In the Dogma House

Carmen Sternwood: What's your name?
Philip Marlowe: Doghouse Reilley
Carmen Sternwood: That's a funny kind of name.
Philip Marlowe: You think so?
--The Big Sleep

Dogma is belief accepted by a group without question or debate. It stands to reason that the higher the preference for collectivism among members of a group, the more likely that dogma will reside within the group.

How to counter such groupthink? One way is to avoid affiliations. As Jefferson understood, belonging to groups tends to cloud judgment.

Outside viewpoints are also useful as they bring fresh perspective. Of course, outsiders are typically unwelcome in collectivist circles as they threat group cohesion.

Finally, there is reason. Applying logic and scientific thinking toward dogmatic principles commonly lays groupthink to waste.

Should it be surprising, then, that leftists increasingly claim reason and critical thinking to be racist and inflammatory?

They need to quell the threat to group cohesion somehow.

Still Radical

Benjamin Martin: May I sit with you?
Charlotte Selton: It's a free country. Or at least it will be.
--The Patriot

Two hundred and forty-six years after our nation's first law, its founding principle of liberty remains radical. From his early days of social existence, man has been tempted to surrender liberty to earthly rulers. As God warned Samuel, doing so invites despotism.

In 1776, the United States startled the world when it chose to 'throw off' that despotism in pursuit of self-determination. Since then, the authoritarians have been seeking to extinguish that flame of liberty and reclaim their power.

Events of the past few years suggest to some that the tyrants have made progress.

Personally, I prefer to believe that the opposite is happening. People tend to wake up when their freedoms are being stolen. 

Nearly a quarter of a millennium ago, we learned that when enough people wake up, they--the true radicals--have the capacity to push back.

Disinformation Governance Board

Funny how I blind myself
I never knew
If I was sometimes played upon 
Afraid to lose
--Talk Talk

In what could hardly be a more overt validation of George Orwell's 1984 message, the federal government has created a 'Disinformation Governance Board" under the Department of Homeland Security. The objective is to 'police' what is deemed (by the overseers, of course) to be 'misinformation' or 'disinformation.'

The censorship drumbeat among progressives has reached a fevered pitch, pushed over the top by Elon Musk's buyout of Twitter (TWTR) announced last week.

How the establishment of such an agency is not a direct violation of the First Amendment is beyond me.

 At the same time, we should also note that this is not the first time the feds have sought to thwart free speech through formal structure. John Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts, Lincoln's muzzling of unfriendly press during the Civil War, Wilson's Committee on Public Information and Sedition Act of 1918, information shapers in FDR's 'brain trust,' et al.

To borrow Locke and Jefferson's term, this 'train of abuses' has been running in fits and starts since the ink was newly dry on the Bill of Rights. And in the most noteworthy authoritarian regimes in history...

I hope this is challenged in the courts. Meanwhile it will be interesting to see how much legitimacy this agency acquires from the people. 

Stated differently, widespread rejection of the Disinformation Governance Board by the citizenry could bury the censors and vault awareness of liberty to levels not seen in some time.

Burying Liberty...Again

"Why should I trade one tyrant 3000 miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away? An elected legislature can trample a man's rights as easily as a king can."

--Benjamin Martin (The Patriot)

Judge Nap rails against the unconstitutional seizing of Russian property, the freezing of Russian bank accounts, and the barring of contractual trade with Russian partners--all done under the guise of sanctions imposed after the Ukraine invasion. These sanctions violate both the Fourth Amendment, which requires warrants specific to place and person before property can be detained, and the Fifth Amendment, which requires due process before property can be expropriated.

A common response to charges such as these is that the Constitution only protects US citizens and not foreigners. This is wrong. The wrongheadedness of this line of thought is revealed by considering the Constitution's conceptual basis.

The formation of the United States is grounded in natural law. Natural law posits that all men are created equal at birth, meaning that we all have equal rights to life, to the freedom to pursue our interests as long as we do not forcibly intrude on the pursuits of others, and to the property that our pursuits might generate.

These natural rights are granted to each of us by our creator and as a condition of our humanity. They are unalienable, meaning that we are free to exercise our natural rights unencumbered by government interference. This is the founding principle of liberty. 

