Liberty's Torch: authority

Showing posts with label authority. Show all posts

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Nostrums

These days it seems as if everyone’s got one.

We know so little. No one is particularly knowledgeable outside whatever he’s made his specialty. (And quite a lot of “specialists” aren’t as special as they claim to be. Yes, I have a couple of names in mind. I’m sure you do, too.) Yet the number of persons prancing about, posturing as Anything Authorities, is larger than ever. I don’t think it’s due to the growth of our population. Not entirely, anyway.

The consequences of this self-anointing by persons known for (at most) one accomplishment or field of expertise are entirely bad. Those who reject the BS involved become ever more disinclined to place credence in anyone’s knowledge of anything. That devalues authentic expertise. Those who swallow the swill soon find themselves trapped in a maze of dubious representations and pseudo-intellectual conjecture. Such habitats spawned all the great demagogues of history.

It’s no coincidence that a great many Anything Authorities head for careers in politics. That’s where the truly disastrous nostrums known to history have all taken root and produced their evil blossoms. But perhaps I should refrain from saying anything quite so “obvious” at such an early hour. Anyway, this is all merely prefatory to what’s really got under my saddle.

There was a recorded-comedy group, way back when, that called itself the Firesign Theater. You might remember them if you’re near to my age. They were something of a sensation in their day, in part because, like the Babylon Bee, they poked fun at everyone, omnidirectionally. In one of their early recordings, Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers, they presented aspirant to office George Tirebiter saying in one of his radio pitches that:

“You Can Trust Me,
Because I Never Lie,
And I’m Always Right.”

Right down to brass tacks, eh what? No real-life politician would say that where others could hear it. (Well, maybe Barack Obama. But I digress.) Yet it’s the subtext of many a campaigner’s pitch that he should be elevated to high office because he knows how to fix whatever ails us.

It’s almost never true. Even President Trump, who’s doing a better job as President than any of his predecessors since Grover Cleveland, has gone wrong on some issues. He’ll continue to be wrong about them because he lacks enough objective knowledge about them to overcome his personal biases. Moreover, his inner circle of advisors is either equally under-knowledgeable, or suffers the same biases, or both.

The tragic fact of individual limitation is why we develop specialties in the first place. The “Renaissance Man” was a dream, an illusion that only manifested itself hazily in a handful of persons who were unusually knowledgeable in two or three fields – certainly not the whole of human knowledge. In all candor, most of us aren’t even particularly good at our chosen specialties. Good enough to earn our livings, perhaps, but not much beyond that.

But they who seek power over others – or excessive influence over others, which can have equally deleterious effects – will continue to posture as Anything Authorities. If they have pet nostrums to peddle, they’ll work them into every speech they give, whether planned or impromptu.

By now you must be wondering what’s lit my boiler this early on a Holy Thursday. Quite simply, it’s this:

     Pope Francis has said the coronavirus pandemic is one of "nature's responses" to humans ignoring the current ecological crisis.
     In an email interview published Wednesday in The Tablet and Commonwealth magazines, the pontiff said the outbreak offered an opportunity to slow down the rate of production and consumption and to learn to understand and contemplate the natural world.
     "We did not respond to the partial catastrophes. Who now speaks of the fires in Australia, or remembers that 18 months ago a boat could cross the North Pole because the glaciers had all melted? Who speaks now of the floods?" the Pope said.
     "I don't know if these are the revenge of nature, but they are certainly nature's responses," he added.

Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio a.k.a. Pope Francis – why did he have to take that name? — is less of a Holy Father than a Socialist Nuisance. With the conspicuous exceptions of abortion and homosexual marriage, he’s glommed onto every trendy left-wing “issue” that’s raised its head over the past half-century. The above is a poorly concealed pitch for his notions about “global warming / climate change.” This is surely the greatest pseudo-scientific fraud ever perpetrated upon Mankind…yet Bergoglio, who’s an antipope in many Catholics’ assessment, is relentless about it. He postures as if global meteorology were something about which he’s an expert. We should be grateful that he hasn’t made an ex cathedra pronouncement about it. No, he doesn’t have the authority to do so, but his lack of humility renders it a perpetual possibility.

A properly humble Supreme Pontiff would never have allowed himself to orate about politics, economics, immigration, the global climate…indeed, about anything other than his specific area of authority: the theological doctrine of the Catholic Church. But this Pope refuses to restrain himself.

An assertion of authority where it does not exist is wholly destructive. It contributes to what Samuel Johnson called “the general degradation of human testimony,” and to the decline of the condition upon which all possibilities for human cooperation depend: trust.

It is shocking, devastating that a pope should exemplify the willingness to claim unwarranted authority. Who in this world has more influence over the convictions and decisions of men? Who is more looked to as a peacemaker, one who can spread oil over troubled waters by reminding us of the eternal verities, the simple requirements for a decent society on Earth? The Redeemer Himself prescribed them:

     But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
     Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.
     And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
     On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
     [Matthew 22:34-40]

The two Great Commandments, and the Ten which they imply, are all we need to live with one another in a tolerable degree of peace and harmony. Were they given the pre-eminence which is their due, they would eliminate nearly all strife. Granted, men would still snore. Women would still chatter on about their girlfriends’ boyfriends during the Big Game, without waiting for a commercial break. Neighbors would still borrow tools and forget to return them. But we would manage to get along without resorting to pistols at dawn.

Yet the peddlers of nostrums – panaceas that cure nothing and often have only fraud and lies for their bases – will not relent. To them belongs the odium for the greater part of the hostility and misery that afflict us. Today they have a Pope to lead the way.

Pray.

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Valid Argumentation And Expertise

The list of fallacies relevant to argument includes one that isn’t, strictly speaking, a fallacy under all circumstances: the “argument from authority.”

If we read authority to mean expert status, there is a place for it in arguments over substantive matters. Problems with expertise-based arguments arise in two venues:

The validation of the claimed expertise;
Its position in the priority scheme of argumentation methods.

If the above seems a bit too abstract, commenter Zachriel at Bookworm Room has provided a compact elucidation:

An appeal to authority is a type of inductive argument {eta: based on the experience that experts are more likely to be correct than non-experts in a field, though not infallibly so} and is evaluated as follows:

The cited authority has sufficient expertise.
The authority is making a statement within their area of expertise.
The area of expertise is a valid field of study.
There is adequate agreement among authorities in the field, and the authority is expressing this agreement.
There is no evidence of undue bias.

The proper argument against a valid appeal to authority is to the evidence.

Excellent – and vitally important to contemporary arguments over all sorts of matters. There is a priority order to valid forms of argument. Expertise has value, if it's authentic and founded on prior demonstration. However, it has less value than evidence. Evidence trumps everything else – and a true expert will always concede that.

Let’s get back to my Problem #1 for a moment. It bears directly on Zachriel’s exposition on authority / expertise. How does one validate a proposed authority’s expertise sufficiently to make his arguments worth considering?

Well, first off, we should avoid those darlings of the talk shows, the Anything Authorities:

Virtually everyone is touched at some point by the arrogance of an expert. I have to saw one in half about once a month, but for a reason tangential to Ace's analysis: their readiness to assert "expertise" in fields other than their own. Arthur Herzog skewered this tendency in his 1973 classic The B.S. Factor:
The thirst for answers in a difficult world has brought about the rise of Anything (or Everything) Authorities. The Anything Authority is one whose credentials in one field are taken as valid for others -- sometimes many others....
The trouble with an Anything Authority is not that he takes a position or works for a cause, but that he seldom seems to apply the same standards of research and documentation to the field in which he is not an expert as he would to his own....
Psychiatrists are a special breed of Anything Authorities because their field is anything (or almost) in the first place....
When an Anything Authority becomes successful, he joins the Permanent Rotating Panel Show and appears on television programs, which pay him....the Anything Authority must never be stuck for an answer. Glibness helps, and so does the fact that many emcees do not know the hard questions to ask.

