LNC, We Have a Problem

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Elisheva Hannah Levin

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It just keeps on coming. During a conversation on a Facebook Page, I stated that I cannot give my sanction to the Johnson-Weld ticket. In response, someone wrote: "You can't say I am not a Libertarian." I responded with a discussion of reality and values. Really, what I ought to have said is this:

When did everything become about you? I never even knew you existed. Whether you are a Libertarian or not has absolutely zero influence on my voting decisions. What I am concerned about is whether or not the ticket nominated by the Convention is living up to the standards of the Libertarian Party.

It is not as if those standards are not well publicized. They are easy to find. Our vision (the goal) is:
Our goal is nothing more nor less than a world set free in our lifetime, and it is to this end that we take these stands.(Preamble of the Libertarian Party Platform)

Our purposes are:
ARTICLE 2: PURPOSES
The Party is organized to implement and give voice to the principles embodied in the Statement of Principles by: functioning as a libertarian political entity separate and distinct from all other political parties or movements; moving public policy in a libertarian direction by building a political party that elects Libertarians to public office; chartering affiliate parties throughout the United States and promoting their growth and activities; nominating candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States, and supporting Party and affiliate party candidates for political office; and, entering into public information activities.(From The LP By-Laws).

Even our governing body, the LNC is not required to carte blanche support candidates who do not promote the vision and mission of our party. Furthermore, if the party continues to support those who not only do not support them, but in fact, in their speech and actions promote and support the opposite of them, we have a problem.

The question the self-involved critic did not ask, but may have been attempting to imply is, how do we know know when a candidate or a ticket has crossed the line? After all, it is one thing to support a ticket that is aiming in the right direction--toward liberty--but that expresses differences of opinions about strategy and tactics. One may in fact support such a ticket because it has integrity and it does not compromise one's own integrity to do so.

Thus, I supported Gary Johnson even though I completely disagree with his stance on the Nazi Cake issue, and I will not obey nor ask anyone else to obey such an unconstitutional edict. I did so because it was my understanding at the time that Gary allowed that he might be wrong and he stated that he did not want to make this a prominent part of his legislative agenda. That is, he was not running on this issue. I believed that he was speaking in good faith, and that allowed me to support the campaign.
However, it is one thing to support a ticket that may be shaky on the goals, but still aiming in their direction, it is quite another to blindly support a ticket that is deliberately aiming in exact opposite direction of the goals. Such a ticket has no integrity, because a person running for office who can integrate principles would recognize that he or she should not be running on a platform that aims in the opposite direction of his or her goals. To continue to support such a ticket, means being out of integrity with one's own goals and principles. The means you are employing will not get you to the goals you say you want. At this point, to remain integrated, it is necessary for you to either recognize that you want different goals, or stop supporting the ticket.

Sometimes, if one has previously respected the candidate, one might give the situation some time and see if the candidate is really aiming in the wrong direction or if his aim is just shaky. If it is shaky then as he continues to practice on the campaign trail, it should firm up. However, when this candidate allies himself with another who consistently aims in the opposite direction of the goal, and also continues to insist on goals and objectives that will not lead to the goal, then that candidate cannot be a person of integrity. That is, his goals and objectives are different than the ones he has agreed to pursue on behalf of the party. A man of integrity in this position would separate himself from the party and admit that his goals are not ours.

Gary Johnson is out of integrity. It is clear that his goal is to be elected President of the United States. But for what purpose? He continues to support causes, legislation and positions that lead to more statism and less liberty, and some of them also violate the Bill of Rights, a Constitutional statement that requires our government to protect our liberty. Specifically, his goal to use government force and deny the freedom of association of certain citizens not only violates their right to freely practice the tenents of their faith, but will inevitably lead to silencing their freedom of speech, freedom of their press, and their right to petition the government for redress of grievances. We have already seen this happen with the abuses of power of the State of Oregon against an individual business.

