John Tyner: American Hero

An American standing up to the government’s ever-growing need to encroach on civil liberties is always a heart-warming experience.  So John Tyner joins William Kostric in the ranks of American heroes canonized by this blog.

Tyner, while trying to board an airplane, was faced with the choice between submitting to a full-body scan, revealing the entire outline of his body, testicles, buttocks, and all, or submitting to an open-palm rubdown beginning in his groin area.  After refusing both, and after more than twenty minutes of deliberation on the part of airport security staff, Tyner was escorted from the airport.

The reaction of most Americans has been as slack-jawed as Chris Matthews’ reaction to William Kostric’s audacity.  People can’t understand why anyone would refuse a full-body scan or an invasive pat-down.  “What’s the big deal?” says one Albany resident.

Indeed, while “What’s the big deal?” is an excellent argument for nudism – after all, I’m not concealing illegal drugs in my underwear, so why should I wear any? – it suffers the same blindness that Kostric’s opponents suffered.  They did not realize that sometimes we must exercise our rights just so that they are not forgotten. An unexercised right is a right soon forgotten.  Invite your friend into your house once, and he is grateful.  Do it ten times, and soon he drops by unannounced.  If your friend is Uncle Sam, after a couple years, he’s taken over the master bedroom.  In just the same way, in the years since September 11th, our right against unreasonable search and seizure has eroded, bit by bit, year by year.

Another argument frequently made in defense of these searches – several times during Tyner’s encounter (videos available on his blog), as well as numerous times by lawyer apologists later on – is that “everyone else is submitting peacefully, so why can’t you?”  I fondly recall using this argument to my mother when I was six years old, and sought an allowance as large as my friends had.  This argument is easily answered by Tyner’s own words: “If I don’t object, nobody else will.”

It is high time that somebody objected to the cattle-herding-like experience of airport security, and high time other people followed suit.  Apologists for Uncle Sam – mostly lawyers – are already all over the airwaves explaining to us why our rights don’t, technically, apply.  The fact is, they don’t apply because we choose not to apply them.  Some citizen, wanting to get somewhere in a hurry, was the first to waive his right against unreasonable search and seizure for the sake of convenience.  Soon, others followed suit.  All we have to do is stop waiving our rights, stop flying until this atrocious violation of our privacy and our Fourth Amendment right is ended.  Uncle Sam, faced with torpedoing the airline industry, or taking a step back from the brink of Big Brother, might, just might do the right thing.

What I’m suggesting is a complete boycott of the airline industry.  This is not realistic.  But what is realistic is the National Opt-Out Day being promoted by Brian Sodergren.  I heartily endorse this idea, in which passengers insist on the more labor-intensive pat-down as opposed to the nude body scan.  However, an even better idea might be for every passenger waiting in the airport security lines to write down or memorize this passage, and recite it aloud while undergoing their searches:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, house, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the places to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

The romance of hearing this passage, the highest law of our land, echoing through the airport corridors that Big Brother has taken over, gives me goosebumps.  Imagine a thousand passengers chanting in unison this passage from our Constitution.  Imagine their voices drowning out the Big Brother pronouncements echoed over the airport speakers that “security is our number one concern”.  For indeed security is not our first concern.  Freedom is our first concern.  Freedom from oppression, freedom from tyranny, freedom from unreasonable and arbitrary search and seizure.  Imagine the patriotism and courage of even a single passenger reciting this passage as some disinterested Gestapo watch his nude body marching past the scanner.

This idea, to say these words, the words of our Constitution, is not easy.  Watching John Tyner’s videos of his security encounter, there are times when you can hear the fear in his voice.  He is dealing with a bunch of callous uniforms who don’t give a crap about him, and would like  to see him arrested for messing up their day.  To himself, he’s a law-abiding citizen who has done nothing wrong; to them, he is less than an insect.  The outrageous coup de grâce is the security officer at the end who tells Tyner that the TSA is going to “bring a case against him” and “he had better make it easier on himself”.

The government can take our freedom.  They can drown it out in technicalities, surround us with complaisant sheep, and browbeat us with pushy security personnel.  But they can’t make us forget that sacred text, and those visionary Founding Fathers who dreamed that our right “shall not be violated.”

Big Oil, Big Finance, and Saving the World

Obama’s recent proposal to allow offshore drilling off the Atlantic coast of the United States has incited a flurry of talk about why the price of oil is so high.  The villain du jour is the speculators.

Big Finance, the story goes, not satisfied with nearly shattering the world economy with the depression of 2008 to 2009, is back up to its old tricks.  In its greedy quest for more money, it is buying up everything, using the proceeds of the bank bailouts to fuel speculation in half a dozen places it doesn’t belong.

Besides, it’s unfair that a bunch of people who don’t even have any use for the oil are buying it all up.  It’s one thing when they pass around pieces of papers, like credit default swaps and stocks, but oil?  We need oil.  How dare they, who don’t need it, buy it when we need it?

Of course, this talk is so ridiculous that I suspect it’s being made not out of mere ignorance, but with far more sinister motives.  The argument of the anti-speculators becomes transparent with even the simplest examination.  Why, for example, has Big Finance chosen oil as the thing to buy?  Because they expect the price of oil to go up.  Why do they expect the price of oil to go up?  Because it’s a limited resource whose fresh supply is expanding more slowly than demand.