If the above passage has you thinking of Fox News regular Dr. Charles Krauthammer, you're not alone.
The progression is plain:

Acquisition of a credential of some kind, often an academic one.
Practice in one's field.
Acquisition of notoriety in consequence of some publicized event.
Interest in one's thinking from persons other than one's fellow specialists.
Increasing boldness, in part due to sustained attention from laymen and journalists.
Ascent to Anything Authority status.
Television gigs and book tours.

The strong relationship between the Anything Authority and major figures in national politics follows automatically.

But that’s only one end of the spectrum. We must also take care to ignore the Nothing Authority:

What lies between those two extremes?

I was once deemed an expert of sorts. My field was real-time software, and I was respected at it. But expertise in engineering has a special set of characteristics: it involves prior achievements that are beyond dispute. In other words, you can see, hear, and feel it.

Engineering is the discipline that solves problems by applying physical knowledge and /or existing technology. When engineers argue, their expertise is counted to a certain extent and no further: what has worked in the past. Such expertise is discounted when considering new methods made available by subsequent technological advances. Of course, those new methods must prove themselves in the crucible of application, but that’s where we enter the realm of evidence.

Expertise in any of the realms of knowledge that don’t involve problem-solving – e.g., physics, chemistry, astronomy, et alii — is founded on prediction. To establish oneself as an expert requires a series of successful predictions: the use of the knowledge one has claimed to create a demonstrable connection:

From a specified context;
Affected by a specified stimulus;
To a consequence that arrives at a specified time.

Once again, I have the pleasure of citing the late Sir Fred Hoyle’s novel The Black Cloud:

     "It looks to me as if those perturbations of the rockets must have been deliberately engineered," began Weichart.
     "Why do you say that, Dave?" asked Marlowe.
     "Well, the probability of three cities being hit by a hundred-odd rockets moving at random is obviously very small. Therefore I conclude that the rockets were not perturbed at random. I think they must have been deliberately guided to give direct hits."
     "There's something of an objection to that," argued McNeil. "If the rockets were deliberately guided, how is it that only three of 'em found their targets?"
     "Maybe only three were guided, or maybe the guiding wasn't all that good. I wouldn't know."
     There was a derisive laugh from Alexandrov.
     "Bloody argument," he asserted.
     "What d'you mean, 'bloody' argument?"
     "Invent bloody argument, like this. Golfer hits ball. Ball lands on tuft of grass -- so. Probability ball landed on tuft very small, very very small. Million other tufts for ball to land on. Probability very small, very, very very small. So golfer did not hit ball, ball deliberately guided onto tuft. Is bloody argument, yes? Like Weichart's argument....Must say what damn target is before shoot, not after shoot. Put shirt on before, not after event."

The prediction must come before the consequence to be predicted! Anyone can say “Just as I predicted!” after the event occurs. That doesn’t take knowledge, only a lot of gall.

Concerning the claims of expertise submitted in the political arena, the majority aren’t even worth committing to paper so we could have the fun of shooting them full of holes. The persons making arguments from authority:

Lack sufficient expertise;
Are outside any area of expertise they might validly claim;
Their field, if any, is not a valid field of study;
There is no agreement among authorities in that field;
They’re demonstrably biased.

That final point is the most telling of all: When their claims are contradicted by the evidence, they dismiss the evidence. Indeed, some of them have taken to hiding the evidence to protect their claimed “expertise”...and, of course, the benefits that flow to them from their assertions of “authority.”

A genuine expert, who possesses the self-respect that comes from demonstrable accomplishments, would never do such a thing. As we mathematical types like to say, quod erat demonstrandum.

I could go on about this. History is filled with examples of “experts” who did all manner of contemptible things to protect their stature as such. The one that comes to mind most readily is Trofim Lysenko. But there have been many others.

Remember always:

When evidence is available,
The true expert will defer to it.

All else is vanity.

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Cowards With Badges?

Time was, Americans took pride in what we called “the forces of order.” The police were prominent in that group of public servants. We believed that they existed to protect the rest of us. We understood their jobs to include the obligation to accept risks, including mortal risks, under certain circumstances. We believed that they understood that as well. And perhaps it really was so.

It doesn’t seem to be that way today. Indeed, police actions in recent years suggest exactly the opposite: that police forces are characterized by an aversion to risk that the rest of us would deride as cowardice.

Everyone is risk averse to some degree. No one accepts any and every risk he confronts without consideration of its upside and downside. Certain occupations are kind to the extremely risk averse. Others are not.

The rash of reports about police not venturing into active-shooter confrontations, police shooting unarmed and unresisting citizens, police shooting dogs, and police intimidation of nominally peaceable citizens suggests that some of our cops are more risk averse (and less respectful of Americans’ individual rights) than the occupation should tolerate. Certainly the situation is worse for Americans in regions where the police are frequently active.

A number of commentators have opined that the typical citizen is better off not involving himself with the police to any degree. You say your house was burglarized? Let the insurance company handle it. Your car was stolen out of your driveway? Same advice. You were mugged on the street? Same advice, with the addendum that you should rethink your choice of neighborhoods to walk through.

Every interaction with anyone carries some degree of risk. An interaction with a policeman is no different, except that the policeman is far more likely to be armed. To depend on the police to protect you and your property, when Supreme Court decisions have held that there is no such obligation, is foolish. If the general level of risk aversion among police is truly rising, it’s even more foolish.

But is it unfair to view policemen generally as cowards with badges?

Institutional dynamics, whether in the private or the public sector, are bound by certain laws of valuation akin to Gresham’s Law of monies and currencies:

"When a government overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation." It is commonly stated as: "Bad money drives out good".

In point of fact, Gresham’s Law operates in any institution in which two items – and they may be persons — are valued equally by the institution despite differences in their operational value. For example, if Smith and Jones, two employees with equivalent responsibilities, are equally valued by their employer – i.e., in salary, perquisites, prestige, and opportunities for promotion – while Smith consistently outperforms Jones, Smith becomes likely either to leave the company or to reduce his performance to Jones’s level. This dynamic can be seen in operation in many places. Owing to the irresistible power of the SNAFU Principle, it’s the bane of large companies with many levels of management.

Police departments are not immune to these dynamics.

Over time, older policemen retire or die and are replaced by younger ones. If the departing policemen exhibited less risk aversion than their replacements, the dynamics discussed above will result in an ever more risk averse police force. Whether that is happening now is a subject for serious study.

The possibility has been discussed, at Western Rifle Shooters that police are taught today that “the most important thing is to go home safe.” If this is true, and there is anecdotal evidence to support it, then the emergence of extremely risk averse police – e.g., the sort who stood down during the Parkland, Florida school massacre – is only natural. I have no countervailing evidence. Whether there is an opposed effort in progress in police academies is hard to determine.

Of one thing we may be sure: A highly risk averse police force is more dangerous to law-abiding citizens than to criminals. Criminals are comfortable with violence, and the police know it. The typical private citizen is not comfortable with violence...and the police know that too. Given that a desire to wield authority is a common characteristic of persons who enter law enforcement, that would have serious implications for relations between cops and private citizens, and for much else besides.