Furthermore, he is a weak leader in that he refuses to control the ticket, and he continues to support a vice-presidential candidate who clearly has a vision and goal that is the opposite of liberty. Weld is a man who believes there is nothing that government cannot or should not do, and no value of the civil society that cannot be denied in order to fulfill the mission of the state. He has surprised television hosts in his absolute ignorance of libertarian values and positions. He is currently promoting the violation of the right to self-defense by supporting regulations that would deny citizens the ability to purchase arms without due process. That not only violates the Second Amendment, which is unconditional. But it also violates the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth.

Weld is clearly not a Libertarian. He promotes statism, not liberty. In fact, he is not even a Republican Constitutionalist or a Conservative Constitutionalist. He is a Progressive Statist. Little by little, his policies would make progress toward absolute tyranny over the several states by the federal government, and allow it to abuse the people and violate their rights.

 Worse, he outright lied to me in direct conversations, and to other members of the Covention as well, about his purposes and his beliefs. It is perfectly honest to have and state such beliefs as Bernie Sanders did, but it is completely out of integrity to hold them while simultaneously claiming to hold the opposite values and beliefs.

LNC, We have a problem.

Whatever reasons Gary Johnson and William Weld have to run for President and Vice President, promoting the goals of the Libertarian Party are not among them. If they wish to be in integrity with themselves, they ought to run as Independents and forthrightly promote their agendas. They ought to resign from the LP ticket, so that the LP can run candidates who aim for the goals and purposes of the LP. Otherwise, they are using the party dishonestly for purposes the party does not have in common with them.

I suspect that Johnson alone has a shaky aim, but could have represented the LP well enough, as he did in 2012. Not a great libertarian candidate, but one that might fulfill certain steps toward one of the LP's goals. But with Weld, the ticket is completely out of integrity with the LP's goals. More egregiously, Weld has lied about his goals to get the nomination and use the party for purposes with which it does not agree.And instead of asserting leadership if the ticket, Johnson has stood by and allowed that to happen.

It is therefore the obligation of the LNC to either insist that Johnson and Weld run on the goals and platform of the LNC, or to disqualify them so that the LNC can choose candidates who's aim is in the direction of Liberty. I recognize that this would mean that this election will not get us the fame and fortune we all want for the party. We would lose this battle. However, if we continue in this state of disintegration, then the purposes we have will be lost. There is at present no voice for liberty in the presidential election. And we are lying to ourselves if we claim otherwise. We might end up with easy ballot access, but how long will we keep it? And who else will come along to use us to even more nefarious purposes?

Better to lose the battle and win the war. Better to remain in integrity in order to fight another day.

Thoughts on the 2016 Election and the Regeneracy of the Fourth Turning

On June 5, 2009, I posted a blog entry here entitled: Of an Ominous Financial Crash, An Ordinary National Election, A Trivial Tea Party. That entry celebrated how I found a book I had been looking for, Strauss and Howe's The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny. I wrote:

As the strange and apparently ominous events of the past half-year have been accruing, I have wanted to re-read The Fourth Turning, but all my rooting in the accessible boxes in the garage came up wanting. So I was anxiously on the lookout for the book as I began the task of making my library as planned in the Chem Geek Princess's old room (now the Guest Room/Library). Thus I was amazed when finally, I found the book and read the page that fell open, and that last, pregnant sentence:

" . . . the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, as trivial as a Tea Party."

The context Strauss and Howe were referring to is the spark that sets off the transition into the Fourth Turning, the Crisis period of our time.

In the summer of 2014, while writing my Ph.D. Comprehensive Exam Paper, I checked in on the Fourth Turning Discussion Groups that I have been a part of since 2002. There, I saw a link to a Neil Howe blog post (blog.saeculumresearch.com) in which he stated that he and Strauss had decided that the Fourth Turning of our era, the Millennial Saeculum, had likely begun with the Global Financial Crash in the fall of 2008. I believe that this timing may well prove to be right. The ages of the generations was right, with the Millennials fully occupying young adulthood, Generation X fully in mid-life, the Boomers fully occupying elderhood, and the very elder GIs leaving the planet. The generational archetypes were also aligned: the Prophets in elderhood, the Nomads in middle-age, the Heroes in young adulthood, and the young Artists arriving as children.