In short, Big Finance realizes what the Green movement has known for a long time: oil is eventually going to run out, or at least become very scarce.    They’re just trying to make a buck while it happens.  What’s more, they’re providing a useful service.

To understand this, let’s assume that speculators who buy futures contracts on oil are actually buying oil and storing it somewhere (which isn’t necessarily always true).  What will happen in the future?  1) Vast new and accessible reserves of oil will be discovered, prices will fall, and the speculators will lose a lot of money.  Rising supply and consumption volumes will render whatever oil the speculators have set aside insignificant.  2) The discovery of new reserves will continue to dwindle, and the competition for existing oil will increase.  The price will skyrocket, and the speculators will make a boatload of money.  In the mean time, the higher the price goes, t he fewer people will be able to afford oil, and more money will be poured into developing alternatives, which will become more economical the higher the price of oil goes.

It is this second case in which the speculators are providing a service.  Think about the oil they are setting aside as a reserve.  If we start running out of oil, they have saved some for us,  to tide us over while we work on alternatives.

This is probably an exaggeration – especially because of the assumption that the oil speculators buy is physically stored somewhere.  But even if it is not, the speculators are still serving a useful function in the event that the supply of oil dwindles in the future.  By driving the price of oil up now, they cause us to modify our behavior.  Expensive prices drive us to consume less, to take fewer trips.  They make the development of alternative sources of energy more economical.

So this brings us back to the anti-speculators.  What are their real motives?  Simple: they just want cheap gasoline for their SUVs.  In short, they want to continue the policy of extravagant subsidies for automotive travel that Washington has been handing out hand over fist since the fifties.  It started with the building of the interstate highway system and continued to our own time with the war in Iraq, to ensure continuous access to oil, and the bailouts of Detroit.  Now the financial system is in the cross-hairs.  Anything or anyone that brings us closer to the reality of expensive oil will be targeted.

Ironically, the financial bad boys are the good guys this time.  This entire controversy is an object lesson in 1) the potential of free markets to solve (some) problems and 2) the manipulation of the American people by the likes of Fox News (#1 hit on Google for oil speculation as of this writing).

A final point bears mentioning.  There exists a real possibility that there are, in fact, vast, easily accessible, untapped reserves.  It behooves us to begin thinking about alternatives to oil because we cannot know when we will no longer have oil.  The current price of oil, and the speculation surrounding it, is a reflection of this uncertainty, perhaps even a measure of it.  The problem is that if it turns out that there are vast untapped reserves, we will probably end up facing another gigantic bailout of the speculators, because the U.S. government (and people) are cowardly, China-loving weaklings unwilling to live in a world where property is sacred and justice brings consequences for the foolish irresponsibility of the wielders of great power.

Freedom, Violence, and Art – Story of Civilization V.vii.i-V.xi.v.1

Often, discussions of freedom are quickly hijacked by the argument over precisely what type of freedom is being discussed.  For instance, in America today, you may love freedom, but is it the freedom to not have to worry about healthcare, or the freedom to not pay excessive taxes to the government?  Similar questions have occurred throughout recent history: in apposition to free enterprise, freedom of property, and freedom from oppressive regulation are freedom to work, freedom from poverty, and freedom to unionize.

These questions are not unique to our time.  Historians often say of Renaissance Italy that it was the freedom of the city-states that stimulated the great flowering of the arts that then occurred.  But which freedom, precisely, do they mean?

In the most trivial answer, the freedom that mattered was the freedom of the city-states themselves from outside rule.  Florence, Venice, Genoa, and Siena were all independent fiefs, practically free, if not technically so, from the encroaching kings, emperors, and popes of their time.  Economically, this meant that each city acted as the capital of its associated lands, receiving their taxes and their goods, and passing them on to no higher authority.

This map of Italy, actually from 1796, hints at the divided nature of the country during the Renaissance. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was actually the Republic of Florence, the Duchy of Parma occupies approximately what would have been Milanese territory, and numerous smaller principalities, such as Ferrara and Siena, would at times have been independent.

Consider, by contrast, Rome during the Empire: prosperous cities and territories grew up repeatedly, but in the end, all were ransacked for the beautification of the capital.  When the method was not taxation or tribute, it was graft; the imperial appointees -native to Rome – would travel to a province, govern it for a few years, gather great wealth, and then leave with it for Rome.

In Renaissance Italy, with no imperial monster to feed, local concentrations of wealth were broken up but little, and the governors of each city-state, having collected the wealth that seems to be the eternal appanage of power, had nowhere to go with it but home.  This is reflected in the art patronage of the time. During the 1400s and 1500s, the greatest patrons of art were almost exclusively the government and the Church.  The Medicis in Florence, the Estensi in Ferrara, the Gonzagas in Mantua, and even Lodovico Sforza in Milan were all both premier patrons of the arts in their cities, and the dictators of said cities.