Government's sole just purpose is to protect our natural rights. It can only interfere in an individual's pursuits when it is suspected that a person has forcibly compromised the natural rights of someone else. However, government must carefully follow just legal processes including those specified by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

If the natural law basis of the Constitution is to be upheld, then it makes no sense to limit its application citizens of the United States. Americans were not the only people born to the 'self-evident' truth that all men were created equal. All have been endowed with the same set of natural rights. When government tramples on the natural rights of any individual, it has done wrong.

As the Judge notes at the end of his column: "War is the health of the state and the graveyard of liberty." Actions of the US government taken under the auspices of the Ukraine conflict demonstrate once again America's lack of leadership in championing the very principles upon which our nation was founded.

War finds the United States burying liberty once again.

Constitution 101

Benjamin Martin: May I sit with you?
Charlotte Selton: It's a free country. Or at least it will be.
--The Patriot

I just began my first of, I suspect, many online courses at Hillsdale College: Constitution 101. It is fantastic. 

I began an earlier version of this course a few years ago but I'm glad that I didn't complete it then as Hillsdale's online content has become even more polished over time.

All of Hillsdale's online courses are free of charge. As such, this great institution is truly providing an invaluable service to US citizens.

Use it.

Overton Window

"A toast...to high treason. That's what these men were committing when they signed the Declaration. Had we lost the war, they would have been hanged, beheaded, drawn and quartered, and--my personal favorite, had their entrails cut out and BURNED!"
--Benjamin Franklin Gates (National Treasure)

The Overton Window conceptualizes the range of politically acceptable policies at a given time. Developed by policy analyst Joseph Overton, the model can be seen as representing the window of opportunity of sorts for politicians. 

In the model, all possible government policies fall along a single vertical scale. Toward the upper end of the scale are policies that reduce government regulation and expand personal freedom. Toward the lower end of the scale are policies that increase government regulation and restrict personal freedom.

At any given time, only a subset of these possibilities is widely seen as legitimate. This subset constitutes the Overton Window. Politicians are likely to pursue policies inside the window. If they stray outside the window to champion other ideas, then politicians are likely to be viewed as too radical or extreme to gain or keep public office.

An interesting and perhaps counterintuitive feature of the theory is its premise that politicians are able to detect the boundaries of acceptability defined by the window but possess limited capacity for altering those boundaries. Instead, intellectuals, social movements, advocacy groups, and other shapers of popular opinion are more likely to alter the window. 

An exception might lie in charismatic political leaders who behave in manners that capture the hearts and minds of the people.

Because the battle between force and freedom is as old as society itself, the boundaries of the Overton Window are in a constant state of flux. As such, politicians who operate near the edges of the window risk public opinion turning against them if the window moves away from the policies that they promote.

Causes of Crisis

"Gentlemen, we have a crisis situation."
--Jester (Top Gun)

Interesting discussion of how we've evolved into a Constitutional Crisis situation. Especially liked the review of the negative influence of the Progressive movement.

I thought that the author missed the mark on a couple of points, however. He correctly notes that the Three Fifths clause which legitimized slavery was not a principle of the Constitution, but a compromise. But the author implies that it was a necessary compromise to close the deal that ultimately led to the union of states. Furthermore he argues, using some cites from Frederick Douglass, that the Constitution was ultimately and anti-slavery document. Because it was grounded in the 'all men created equal' principle set forth in the Declaration, tension was created by the compromise that ultimately led to slavery being thrown off.

Very neat, but what if enough anti-slavery framers had the cojones to stand their ground at the convention? Might the union have included fewer states in the beginning? Yes. But the principle would have stood from the outset. And millions of lives would have subsequently been saved. Indeed, it can be argued that willingness to 'compromise' ranks highly in the factors that have led to the Constitutional Crisis that we face.

Before lambasting Progressives for wanting to consolidate power in the executive branch, the author claims that there are times when the president rightfully should wield such power. In the event of war and crises, he suggests, the president must be able to circumvent constitutional balances of power to, essentially, 'preserve the union.' He is undoubtedly covering for Lincoln, whom he is sympathetic to and quotes liberally in the article despite Lincoln's abuse of power during his administration.

Lincoln and other presidents have used 'emergency powers' to do precisely what the author seems to argue against--i.e., the durable confiscation of liberty by an authoritarian state. Although he quotes work by both Jefferson and Locke that appear sympathetic to concentrating authority with the executive branch in times of crisis, there is no provision for doing such in the Constitution itself.

Indeed, the inconsistencies demonstrate by the author suggest that there is plenty of blame to go around for our present crises. The actions of many so-called 'conservatives' have done as much to denigrate the Constitution as those of Progressives.

