The Little Amendment that Failed

As I ruminate on the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America I am forced to conclude that if it was put in place, as it surely seems, as a personal right with the intent to fortify the people against domestic tyranny then it certainly seems to have failed. Given the proportion of our population that is armed, is there a more timid people? In fear of everything they resist nothing. Where 300 might have resisted 100,000 in Greece here it is inconceivable that 300,000,000 would resist 700,000 (an estimate of the domestic law enforcement population). Despite tax rates that would have set the world ablaze in times past, government intrusions far beyond the bounds envisioned during the country's formation, unaddressed and massively unpopular immigration and active and increasingly common violence against the population there is little more than the occasional harsh word, law suite or youtube video to mark any signs of resistance. The South seceded and the continent was bloodied over issues no more divisive than those we face now.

In the few acts of resistance to the Government of the United States you have the use of fertilizer, planes and powders. The weaponry that was supposed to steel the spine of the nation has failed in that purpose. While government seems to fear its citizenry, it is not through the collection of firearms that it acts out its will upon them. By the time it would get to that point it is far to late anyway...

Is it an overarching faith in government and its legitimacy that restrains the current population in ways prior populations would not? Is it the relative economic prosperity that gives more people a stake in the system as it stands? Is it a preoccupation with foreign affairs that has kept the domestic scene so tranquil? Is it simply a level of passivity in the general population that exceeds the vision of those who authored the amendment, and if so, what accounts for the passivity of this population group compared to the French, early Americans and the Eastern Bloc countries?

Book Review #6

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

Many people have heard of Freakonomics. If you have not read it, you may still be familiar with the conclusion it reached on abortion and crime rates and with the controversy this caused Bill Bennett. On the whole it is a fascinating concept. The ideas of following data wherever it may lead and what the study economics can be used for.

The book as a whole is presented in a very readable style. And the various chapters while readable in an independent fashion manage to tie together in a loose overall theme.

I hope there is a sequel as it seems that there is no end to the directions you could go with this concept.

Book Review #5

The War of the Roses by Alison Weir

History can be a tricky thing to write about. There is always the issues of bias, accuracy and complexity with which to deal. Being my first foray into this era of English history it is hard to speak to the authors dealings with the first two issues, but it is the latter that presents both the main strength and weakness of the book.

The War of the Roses covers a period of English history primarily from 1455-1487. The text does a solid job of setting the stage for the political situation and bringing the personal traits and motivations of many of the main players to life. Given the magnitude of the cast and the number of titles and people to contend with, the author does an admirable job of keeping the overall flow of the tale moving forward. I do feel that in some form or fashion more could have been done to help the reader keep track of the relationships and titles various people had and held throughout the time frame and their significance. At times it became exceedingly difficult to understand who was related to whom and in what capacity the different titles conferred influence and power. No doubt this was problematic for the people of the time also.

I can recommend the book as a fairly concise and apparently thorough look at the situation and one that leaves you with a richer understanding of a famous time in English history.

Book Review #4

I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert

A decade or so ago I probably would not have liked this book. It is certainly fun, but I would have chafed a bit at the fact it was picking at 'my side'. At this point in life though I can find the humor in it and even agree that those who I would have once thought on 'my side' deserve a good skewering.

This book is based, in my opinion, on the model of the old Rush Limbaugh books. Issues thrown out there with the opinion of the author addressing them. The book is just the right length to cover a good amount of issues and not become tiresome. There are some true gems in here... the comment on the Catholic Church and getting production value for your offerings still brings a smile to my face. He even has a point there.

A comedy book worth a read.

Book Review #3

Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors by Cosby & Poussaint

I so wanted to like this book. If I had stopped in the first few pages I would have. Mr. Cosby and Poussaint do a reasonably admirable job of laying out the background and problems for the black community. Where this book ultimately fails, in my opinion, is its all to predictable fallback into the position of government action. Yes, there are certainly calls for self help, but there are many calls for more of the same programs that have yielded little to no return on the investment in terms of helping the black community they were targeted at. I think if one searched out Mr. Cosby's speeches as of late then you would get the majority of the same information and opinion in probably a more engaging form.