Sunday, May 15, 2016

The Sins Of Authority: A Sunday Tirade

It seems my news reading is insufficiently broad, as yesterday evening I missed a story of considerable importance:

     The Marianist order has suspended a former longtime president of Chaminade High School from functioning as a priest after allegations of sexual abuse involving a former student were found to be “credible,” the order said.
     The Rev. James Williams, who resigned in 2011 after 12 years as president of the prestigious all-boys Catholic institution in Mineola, has “completely denied” the allegations, but a “vigorous, thorough and comprehensive investigation” conducted by the order “deemed them to be credible,” the group said in a statement posted Friday on Chaminade’s website.
     The Marianists said they have contacted the Nassau County district attorney’s office and the Diocese of Rockville Centre about the allegations.

Every case of this sort fills me with both fury and fear. The allegations might not be true; Reverend Williams has denied them, and at this point no rigorous proceeding to determine their validity has yet taken place. However, that an investigation by Reverend Williams’s own order finds them “credible” suffices to evoke many terrible thoughts, of several terrible consequences.

Nearly every other kind of evil pales in comparison to the abuse of a child. Yet the abuse of a child by one in a position of moral and practical authority over him plumbs still deeper into the depths of villainy. The authority finds it all too easy to convince the child that the sin and the guilt belong to the victim rather than the offender. It’s an offense capable of warping all but the strongest souls...and very few minors are spiritually strong enough to withstand its effects.

The scandal over the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests has harmed the Church even more than did the Renaissance popes and their orgiastic indulgences. Never mind that the frequency of such abuses is just as high among Protestant ministers and lay teachers. Catholic priests are a special breed: men sworn to complete celibacy in the service of Christ. Those who’ve been entrusted with the care of the souls of the youngest and most impressionable of their flock have a responsibility weightier than any other:

“Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” [Matthew 18:3-6]

Yet when the Most Reverend William Francis Murphy, the presiding bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Center, called a convocation of the priests of the diocese to hear presentations about this terrible evil, the featured speaker, a bishop from another diocese, styled such offenses “inappropriate behavior.” A steady procession of the clerical listeners thanked him for that speech.

“Inappropriate behavior!” As Father Edward Kealty has said, that’s a phrase to describe “picking up the wrong fork at dinner.” Father Ed got into a lot of trouble with the diocese for saying that to the convocation. It might be the reason he was forced into retirement against his will and the pleas of his parishioners.

But this, too, is characteristic of sinful authorities.

Authorities of many kinds are prone to taking credit for good developments and foisting the blame for bad ones onto others’ shoulders. They’re also the life form most susceptible to mincing words, especially when they’re confronted with failures and crimes of their own. It’s one of the reasons for the overall decline of mutual trust in recent years. It’s also one of the reasons for what Samuel Johnson called “the general degradation of human testimony:”

“To doubt whether a man of eminence has told the truth about his own birth is, in appearance, to be very deficient in candour; yet nobody can live long without knowing that falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered are sullenly supported.”

I submit that recategorizing the rape of a minor as “inappropriate behavior” is far worse than a “falsehood of convenience or vanity.” When a person in authority does it, the blot covers more than his individual escutcheon. It taints the credibility and probity of all those of his stature who by their silence concur with his statement.

Priests, ministers, and rabbis lack coercive authority. Theirs is of a much higher plane: that on which the most critical distinctions of all, those between right and wrong, are found. If these be found unworthy of trust, where do we stand? To what station do we apply for judgment of our own morals and ethics?

Time was, it was only the moral authority of the Church that bounded the actions of nobles and kings. The nobility of Christendom didn’t need to fear an army of priests with crucifixes and censers. The flock enraged to action was a far different matter – and such flocks, though armed with nothing but the tools of their various trades, removed the crowns and scepters from the heads and hands of many who regarded themselves as above judgment.

They who think a restoration of justice must begin with changes to the State and its policies may have been looking in the wrong direction all this time.

Today is the great Feast of Pentecost, which commemorates the day the Holy Spirit descended upon Christ’s eleven chief disciples. The Paraclete opened their minds to complete understanding of His teachings and equipped them with the gift of tongues, that they might be understood by all who heard them. Thus enlightened and amplified, they went out to do as He had commanded:

“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” [Matthew 28:19-20]

Teaching is possible only under commonality of language. When the student understands the teacher’s words, it becomes possible for the teacher to impart new information and understanding to the student. This is why teachers enlarge their students’ vocabularies incrementally, and couch their other lessons in language their students are able to grasp. But when authorities tear words from their public meanings, such that language itself becomes a maze of Humpty-Dumpty eccentricities that forbids anyone to be certain of the speaker’s meaning, teaching – indeed, communication of any sort – becomes impossible.

Deception – the cloaking of crimes of every magnitude behind dense curtains of words no longer penetrable by the light of common understanding – is all that remains.

Confucius told us that “What is necessary [is] to rectify names.” What’s happening to communication in our day is the exact reverse – and it’s authorities of every sort, lay and clerical, determined to conceal their villainy from the common folk, who are the perpetrators.

May God have mercy on their souls, for I doubt that we lesser ones will stay our hands for much longer.

Monday, May 2, 2016

A Few Words On The Status Quo

“Status quo, you know, is Latin for ‘the mess we’re in’.” – Ronald Reagan

For some reason, the sort of public policy pontificator we see on television or who rants in the newspapers’ op-ed sections is frequently concerned with stability, or the maintenance of the status quo in various manifestations. Such a commentator seldom faces the question “Why is it right and necessary to maintain the status quo? And why is it America’s responsibility to see to it? Be specific.”

Now, the generic answer to such a “why” question would be that the status quo is preferable to the alternatives – at least, to the alternatives that would most probably result from disturbing it. But that, of course, raises other questions: “Preferable to whom? And why? And once more with feeling, is it really our problem?”

That’s why specificity is so important...and why the windy types mentioned above would gladly sacrifice a finger rather than be forced to provide it.

Granted that there are identifiable conditions, local, regional, and global, that seem worth preserving, at least prima facie. But even the most desirable of such are desirable to specific persons, for specific reasons, and not unanimously so. For example, there are several local businesses I patronize regularly and would hate to see go bankrupt. Regionally, were all of Long Island’s throughways to be closed, there’d be some dislocations. As for global conditions, I’d be greatly vexed if the planet were to stop rotating. (I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t be the only one.) However:

Those businesses’ competitors might have a different opinion;
Islamic terrorists would count it a “win;”
There’s this marauding fleet of genocidal aliens from Antares that...oh, never mind.

Moreover, the responsibility for protecting those conditions from perturbation is not uniformly distributed over the affected populations. At least, were the Earth to threaten to stop rotating, I’d have a hard time blaming some illiterate starving aborigine in Papua New Guinea for not “doing his share.”

There is no moral or rational way to assign responsibility without assessing the distribution of the relevant authority -- and on that subject, a better known voice than mine has spoken:

“Both for practical reasons and for mathematically verifiable moral reasons, authority and responsibility must be equal - else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential. To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy.” – Robert A. Heinlein

In the great majority of cases, the persons responsible for protecting some supposedly desirable condition – e.g., by correcting a problem that threatens it – are those who benefit from that condition, not some gaggle of outsiders. Yet this is seldom admitted by those aforementioned windy types.