Reviving Nullification

Gonna break it

Gonna shake it

Let's forget it better still
--The Who

Last week the Supreme Court declined to interfere with a Texas statute that provides for civil litigation against abortion providers in the state. Because the high court had previously upheld the principles of Roe v. Wade that has legalized more than 60 million abortions since 1973, Judge Nap reasons that the a five majority on the court is signaling that the concept of nullification is being revived.

Nullification stems from the notion that any state, via legislative or judicial means, can determine that a federal law or mandate is unconstitutional. If it does so, then the law is 'nullified,' meaning that the state can legally ignore it.

The idea of nullification was supported by many of our founding ancestors, including Jefferson and Madison. Nullification was employed several times in the early days of the United States--perhaps most notably in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts of the late 1790s. However, it has not been applied seriously since the outcome of the Civil War--an outcome which called into question the true sovereignty of the states.

A nullification-based interpretation of last week's ruling would be that Roe is unconstitutional, and that Texas has the sovereign power to declare it as such. 

It should be noted, however, that the Supreme Court's decision amounts to a temporary ruling. Challengers mount cases that ultimately will put the issue before the high court again. At that point, customary full briefings and oral arguments will require more transparency among the justices concerning their views on the legality of nullification.

Until then, the Texas ruling revives hope in the utility of nullification--perhaps, as the Judge call it, "the most effective peaceful tool for returning the federal government to the confines of the Constitution.

No Purchase Necessary

"I can break you, mate. I can buy you six times over."
--Sir Lawrence Wildman (Wall Street)

The primary responsibility of just government is not to keep its citizens safe. It is to preserve their freedom.

Security is a good that must be purchased.

Freedom is not a good. It is a God-given right. No purchase necessary.

Conceived in Liberty

So speak and act as people who will be judged by the law of freedom.
--James 2:12

Two hundred and forty five years ago today, the document that changed the world was ratified. It declared that all people were endowed by their Creator with rights to life, liberty, and property that could not be justly rescinded by earthly authority. When government failed to secure those rights, its authors argued, the people are justified in throwing off that government in favor of a better design.

The original argument and its effect has not changed since the ink dried on the underwriters' signatures. Authoritarians fear and despise these ideas, and will do everything in their power to wipe them away.

Thus, a nation conceived in liberty still fights a revolution to preserve ideals that remain truly radical. 

The Real Radicals

"A toast...to high treason. That's what these men were committing when they signed the Declaration. Had we lost the war, they would have been hanged, beheaded, drawn and quartered, and--my personal favorite--had their entrails cut out and BURNED! So, here's to the men who did what was considered WRONG, in order to do what they knew was right...what they KNEW was right."
--Benjamin Franklin Gates (National Treasure)

Today, those labelled 'radicals' are not radical at all. Radicals side with big government, and robbing life, liberty, and property from some for the benefit of themselves and their comrades. Nothing radical about that. Seeking to forcibly rule others has been the status quo position since the beginning of social man.

No, the radical idea remains liberty. The natural right to pursue one's interest without forcible intervention from others. 

1795 50c PCGS F12 CAC

It's as novel now as it was 245 years ago when our founding ancestors prepared to issue the First Law.

Be real radicals. Live free.

Spinning Intolerance

"We must pray that when your head's finished turning, your face is to the front again."
--Sir Thomas More (A Man for All Seasons)

A core principle of cultural Marxism is 'liberating tolerance.' The term was coined by Frankfurt School theorist Herbert Marcuse. As with most Marxist ideas, the concept turns reality upside down.

Classically defined, tolerance means being able to live with things you don't like. Marcuse posited that a classically 'tolerant' society would therefore validate or institutionalize things that are harmful and inhibit progress. 

To counter this 'repressive tolerance,' Marcuse espoused liberating tolerance. Liberating tolerance means tolerating ideas coming from sources deemed as 'correct,' while not tolerating ideas coming from sources deemed 'incorrect.' 

Guess who gets to deem correctness?

To cultural Marxists, then, censorship is quite welcome when applied to groups with 'incorrect' ideas. And can there be any doubt that we are witnessing precisely this? Hello Facebook, Twitter, et al...

Quite clearly, liberating tolerance is the definition of intolerance. Stated differently, liberating tolerance to counter repressive tolerance is... repressive intolerance.