Recently, I have noticed that people are beginning to talk about the dire nature of the current election. I have also heard forebodings about another economic shock to the system from people I am talking to for my dissertation research and from those involved in other projects with me. These premonitions of dire events to come are not directly a part of my research, but the Strauss and Howe theory may explain some of what I am finding. This was unexpected.

 I have also been anxious and upset about this election, and I have had to take a short break from Facebook in order to keep my focus on my dissertation work. I have been thinking about the election as part of a linear trend toward some totalitarian future, a fascist or socialist dystopia. So I pulled out The Fourth Turning and read it again, paying attention to the cyclical nature of Awakenings and Crises it describes. This gave me hope for the future despite the stresses to the current system that seem to be reaching a saecular maximum.

In the Strauss and Howe Generational Theory, a saeculum is a cycle in time that "spans the length of a long human life, roughly eighty to one hundred years. Each cycle is comprised of four Turnings which are eras that come in the same order, saeculum after saeculum since the end of the Middle Ages. Strauss and Howe define the turnings as:

• The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays.
• The Second Turning is an Awakening, a passionate era of spiritual upheaval, when the civic order comes under attack from a new values regime.
•  The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions, when an old civic order decays and the new values regime implants.
• The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one. (Strauss & Howe, 1997, p. 3)

In my re-reading, I noticed that some of what I remembered from the book was not quite right. I had expected the Fourth Turning Crisis to erupt as the-end-of-the world-as-we-know-it (TEOTWAWKI). But the Strauss and Howe Generational Theory posits a Crisis as a "great gate in history" when civic order reaches its nadir and is rebuilt based on values developed during the Second Turning Awakening. The conclusion of the Crisis and the change in the social mood that follows, marks the beginning of the First Turning High of a new saeculum. Strauss and Howe state that a Crisis begins with some random event that causes a sudden change of the social mood. This happens when the generational archetypes are aligned in a certain order, as I noted above. At that point, members of a society stop drifting along and begin to take responsibility for problems they had ignored during the 3rd Turning Unraveling. The order of the generational archetypes is important, because each one has a particular character marked by their age and place in history.

In the Fourth Turning, Strauss and Howe looked at other Crises in the Anglo-American Saecular history. They identified patterns common to each Fourth Turning, even though the particulars of each were different in their timing and events. They wrote that a Crisis has an identifiable morphology. From the Fourth Turning:

Fourth Turnings have provided the great pivot points of the Anglo-American legacy. dating back to the fifteenth century, there have been six. Each produced its own Crisis and its own facsimile of the halcyon spirit today's World War II veterans remember so vividly. From the similarities of these eras, a morphology can be constructed:

• A Crisis era begins with a catalyst--a startling event (or sequence of events) that produces a sudden shift in mood.
• Once catalyzed, a society achieves a regeneracy--a new counterentropy that reunifies and reenergizes civic life.
• The regenerated society propels toward a climax--a crucial moment that confirms the death of the old order and the birth of the new.
• The climax culminates in a resolution--a triumphant or tragic conclusion that separates winners from losers, resolves the big, public questions, and establishes the new order. (Strauss & Howe, 1997, p. 256). 

According to Strauss and Howe, the regeneracy is a process. It's beginning is marked by the nadir of social order that has been decaying through the Unraveling and into the crisis. The regeneration is complete when "out of the debris of the Unraveling, a new civic ethos arises. One set of post-Awakening ideals prevails over the others" (p. 257). At this point, people use the new synergy to strengthen their communities and instruct their government officials on how to reinforce it.


Before a Crisis begins, say Strauss and Howe, people can foresee the fault lines along which a spark may ignite, but they cannot predict its regeneracy, climax or resolution. However, they say that a regeneracy can be expected 1-5 years into a Crisis. But not all Fourth Turnings are the same. If Strauss and Howe are right about the beginning of this Crisis, we are more than seven years into it, and still the fragmentation from the Unraveling continues. We can see the splintering of our politics continuing among and within the major political parties, and most of the people have not yet united around a particular vision of civic order. In his blog posts on the topic, Howe also stated that the regeneracy is bumped into being by a spark or series of sparks that are more serious than the initial catalyst for the Fourth Turning. However, from the Crash of 2008 until now, the Great Recession has continued, with no marked repair and no sudden change. Although the Obama administration calls it a "recovery," many Americans point out bitterly that it is a "jobless recovery," if a recovery it is.


