Recently someone shared The Obama Deception with me (and others) asking for feedback. Normally I would not take two hours to watch such a video because these efforts rarely shed any real light on their subjects. Mostly, they just generate heat through friction. I decided that in the interest of giving an honest response and out of respect for the person who shared it I would take the time. I’m glad that I did so that I could know what I was responding to, and so that I could share the best 8 seconds of the video which come from nearly the end of the two hours.
My reaction to the whole video is to admit that there is an element of truth in it – as there usually is to reports of conspiracy theories. Also common among such reports is the fact that the reality is generally less sinister than the report would have you believe. It’s always helpful to refer back to Hanlon’s Razor:
Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence. (or similar variations)
I don’t mean to suggest that everyone in our government is incompetent – only that the assumption of malice in everything they do does nothing to help us act appropriately as we learn of poor or misguided actions.
My thought as I viewed the video was to ask myself, "what actions would they have people take?" Similarly, my thought whenever I am acquiring new information is to ask myself "what should I do about it?" The reason that I liked those 8 seconds of video is that they addressed that question. (After two hours I was surprised that they did address my question.)
My experience in asking that question has been that no matter how varied the problems in government, the answer to that question is generally some variation on the same theme. Study the Constitution and promote a culture of individual liberty in our own actions and within our government. In order to do that we have to understand what a culture of individual liberty is. For one thing, it means that we have to let go of the assumption that the government can or should solve many of our social problems. The role of government is not to make sure that the playing field is level – it is to ensure that nobody cheats.
Government cannot ensure a level playing field because each individual is different and not equal. No matter how much I might try to imagine otherwise the fact is that I can’t compete with Alex Rodriguez in baseball, LeBron James in basketball, or Tiger Woods in golf. The government is only there to enforce the rules of fairness. No matter how sophisticated a handicapping system they devise I will never be able to beat Tiger at a fair golf game. The rules are not to make sure that I score somewhere close to my competitor, they are to make sure that Tiger does not choose to take a mulligan or sign an inaccurate scorecard and that I don’t do those things either. On the other hand, the rules do not prevent Tiger from spotting me a shot or two (per hole) in the interest of keeping the game interesting.
In case anyone is wondering, individual liberty does not mean that the course owners can’t enforce a dress code despite the fact that my breaking the dress code does not give me any advantage in the game. In other words, the argument that "I’m not hurting anyone but myself" is not sufficient reason to strike down a law (contrary to what many libertarians might argue). It is acceptable for us to codify into law the values that we want to promote within our society.
Obama clearly does not share your beliefs in the principles of our constitution as the 2001 radio interview from which I have quoted below demonstrates. Obama is criticizing our forefathers for not having created a socialist constitution:
“40:10 But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of basic issues of political and economic justice in this society and to that extent as radical as people try to characterize the Warren Court. It wasn’t that radical. 40;30 it didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the constitution. At least as it has been interpreted and the Warren Court interpreted it generally in the same way that the constitution is a document of negative liberties 40:43 Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal govt cant do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal govt or state govt must do on your behalf and that hasn’t shifted and I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that 41:01 the civil rights movement became so court focused. I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and organizing activities 41:12 on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.. 41:20 and in some ways we still suffer from that.”
What you can do is join the Tea Party Movement, which is a movement demanding a return to our constitutional basis. There are going to be demonstrations all over the country on April 15th and I am sure there is such a movement in your state.
Oklahoma just passed a state sovereignty resolution which says the federal Government has only the powers granted to it in the constitution. I am working with such a group in Main. There was such a resolution proposed by Representative Richard Cebra but the Legislative Council didn’t approve it for a vote and so now we are organizing to get signatures for a citizen’s petition. There are many instances in the Stimulus Bill alone, where money is attached to stipulations that transfer power from the states to the federal Government. One such stipulation claims that if a governor refuses stimulus funds that the legislature can pass a resolution to accept the funds. The federal Government does not have the constitutional authority to create such a mandate.
Yes, the fact that I don’t see the Constitution the way our president does is very clear. I am already aware of the Tea Party movement(s) and yes, there is one in our state. The Obama Deception mentioned the states that have passed legislation such as you mentioned from Oklahoma.
You said:
“In case anyone is wondering, individual liberty does not mean that the course owners can’t enforce a dress code despite the fact that my breaking the dress code does not give me any advantage in the game. In other words, the argument that ‘I’m not hurting anyone but myself’ is not sufficient reason to strike down a law (contrary to what many libertarians might argue). It is acceptable for us to codify into law the values that we want to promote within our society.”
It seems to me that you want to have it both ways here. By definition you can’t have individual liberty while at the same enforcing your preferred level of societal morality at the point of a gun.