One is inclined to wonder whence came the great wealth of these dictators.  Other questions also arise.  Might the proletariat have done better under the oppression of a papal legate than under the freedom of the independent dictators?  Perhaps not; in addition to being artistically fertile, one of the signature characteristics of the Renaissance city-states was their patriotism.  Nonetheless, it seems clear that freedom from outside rule meant, in practice, the freedom of local rulers to cull for themselves whatever wealth they could extract from their territories.

Freedom from outside rule, in a way, also meant freedom from supervision, freedom from law.  This resulted in another notorious characteristic of the Renaissance city-states: their violence.  The Medicis and the Sforzas had to fear violent insurrections from time to time, but they were by no means the worst.  In cities like Verona under the Scaligeri, Perugia under the Baglioni, and others, rule was by families or factions whose sole claim to power appears to have been violence; so numerous are the stories of murder and midnight coups in these states, that, through the clouded vision of history, one could almost characterize the form of government as gang rule.

And so freedom can mean many things.  We must especially beware of those who would use freedom as a banner under which to usher in any number or variety of changes that in actuality have little to do with freedom.  When, in an effort to oust Lorenzo de’ Medici his opponents attempted to assassinate him, while running through the streets proclaiming freedom, the only reasonable interpretation of the freedom they offered was freedom from Lorenzo, and freedom for themselves to oppress the people in his stead.  The people responded accordingly, and killed them.

Scott Brown vs. Martha Coakley

The citizens of Massachusetts face a very difficult decision on this coming Tuesday.  How are they to come to a reasoned conclusion?

It may seem odd, but the first thought that came to us when considering which candidate to endorse was this: what are their characters?  Is one candidate clearly corrupt, while another is clearly the moral superior?  Does Scott Brown, for instance, have a record of drowning kittens, or does Martha Coakley regularly light her yard on fire just to add some CO2 to the air?  (No such allegations have been raised.)

In the consideration of character, it is often a negative consideration that we must make.  Praiseworthy actions rarely come to light, whereas smears or attacks are gleefully highlighted by the opposition.  Following this, the first point that came to our consideration of character was this comment by Scott Brown.  After supporting the uncouth Sarah Palin, Mr. Brown casually suggests that Barack Obama was born out of wedlock.  Like our considerations of kitten killing or predilections for pyrotechnics, Mr. Brown’s allegation is completely unfounded, and what’s worse, has little bearing on any real qualification that Obama might have had for the office of President (the comment having been made before the 2008 election).  From this comment, out of his own mouth, Scott Brown shows that he will be a partisan of standard Republican attack techniques, showing little regard for truth or fact, and raising “questions” that are designed to puzzle the simple-minded into doubt.  In short, Scott Brown shows every sign that he plans to manipulate the people rather than speak the truth to them.

By comparison, what can we say of Martha Coakley?  After some searching, and the sampling of many laughably inept Republican attack ads (for example), the best I could come up with was Dorothy Rabinowitz’s unbelievably partisan piece on the Wall Street Journal on Coakley’s role in the Amirault affair.  Herein, Coakley used her formidable powers as a prosecutor, and then attorney general of Massachusetts, to pursue (on scant and dubious evidence) drastic penalties against a family accused of sexual offenses against minors.  The consensus, according to Rabinowitz, is that Coakley’s case was weak, and that she needlessly defamed and ruined the lives of the Amirault family.

This in and of itself does little to settle the question of Coakley’s character.  The question becomes this: why did she defend the case against the Amiraults so viciously?  Was it all a mistake or misunderstanding?  Was her reason corrupt, or was it noble?  A case could be made that prosecutors should always pursue their cases to the very ends of the Earth, on however slim evidence, because often criminals can be very slippery, and can manipulate the truth to their own ends, and appear for all the world like the most innocent of men.  Recall the villains that Eliot Spitzer pursued when his was a noble name; who would deny that he should have used all the powers at his disposal to pursue the Wall Street fat cats?  Even now, who thinks he should have acted with more restraint?

Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that Coakley’s motivations were so principled; as M. Leblanc suggests, it is more likely that Coakley was acting to further her own political interests and ambitions, by trying to appear tough on crime.  Especially against sex offenders, as the Amiraults were suggested to be, the consensus everywhere is to penalize them in the severest ways, because such action is unlikely to encounter much public disapprobation.  In short, Coakley probably kept Gerald Amirault in prison not out of a personal conviction that he was guilty, or even out of a principled belief that, regardless of her own convictions, the harmony of the entire justice system required that her capacity as district attorney pursue the maximum possible penalty against him… not for these things did she pursue his incarceration, but for her own personal political ambition.

Such a thing is a great moral tragedy, although arguably one that any candidate for political office might be guilty of.  Also arguably, we do not think it is a much greater crime than Scott Brown’s apparent willingness to use disingenuousness and manipulation to achieve his own ends.  It seems our decision will not be made on character; who knows that this would have been a sufficient basis anyway?

Indeed, even arriving at a basis for decision in this election is difficult; we have every reason to believe that Coakley, as a Massachusetts liberal, and Brown, as a member of a minority opposition party clinging to the filibuster, will both vote along party lines more often than not.  Are we not then justified in ignoring their personal positions on issues, and in considering only their parties?  What’s more, the composition of the Senate will change dramatically in just a few months, when the 2010 elections happen; between now and then, it is hard to imagine but that the healthcare reform currently before Congress will be by far the issue of greatest import.  Considering then, that the Senate currently has 59 Democratic-aligned senators and 40 Republican-aligned, and that 60 votes are necessary to break a filibuster and pass legislation, it seems that our decision to vote for Coakley vs. Brown is a referendum on healthcare reform.