But this year, people are facing a presidential election that is unique in American history. There is no incumbent candidate. Obama is term-limited out. His party controls the executive branch, but does not control the Congress. The Court is divided, and could lean toward constitutional anarchy with the appointment of the president's nominee. Garland is opposed to the Second Amendment, causing Second Amendment groups and gun-owners to consider their response should the Court try to violate their right to keep and bear arms.

One major party, the Democrats, is running a corrupt criminal who may yet be indicted for mishandling government property. She is also responsible for the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, and yet cannot remember that any people were "lost" there under her watch. Their only other declared candidate is an aging "democratic" socialist who promises to continue the trend of taxation and deficit spending that has thus far enslaved our grandchildren to unprecedented debt.

The other major party has gone against the wishes of its conservative base over the course of the last three elections. The Republican front-runner is a Boomer, an inside trader who calls himself an outsider, and he cannot articulate a single policy. But he is popular among true-believers because they think he can, with his pen and phone, make the budding executive branch tyranny stop. But he has unfavorable polls approaching 70% and he is unlikely to be able to win the election. His only serious challenger is a Gen-X outsider, a constitutionalist, who is hated by the party establishment. In fact, the Republican establishment wonks have proposed inserting their own preferred insiders into the process through a brokered convention, which is not the same as a contested convention in which the existing candidates duke it out for the nomination. This would be unique in history. Many observers think this would destroy the credibility of the Republican Party, causing its voters to stay home or vote third party in unprecedented numbers.

The largest "third party," the Libertarian Party, will likely run a popular former governor of New Mexico, who has considerable executive experience and was known for his promotion of individuals rights and liberty, and his use of veto power to keep the budget balanced and stop the state government from violating the liberty of the people. Some Republican wonks are threatening to try to take over the Libertarian Party, should an unwanted candidate be nominated in their own party. Although the threat is unlikely to be successful, because the Libertarian Party National Convention will take place in May, which is before the Republicans have finished their primaries, it is an indicator of the instability within the GOP.

When faced with such an election, many people I know personally or on social media resort to bitter humor, anger, and a sense of impending doom. That sense of doom is only increased by the predictions of further shocks to the economy that may occur as early as this summer. Some economists say that it could result in The Great Devaluation of the American dollar. This would render our money worthless and stop commerce.

These are things that I have had nightmares about.
However, if these are the things of which a regeneracy may be made, so that the old, decaying civic habits are replaced with something new--a new economy, a new political outlook, a new liberty--then the nightmares might be worth it. After the Great Depression and World War II, some people thought that the piper of the old order would still have to be paid, and that the Depression would re-establish itself. Instead, as Americans worked through the war, they developed a new economy, new industry, and a new social ethos. When the war was over, people moved on. They did not go back. They had reset their systems, remitted their debts and established the beginning of new social habits through the regeneracy of that Great Power Crisis.

I posit that this year and this election will mark the regeneracy of the Millennial Crisis. The faults in the old order that the election and the economy are revealing are similar to other saecula. They are also directly related to the values changes precipitated in the 2nd Turning Awkaening and the problems revealed in the 3rd Turning Unraveling. We still cannot foresee what great and perilous events will mark the climax of our passage through this "great gate" in history, and what future will be built out of its resolution. However, we can know that the Fourth Turning is proceeding in a familiar pattern, and that we are not stuck in some nightmare Crisis without end.

My re-reading has given me hope. A good outcome is not a sure thing. Of the ten crises that the Anglo-American generations have passed through, some have had the best possible resolution, some have had good resolutions, and some have had mixed results. However, none so far have ended the civilization that sustains these cycles, and TEOTWAWKI has not happened. It could happen. But I think it is more likely that if we stay the course, fight for our values, restore the power of the civil society and take control of our government, we will see a good resolution to this Fourth Turning. If we work for it, the generations now living can become "repairers of the breech."