Mother

"Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children" - William Makepeace Thackeray

Made famous more from its appearance in the theatrical release of The Crow than from its original author, it conveys a truth that should be self-evident.

As I have grown older I have come to recognize that there are few guarantees in life. Input does not always equal output and outcomes are not always predictable. We sometimes pretend that raising children in a particular way means that we should get a certain result or that only the way children were raised in a certain time was correct. A historical review will show that it is nonsense to believe that humanity was only successful when the family was structured as shown on the 1950's television shows. Many societies have flourished under different approaches and in particular with different roles for mothers and fathers.

Raising a child is a very personal thing... and on what can you judge its success? If you seek to judge the success by the performance of the child then that can paint a very unfair picture. A parent is no more responsible for all their child's failures than they can be for all their child's successes. The same effort given to each child will have wildly different results. But effort is what I would choose to make my judgement on. For if God is love and that is shown through His efforts for mankind than how can the 'god in the lips of children' be expressed any more purely than through the effort shown to her offspring. I believe that all to often children are just another commodity in the life of their parents. They represent the check marked item on a sheet that included marriage, car, big house and a high definition tv. That love of a child expressed in the effort of engagement and purpose of will is something I have rarely witnessed in my life.

I was fortunate... my formative years were guided by a mother whose love felt so complete that I tarried long from a life of worry or doubts of my worth. In all aspects she prepared me to someday have a wellspring of decency and honor and love that would exceed even a life bent by cynicism and disappointment.

I could never have wished for more in a mother... nor could I ever hope to match her as I raise my own child.

For this day... and all others... for always... my love and respect.

A Libertarian Problem with the Military Pt. 3

The sports analogy was yours and I was simply responding to it. Football is a game in which people try to score more points than the other side. War is not a game, it is an activity in which one side tries to kill the people on the other side. When the soldier signs his contract, as a practical matter he agrees to obey the orders of the president to wage war against another country, no matter if he believes the war is immoral or violates the principles of aggressive war set forth at Nuremberg. At Nuremberg, the judges punished German officials for attacking another country that had not attacked Germany. They held that doing so constitutes a war crime even if no German court ever found the war of aggression to be illegal. The president ordered his army to invade Iraq despite the fact that neither the Iraqi people nor their govt attacked the United States. That makes the U.S. govt the aggressor power in the conflict. It is not a football game. If you add the deaths of the Iraqi children from the sanctions, which were enforced by U.S. troops, to the number of people killed during the war of aggression and subsequent occupation, the number gets close to 1 million. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, no sports event in history has produced than many deaths. Only one soldier, as far as I know, refused orders to deploy to Iraq on basis that the attack and occupation are illegal and immoral--Lt. Watada, and the military is doing its best to punish him, in order to show the other soldiers--obey the orders of your commander in chief or else, no matter what your conscience says. If a football coach inserted a clause in the contract that said, "By signing this contract, you surrender your conscience and you kill whatever player on the other side that I tell you to kill," there is no doubt in mind that very few football players, if any, would sign the contract. Moreover, if a player does feel that a football coach isn't doing things properly, he can quit without going to jail. The worst thing he might face is a breach of contract action. That's not the case with the military. Soldiers must obey orders to attack any country on earth, no matter how weak or how defenseless those countries are. If they are ordered to drop bombs that will inevitably kill defenseless women and children, they are expected to obey. If they refuse, they are punished. Govt prosecutors are going after Watada viciously, seeking to put him into jail for 7 years for refusing to deploy to Iraq and killing people in a war of aggression. That's the purpose of boot camp, or basic training if you will. It is to destroy all sense of individuality and instill conformity and obedience. In that way, when the president says, "Attack Iraq" or Bolivia or Panama or Cuba, or Iran, the soldier will not question the morality of attacking people in a war of aggression--that is, people who have never attacked the U.S--but instead loyally obey the orders to attack of their commander in chief. One of the primary reasons that the Founding Fathers feared standing armies is because they would also follow orders to kill their own citizenry. That's why soldiers obeyed orders to do what they did to Jose Padilla. They will do the same to any other Americans, if their commander in chief orders them to. Soldiers in a standing army are loyal to their commander in chief, Mr. Shirah, and they will loyally obey his orders to go after "the terrorists" or the "bad guys" regardless of whom their commander in chief labels "the terrorists" or the "bad guys." The key to human growth and development is a society in which people have the widest ambit of choice with respect to peaceful activity. In a political context, that would entail the repeal of such socialist and interventionist programs as Social Security, Medicare, public schooling, and drug laws. When people are free to make their own choices--including bad ones and irresponsible ones--that is when conscience, consciousness, responsibility, and charity are nurtured. When govt punishes people for the peaceful choices they make or forces people to make choices, those traits atrophy. While the military convinces soldiers that they are acting properly in surrendering their conscience with respect to the people that are killed in a war of aggression, the state cannot relieve the soldier of the moral or religious consequences of his choice. That is beyond the power of the state. If you are not familiar with the essay "Conscience on the Battlefield," I recommend it to you. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/read1.html Both the warfare and welfare state are leading our country to catastrophe, both morally and financially. I highly recommend three books to you--all three written by Chalmers Johnson--Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis. Best regards and thanks again for sharing your perspectives with me. Jacob Hornberger