What, then, of healthcare?  In previous posts (in several different places) on the healthcare debate, I have argued, in broad summary, that spending on healthcare is not bad for the economy, that it represents the purchase of a good that, in general, people want, that increased government spending on healthcare would have a healthy and multiplicative effect on the economy, and finally, that despite all this, the current system has seriously skewed incentives due to the government-imposed insurance model.  I at no time reached a conclusion on whether the healthcare reform that we now face is a good thing or not.  Let me do so here.

The healthcare reform that we face is essentially socialism.  This is not out-and-out a bad thing, but it’s important to recognize it for what it is.  Whether or not the bill before us will immediately create a socialized system, or whether it will merely attempt to create the conditions for such a system in years to come is not relevant.  What is relevant is whether we want a socialized system.  All other developed countries in the world have systems that are socialized, or moving toward socialization, and even not “developed” countries with powerful economies, like China, have socialized healthcare.  Only the United States does not.

Let’s be clear on the facts: these other developed countries are doing fine.  While partisans will batter us with statistics from either side, there seems to be little citizen testimony from any developed country that the state of health in other countries is substantially different from that in the United States today.  The only thing that is different is that they do not have to pay for their healthcare (except in their taxes, and in such a way that income is redistributed from the rich to the poor).  The only advantage that the United States has over these other countries is our markedly better pharmaceutical development industry, but I think that the intellectual property issues surrounding pharmaceutical development are separate enough from the mundane questions of who will fix broken bones or diagnose your kid’s strep throat that we can leave pharma for another time.

With this in mind, shouldn’t we get socialized healthcare too?  I think that the answer is a resounding “no”.  Our country was founded as an experiment in the affirmative freedom of the individual citizen, an experiment in minimalist government.  We are a bold experiment, and a novel one.  We are the eternal opposition party of history; we are the opposite of China.  They desire harmony; we desire dynamism.  While other societies were created to endow all of their citizens with a collective good, we exist to provide a haven for those who wish to pursue their own individual goods.  We see the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as precluding other rights, such as the “rights” to jobs or healthcare, which rights would necessarily be provided to some citizens at the cost of the liberty or happiness of others.

If every other civilized country will have universal healthcare, and yet right now – as I said before – their healthcare and ours are on roughly the same footing, I say let us continue to experiment.  The situation is not yet so dire that consensus has been reached, that socialism has been proven to be the answer.  There is still room to doubt, so doubt we must.  If everyone else chooses socialism, let us choose anything else.

Such a position would seem to lead us to recommend Scott Brown for United States senator from Massachusetts.  Can it be that the heroic pursuit of truth leads us to select  this manipulating, two-faced, Sarah Palin-supporting rascal to be elected to the Senate of our land?  Citizens of Massachusetts, you truly face a difficult decision.

On Bernie Sanders and Tom Coburn

In the Senate today, Bernie Sanders and Tom Coburn got into an altercation over an attempt by Mr. Sanders to insert a single-payer amendment into the healthcare bill.  Mr. Coburn asked that the 767-page amendment, which would have been the ultimate Christmas present for Democrats, and anathema to Republicans, be read aloud on the Senate floor.  According to one reporter, the exercise would have taken eight hours.  This possibility prompted Mr. Sanders to withdraw the amendment, though not without some sharp words for his colleague.

This is part of a larger trend: a major, if subtle, Republican tactic to drum up popular opposition to healthcare reform has been to cite, as frequently and as loudly as possible, the huge numbers of pages of legislation that healthcare reform would consume.  In response, Democratic talking heads have used the Republican complaints about length as an example of the absurd, trite, and insubstantial nature of the Republican opposition to healthcare reform.

So the question: can the length of a bill be sufficient reason for opposing it?  I would like to submit that the answer is yes.  Arcane and lengthy legislation removes power from citizens in a variety of ways.

First, a 767-page amendment is difficult to read.  When Congress publishes thousands of pages of legislation a year, how is the average voting citizen supposed to keep up?  I am all for civic participation, and I would accept the proposition that the average American does not care enough about or invest enough time in the government, but it is simply not reasonable to expect working Americans to come to a considered conclusion about several pages of legalese for each day of the year.  In this way, by making legislation lengthy, it is almost guaranteed that only a tiny minority of the voting public will ever have any direct knowledge of what it contains.  Very few people will be able to perform primary evaluation of the legislation.  Very few people will actually know what it contains.

This forced ignorance of the American public has several pernicious consequences.  First, it is in part responsible for our current culture of partisanship.  When a voter cannot read the legislation, he turns to the news media to inform him.  Thus, by means of several mostly redundant thirty-second soundbites a day, he acquires in his mind a caricature of the legislation.  This image is further distorted by the almost inevitable intentional or unintentional bias of most popular media outlets, ranging from Fox News (intentional) to the New York Times (apparently unintentional).  In the end, the voter is reduced to chanting a slogan – “Healthcare is a right!” or “Universal healthcare is socialism!” – while having a thousand micro-debates on parts of the bill that never make it to the President’s desk, such as the “kill Granny” provision.