OK. Now I can go back to my dissertation with some equanimity.
And yes, I am back to blogging. In late 2013, I had my own crisis, which caused me to reorder my priorities, write and defend my Comps (November 2014), form a dissertation committee, write and successfully defend my dissertation proposal (November 2015). I am now in the "valley of confusion" that is part and parcel of qualitative research. Yes, it is fun! Yes, I will tell you all about it in another post.

Differentiating Between Islam and the Code of the West

There has been much discussion about the possibility of incorporating Sharia law into the jurisprudence of the United States, much as some Sharia law has been introduced to English jurisprudence by unthinking multiculturalists who believe that this would be the politically correct and oh, so tolerant thing to do.

Such discussion has also been motivated by a few legal decisions made by judges in the United States that have recognized Islamic law as being binding upon Muslim individuals acting within the United States, even when such actions violate American state and/or federal laws. One of the most notorious of these is the decision of a New Jersey judge to acquit a man who raped his wife because his Muslim religion allows such behavior, even though the New Jersey criminal code forbids it. We can all be thankful that such an idiotic decision--one that does not take into account the individual rights that are basis of American criminal and civil law--was overturned by a higher court. Freedom to practice one's religion does not come with the license to violate the rights of another person.

In most of the discussions I have seen, the majority of participants tend to oppose the recognition of Sharia law--or for that matter, any foreign jurisprudence--by American courts. However, many of the arguments are based in a rivalry of religious laws--the "Judeo-Christian" code as opposed to the Islamic code. Although this argument is correct in that there is a large difference between the two, it is limited. A look at the different ideas about law that have formed these two very different legal traditions shows why we in the West ought to be very wary of tolerating Sharia within our legal tradition. What follows is an expanded version of a a comment I made to one of the internet discussions about this issue.

Although American jurisprudence owes much to the Jewish and Christian concept of the rule of law, and is based on the development of this concept through Western religious thought, it is in its own self, different than religious law, and its jurisdiction supersedes the rules and dogmas of any specific sect or religion. Specifically, American law is based on the concept of individual rights that are understood to be bequeathed to each person by his or her Creator--Nature's God, as Jefferson put it--and are therefore fundamental to the being of the individual as an individual. As such, our legal tradition transcends the laws of any religion, and applies to all individuals. It is profoundly secular.

Although it is often called a "Western Religion" because it is derived in part from Judaism and Christianity, Islam did not partake in the unique melding of Greek ideas with the Mosaic ethical and legal tradition that came through Christianity to define the Western intellectual tradition. Whereas Christianity has, from its inception, differentiated between what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar, carving out for Christian Europeans a secular realm, the Islamic Sharia law makes no such differentiation. Islam claims all aspects of life. It would be very difficult indeed for Islam as it is presently understood and practiced to allow for a separation of religious and state institutions.

Although Christianity had its internecine wars over doctrine--and the concomitant attempts to apply them by force--they were resolved relatively early with the division between the Eastern and Western Roman Empire. Later wars between the Christian church and state were a matter of arguments that turned violent about where exactly the division is between what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar. Specifically, these struggles were about how the material benefits that come with power would be divided between the church and the state. As Western religious thought developed in Europe, the Reformation introduced ideas that placed more value on the ordinary individual and his choices and actions than Christianity had previously, and this created an evolution that from the scholastic idea of natural law to the enlightenment ideal of individual rights. (For a more thorough discussion of this evolution see Libertarian Ethics: Natural Law and Natural Rights). The consistent application of the ideal that each individual has rights by his or her very nature as a human being eventually required that one's religious expression becomes a matter of individual conscience and choice, and that it cannot be coerced by the state. The fullest expression of the idea of natural rights thus far has been through the American concept of republican government, which ideally limits government and its enumerated duties to the protection of the unenumerated rights of individuals. That this ideal has not been reached does not detract from the power and nobility of the idea and the admirable attempt to express it through American jurisprudence.