At this point I feel we will have to agree to disagree. I think you can only relate my intent in comparing football in the military in the way you are is because of the choice you have made on how to view the members of the military and the military itself. In a free society, as you state, people must be free to make choices, even incorrect ones. From my perspective the analogy holds because it is simply comparing the utility of tradition and ‘nonsensical’ drills in forming a cohesive team and establishing a common framework for future training and skills development. You want to debate the legitimacy of the Iraq war which was not the focus of your original article or the focus of my replies. The issue I felt we were debating was whether military boot camp training is as you describe and effectively whether military people are as you describe. The first point I think has been proven to be untrue. The people are not drafted, the services have different modes and methods in their training and there is nothing illegal or immoral about a contract to perform the functions in basic training. As you have frequently mentioned the Founding Fathers, I must make a direct note of their establishment of a standing Navy. The Navy of course has its own boot camp and the Marines being a part of the Navy have theirs also. I wonder if you feel that the contracts for the Navy are also invalid. They certainly cannot be illegal as they are in fulfillment of a Constitutionally established agency. Your extrapolation to what may occur in the future is irrelevant to this point. I feel that I have provided enough points to support the latter contention, to include a news article. This will simply butt up against your opinion on military members. It also seems that you focus on legality when that suits your interests and morality when the legality of the issue does not support your desires. The 600,000 children that you state have died did so in part in fulfilling what the world would consider legal sanctions imposed by the United Nations. At this point I imagine your argument will move the morality of the situation. Regarding Nuremburg, it is not my understanding that it is a treaty. It is simply a legal precedent. As it is not a treaty, then the members of the United States Military are obliged legally to follow the directives of the legal entity of the Constitution and the statutes established which govern the military’s relationship with the people their agent the government. Nuremburg itself cannot condemn a war as illegal; it can simply provide a framework and argument for an agency with jurisdiction to declare it illegal. This leads us once again to the area where legality and morality are not synonymous. You wish military people in the name of your definition of morality to commit an act of illegality. A stand which I do not feel you would take as I assume you pay income taxes (the power to tax is the power to destroy) and do not water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants. If Nuremburg is in fact a treaty then I will acknowledge the error of my previous statement in this paragraph and hold lawyers and Congress responsible for not prosecuting this issue before I will hold 18-21 year old adults culpable who went through the education system you describe. Further, I will disagree that taking a stand on morality should be without personal sacrifice. In the case of Lt. Watada, as I stated in my prior comments, who we will assume acted out of conscience has been allowed the action and now will pay the price for acting on his/her view of morality. As a libertarian I doubt you would think that a pharmacy should not be able to fire a pharmacist who will not prescribe the morning-after pill to a woman. Even though this pharmacist believes he is acting morally and is not taking part in an act of killing as he would define it; I would think you would believe the pharmacy has its own rights to remove with prejudice its employee. Acting morally does not free one from the consequences of action. Which is the equivalent of your belief that acting legally does not free one from the consequences of action. If your objection now becomes the level of sanction the military may visit versus the pharmacy then I feel that is another issue altogether. The military member swore a different oath and signed a different contract. I am not certain how to address your feelings regarding the military’s loyalty to a commander in chief. Your view seems to reflect a belief that the military is the equivalent of the legions of Caesar. The military is not personally loyal to a particular commander in chief. As an institution, it is loyal to a process established by civilian government which in philosophy if not practice is given its authority by the people of the nation. From this it is incorrect to label the military ‘the president’s army’… it is the United States Army. I feel you evaded most of the remainder of my points. That is certainly your prerogative. I am sure you are busy. Thank you for the discussion. I always enjoy debating issues such as these. I wish you and your organization the best and hope that it experiences success in drawing down the size and scope of government.