The more you look, the more you see. -- Robert M. Pirsig

The collectivization of responsibility – most often in order to load the responsibility onto the shoulders of a government – is the reverse of the coin of the worship of stability. The Reagan quote at the top of this piece implies that, albeit indirectly.

“The mess we’re in.” As Tonto might have said to the Lone Ranger on many an occasion, “What do you mean we, paleface?” “We” did not create many of the conditions in the world, nor are “we” the beneficiaries thereof. Indeed, just as some well-meant American interventions have actually worsened matters, some conditions the U.S. has intervened to “stabilize” ought to have been left to topple.

Stop! Stop! Danger, Will Robinson! Return to the previous paragraph. Read the last sentence aloud. Analyze it carefully. What implicit collectivizations can you find in what I wrote? There are four; find and unpack them all for full credit. See how easy it is to “slip one over” on your audience?

Look at any nominally well-meant government intervention, in a matter that seemed to call for it. Ponder the collectivizing assumptions hidden in it and how they might fail under scrutiny. Here’s an example that will prove fruitful to the careful analyst: the intervention by the federal government in a coastal community’s recovery from a destructive hurricane. There’ve been several such these past sixteen years; any such will yield treasures of understanding to the determined student.

This is on my mind this morning because of Michael Snyder’s citation of this paper on “possible global catastrophes.” I’ll cite a single passage, the brief Foreword, which is magnificently exemplary of the syndrome discussed above:

     Nearly four years ago when the Global Challenges Foundation was established, we decided on a direction with two parallel strategies. The first is increasing the knowledge about Global Catastrophic Risks (GCRs), which with our terminology means threats that can eliminate at least 10% of the global population. This knowledge is an important prerequisite for the Foundation’s second strategy: to encourage debates and proposals as to how we can effectively and fairly reduce – and preferably eliminate – these catastrophic risks.
     This publication, the Foundation’s Annual Report for 2016, is the result of a collaboration between the Foundation and the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) and the Global Priorities Project at Oxford University in the U.K., which has now lasted for over two years. A big group of researchers at the FHI, commissioned by the Foundation, summarized where research, focused on charting some of the greatest global risks, currently stands.
     In addition to describing the risks, their effects and their likelihood of occurring, this year’s Annual Report takes one step further and try’s to show how different risks relate to one another, what can be done to combat the risks and who can and should do this. In addition to the risks involved in the Annual Report for 2016, the Foundation actively works with environmental degradation, weapons of mass destruction, population growth (that exacerbates several risks), and political violence which is behind many of the world’s current problems.
     Political violence comes in many forms. Various kinds of weapons of mass destruction represent potentially devastating weaponry. Further, political violence creates uncontrolled migration and we receive repeated reminders that there is also “digital violence” in the form of cyber-attacks. Together, this takes up a significant amount of space on the political agenda, thus stealing attention from other important risks. And above all, the defense against various forms of political violence requires a grotesquely large share of public resources. Each day, the world spends over SEK 40 billion on defence expenditure – money that would be needed to fight poverty and prevent catastrophic risks.
     My personal opinion is that in order to drastically minimize GCRs we must develop a model where a majority of the world’s nations, with strong support from leading nations, can make binding decisions which can be enforced in an effective and fair way. This would imply that individual nations waive their sovereignty in favor of one or more organizations that have a mandate to decide on how to mitigate GCRs.
     Would this be possible? My counter question is whether there are any alternatives? To continue relying on multilateral negotiations increases the probability that decisions and actions are insufficient and executed too late. This means that the likelihood of GCRs continues to escalate.
     I hope that this publication can deepen the understanding of GCRs and that these insights provide a fertile ground for both debates and proposals on how we can develop a better way of managing and addressing these risks.

The above is an absolute masterpiece of implicit collectivization...and multi-level collectivization at that. Moreover, as you proceed into the document, it will become clear that several of the “risks” the authors cite are either illusory or are merely challenges to a status quo from which some benefit and others suffer.

The publication is an irritating, remorselessly self-righteous and tendentious document written mainly by Scandinavian socialists. You might not want to read it in its entirety. I could hardly blame you. But those who steel themselves to the task will learn many things about the Left’s tactics, to say nothing of the reasons for them.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Leftists’ manipulation of language as one of their principal tactics. To save you some wear and tear on your mouse, here’s the central thesis of that essay:

[I]f the perversion of language is directed toward rendering particular concepts immoral, it sanctifies the use of violence to suppress those who would dare to speak of them, much less act on them. And as we have seen in recent years, leftists are growing ever more ready to use violence to prevent the discussion of concepts unfriendly to their aims.

Exactly the same could be said about the manipulation of language to imply collective responsibility for various matters. When that collectivization is aimed at the protection of some status quo, sharp questions demand to be asked:

Who benefits and who suffers from the “problem?”
Who has authority over the conditions described and why has he not acted?
Are there “passive victims” who ought to have taken a hand in redressing it?
Concerning the proposed intervention, who would profit and who would be mulcted – and why should the latter group willingly assent?

These are questions the Left, and the great majority of those at the levers of power, would prefer not to face. Collectivization is the source of their power, prestige, and perquisites...and collectivization is the essence of any status quo.

Yes, the title of this piece is “a few words.” For this enormous subject, the above are very few words. Think about it, especially in the light of our current political cycle.

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

The Cop Conundrum

What with Ferguson, Eric Garner, and the assassinations of Liu and Ramos, we’ve certainly heard enough about the police this year...or have we?

There’s a problem here. We don’t really know, objectively, about the quality of America’s police forces or whether they use their authority generally within the parameters of the law. It’s becoming one of the most discussed subjects in the Commentariat, though the typical opinion-monger seems reluctant to come down firmly on one side or the other. Consider the following statement from our favorite Graybeard:

“On balance, though, I come down with the guys who say that most cops are not bad cops...”

Graybeard may be right, but he may be wrong – and there are institutional barriers that prevent anyone outside them from knowing which position is more accurate.

What is a policeman, in the American context of our time? He’s a municipal or state employee, protected by a powerful union and laws akin to those that protect civilian Civil Service employees, and effectively answerable only to his superiors in the police hierarchy. He’s been granted certain legal privileges – already we’re in murky waters – and a default presumption of justification regarding his uses of coercive force. He may have had some training in police procedure and the restrictions on his activities, though the smaller the district and its police force, the less certain that will be.

What does this policeman do? More to the point:

What must he do?
What may he do?
What must he not do?

...ex officio?

The “must” part has grown very slender. Recent Supreme Court decisions have decreed that, regardless of the prevalent conceptions, the police have no “duty to protect” and no “duty to intervene.” If you deem yourself to be in danger, the problem is yours, even if the police agree with your assessment. You can be in the midst of an actual criminal victimization, yet the police have no duty to intervene to stop it or to protect you, even if they can see it happening before their own eyes.

The “may” part has become very broad. For example, numerous court decisions have ruled that all a policeman needs to detain you is “reasonable suspicion” that you are or have been involved in a crime. What constitutes “reasonable suspicion” has proved remarkably flexible. A cop who wants to search your car can simply say “I smell marijuana,” and suddenly the most invasive imaginable search is “reasonable,” no matter what his original reason was for detaining you. Regardless of any and all circumstances, you are not allowed to refuse his “lawful order” – yet another serious departure from American norms.

The “must not” part has effectively vanished. State and local police forces have become quasi-military bodies. They’ve been equipped with large amounts of military-grade hardware that no private citizen would be permitted to own. They frequently stage violent intrusions and “no-knock” raids on private institutions and private homes. Most of the time, they have court authorizations for those activities...but often on suppositions that later prove to have been wrong, or based on testimony or “evidence” that was convenient but fictitious. Despite all that, courts have ruled that persons subjected to such treatment do not have a right to resist it – that any violence committed in the process of resistance will be held against the citizen, not the police.