Let's join Sir Thomas in a prayer for the spinning minds of the left.

What They Count On

"I want this country to know that we stand on the edge of oblivion! I want every man, woman, and child to understand how close we are to chaos! I want everyone to remember why they need us!"
--Sutler (V for Vendetta)

Tyrannical rule, defined as impairing the liberties of those governed, could never persist if the masses rose up against it. Despots are almost by definition a small minority. They could not remain in charge if the majority 'threw them off.'

So how do they do it? How do tyrants manage to keep their thrones when they are so vastly outnumbered? There are few plausible answers.

One is that they trade with the masses. Tyrants agree to provide something that the people want, such as security, in exchange for their acquiescence. When they do this, of course, the masses are dealing with the devil. 

Another is entertainment and distraction. The Roman solution of 'bread and circuses' is meant to divert attention of common men from the real issue at hand: confiscation of freedom. Drumming up war, btw, serves a similar purpose.

Finally, tyrants presume that most people are just plain ignorant. The masses, they believe, don't engage their brains and think for themselves. Instead, they are willing to outsource their brains to so-called experts. Consequently, tyrants employ all kinds of experts to tell the public what it should think.

This is what tyrants count on.

Jabbing is Stabbing

This wouldn't be the first time
Things have gone astray
Now you've thrown it all away
--Bryan Adams

If life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness are truly inalienable rights, then by definition they cannot legitimately be taken away from peaceful people. Doing so would constitute an act of aggression. In a truly free society that respects natural rights, any form of aggression is unjust. 

This includes aggression done in the name of safety of any kind, including public safety.

Jabbing people with needles against their will is no less an act of aggression than stabbing them with knives. 

Those doing the jabbing, and those who condone it, are committing crimes against humanity.

Is It Time?

"Their prophet says 'submit.' Jesus says 'decide.'"
--Sybilla (Kingdom of Heaven)

The Judge's 'what ifs' are centered around the idea of let the people decide. Free will.

But at the end, he asks a particularly interesting series of what ifs:

"What if when government tramples our rights, we alter or abolish it? What if the time to do that is coming? What if that time is here?"

I have been wondering that myself.

Takeover Assumptions

"How could it come to this? An army of rable...peasants. Everything will change. Everything HAS changed."
--Cornwallis (The Patriot)

There seems to be a view among statists in America that if they could just wrestle federal government control away from those with high preference for liberty, then they would permanently turn the country into a socialist authoritarian state. This grand vision of takeover is grounded in several questionable assumptions.

One is that liberty lovers would obediently bow to the strong arm of the state and surrender their freedom. This seems doubtful, given the history that surrounds the founding of this country. Research suggests that, at the time of the revolution, perhaps 1/3 of the colonists were willing to fight against the British. That minority fraction was still a large enough to spark a world-changing revolution. There will be resistance--armed if necessary. Authoritarians would have to put this resistance down.

Which brings us to another questionable assumption. Statists must believe that they can project enough government force to quell pushback to their policies. Will they be able to marshal enough strong armed agents, i.e., police, military, et al., to do so? Some agents of force will surely side with them, but others won't. Not only will some police and military refuse to enforce authoritarian policy, but many will cross over to fight for the cause of freedom.

Authoritarians also face the small problem of approximately 300 million guns currently in the hands of the citizenry. It should be no wonder why gun control (i.e., confiscation) is a perpetual priority of statists.

These takeover assumptions seem so questionable that it is difficult to imagine that statists haven't already come to realize the risk of being, as Jefferson famously wrote, 'thrown off.'

Perhaps they have. Which leads me to believe that they have an ace in the hole: outside help.

Standing Armies and Riots

"The Army is a broadsword, not a scalpel. Trust me, senator, you do not want the Army in an American city."
--General William Devereaux (The Siege)

President Trump has threatened to send in US military troops where states refuse to take measures to appropriately defend the lives and property of their residents from rioters. Constitutionally, the president has no leg to stand on.

Article 4, Section 4 states that the federal government "shall guarantee to every state in this Union a Republican form of Government"(i.e., the 'Guarantee Clause'). Further, the federal government shall protect each of [the states] against Invasion," but clearly this 'Invasion Clause' is aimed at penetration from external enemies.

The article also states that the federal government shall protect each state from "domestic Violence," but only upon the request of the state legislature or the governor if the legislature cannot be convened. This 'Protection Clause' is clearly aimed at addressing internal uprisings that are presumed to be each state's primary responsibility to handle.