Because Islam did not participate in the fusion of Greek and Jewish/Christian ideas, it is not really Western in character. Within Islam, there is no differentiation between what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar, and thus there is no possibility of a separation between religious and secular institutions. The concept does not exist. At the very beginning of Islam Online, this is boldly stated:

First of all, it is to be noted that Islam, being Allah’s final message to humanity, is a comprehensive system dealing with all spheres of life; it is a state and a religion, or government and a nation; it is a morality and power, or mercy and justice; it is a culture and a law or knowledge and jurisprudence; it is material and wealth, or gain and prosperity; it is Jihad and a call, or army and a cause and finally, it is true belief and worship.

Therefore, there is no way that Islam can tolerate a law that supersedes its jurisdiction, as American secular jurisprudence does over the specific religious laws and doctrines of all who live in the United States and its territories. Furthermore, Islam does not recognize the sanctity of the individual, the rule of reason in matters of individual conscience, nor individual rights. Under Sharia, there is no equality before the law, and some are not even recognized as persons with their own rights (women and non-believers, for example).

It is always possible that Islam could be reformed from within, in the same way that Christianity was reformed. But Christianity had that one statement in its scriptures that allowed such reformation. That is the statement about the differentiation between the realm of the Christian God and that of Caesar. The scripture of Islam does not make any such statement, and therefore such a reformation would require an intellectual leap based not on its own tradition, but solely upon the example of the West. Currently, few Muslims seem willing or able to create such a reformation. Therefore we should be very wary of any claim that Islam is a religion of peace rather than a religion of the sword. In Islamic understanding, only those who submit to Allah are accorded membership in the world of peace, and all others live within the world of strife, to be conquered by the sword.

In the West, we have been slow to realize these crucial differences in culture and the development of ideas. This is partly due to a lack of education in and understanding of our own history and heritage. But it is also due to the error of multiculturalism, the idea that all cultures are equal in every respect, so that it is wrong to make judgments about them and have preferences among them. Islam has no such moral relativism, and Muslims eager to bring the West under the dominion of the Crescent have no compunction about doing so by force through the Jihad, the Holy War.

We of the West have every right and reason to defend our culture, and our desire to live by its ideas and values. We have every right to demand that those who choose to live among us abide by our laws. We need not impose our laws on others living elsewhere, but should they attempt to impose theirs upon us by force, we need to be ready to repel them. Our is a unique heritage, one that has been built over centuries of thought and tears. It is a culture that has as its basis and ideal the hard-won idea that individual human beings have unalienable rights derived from nature and nature's God, and that no prophet or priest, king or state can remove them from us. That is an idea well worth defending with our very lives. It is the basis of human freedom.

Bread, Circuses and the Danger of Reading Science Fiction

The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be

like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty

-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to

thewriters of fiction for such information. It's none of their

business. All they're trying to do is tell you what they're
like, and what you are like -- what's going on -- what the

weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight,

look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists

say. But they don't tell you what what you will see and hear.

All they can tell you is what they have seen and
heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent

in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent telling lies.

--Ursula K. LeGuin, Introduction to

The Left Hand of Darkness

I have been engaging in the dangerous and subversive activity of reading science fiction.

As Ursula K. LeGuin tells us above, Science Fiction is never about the future, and it makes no predictions. Science Fiction is, she says--though far more poetically--always about us, now.

This is why when reading a particularly good Sci-Fi novel, one is apt to see truth within the lies so convincingly spun by a master in genre. And this is why one walks away from reading a well-crafted Sci-Fi story or novel with new insight into who we are at this moment in time.

An awareness of this can a little scary--when it's not downright terrifying.