To these eyes, it would appear that the incentives pertaining to police and policing have headed in the wrong direction, and are rather far down the road at that.

The incentives of power dictate that over time, power-positions will be filled by an increasing percentage of persons who love power more than all other things. The test of power resides in its use; if you’re not using it, you can’t be certain you possess it. That would suggest that, in the two centuries since the formation of municipal police forces, the percentage of persons in police forces who are there because they love power rather than justice or public service has risen steadily.

Still, even though incentives are important, justice demands that we address the actual behavior of American police. We cannot assume that because the incentives are perverse, therefore the typical cop is merely a thug with a badge. The problem here is that without the cooperation of governmental sources, including police departments, that have a natural interest in keeping us outside their walls, determining the justice and appropriateness of police behavior is next to impossible.

For example, we are told, though not by official sources, that 1089 civilians died at police hands during 2014. Semi-official sources tell us that from 2004 through 2013, an average of 55 policemen were killed each year in the performance of their duties. The ratio might be meaningful, but stripped of context we can’t be sure. Who was doing what to whom (and why) at the time of the death in question? Such details aren’t always available...and when they are, they’re seldom complete or ironclad.

The judicial system is also involved. Consider a “no-knock” raid in which one of the occupants of the house is killed by the police...but it later emerges that the police raided the wrong house. Exactly such things have happened in recent years. Were the intruders not police, that would constitute felony murder by the plain words of the law. However, cops are almost never held to account for such events. Judicial deference to the police is seldom punctured.

All that having been said, there are surely some cops who aren’t merely thugs with badges, just as there are surely some who are that and nothing else. Our problems include both detoxifying the incentives toward thuggish behavior under color of police authority and protecting good cops from being lumped in with their not-good colleagues in blue.

Much police misbehavior stems from bad law: the unConstitutional firearms laws, the anti-drug laws, and the many “laws” that prohibit or restrict various kinds of peaceful commerce. In such cases, it’s easy to dismiss the matter by saying the cops are “only doing their jobs.” In point of fact, police discretion is usually involved to a considerable extent. It’s almost always exercised in a fashion that favors authority...and those persons favored by the police and officialdom.

An example: Where I live, a permit is required to operate a roadside coffee truck. Also, sanitary codes apply to such trucks. Most operators stake out specific spots on particular thoroughfares. Over time, they become known to the police. Relationships develop. Some such operators are conceded something akin to property rights over the spots they habitually occupy. The police then harass others who might stake out positions they deem “too close” to their favored operators, repeatedly (sometimes several times a day) demanding to see permits, conducting “inspections,” and generally making it plainly visible to potential customers that this operator is “on the outs” with the police.

There is nothing even remotely legal about this. Yet it has become commonplace on Long Island. That a number of coffee-truck operators have family ties to the police is surely not a coincidence.

Bad laws create and intensify the incentives to bad behavior. That includes bad police behavior.

The problem is stiff. Americans are generally disposed to believe that much of the above is unavoidable, perhaps even desirable. The rise in allegations of police misbehavior has caused rancor and tumult, but is unlikely to bring about substantial legal, judicial, or procedural changes. No outcome is certain, but the probabilities incline in the direction of an intensification of the “us versus them” attitude about the police that’s become prevalent on both sides of the “blue wall.”

There is no Last Graf. Be watchful, and wary about developments in your locale. Record any suspicious incidents in as much detail as possible. Get to know the cops who regularly appear in your neighborhood personally; personal relationships are one of the few deterrents to abuse available to the private citizen. And stay tuned.

Friday, August 15, 2014

Owners

Brace yourself, Gentle Reader. It's a day for fundamentals and fundamental questions:

Who owns the economy -- if you have any idea what that is?
Who owns the ground beneath your feet?
Who owns your car, or your phone?
Who owns the law?
Who owns you?

Have you been asked those questions anywhere else lately? Have you asked them of yourself? Or are you baffled as to why longtime opinion-spouter and widely celebrated pompous ass Fran Porretto has called them "fundamental?"

In two of the four cases above, the typical respondent will be quick to answer. In the other two, he's likely to want to ponder the matter, perhaps even doubting whether the question itself "makes sense." But many will go zero for four, at least under an empirical treatment of the matter.

Beneath those four questions lies one that's more basic still:

What does it mean to own something...or someone?

If you're under thirty years old, there are certain names familiar to us older farts that you probably never heard in school. One of those, perhaps the most important of them, is John Locke.

Locke, a seventeenth century physician who also put his prodigious intelligence to moral and political philosophy, was the first of the Enlightenment thinkers to give serious consideration to the concept of property, specifically property in material things. His Two Treatises of Government, coupled to Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, are the cornerstones of the ideals expressed in the greatest two hundred words of prose ever penned:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

It is with infinite sadness that I note that any under-thirties in the audience might never have been presented with that in school, either.

Locke concerned himself with how a material thing becomes property, and arrived at a thesis based on the investment of human labor in the thing to be owned. The essence of his thesis can be captured in a simple diagram:

Unowned items reside conceptually in the common, from which they can be made property by any moral agent by homesteading: the investment in the item of enough labor to "enclose it from the common." (Locke used the example of gathering berries from a wild bush as his illustration of this operation.) Inversely, an owned item can revert to unowned if its owner neglects it sufficiently that it can no longer be distinguished from the common. (For this operation, I like the example of leaving your Chevy on the side of the Cross Bronx Expressway with the keys in the ignition.) Owned items can pass from owner to owner through trade, a voluntary process in which the current owner surrenders his title to a new one for some consideration.

Locke deemed the attachments conferred by these processes to belong to the category of natural rights: morally ironclad associations that arise from the nature of Man and the laws of the universe in which we live. By giving property a moral character, Locke invalidated Smith's acquisition of (or interference with) Jones's property by force or fraud: the diametrical opposite of voluntary exchange. Force and fraud are the inverse of rights; no right can be premised upon them without destroying the very concept of rights.

All of economics, from Adam Smith onward, is premised on the Lockean conceptions of property and natural rights. And there are those two hundred words I quoted above, as well.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

Men must be free
Because nothing else can be.

"Free" in the above context has two quite distinct meanings: one when applied to men's property, and one when applied to men themselves. In the former case, "free" means "without cost." But even an isolated Robinson Crusoe type, alone on his island, cannot properly regard any of the bounties of the island as "free" in that sense, for he must go to the effort of gathering them at the very least. In the latter case, "free" means "not subject to external coercion or constraint:" the political meaning of freedom. Both senses of the word are bound to the understanding of property and property rights, which brings us back to the questions at the beginning of this tirade:

Who owns the economy -- if you have any idea what that is?
Who owns the ground beneath your feet?
Who owns your car, or your phone?
Who owns the law?
Who owns you?

If we apply the Lockean standard to these questions, we get fairly simple answers easily defended from first principles. However, in at least three of those five cases, governments habitually act as if they disagree -- and they back up their positions with guns.

Not one square inch of land surface in these United States is immune from property taxes: literally, a rent you must pay to occupy the plot upon which you live. Fail to pay that rent and you'll be involuntarily ejected from your home, quite possibly at gunpoint. So who owns the ground on which you stand?