The same hapless ignorance that distorts the creation of legislation is also a danger to citizens once the legislation has been passed.  Consider the tax code: a frequent complaint against it is that its complexity enables rich citizens, who can hire lawyers, to make careers out of sifting through the tax code, understanding its complexities and loopholes, and in this way performing legal pirouettes so as to pay less taxes than even the poorest among us.  Meanwhile, the rest of us can never be quite sure that we’re not committing tax fraud – sure, I filed my 1040, but did I spend the extra twenty minutes tracking down Schedule 4149 to make sure that I’m eligible to file just a 1040?

This state of ignorance can be induced by any complex piece of legislation.  For example, suppose that healthcare reform passes: how will you determine what you must do to be in compliance with the law?  Will you read the entire piece of legislation?  Unlikely.  Have you read the entire tax code?  No… if you’re responsible, you’ve probably paid someone else to do your taxes, someone who has the time and resources to understand the tax code, or if you can’t afford this, you’ve done them yourself and hoped for the best.  In just the same way, if healthcare reform passes, the very same insurance companies that are taking your money now to offer you “protection” will switch their packs of lawyers from finding ways of denying you coverage to finding short, snippy tidbits of information they can give you about the new legislation (that come with no guarantees, of course).

In short, complex legislation, regardless of its intended effect, transfers power.  It transfers power from the citizens, who are the ultimate source of the law, to bureaucracies, both governmental and corporate, who have the time and resources to understand complex legislation.  Common citizens, ignorant of the law, are at a disadvantage against these organizations.

This is not an argument against big government.  One can imagine a tax law as simple as a flat tax that would produce the same level of income as the current gargantuan tax code.  One can imagine a brief charter for a governmental healthcare corporation.  This is simply an argument that, no matter one’s political beliefs, in a democratic society, all expression of the law must be comprehensible, so that it is subject to the evaluation of the citizens, because the citizens themselves are ultimately responsible for the justice of their society.

I do not say that complex legislation cannot work under any conditions; a society like China’s is well-suited for complex legislation.  The servile populace, under the iron fist of a sprawling governmental bureaucracy, has no hand in the justice of its own society.  The government, subsuming all power itself, also subsumes all responsibility.  The common Chinese citizen cannot be expected to understand the way his government works; he can only hope that it will be just to him, and reward or punish him according to his deserts.  He gives up his freedom of action and his political voice, and in return, he is freed from the responsibility of helping to provide his society with justice.

How nice it would be if in our country we didn’t have to worry our pretty little heads with understanding laws before they’re passed.  Help make this a reality!

The Prisoner: Dance of the Dead

Note: This is yet another cultural production for which an understanding of Crito is essential.

“Dance of the Dead” concerns what happens when a free individual, unwillingly participating in a coercive society, breaks “the rules”.  Society – and its members – frown on rule-breaking.  In this episode, Number Six discovers a radio on the beach.  Possession of a radio is against the rules, and so the issue goes to trial, and culminates with an angry mob chasing Number Six through the Village headquarters.  The people are not pleased with a man who has been so bold as to shake the foundations of their society by breaking their rules.

The exchange in which Number Six confronts the observer who reported his possession of the radio lays out the major themes:

Observer: I had my duty.
Number Six: To whom?
Observer: To everyone. The rules. “Of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Number Six: Takes on a new meaning.
Observer: You’re a wicked man!
Number Six: Wicked?
Observer: You have no values!
Number Six: Different values.
Observer: You won’t be helped.
Number Six: Destroyed.
Observer: You want to spoil things.
Number Six: I won’t be a goldfish in a bowl.

The Observer is giving Socrates’ answer to Crito.  The Observer, just like Socrates, considers the rules an entity to which she owes higher duty than any person or individual whim.  She considers the breaking of the rules to be an assault on them.

Unfortunately, “Dance of the Dead” does not answer this Socratic argument.  Number Six asserts that his values are different, and that he wishes to preserve his individualism.  Later, when he is literally on trial for possession of the radio, he mocks the shallow, artificial nature of the proceedings.  He questions the legitimacy of the legal forms, particularly the fact that his defense is given by his nemesis, Number Two.  But nowhere does an argument appear for the prerogative of the individual to break rules at will.  Even if the trial is a sham, if the mechanisms of justice are corrupt, does that mean that every rule is subject to the judgment of every individual?  Surely not.

Perhaps the answer that “The Prisoner” seeks to provide is to an earlier stage of the Socratic argument (and an earlier episode).  Yes, an individual in contract with society cannot break the rules, assault the laws, and seek to destroy society at will.  This would be most unjust.  But suppose an individual is not in contract with society.  Socrates assumes this contract; he says it is implicit in an individual’s decision to remain a participant in a society.  But suppose there is no alternative; suppose the citizen is, in fact, a prisoner.  A prisoner by definition does not enter into contract with his guardians; he is held against his will precisely because he will not acknowledge the law of the guardians that he is to be imprisoned.  In this case, perhaps the law, or the rules, are subject to the judgment of the individual.