Stated differently, states must request the assistance of US troops to quell internal violence. The president cannot unilaterally deploy them.

An obvious question to our founding ancestors is this. If life and property are among the inalienable rights endowed to each person, and it is the responsibility of a just government to protect those rights, then shouldn't the federal government proactively intervene when states refuse to take appropriate protective measures?

The founders would likely say 'no.' If the federal government is permitted to forcibly intervene in state affairs whenever it deems that a 'crisis' exists, then the authority to deploy unilaterally 'standing armies' ultimately leads to discretionary rule, and the usurpation of that other inalienable right granted to all: liberty.

How, then, are people to protect themselves against threats to life and property if state and local government refuse to adequately do so. The founders answered this with the Second Amendment. Individuals are justified to arm themselves to defend their lives and property against aggression by others when government agents can't, or won't, be there to do so.

Derailing the Train

Benjamin Franklin Gates: Of all the words written here about freedom, there's a line here that's at the heart of all the others. '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 provide new Guards for their future security'...People don't talk that way anymore.
Riley Poole: Beautiful...I have no idea what you just said.
Benjamin Franklin Gates: It means if there's something wrong, those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action.
--National Treasure

Although we have all been endowed with the inalienable right to liberty, the law of diversity suggests that each of us does not value liberty equally. Perhaps liberty preference is normally distributed among individuals.

On one end of the bell-shaped curve are people who value freedom so highly that they're willing to rebel when their liberty is infringed only slightly. Because they reside out in the 'tail' of the distribution, these folks are few in number.

On the other end are those content to trade their liberty away for a something else, such as a government-provided security--however temporary that provision may be. There are relatively few of these tail dwellers as well.

If preference for liberty is approximated by the normal distribution, then most people reside in the middle. They are willing to tolerate some compromise to their freedom--perhaps because they figure that the cost of pushback exceeds the perceived gain.

It takes, in the classic words of Locke and Jefferson, 'a long train of abuses' of liberty by government to motivate pushback from the middle group. As that train lengthens, however, preference for liberty is activated in more people in the meat of the bell-shaped curve. At some point, critical mass is reached where rebels collectively engage in throwing off tyrannical government.

How large must that critical mass be? Researchers estimate that the fraction of colonists willing to engage in active rebellion against the British was no more than 1/3 of the colonial population prior to the beginning of the American Revolution. Studies of other libertarian movements conclude similarly. The fraction of the bell-shaped curve whose liberty preference must be engaged to spark rebellion tends to be far less than half.

As governors continue, and in some cases escalate, conditions of draconian lockdown in some states, the train of abuses is getting longer. The lengthening train is engaging the liberty preference in more individuals. These individuals are pushing back in larger numbers. If this process continues, this pushback will get organized with the collective objective of derailing the train.

Declaration of Radicals

"A toast...to high treason. That's what these men were committing when they signed the Declaration.  Had we lost the war, they would have been hanged, beheaded, drawn and quartered, and--my personal favorite--had their entrails cut out and burned. So, here's to the men who did what was considered WRONG, in order to do what they knew was right...what they KNEW was right."
--Benjamin Franklin Gates (National Treasure)

Two hundred and forty three years ago today the Continental Congress ratified our first law. The underwriters knew that, should their declaration be put down, then they would be executed by the Crown for committing treason. They were the nation's first radicals.

Their declaration remains radical as well. That people are free by natural right, and that they are beholden to no government that tramples that right.

Today let us pray that one day the ideas of freedom and liberty will no longer seem so radical.

Iconoclasm

"Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has actually been abolished? If it survives anywhere, it's in a few solid objects with no words attached to them, like that lump of glass there. Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."
--Winston Smith (Nineteen Eighty Four)

Over the past few years, statists have increasingly engaged in iconoclasm. Iconoclasm is the attacking, rejection, or destruction of established beliefs, values, and practices along with their associated artifacts and institutions. In ancient times, the motivation was primarily religion. Today, iconoclasm is done mainly for political purposes (for statists, of course, politics is religion).

The objective of the campaign is to destroy or disparage American history. Sever ties with the past and perhaps US citizens will acquiesce once more to a state of despotism.

This week we celebrate the birth of a nation founded on the principle of liberty--a principle that the iconoclasts detest. The best way to foil the iconoclasts is to remember our founding, and to securely pass those memories to the next generation.