thoughts on this subject have continued to evolve.  I believe I’ve been learning something new and important, even if not necessarily all that original.  Most importantly, as a form of direct advocacy, it’s been working.

For those keeping score… [crickets chirping]… I’ve felt that I’ve had a couple of solid insights since I’ve begun writing here.  One is the conviction that you must operate in full public view to succeed in a mission to win hearts and minds, and the other is that comment thread flame wars are an insane waste of time: pro-liberty folks, especially objectivists, seem to concentrate on the smiting of enemies instead of working towards goals.

A couple more pieces have fallen into place for me this month.  Like I wrote in my straw man dialogue, there’s a tendency for the pro-command political type to trend sadistic when facing a pro-liberty person.  There’s a certain joy in the way they remind us that we’re living in their world.  That fact, plus the complete apoplexy with which they confront those who’d dare to promote armed defense, leads me to believe that these people are more scared and desperate than I had thought, and they are doubling down in the face of fearing they may have already gone too far.  People are prepared to bluff themselves off a cliff, which is not optimal strategy.  I’m thinking of a way to motivate the pro-command side to de-escalate, while also giving them an honorable path for de-escalation.  A post is coming on this after Labor Day.

We need to triumph over our pro-command neighbors to get our lives back.  But getting our lives back is the goal, not defeating a hated adversary.  I’ll confess to being motivated by all sorts of revenge fantasies in the past, but that was a mistake.  I’m no longer spurred to action by a desire to humiliate anyone.  Let’s give our current opponents the respect they deserve as our future partners in freedom.

(Sounds like a sci-fi/fantasy short story, but it’s not.  It’s just a short blog post.)

Something struck me that has dampened my optimism somewhat.  I was thinking about the unsurprising resistance the administration’s health care ambitions have faced of late, but it occurred to me that even if I were interested in practicing medicine, and even if all of the administration’s proposals were defeated and free-market reforms enacted in their place, I would still not have the confidence to make medicine my career choice.  It’s abundantly clear that the majority thinks the liberty of doctors to practice as they and their patients jointly see fit is subject to their approval, whether or not they choose to exercise their authority.

This is part of a larger truth.  The visible gyrations of the political sphere are like those of a chaos pendulum.  Any given snapshot of activity can appear wild, frenetic, born as they are from interaction effects of prior vectors and momentum.  And yet, there is a regularity to this motion, a predictability, if not from moment to moment, then from decade to decade.  There is a limit to the extent of the movement, and a reach in one direction will be followed by a lurch to the other.

The chaos pendulum should not be ignored, as you may find yourself lifted, or walloped, by its beams.  And indeed, this is where everyone focuses their attention.

Meanwhile, a ratchet mechanism slowly advances, and a pawl prevents its retreat.  This is the ever-expanding public sphere, which subjects more and more of private life to the authority of all.  The effect of this ratchet is essentially invisible from moment to moment, miniscule compared to the gross movements of the chaos pendulum.  But its tiny motion is nothing less than the relocation of the chaos pendulum’s center of gravity, its equilibrium position, which even if never attained for more than an instant still directs its flow.

My suspicion of late is that the ratchet is only reset by revolution. There can be pro-liberty and anti-liberty revolutions, but empirically, gradualism and entropy favor the consolidation of power in the state.  (I am also coming to believe that this is related to where the arms are.)  Perhaps a rebellion can accomplish the reclamation of liberty without the need for total revolution.  Then again, total revolution might wind up being easier as the state collapses under its own weight.

I still maintain my optimism regarding (and my assessment of the value of reclaiming) the hearts and minds of the public, and this position has been borne out repeatedly in my own life in the last few months.  But I think those hearts and minds will need to power and direct some muscle.

I worry about the future.  As for tonight, I’m going to enjoy some plum gekkeikan and dark chocolate, and watch A Day At The Races with my six- and eight-year-old sons.

…and no, the irony isn’t lost on me . But I feel bad just putting that teaser out last week with no follow-up yet; I haven’t been even able to get around to replying to a few interesting comments (and indicating my appreciation for some supportive others), so I’ll throw a couple of quick points up right now.