But are citizens of modern society prisoners or willing participants?  Indeed, the sole alternative to participation, for both Socrates and Number Six, appears to be anarchy.  Number Six’s response to the suggestion of anarchy is “Here, here!”  This is unsatisfactory; anarchy does not solve the problem of how to reconcile the freedom of the individual with his mandatory participation in a society.  The declaration that there is a contradiction between individual freedom and social order is not a serious intellectual position; it is a complaint.  Further exposition is needed.

The Prisoner: Free For All

In society, which is by nature coercive, is democracy a reasonable approximation of freedom?  Or can freedom be achieved by means of democracy?  Number Six learns the answers to both questions in “Free For All”.

At the outset, Number Six assumes that elections in the Village are a fraud.  Even a dictator holds elections, and the support for Number Two for leader seems overwhelming.  Besides, why should a prison (or a society) give its members the right to choose their own leader?  If one is forced to be in the Village, and forced to follow its rules, what meaning does the ability to choose a leader have?

Number Two persuades Number Six that this choice has deep significance indeed.  The winner of an election can advance his own agenda.  By holding office, Number Six could promulgate his ideals of freedom and independence.  Number Two also remarks that elections are good for morale; people like to have a choice.  In a way, this advantage is the same as the first one.  Elections make Number Six and other individualists happy by giving them a chance to run for office and advance their agendas, but elections also satisfy other people’s urges toward individualism by allowing them to vote.

Phrased this way, both advantages appear deeply cynical, because they are both concerned with keeping people happy.  What is important is not true freedom, but the appearance of freedom.  Once the election is over, Number Six defeats Number Two in a landslide, but finds that he can’t use his power to change anything.  He gets access to Number Two’s office (because he is the new Number Two), but it’s just filled with buttons that make chairs appear and cameras that survey the Village.  Number Six tries to use the speaker system to declare everyone free and start a general escape from the Village, but as soon as he does, men in uniform appear and subdue him.  In short, the one thing he desires, freedom, is not achievable even once he is the leader.  His platform of individualism makes him unfit to lead, because of the inherent contradiction between individualism and the leadership of a coercive society.  The election was not designed to provide him with freedom, and it was not designed to let him advance his objectives.  It was designed to make him THINK he could advance those objectives – freedom and individualism – within an unfree system.

“Free For All” also satires the media, which play a large role in propping up the illusion of choice in democracy.  As soon as Number Six declares his intention to run for office, the journalists bombard him:

Journalist: How are you going to handle your campaign?
Number Six: No comment.
Journalist (writing): ‘Intends to fight for freedom at all costs.’  How about your internal policy?
Number Six: No comment.
Journalist (writing): ‘Will tighten up on Village security.’

The media are not concerned with Number Six’s thoughts; they are determined to seize upon their preexisting knowledge of him or any shred of information he provides to make an interesting story.  When he refuses to comment, they put words into his mouth; when he says something, they change it.  They are inevitably, necessarily distorting.  This is an oft-repeated grievance, but the frequency of its repetition does not excuse the behavior.  The media are the tool by which the benefits of election – the illusions of choice, debate, and freedom – disseminate to the people.

The Prisoner: Arrival

“Arrival” lays out two themes that will dominate “The Prisoner”: first, it is a social allegory; second, the setting, “the village”, is the perfect prison.

It is in the context of a social allegory that the behavior of the village’s leadership, represented by Number Two, makes the most sense.  Number Two wants to know why Number Six, the protagonist, played by Patrick McGoohan, resigned from his job as a secret agent.  Number Two stresses that Number Six will never be able to leave the village; he must simply cooperate, tell them what they need to know, and life could be very nice.  By allegory, society demands the submission of the individual.  In return for submission to the arbitrary authority of society, the individual receives comfort, and “may even be given a position of authority”, in Number Two’s words.  The problem with the arrangement is that the choice is illusory.  Number Six is stuck in the village, and we are stuck in society.  The village is in fact a prison, and so is society.

The elements of this perfect prison are fascinating.  First, we never find out anyone’s names; there are only numbers.  In this way, the people are de-individualized.  (The numbering of people is clearly also a social commentary.)  Second, the prisoners cannot identify each other.  Any supposed prisoner may be a guardian posing as a prisoner.  Because of this, the prisoners’ ability to trust is destroyed.  Number Six is betrayed in the first episode by three people: his maid, a former friend posing as a prisoner, and that friend’s aggrieved lover, who appears after his death.  Third, escape is impossible.  There are substantial physical barriers to leaving the village, and a vicious white… something… can chase down anyone who gets too far.  Fourth, since escape is impossible, attempts to escape are permitted, because they reinforce to the prisoner the futility and hopelessness of his situation.

But is the situation so hopeless?  If society is a prison, what is freedom?  Anarchy?  The wilderness?  One suspects that whatever the alternative, we would almost always choose the prison of society.  The central question then, is not whether society is justified in imposing itself upon us, because this does not matter.  We are prisoners, and no alternative exists.  The central question is how best to reconcile this fact, the coercive nature of participation in society, with the preservation and freedom of the individual.  We desire not the perfect prison that is the Village, but the most imperfect prison that can be imagined, something quite the opposite of the Village.