Book Review #2

Day of Reckoning by Patrick J. Buchanan


Of all the political columnists and commentators I enjoy, I believe Pat Buchanan tops the list. I have read several of his books and many of his columns and all of them I have found them all worthy of the time and mental engagement. Pat Buchanan combines readability, historical perspective, cultural understanding, facts and religious insight into his works. More than any other writer his thoughts challenge some of the economic beliefs that I tend to gravitate towards as a libertarian minded person.

Mr. Buchanan's current work seems to be a culmination of several of his prior ones. Where before he lays out problems as he sees them, in this one he postulates that we have slept too long at the wheel and now all that is left to do is succumb to the inevitable consequences of so many errant policies and actions.

Across the board of economics, foreign policy, culture, immigration and demographics, Mr. Buchanan demonstrates how America and Western Civilization is being ripped apart and irrevocably changed and weakened. While his opinion has often acted in the role of Cassandra, it is hard to argue with the information he presents to make his case. One can only hope that he is wrong... one can only fear that he is right.

Book Review #1

One thing I certainly do a great deal of is read. I tend to do a lot of Sci-Fi and Fantasy reading, but recently I have been engaged more with culture, politics and history. Seemed reasonable to let others know my thoughts on the books that I have read... so here goes.

The Irrational Atheist by Vox Day

My first encounter with the new atheist movement came primarily from commentators on Vox Popoli. I had encountered people of the atheist bent in my personal life, but they lacked nearly so much stridency and it seemed fairly obvious that they were mostly angry at parents and personal circumstances. They also were in no way posing as intellectuals so it seemed harmless enough. However, it has become quite apparent that besides the entertainment portrayal of those of faith as boobs, dullards and hate mongers there is now another group that seems to spend its days fuming about perceived theocractic and historical injustices committed by particularly by those of the Christian faith. Any argument with this crowd is instantly dismissed as being done by people who suffer the mental disorder of faith and are not qualified to speak and unworthy of being heard. Into this 'debate' comes Vox Day.

Vox Day decided to engage the atheist 'intellectual' leaders on their own perceived turf of rationality and evidence. To give a more fair review it would be better if I had read the original texts that he is commenting on, but the arguments he debates and debunks are common enough to have been heard through other sources (ie Religion causes war).

Vox Day writes in a pretty engaging style. It is not dull which is a risk that books on social issues, culture and history take. His approach to the debate is admittedly combative and treats the New Atheist movement with little more respect than they treat those of faith.

For those looking to debate an atheist without relying on the obviously losing argument of theology and personal revelation this book provides the ammunition. It should be noted however that the New Atheists and their ilk being less than the rational people they advertise have opted not to engage in debates on this book. But perhaps, in smaller groups and crowds it will give you a few talking points to hold your own and convince those more on the fence who are less strident that while there may or may not be a God... atheists ARE asses and are NOT rational.