Your legal limits on individual liberty in the name of promoting the values you want within our society is no less offensive to the virtue of individual liberty than the leftist desire to codify their egalitarian idea of social justice.
You’re arguing for conservatism (liberal policies on property rights with illiberal moral restrictions)not individual liberty. They are not synonymous. For more information on the difference between individual liberty and the authentic conservatism I think you are arguing for here you should talk to Paul Mero. He does an excellent job describing the difference between the two and he rationalizes violent government enforcement of societal morality better than any other conservative I’ve read.
I think a lot of what we can enforce depends to some degree on how we enforce it. I’m sure you would have no problem with the legality of an HOA placing a lien on my home for failure to pay membership dues – after all, it is in the contract with the house. With those dues they enforce standards about how often I mow my lawn and what kind of fence I put on my own property. I think it’s safe to say that what kind of fence I put on my own property is a matter of individual liberty.
We have a current case of Tim DeChristopher who broke the law in an auction. We have every right as a society to make rules stating that nobody should manipulate the auction process – even if nobody gets hurt by the outcomes. Mr. DeChristopher has shown his willingness to accept the consequences of his actions without trying to argue that what he did was legal (he will claim that it was a moral choice, but he is not foolish enough to pretend that it did not break the law). Whatever the outcome of his case I would not feel threatened by him in any way because he is accepting the responsibility for what he did, including the consequences of our standing laws.
The point is that we can make law – no polygamy in this community for example – and enforce those laws in a way that allows people to make their own choices so long as they accept the stated consequences. Unfortunately, those who argue for moral relativism are frequently advocating a double standard wherein any individual can make a choice and a majority of the citizens in any given area must silently accept it. Instead, any group should have the right to express their displeasure and indicate that certain behaviors are not welcome among them – this need not be enforced at the point of a gun.
By the way – you are making assumptions as to what values I think can be appropriately codified into law. Not to mention that I have not given any indication as to the nature of the statutes I might support.
Cick HERE for a good article on State Sovereignity.
http://www.compustuff.org/State-Sovereignty/Introductory-Message.htm
It is not only a matter of what and how we enforce laws but who can create and enforce them. The example you have given regarding HOA are laws written and enforced at a local level. It is not constitutionl for the federal government to write or enforce such laws- and yet the stimulations attached to the stimulus funds do just that. Stimulus funda have either been resisted or returned by banks, schools, states, and likely many more- with stimulus money being returned on the basis that “the stipulations” were not acceptable. Usualy the objectionable nature of the stipulations is not articulated, but Governor Pawlenty of Minnesotta pointed out some of them. The one that most affected Minnesota is a stipulation that says states must use a portion of the funds for Medicaid and they are not allowed to change the eligibility rules for Medicaid, if they accept stimulus funds. Minnesotta was allready considering doing just that.
The Bills that are written in such a way that one has to simultaneously referrence other bills in order to understand what is being ammended.
In the recently passed Give Act the words were ammended so that restrictions that formally apply to the use of funds now apply to participants in an “approved national service position” _ what is prohibited is freedom of speech related to anything political and participating in any form of worship. The new bill also removes the inclusion of church based groups. I didn’t have the time to cross reference against the older version on that one- but I took notice of it because the “prohibitted activities” for “participants” includes being involved in places of worship.
Since the word of the law (in the section I read) doesn’t draw any parameters about when and where those prohibitions apply, it is left open to interpretation and in fact it can be interpreted as saying that once a person is involved in a state approved program, they give up those rights in any and all aspects of their life. The section that I read did not adequatly define what “position” means. I didn’t have the personal time to read and cross reference the entire act so I don’t know if there is any further clarity in another section of the bill- but we know Congress isn’t reading the bills they sign and so with so many bills being passed, who knows what other unconstitutional thefts of our individual liberties are being written into law.
The Give Act is HR 1388. You can find the text of any federal bill by googling Thomas Library of Congress with the name of the Bill.
You can find the prhohibited activities in section 1304
And for your conveinence, I am posting the text that the current bill replaces with section 1304:
FORMER VERSION SAID:
SEC. 174. [42 U.S.C. 12634] Prohibition on use of funds
(a) Prohibited uses
No assistance made available under a grant under this subchapter shall be used to provide religious
instruction, conduct worship services, or engage in any form of proselytization.
(b) Political activity
Assistance provided under this subchapter shall not be used by program participants and program
staff to–
(1) assist, promote, or deter union organizing; or
(2) finance, directly or indirectly, any activity designed to influence the outcome of an election to
Federal office or the outcome of an election to a State or local public office.
(c) Contracts or collective bargaining agreements
A program that receives assistance under this subchapter shall not impair existing contracts for
services or collective bargaining agreements.
As a member of the Read the Bills Act Coalition I very much appreciate your reminder that the way Congress enacts laws that they have not read is a large contributor to the problems in our government.