I have been reading the Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay. The story, for young adults, is the tale of Katniss Everdeen, a young woman who grows up in the country of Panem, which exist(s)(ed) in what used to be North America. In this alternate future/world-- the people of12 districts are enslaved by a city known only as the Capitol, and in order to maintain their slave status of crafty obedience, the Capitol forces them each to send a boy and a girl to compete in the "Hunger Games", a fight to the death on national television. The people are told that these Games--and the need to send their children to almost certain death--is in punishment for a rebellion that took place almost a century before, so that the children are sacrifices--called "Tributes"--and their deaths are punishment for a crime that happened before any of them had ever been born.

There are many realities about us, now, that are reflected in these books: the sacrafice of innocent lives to sustain political power and the cynical use of the real aspirations of individuals for life and freedom to consolidate that power; the blurring of television and reality to the point where the misery of others becomes entertainment for the some and a cruel reminder of servility to others; the acquiescence of many to servitude for the sake, not of great riches and power, but merely for enough to (barely) survive another day; the spark of freedom and rebellion that dwells within the hearts of even the meekest of slaves.

In this story there is also the theme of the disconnect between the privileged Capitol Dwellers--one can certainly not call them free!-- and those born to the Districts, whose lot in life is to toil and to starve; and the work of their hands is taken from them, tribute to a class of political royalty who party and play in the Capitol, while the people of the Districts learn subtle disobedience to their masters in order to survive. Thus, while the people in the Districts understand that they are slaves, that the government owns everything, the support staff of that government do not. Rather, they primp and party and bet on the deaths of children in the Hunger Games each year, and within them there is no thought, only the constant distraction.

Katniss sees this stark contrast after she has won the Hunger Games through an act of rebellion. As she is being dressed and fussed over by her "prep" team for a televised appearance, she thinks:

"It's funny, because even though they are rattling on about the Games, it's all about where they were or what they were doing or how they felt when a specific event occurred. "I was in bed!" "I had just had my eyebrows dyed!" "I swear I nearly fainted!" Everything is about them, not the dying boys and girls in the arena." (The Hunger Games, p. 354).

For the people of the Capitol, the Games are a gruesome reality show through which they live a life and death adventure vicariously, and without thought, whereas for the people of the districts it is a grim reality to be endured, like all of the other privations forced upon them because of their status as the children and grandchildren of traitors:

"We don't wallow around the Games this way in District 12. We grit our teeth and watch because we must, and try to get back to business as soon as possible when they're over." (ibid.)

Thus, any child of the Districts of Panem learns that he or she is a slave, whose life and work belong to the government in the Capitol, whereas the people who do the mundane work of the government are adults in name only, acting like thoughtless children, their lives governed by the latest fashion, their heads full of the latest gossip about others. Not the power brokers, these people live silly, second hand lives.

The children who are forced into the arena each year come to understand that they are pawns, pampered and fed for a little while before their almost certain deaths in the arena; they are game pieces for the entertainment of the Capitol citizens, used to distract the privileged from the reality of serfdom. For the children, 'winning' means surviving by killing other innocent children, and their pampered future back in their districts is a life of nightmares and deceit, a damaged life sustained only by finding ways to evade the terrible knowledge that their lives are not their own, ever. Those "winners" who do not have a talent for that evasion live out their lives in madness. As another "winner", Peeta, says in a televised interview to a glittering talk-show host called Ceasar:

" 'Once you're in the arena,the rest of the world becomes very distant,' he continues. 'All of the people, the things you really cared about almost cease to exist. The pink sky and the monsters in the jungle and the tributes who want your blood become your final reality, the only one that ever mattered. As bad as it makes you feel, you know you're going to have to do some killing because in the arena you only get one wish. And it's very costly.'

'It costs your life,' says Ceasar.

'Oh, no. It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people?' says Peeta. 'It costs everything you are.' " (Mockinjay , p. 23).

And so, within such a reality, there are those like the heroine, Katniss, who survive the Games through an irrepressible act of rebellion, a free act that may indeed cost her life, an act that demonstrates to those in power that physical chains cannot entirely supress the memory of freedom. Such an act is not consciously contemplated but arises out of the knowledge of the nature of human freedom that burns, unquenchable in the soul. And once such an action is taken, the person is changed, and one such act leads to another and another, until the reality of freedom bubbles into consciousness thought:

"As I drift off, I try to imagine that world, somewhere in the future, with no Games, no Capitol. A place like the meadow in the song I sang to Rue as she died. Where Peeta's child could be safe." (Catching Fire, p. 354).