1) A lot of those who value political liberty in the U.S. are devout Christians. I’m an atheist myself (I wouldn’t classify anyone as an objectivist who wasn’t), but a large majority of the best people I know on a personal level (as well as the people I most admire in history) are people of faith, and the large majority of them are Christians. As a homeschooler in New Jersey, I feel particularly indebted to the Christian families who did (and continue to do) the yeoman’s work in making and keeping homeschooling a viable educational option for my family, even if some of their motives for doing so are not the same as mine. And in this fight in particular, I’m proud to stand with anyone who recognizes my right to be free, even if they may disagree with my personal plans for my freedom, or with my reasons for valuing it.  In short, nothing would make me happier than for people of all faiths and of no faith to win the fight for liberty so we can be free to be bitter enemies once again, our common foes having been vanquished . I’m not diminishing the significance of our differences, but neither should the strength we can derive from our common values be diminished.

2) I’ve made this point before, but I think it bears re-emphasizing as it might not be obvious to someone unfamiliar with this site: I really, really don’t want to ever actually have to go “John Galt”. Now I still feel quite certain that the only way to avoid having to do so is to show that you actually are willing to. But there’s more that can be done too, and that’s what I’ve been thinking about lately. And it has to do with recognizing an important fact about the conflict between your average producer and your average functionally anti-freedom person: neither one has their heart in this fight the way their opponent fears they do. The producer is not pro-freedom because they desire to see widows and orphans starving, and the person who thinks that freedom is undesirable does so out of a miscalculation about both the impracticality of freedom and the efficacy of force as a necessary evil, not because they desire to see productivity punished.  There are exceptions to this characterization on both sides, but they constitute a minority small enough to be ignored when considering the forces that shape society. More to come eventually.

In John Irving’s The Cider House Rules, Dr. Larch considers himself an abortionist out of obligation, because of the practice’s illegality. He argues with his protege Homer that his personal feelings on the matter are irrelevant as long as women are forbidden from availing themselves of abortion as an option. According to Larch, only if and when abortion was legal could Homer allow himself the luxury of personal conscience; until then, however, he expected Homer to fight for the women who came seeking deliverance. (Please note: this is not a commentary on this view of abortion — both proponents and detractors have much stronger arguments than those barely hinted at here. It’s not even a commentary on the moral stances of the characters involved.)

I homeschool my kids. Such as it is, anyhow (the more accurate term is “unschooling”). Homeschooling being a fringe activity, you run into a lot of fringe viewpoints (and you can use this site as Exhibit A), and one with a lot of currency among homeschoolers is distrust of vaccines almost on principle.  As a scientifically-minded person, this drives me nuts. Seeing otherwise reasonable folks reject one of the greatest medical achievements of the previous two centuries, endangering not only their children, but other children and adults as well, angers me greatly. However, I feel an obligation to defend their right to make that profoundly irresponsible choice from those who would allow them no choice at all. As important as vaccination is, liberty is even more important to a healthy society.

There are many things one can peaceably do with one’s own freedom. You can try to better everyone’s lot in life, or just your own. You can waste it, or what’s more, use it to convince thousands of others to waste theirs as well. But the only right one can have to sit in judgment of how another has chosen to peaceably use their freedom comes from the fact that one acknowledges their right to freedom in the first place.  The person who would say “See how he exercises his freedom when it’s granted? This is why I cannot permit him to keep it.” already believes that their desired outcomes are not only worth more than another’s, but that that fact entitles them to grant or revoke his freedom as it suits. To them I have nothing to say, as befits the chattel they take people for. I will not waste words on those who refuse to treat others as fellow humans.  I may share or dispute their moral assessment of another, but while they insist that their moral assessment is a cudgel with which they may compel their peaceable but allegedly moral inferiors, they are unworthy of pronouncing moral judgment. Against them, I will side with the miser and the wastrel. Both are the moral superior of the highwayman.