Under the contractarian basis on which the Constitution and all the lesser state and county charters are premised, the law, whatever it may be, is the joint property of the American people; though we formulate it through representatives, its implementation and its protections are uniform, as the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to emphasize. More, any citizen has as much law enforcement power as any other, badges and municipal salaries notwithstanding. So why is it that police are deemed to exercise command authority over private persons, such that for the latter to "disobey" the former constitutes a cause for arrest?

One comes to self-ownership by a process of "self-homesteading:" the acquisition of learning and capability that results in a self-supporting adult. More, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States supposedly put a permanent end to slavery and involuntary servitude: i.e., the ownership of persons by other persons or institutions. So why do we have a conscription law, which requires all young men to register with the Selective Service system when they turn eighteen?

Think it over.

The essential difference between a free society and other sorts is that in a free society, the individual possesses rights against the State. Those rights are Lockean property rights: to oneself, to one's freedom of action, and to one's honestly acquired property. Given that force, the defining characteristic of the State, is the exact opposite of rights, there can never be a right of any description that's premised upon forcible coercion or constraint (i.e., intimidation through the threat of forcible punishment).

How does that comport with all the incredibly sloppy "rights talk" afloat in our national discourse:

"Right" to marry.
"Right" to health care.
"Right" to an education.
"Right" to free contraception.
"Right" to be supported by the State.

...and so on?

Isn't it time we started whacking "rights-mongers" across the chops with a wet mackerel for their demonstrable abuse of the most important conception in all of human thought?

This morning's rant was triggered by this piece from the invaluable David De Gerolamo:

Another clash between protesters and police lit up Ferguson, Mo., on Wednesday night, with police shooting tear gas into crowds and briefly arresting two journalists.
Reporters Ryan J. Reilly of The Huffington Post and Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post were briefly arrested while covering the protests after police entered a McDonald’s where the two were working. Reilly tweeted his arrest as several reports emerged that police on the scene were telling TV crews to leave.…
“Oh, God,” Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson said when told of the arrests by the Los Angeles Times. “I told them to release them,” Jackson said of the two reporters. His department was in command.

The enveloping context of the arrests was Ferguson police using SWAT tactics to empty a peaceable restaurant, in which the aforementioned reporters were eating and working. By what right did the police assert an owner's rights over someone else's property? By what right did they command the immediate obedience of private citizens engaged in wholly legitimate, wholly peaceful activities? Given the context, had the reporters resisted arrest, they might well have been shot down on the instant. By what right would the Ferguson police have deprived those men of their most fundamental properties: their lives?

That sort of conduct by armed agents of the State is characteristic of war zones: places where no rights are recognized, where the preponderance of force is the one and only standard of ownership, where "you're either one of us or the enemy." Is Ferguson, Missouri at war? If so, who are the combatants? What uniforms do they wear, if any?

Have the governments of these United States -- some 88,000 in number -- gone to war against the nation's citizens? Was it declared at some point, published in two-point type in some obscure periodical like the pro forma announcement of a zoning board meeting to which the public would be unwelcome, such that we were intended to miss it?

Answer those questions for yourself. If you find the answers disagreeable, you might want to ponder which side you're on.

Who owns you?

Friday, November 29, 2013

Defects Of Memory

I try to remain upbeat. Truly I do, especially on Thanksgiving weekend. But...

That was recorded in the early Sixties. It was one of the biggest hits of its era. Reflect on that...and on this as well: at that time, a Hula Hoop^® was priced at $1.98.

"I am taking trouble with you," O'Brien said, "Because you are worth trouble. You know perfectly well what is the matter with you. You have known it for years, though you have fought against the knowledge. You are mentally deranged. You suffer from a defective memory. You are unable to remember real events, and you persuade yourself that you remember other events that never happened. Fortunately, it is curable."

Do I really need to tell a Gentle Reader of Liberty's Torch where that came from?

The number of times I've had the following exchange:

FWP: You know, in 1960 you could buy a gallon of gas for three dimes...and you still can today.
Miscellaneous Other Person: Huh? Giddouddahere!
FWP: No, seriously, you can -- if they're silver dimes.
MOP: C'mon, that can't be right. (walks away)

...has grown beyond my ability to remember. Except for oldsters like myself, my conversational partners simply reject the information. It's recorded in many places, including government compilations such as the Historical Statistics of the United States. But most persons under the age of sixty are unwilling to accept it.

Few persons under that age are willing to believe that in those days:

Pop stars performed fully clothed.
Parents spanked their disobedient children.
A pound of ground beef cost less than a dollar.
A rifle as a Christmas present was nothing to stir controversy.
Savings banks paid 3% on deposits and charged 6% on mortgages.
Divorce and "single motherhood" were considered marks of personal failure.
The Sunday morning talking-head shows were gentlemanly affairs with no shouting.
The most vexing public problem in America, according to the airwaves, was littering.
Murderers were more likely than not to serve their full sentences...and many were executed.
A walk along the Bronx's Grand Concourse at ten P.M. was almost perfectly safe -- for a ten-year-old.
Advertising of all sorts -- including ads for liquor and cigarettes -- routinely included the prices of the things advertised.
Network TV stations aired "public service" pitches stating that "The family that prays together stays together," and encouraging Americans to "Go to the church of your choice."

I remember it all. All of it is verifiably true. (Oh, and there was no "knockout game," either.) But for how much longer?

    O'Brien smiled faintly. "You are no metaphysician, Winston. Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?"
    "No"
    "Then where does the past exist, if at all?"
    "In records. It is written down.
    "In records. And--?"
    "In the mind. In human memories."
    "In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?"
    "But how can you stop people remembering things?" cried Winston, again momentarily forgetting the dial. "It is involuntary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory? You have not controlled mine!"
    O'Brien's manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial.
    "On the contrary," he said, "you have not controlled it. That is what has brought you here."

The Omnipotent State demands unquestioning submission -- of body and mind. It is heresy to remember things the State does not wish remembered. It is blasphemy against Official Truth to speak of them. Though it has not yet begun to prosecute and punish for the thoughtcrimes that laid low Winston Smith, that day is unlikely to be far off. The foundations of "reality control" -- what Orwell's Newspeak termed doublethink -- are being poured as we speak, by our mass media and our government-run schools.

To remember an adverse datum even as much as one year old is no longer socially acceptable:

At one point during this time, there was a furor raised over the funding of school lunches. So, I looked into it carefully.
After delving into the actual numbers, I was horrified to learn that what I heard from all the big-name news outlets was factually incorrect. Every single one of them got it wrong.
So, I called the newsroom of the biggest and most respected news radio station in Chicago (where I was living.) Amazingly, they put me right through. The conversation went like this:
Me: Listen, I have a problem on this school lunch thing. The numbers you guys are using are wrong.
News writer: What do you mean?
Me: You’re reporting a seven percent cut in school lunch funding, but I checked the real numbers – they are going up three percent. The democrats are saying “seven percent cut,” because they want a ten percent increase. This talk about a cut is false: it’s actually an increase, and you guys have to know that.
News writer: Yeah, well… the democrats gave us stuff to use and the republicans didn’t.
I was horrified, but it was, at least, an honest answer. What shocked me most was the fact that they simply didn’t care. This was the flagship news station in Chicago – the one people went to when they wanted to be sure – and they simply didn’t care about accuracy.

The government-run schools have slighted actual history so completely that the typical high-school graduate when asked what founding American document includes "From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs," answers "the Declaration of Independence." He's read more about Harriet Tubman than about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson combined. He thinks the "party of slavery" was the Republican Party...and that Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat. He isn't aware that is the U.S. fought Japan in World War II...or who won.