Website Review – Lifeforliberty.org

Those visiting Lifeforliberty.org will want to start from the rear, where the breadth and organization of the website is at once visible, although in fairness to its authors, it was meant to be read from the front in a linear fashion; I will suggest quickly clicking through each page to reach the table of contents.

Lifeforliberty.org is a call to action for the implementation of several core libertarian desiderata.  It advocates non-violent protest as a means to achieve these desiderata, providing a brief sketch of how non-violent protest works, what it can hope to achieve, and what level of activism will be necessary to achieve a national impact.  The conclusion is that roughly 250 protesters, over 25 metropolitan areas, could cause sufficient disruption to garner national media attention.  This is predicated on the assumption that only one major highway need by blockaded in each area to create a sufficient disruption.  I am no expert on civil disobedience, so I will note evaluate this.  It is simply Lifeforliberty.org’s goal.

Being a thinker, my interest in Lifeforliberty.org is analytical.  What do these people want, why do they want it, and why have they chosen the means of non-violence as  their means of achieving it?

Lifeforliberty.org wishes its protesters to continue their actions until five demands are met: disassembly of the Federal Reserve, substitution of a national sales tax for a national income tax, enactment of a Constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget, enactment of a states’ sovereignty amendment, and enactment of a campaign finance amendment.  Though it will add significantly to the length of this review, I feel it necessary to deal with these demands one by one.

1) The dissolution of the Federal Reserve is an interesting idea.  This has been a pet project of Ron Paul, and many others, for some time.  On a principled level, I am not sure that the Federal Reserve is unconstitutional.  Congress’s old excuse for everything, the interstate commerce clause, appears to justify an organization whose function is to provide stability to the federal economy.  On a practical level, I think that this stability is a desirable thing.  I resent the recent incursions of the Federal Reserve into morally questionable territory, but I do not think it clear that these incursions were a necessary result of the nature of the beast.  After all, these actions were unprecedented, and perhaps with some legal tweaking, they will also be unrepeated.  For those unconvinced of the Federal Reserve’s importance, this link explains its basic functions, while a brief but rigorous excursion into macroeconomics, such as the one provided by Olivier Blanchard, should provide an understanding of why these functions are important.

2) The demand for the repeal of the income tax, and its replacement with a sales tax, makes me hang my head in shame for all libertarians.  While the income tax has become an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of citizens, this is again not the nature of the beast, but a result of Congress’s addiction to social engineering through taxation, and the Supreme Court’s unwillingness to stand up to Congress.  Furthermore, the idea that a national sales tax would not quickly be plagued by every single one of the problems that currently plagues the income tax is naive beyond expression.

3) The enactment of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution is perhaps Lifeforliberty.org’s most intellectually persuasive idea.  While macroeconomists, including the excellent Paul Krugman, often strongly make the case for the critical importance of expansionary fiscal policy – usually entailing massive budget deficits – I think that historically, it remains to be seen that such policy will not ultimately poison every nation that embraces it.  It is not easy for a democracy to elect a leader who promises higher taxes and lower spending, particularly with the old Republican canard – still obsessing the popular imagination – that promises higher revenues through lower taxes.  The macroeconomists appear to have the weight of current history on their side, because even with recent events, public debt as a percentage of GDP has remained relatively stable (look at the graphs on the right).  But it will not necessarily always be so, and some form of legal straitjacket, even if it is less restrictive than the one envisioned by Lifeforliberty.org, is an intriguing idea.  Public debt cannot rise above 100% of GDP anyone?

4) Enactment of states’ sovereignty amendment… I had hope to provide a link for the further explication of this idea, but it does not appear to have much backing in the libertarian, or even states’ rights communities.  Most people are simply in favor of a return to the Tenth Amendment.  Ignoring this minor philosophical difference, I will make a few remarks.  First, it seems to be the opinion of many legal scholars, as exemplified by a recent Harvard panel discussion, that the Constitution, while a very good thing, is not necessarily the pinnacle of good governance.  In particular, a government strictly constructed according to the Constitution may not be able to provide the level of stability and safety that it is necessary for a modern nation to have to survive.  Nonetheless, I personally think that it ought to be considered desirable to have our federal government on a firmer legal footing than the one it is currently on; if the Constitution becomes nothing more than a scrap of paper with antiquated ideas, then the limitations on the powers of our government essentially disappear.  Perhaps amendments to the Constitution are the way to do this, but that a states’ sovereignty amendment will be a panacea is not at all clear to me.

5)  The idea for a campaign finance reform amendment is as naive as the national sales tax, and merits no discussion.  Campaign finance reform itself, of course, merits a serious national discussion.

In short, Lifeforliberty.org makes a variety of demands, some more coherent and interesting than others, but many, at various levels, hopelessly naive.  While I do not wish to spend too much time kicking naive thinkers while they’re down, I must note that occasionally, Lifeforliberty.org’s rhetoric gets the best of it: “None could claim that the implementation of any of these five measure [sic] would bring irreparable harm to our beloved nation, while it has become undeniable that not acting upon these issues has led us upon a [sic] inexorable road to ruin.”  In the first place, I just did deny that we’re on the aforementioned road to ruin, and I’m hardly the most hostile audience these people will encounter.  In the second place, if this statement is true, then this movement should meet with virtually no resistance at all.  Should I start buying canned goods now?