David,
I made no assumptions. My comment was restricted to discussion of the quote from your post that was cut and pasted into my comment.
Are you comparing HOA covenants with the government telling people what kind of marriages they are allowed to voluntarily participate in?
In the HOA the participants voluntarily surrendered their individual liberty to put up whatever kind of fence they wanted when they joined the association. They weren’t forced to be a member.
The ban on polygamy is different. It involves one group in society forcing their marriage preferences on another at the point of the government’s guns.
If you can’t see the glaring differences between your chosen examples maybe you should think a little more about what liberty means.
DeChristopher’s situation involves him defrauding the federal government and the other bidders at the auction. Whenever someone initiates force or fraud against another person or their property they are the criminals infringing on individual liberty. Punishing them is one of the few proper roles of government.
Let’s clarify what you are talking about. The government has no business telling people what kind of relationships they are allowed to voluntarily participate in. The government can only do two things – specify what constitutes “voluntary” (think of age restrictions), and specify which relationships it will officially recognize.
The government has no business prosecuting individuals who choose relationships that are not recognized by the government unless those relationships do not meet the criteria for voluntary. On the other hand, the fact that people choose voluntary relationships that do not fit the officially sanctioned types does not obligate the government to recognize the new varieties. (By the way – the government is not required to recognize any particular relationship situation.)
Government need not recognize polygamy or gay relationships officially so long as they do not prosecute those relationships when they are truly voluntary (I’m thinking of the age restrictions here).
If you cannot see the glaring difference between prosecution and lack of recognition then we won’t be able to understand each other.
Lest there be any confusion here – it was gay marriage that I figured you were making assumptions about. Based on your comments I was right about what you believed my position to be. Although I see no reason why the government should officially recognize homosexual relationships I am an ardent supporter of enforcing the legitimate rights of gay couples such as was supposedly being advanced in the Common Ground Initiative. (The caveat there is that I never got to read the actual Common Ground bills before they got pulled so I refuse to assume that the bills did exactly what they were advertised to do.) If you want to have a better idea about my positions just check out what I have written about adoption.
David,
You assume too much. I’m not criticizing you I’m only pointing out that you are arguing for conservatism…not individual liberty. They are not the same thing.
I’m saying that someone who truly values individual liberty wouldn’t support government preference for any type of marriage. Government recognition involves government granting special tax subsidies and legal rights for one group of people at the expense of others. Conservatives make a fairly good argument that these real costs to liberty are worth the price because government recognition of “traditional” marriage provides a benefit to society and children. Is that where you’re coming from too? If so than you are not making an argument that derives from the view that a “culture of individual liberty” is the ideal. You are arguing as a conservative. Again, they are not the same thing.
I’m not saying you are wrong about the policy preferences you have made reference to. I am saying that you and other conservatives are wrong when you try to argue that you value individual liberty any more than leftists do.
I wasn’t being disrespectful when I referred you to Mr. Mero in an earlier comment. He is one of the few conservatives I’ve heard from who effectively argues that individual liberty isn’t an overly important moral value in any debate for conservative policy. Your last paragraph in this post downplays the value of individual liberty and ‘outs’ you as a conservative in the Paul Mero mold. There isn’t anything wrong with that but it is incompatible with the idea supported in the rest of your post of a “culture of individual liberty”.
Civil Unions satisfy legal rights of marriage. The marriage issue is a linguistic battle- where by minority groups try to change real and significant meaning by redefining language. In my view this is typical of liberalism.
OK so let’s say the liberal wins and the word marriage is redefined as any type of union- gays, polygamy- child and adult- anything goes-.
It changes the language- Not the fundamental meaning from which the language emerges. The original historical meaning that the word “marriage” signifies doesn’t go away- instead new language emerges to signify the historical meaning that was formerly signified by the word “marriage”. This creates historical confusion as the liberals succeed in commandeering a language term but not it’s significant meaningfulness. 100 years from now, historians will have to explain how a new word was coined to denote the meaning that the word “marriage” formerly represented and that until such a date, the word “marriage” signified the same meaning as the newly coined signifier- and after a certain date, marriage signifies the meaning attributed to it by liberal culture thieves- who, in another hundred years, are probably demanding the newly coined language term be deprived of it’s meaning and reassigned the meaning dictated by the language thieves.
Jeremy,
If the question is between Paul Mero style conservatism and untempered libertarianism then I am definitely arguing for conservatism. I think where we disagree is that I believe that a culture of individual liberty does not have to exclude the ability for society to set boundaries on what is deemed acceptable. Like I said before, society should not prosecute some things that are considered unacceptable by the majority but it should not be forced to condone those things either.