Given all that, how could anyone expect young Mr. John Q. Public to believe that gasoline ever cost $0.30 per gallon -- or that there was so much of it available that gas station chains had to run giveaway programs and strange, raffle-like contests to compete with one another?

Our political class is perfectly happy with that.

I remember too much. As I wrote long ago:

I remember the milk truck, the bakery truck, the dry cleaner's truck, the sharpener truck, and the Charles Chips truck, all of which came to our door, and all of whose drivers were treated like old friends. In some cases, they were old friends.
I remember cap guns, and games of Cowboys and Indians, and huge snowball fights conducted with an innocent ferocity by pugilists from eight to eighty.
I remember thinking that the Palisades Interstate Parkway must surely be one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and that heaven itself could hardly exceed the delights of Palisades Amusement Park.
I remember my father, down on his luck and himself after my mother left him, spending much too much time in a local gin mill. I remember him cashing check after check at that saloon, and the owner, who knew those checks would bounce right over the Moon, accepting them anyway, putting them into his cash register and never saying a word. That saloon owner eventually got every penny my father owed him. I wonder if he'd known that he would.
I remember adults who had standards they weren't afraid to enforce without needing to invoke the authority of the law. I remember lawyers who tried to counsel their prospective clients not to sue. I remember journalists who could be trusted.
I remember loving America wholeheartedly and with no reservations. We were the good guys. I remember fearing nothing and no one, certainly not the government. I remember being confident that the world could only get better, now that the good guys were in charge.

I know I'm not supposed to remember all those things, especially not on Thanksgiving Day. I'm supposed to be grateful for the bounties bestowed on us by Our Leader and his lieutenants. I'm supposed to frown at anyone who voices criticism of His enlightened rule, and make a note not to have that seditionist at my table next year. And I'm supposed to accumulate paper dollars (or magnetic domains that represent them) as if they could really store value, and spurn the precious-metals cranks who shriek, as Milton Friedman once wrote, that "Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink, and make the combination worthless."

I wonder how long it will be before I face my personal Room 101.

"Tell me," Winston said, "how soon will they shoot me?"
"It might be a long time," said O'Brien. "You are a difficult case. But don't give up hope. Everything is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you."

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Not Enough Part 2: Enablers

Persons cloaked in "authority" and minded to brutalize generally don't do it all "on their own." Indeed, they couldn't. They need support. Validation. Repeated, vocal affirmation by others of the importance of their oppressive trade, and the necessity of tolerance toward that trade regardless of the excesses of "a few bad apples."

Time was, there was a saying that one rotten apple can spoil a whole barrel. That concept doesn't seem to be in play any more. Worse yet, many Americans have lost their grip on an understanding critical to justice: that the accomplice after the fact is as guilty as the perpetrator, and deserves to suffer alongside him.

Remember "Officer Friendly?" (Don't admit it in the comments; you'll date yourself.) He once visited grammar schools to exhort the kiddies to obey their parents, always cross at the crosswalk and only when the light is green, and regard policemen as "your friends." The pitch worked far more often than not, back then.

There were, and are, a million ironies in this. Cops are de facto indemnified for breaking the law; you and I are not. Indeed, you and I can be "Eckertized" by a cop on any pretext whatsoever. (Most common: "I smell marijuana.") Constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz and his minor son were arrested at a baseball game and handled very roughly indeed -- for being in seats originally purchased by someone else. You can read about it in his book The Best Defense, which I highly recommend.

The policeman is not your friend. He comes closer to being the neighborhood strongman. His badge gives him a personal prerogative to suspend or dismiss your rights. As time has passed, police forces everywhere have been populated by persons who enjoy doing exactly that, gradually displacing the older generations of cops who retained some vestige of respect for the communities that employed them.

Hearken to Mike Hendrix on this subject:

That “leaning into your space” bit reminds me of the time years ago when I broke down on the New Jersey Turnpike just outside NYC. A Jersey Trooper pulled up, motioned me over to his car (it was about 15 degrees outside at the time, so no way was he getting out of his nice warm car), and when I walked to his window, he immediately started in: “So you wear a leather jacket, huh? What are you, some big tough biker? You a Hells Angel, huh? You think you’re tough, huh? Think you can whip my ass? Wanna take a swing at me, big tough biker guy?”
My response every time was a humble “No, sir,” which I have to admit kind of stuck in my craw a goodish bit. But the truth is, I’ve never seen any percentage in being rude to cops, much as I may dislike the smell of whatever they’re shoveling my way at the time. He was one of those young, over-eager types: buzz-cut, over-muscled, tucked in and squared away as he could be. I always figured guys like him wanted to be in the Marine Corps but couldn’t hack it, probably for psychological reasons, so they pretend to be one anyway whilst riding around in a cop car beating off to fantasies of dominance and subjugation. Hopefully, he got shot by some gang-banger or thrown off the force for some reason; the thought of this guy rising through the ranks to a position of even more power over the hapless serfs is chilling indeed. But he’s probably made Captain by now.

So much for "Officer Friendly"...who, incidentally, was more often than not a civilian hireling rather than a genuine police officer.

Armed agents of the State couldn't get away with their oppressions if the far more numerous civilian populace weren't predisposed to defer to them. We do so out of reflex: a conditioned-in response that arises partly from habit and partly from the pre-conscious assumption that they're the "good guys" we pay to "protect us." In point of fact, cops -- county, state, or federal -- don't protect anyone but one another. They were never intended to do so, and surely won't assume the responsibility for it now.

Those who confer the "good guy / protector" presumption upon the armed agents of the State seldom have reasons for doing so grounded in personal experience. Mainly they've been conditioned into it by an enabler or enablers. Those who "teach" our children are perhaps the most important of the enablers.

"Educators" have become ever more insistent about conditioning those subjected to their ministrations to "defer to authority." Whence arises that authority? What limits must it respect? Under what conditions is it being abused? A schoolchild who dares to ask those questions will usually be disciplined. Can't have them questioning Teacher; she, too, is an "authority" who demands that you defer to her.

Glenn Reynolds has said on several occasions that subjecting your children to the "public" schools ought to be considered a form of child abuse. Consider the above an observation in support.

There are other enablers, of course: "supervisors" who'll do anything to avoid taking official notice of police misconduct; a press that routinely soft-pedals incidents of police brutality and overreach; media personalities who harp on "law and order" rhetoric, regardless of whether order increases or diminishes as the Myrmidons of the Law tighten their grip; rabble-rousers for some cause they demand be written into the law; "gun control" activists implacably hostile to an armed citizenry; and "public advocates" who mainly exist to reassure the protesting citizen that, yes, the nice policeman was only doing his job when he shoved his nightstick up your ass. The federal courts provided their contribution with U.S. v Barker and Martinez. (This, in the country that imposed the Nuremberg Tribunals on defeated Germany, and whose judges insisted repeatedly that "I was only following orders" is not a valid defense.)

Such enablers seldom change their tune even when confronted by a case such as that of David Eckert. Sometimes they change the subject; more often, they counterattack the questioner as "an enemy of law and order." What's this? You're not really objecting to the War on Drugs, are you? You must be a druggie yourself, maybe even a dealer! Where'd you get the money to pay for that BMW? Besides, that TSA agent who insists on groping your private parts is only doing his job!