Lifeforliberty.org does contain a couple of interesting ideas.  First, “We shall not cease until ALL of our demands, every last one, has been legally instituted in the full spirit of their intent!”  In short, the composers of Lifeforliberty.org have proposed to gather a group of 250 like-minded people, use these people to lay a stranglehold on our nation, and not to remove their grip until their demands are met.  While they characterize their movement as non-violent, from this perspective, it appears that they are proposing to take the rest of us hostage.  Either they believe their message is totally self-evident and will meet with universal embrace – which is evidently not the case – or they wish to impose their idea of good governance on others by what amounts to force.

The use of such force is the hallmark of a radical ideology.  In a previous post, I discussed that for a radical ideology to be logically coherent, it had to meet three criteria: it had to be of critical importance to the national dialogue, it had to be of immediate importance to the national dialogue, and it had to be obvious to the vast majority immediately upon hearing.  While Lifeforliberty.org effortlessly passes the first criterion, believing their message to be of the utmost importance to the survival of freedom, they present little argument that action is needed tomorrow, next week, or next year – indeed they present no timeline for the expected decay of our great nation – and it seems clear that their message is not manifest to everyone (unless I am exceptionally dense).

What I have advocated here is further discussion, rather than the immediate action that Lifeforliberty.org proposes.  Interestingly, Lifeforliberty.org has an answer for this too: “At this juncture, to hold on to the hope that situations will significantly change within the existing state of affairs goes beyond mere foolish denial and flies into the realm of flagrant irresponsibility.  One must have the courage to relinquish empty hope before one can rightly consider an alternative course of action.”

I found this statement fascinating.  It often does appear to me that our national dialogue is hopelessly corrupt.  The major news organizations appear to cater to twelve-year-olds, the most-listened-to talking heads are irrational bombasts, and good ideas seem to get little circulation.  Am I just wrong?  Is it my evaluation that is skewed, and my dialogue that is corrupt, or is Lifeforliberty.org correct?  Perhaps it is in fact true that mere talking will never solve anything, that the right voices will never be the loudest and most-listen-to.

What is the reason for optimism?  Oddly enough, I think China is the reason for optimism.  In China, the citizens of the free world have the opportunity to witness a brutal, repressive regime, a nation utterly repugnant to all lovers of freedom and humanity, but also a nation of rising power, of economic prestige, and soon, of prosperity and happiness.  In short, China gives the free world the perfect antithesis of all that we hope to be.  In this way, in a dramatic history of peoples more powerful than any voice, perhaps we will discover who we truly wish to be.

Story of Civilization – II.1.I.i – II.1.IV.iii.3

In passing to Greece, we dwell interminably on the Cretans, the Lydians, the Phrygians, and even the Mycenaean precursors of classical Greece before passing on to the meat of the matter.

Durant begins the history of Greece with Sparta.  The story of Sparta is a fascinating one.  It begins with the Dorian invasion of Greece.  Sparta seems to be representative of this period of Greek history.  The Dorians invaded, subjugated the native peoples, and then ruled them.  In Sparta, this paradigm was particularly direct.  The Dorians came in, occupied a naturally fortified position among the Laconian mountains, and began fighting the tribes around them.

With time, the surrounding tribes came to be perioikoi and helots, the tradesmen and agricultural class of Sparta, respectively.  The Dorian-Spartans taxed them excessively, and used the earnings to fund, initially, some development of art and culture.  Their contributions to music seem to have been particularly notable, although most of their bards were imported from other city-states and tribes.  In this music, which by law was martially themed, Plato found the inspiration for the culture of his “Republic”.

The Spartans continued to make war on the surrounding peoples, subjugating more and more.  The excessive taxes, bitter history, and utter lack of political voice given to these peoples kept them on the brink of revolt.  In time, the only way for the Spartans to keep them in line was to adopt a completely militaristic lifestyle.  Every Spartan became a soldier.

Beyond the aforementioned griefs, what embittered the subject peoples against the Spartans?  Although Spartan control was complete, it is not obvious that the Spartans interfered much with the civil or economic liberties of the people.  They did offer the people the two services to which they were particularly suited: protection from foreign harm and enforcement of domestic tranquility.  The former they did with their army, and the latter by means of a secret police.  The police moved among the people anonymously, and could kill wrongdoers without trial, verdict, or sentence.

Is this system of government incompatible with a free life?  I’ve often wondered why political freedom should be necessary to have all of the other liberties that we cherish.  If the Spartans took from their subjects a handful of stuff and in return gave not just personal freedom, but total security and tranquility, is that not a good trade?

The tendency of democracy, after all, is toward less freedom.  The people, as they perceive threats, or greater ways to prosperity, are willing to sacrifice a little freedom here, and a little there.  The leaders they appoint are eager to take it from them.  If the people are ignorant or poorly-educated, they are susceptible to demagoguery and false arguments.  Unless they are fortunate in their choice of demagogues, they are thus likely to behave in accordance with the whims of rulers who are probably corrupt and self-interested.