You seem to imply that a true culture of individual liberty would allow an individual to do anything which did not infringe upon the rights of other people. The trick is that such a definition would accept as fully legal a person choosing to torture and kill their own pets. You may argue that committing such acts should be unacceptable because engaging in them quite likely leads to a greater acceptance of acts that do infringe upon the rights of other people, but the preceding definition of a culture of individual liberty would state that a person can choose to make that choice for themselves and could not be prosecuted until their actions had crossed that line.
David,
Untempered libertarianism? Animal torture and killing is the best you can do?* Have you ever seen a mink farm? What other agricultural ventures are you in favor of banning? Foie gras? How many other moral decisions are you willing to allow government to decide for people in your “culture of individual liberty”?
You claim to know where to draw the line. I admire that. It is exactly because I don’t know where the best place to draw the line is that I support the idea of natural rights and individual liberty. You are correct that under a system based on freedom for the individual prosecutions can’t happen until someone has actually harmed someone else. At least under such a system there is never any question about whether or not a punishment is warranted. The more you use government to protect people from themselves the more you abuse the principles you claim to support in your post.
Both conservatives and liberals misrepresent what individual liberty really is while claiming that they are its superior supporters. We’d all be better off if both groups were a little more thoughtful about the words they use.
I’m realistic. I know that the vast majority of people disagree with me about how valuable a principle individual liberty really is. I have no doubts that lines will continue to be drawn by those on the left and right in ways that further restrict my liberty. I can live with that. But I still speak up against it when I can.
* I’d have gone after drug legalization or something crazy like that 🙂
Animal torture and killing just seemed like a pretty clear-cut example. I have never seen a mink farm (except from the outside, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what you meant) and yet I am fairly confident that no matter how inhumane their operations are it is not the same as the individualized intimate torture that I was thinking of such as was described of Peter Wiggin in Ender’s Game. This should not be taken as a defense of mink farming – I have no position on it precisely because I have no knowledge of it.
You admire that I claim to know where to draw the line but your admiration can be put aside. I don’t claim to know where to draw the line. I only claim that communities should be allowed to draw lines.
Some communities will chose to ban drugs, others will choose to ban guns, and others will chose to ban both or neither. In cases of those things which are not universally banned the punishment should generally be removal from the community – in other words, if you want to do something that we don’t allow you go do it elsewhere. Some people may find themselves living in near isolation because of their personal desires – and they are allowed to do so as long as they do not infringe on the rights of others.
Do I really have individual liberty if I am not allowed to choose that the government should not sanction certain activities?
David,
If you had been in charge of Card’s imaginary universe Peter Wiggin would have been thrown in jail for his animal cruelty and would never have had the chance to unite humanity and save the world!
Are you the same David who’s been reporting on The Federalist Papers? After all that study you still think it is acceptable for the majority in society to use government to sanction or ban anything they want? Guns too? I don’t even need to be a crazy eyed libertarian to disagree with that. Any American who understands our founding documents will look at your proposal with disgust.
You asked, “Do I really have individual liberty if I am not allowed to choose that the government should not sanction certain activities?”
This idea is the whole point behind our nation’s founding document. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights were intended to limit our government to a great degree. The founders never intended to give government the power to execute whatever whims the majority of voters bade it to do as you seem to be suggesting. I’m a little surprised that you can’t see that what you are now proposing (tyranny of the majority) is the exact opposite of the “culture of individual liberty” you supported in your original post.
You are still under the assumption that jail the appropriate response to all these offenses. You also misunderstand the purpose of the Constitution or else you are misunderstanding me. The founders wrote the Constitution not simply to limit what the government could go, but to limit what the federal government could do. Their entire intent was to allow the states to make their own choices unaffected to a large degree by the other states. That’s what I am arguing for here. I don’t think that banning guns is a good idea, but I do think that allowing smaller governments (meaning states, cities etc.) to make their own rules on a range of issues rather than being required to conform to a national standard is a good idea and I recognize that if we allow that there will be places that do choose to ban guns. (Washington D.C. is always trying to find new ways to limit gun ownership.)
Notice that instead of specifying who was allowed to vote they only stipulated that the same people be allowed to vote in federal elections as were allowed to vote in state elections. Notice too that the Fourteenth Amendment does not prohibit states from denying voting rights to blacks – it simply says that their representation in Congress will be reduced accordingly. In case you haven’t noticed – limited government is not what we have in any meaningful way today – nor is it what most people seem to be looking for. You may not agree with the lines I think that communities should be allowed to draw, but I think that in practice you would find that I am very supportive of individual liberty.
By the way, if I had been in charge of Card’s universe Peter Wiggin would definitely have had some serious therapy before he had a chance to unite humanity. I’m not convinced that such a disturbed individual would have had a reasonably likelihood of turning out like Peter did.