These are accomplices, both before and after the fact, in the totalitarianization of American society. It doesn't matter whether they do so out of conviction or for personal gain. They are equally as guilty as the thugs at the sharp end, uniformed and otherwise, to whom "civilians" are a lesser form of life over whom they can ride roughshod as the please.

Remember this photo from the days after the Boston Marathon bombing?

Somewhere off in the distance, I hear Madame DeFarge's knitting needles clicking away.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Ultra Vires: Quandaries For Catholics And Conservatives

[The following essay, which first appeared at the old Palace Of Reason in April 2003, is being reposted by special request. Having reviewed it, I find it germane to many of the conflicts within both the Church and the American conservative movement at this time. -- FWP]

April 21, 2003

In its unique way, the Catholic Church, to which I adhere, represents the greatest of the conflicts in American conservative politics today. Conversely, the conservative experience in America, especially as informed by its legal attitudes toward personal virtue, is a near-perfect mirror for a special malady that afflicts the Church in our time.

Michele Catalano recently bemoaned a common complaint: Catholic Guilt, a major legacy of much misguided indoctrination applied to young and defenseless Catholics, mainly in parochial schools. Stripped of its subtleties, Catholic Guilt is what comes of the inculcation of the notion that one is supposed to suffer in this world to earn one's place in the next. Suffering here is meant to include not merely pain, fatigue, and discomfort, but also the renunciation, voluntary or otherwise, of the pleasures offered us by the world.

Contrast this idea with another, presented here by the great Christian apologist C. S. Lewis, through his devil-protagonist Screwtape:

He [God] has a bourgeois mind. He has filled His world full of pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without His minding in the least -- sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it's any use to us. We fight under cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side. [from The Screwtape Letters, of course]

To your Curmudgeon, the truth of Lewis's view seems self-evident. The opposing view, from which Catholic Guilt germinates, was enough to distance me from the Church for a long time. Moreover, a review of the Gospels reveals that Christ Himself demanded none of the renunciations and self-abnegations at the heart of Catholic Guilt.

The number of Catholics who have left the Church for this reason is incalculable. Not many return.

But even a lapsed Catholic, determined to remove the Church entirely from his life, can find himself afflicted with Catholic Guilt. A growth whose roots strike that deeply into one's early childhood can be hard to expunge.

Guilt as a tool of control has obvious attractions. Once nurtured, it functions automatically. An external authority aware of its contours can use it for a wide variety of purposes. In that regard, it's more potent and flexible than either the sense of right and wrong or the assumption of personal obligations.

Ayn Rand had one of her most loathsome villains soliloquize about the control possibilities inherent in guilt in a truly piercing fashion:

"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against -- then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can be neither observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted -- and you create a nation of law-breakers -- and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with." [from Atlas Shrugged]

Because guilt is a perpetual negative presence in the mind, it can also engender negative consequences. One always attempts to escape from a sense of guilt. When guilt attaches to a specific act, one can atone and win absolution, at least in theory. When the guilt is formless and free-floating -- the unarticulated conviction that to allow oneself to feel pleasure or to live for one's own purposes is inherently wrong and marks one as unworthy of eternal life -- no escape is possible, except into the abandonment of the institution inflicting the guilt, or psychosis.

Given its most important practical effect -- driving genuinely good people away from the Church to God knows where -- Catholic Guilt must be regarded as a disaster: for the Catholic Church; for Christianity, of which Catholicism is the largest sect; and for those who would otherwise have remained in the fold to partake of all the truly positive and life-enhancing things the Church has to offer.

But enough about that. Let's move to a topic of wider interest: conservative guilt, an underappreciated and largely undiscussed brake on the growth of American conservatism today.

About a year ago, a gentleman named Will Wilkinson wrote the following about "lifestyle-conservatives" (with particular application to their attitudes toward recreational sex) as cited by Professor Glenn Reynolds, the much-beloved InstaPundit:

What people are interested in is a sense of identity. If a party grates against our sense of the kind of person we'd like to be, then we don't want anything to do with it.
So, if the the alternative to being an uptight, sanctimonious, moralistic asshole is to be a Democrat, then we'll want to be Democrats -- even if we do end up getting shafted by Taxman. And I think that's the way a whole lot of folks in my demo (BoBo Gen-X) see it. To large swaths of the public mind, choosing to put a gargoyle like John Ashcroft in charge of norm enforcement is like choosing to put Michael Moore in charge of the Fed.

This, and Professor Reynolds's response, germinated a Curmudgeonly reflection on conservative identity-politics (not the most frequently discussed topic on the political Right), and some tentative conclusions about the sociodynamics of American conservatism. Those conclusions have become broader and stronger since that article -- and they center on guilt.

To be brief, an awful lot of easygoing conservative types, who see nothing wrong with various kinds of pleasurable self-indulgence as long as they don't produce harms or costs for uninvolved others, mouth a coercive-moralistic line so that they'll be approved and accepted by the most rigid, humorless bluenoses in the conservative community. They feel themselves to be unworthy to some degree, because they're insincere about their allegiance to such crusades as the War On Drugs, the condemnation of recreational sex and sex-for-hire, and other traditional strictures on the pleasures of the world and the flesh.

It's possible that this is the worst retardant influence on conservative politics in our time. It certainly costs us the interest of most young Americans, who want neither to be deprived of life's pleasures nor to be seen trying to deprive their contemporaries of them. And it is entirely a cultural phenomenon.

It's laudable to exalt the virtues of work, of dedication, of the striving for excellence in oneself and one's creations. This is a feature of America's "enterprise culture," the living filament that lights her commercial republic and makes its achievements the envy of the world. But there is no necessary connection between that set of attitudes and the notion that one must renounce the pleasures of life, even if indulgence subtracts from the time available for productive enterprise, worship, or what-have-you.

Yet lifestyle-conservatives, especially the religiously inclined, would like the two threads to be inextricably intertwined. They treat their anti-hedonic preferences as the heart of the conservative worldview. And a great many conservatives who are far less puritanically oriented pay them lip service.

The reasons are guilt and the desire for acceptance, a perfect mirror to the phenomenon of Catholic Guilt. The major difference between them is that Catholic Guilt is nurtured in young children by terrifying authority figures, while conservative guilt is an adult phenomenon kept vital by the supercilious disdain of lifestyle-conservatives.

Combating conservative guilt is as important for achieving a rational, majority conservatism -- a conservatism that, pace Lord Acton, regards liberty as the highest political end, and intrudes upon it no more than necessary to maintain public order -- as combating Catholic Guilt is for maintaining the vitality of the Church.

There are no miracle cures for unfounded guilt. The sufferer must satisfy himself that there's no fundamental requirement that he carry that burden. The best that can be done for him is to point him at primary sources:

For the Catholic, the Gospels;
For the conservative, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

Primary sources are important because they are grants of authority. Christ's teachings as set forth in the Gospels are the source and foundation of all Christian belief. A cleric that overlays them with his own preferences or ambitions, going beyond what Christ proclaimed as the obligations of the seeker after eternal life, betrays His mission among men and sins grievously against the innocent soul. Similarly, the Declaration and Constitution are the foundations of the American Republic. The lifestyle-conservative who seeks to efface the philosophy of the Declaration, or to usurp more power than was granted by the Constitution, traduces our whole experiment in freedom. Both of these are clear cases of ultra vires, the unjustified usurpation of power beyond that which was legitimately granted, the form treason most often takes within the corridors of power.

If the guilt-ridden Catholic or conservative can be brought to that realization, then, as with Winston Smith's "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four," all else follows.

From that point forward, the matter is in his hands.