Thus, reading a good Sci-Fi novel is dangerous. For as Ursula K. LeGuin says:

"In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find -- if it's a good novel -- that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it's very hard to _say_ just what we learned, how we were changed. " (Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness).

Oh, yes, reading Sci-Fi can be a subversive act. Sometimes, if it is good Sci-Fi, we see a truth that the author is telling us about our world, about our selves. And we cannot unsee it . Good Sci-Fi it is not about geeking out on the future or vegging out on technology. Good Sci-Fi is about us. Now. And once we have seen the particular truth about our condition, we cannot unsee it.

Reading science fiction is a dangerous thing. For a good science fiction novel strips away the evasions and the confusions, making stark the reality of our own lives within the text. In our real lives we often go about like Katniss's prep team, wrapped in the mundane and necessary routines that make up daily life. But in the dialogue between the reader and the text, the reader's reality is stripped of the little things, and the meaning of it, illuminated. We are made uncomfortable. Are we really like the citizens of the Capitol, living vicariously through others? Do we see revolution as a Google-made game, created for our entertainment, returning to our own fleshpots, making a pun of the crack-down that we ignore afterwards? Are we more like the people of the Districts, afraid to step out of line for fear of losing what little they have? Is there perhaps, something of Katniss hidden deep within us, something that drives us to act--albeit uncounsciously--in defiance of our own slavery?

No wonder, then, that unfree societies take up the time of the individuals that they enslave with bread and circuses, in order to distract. But even in the real world, bread and circuses are in themselves dangerous to the regime that uses them. For while they lull the "citizens" who are fed bread they did not earn into somnolence, they eventually remind the circus "performers" that their lives are not their own, that they are living for the purposes of others. But in real life, this may take generations. In the story of the Israelites in Egypt, it took 400 years for the Israelites to realize that they had allowed themselves to become enslaved, the lives of their children at stake to prop up the power of Pharaoh.

But in Sci-Fi novels like the Hunger Games Trilogy, the story begins at the place where the reality of the consequences of second-hand lives, and of enslavement is no longer obscured; in the stripped down version of a story about us, now, we the truth of who we are now, and what we are doing now. And what it means. Really.

Oh, reading Sci-Fi can be a dangerous, dangerous act. For by paring down what is, and placing it in another place and time, it can cut through the bread and circuses, and bring the reader into an uncomfortable confrontation with reality.

And that changes a person, until with that internal dialogue, and then another and another, the unconscious understanding of what human freedom entails bubbles dangerously up, irrepressible, and the undercurrent becomes a mighty stream that wakes us up and forces us to confront the reality that all is not as we thought it was. And that understanding leads us into a confrontation with those who wish to keep us asleep and compliant to the thousands of little slaveries that keep us in bondage to their wills.

And so the subversive act of reading Sci-Fi can enventually provoke us to recognize who we are, to break our bonds, and lead us out of our second hand lives into the liberty of who knows where?

Eighteen months in the R3volution

Today the last entries posted from a blog that used to follow appeared mysteriously on the reading list of my Blogger Dashboard. Since I hadn't seen items for this blog, I quickly clicked through to it, excited to find out what was happening with that particular homeschool blogger. Since I had been fooling with the blogs I follow on that list, I thought I had fixed my reading list. Then, as I clicked on links on that blog, I realized that I fallen into a time warp to February of last year. I have no idea why those blog entries from that blog appeared on my list today, and labeled that they had been posted one day ago.

After sending her an e-mail, I suddenly noticed the time warp and realized that my blogging friend appears to have given up blogging last year at this time for reasons unknown. Usually, it seems that those reasons are related to major life changes, that alter the rationale for a blog or that interfere with one's ability to blog. In my admittedly unscientific survey of blogs that have ended, I see very few blogs that have successfully changed the theme or purpose for blogging and continued blogging on the same blog site.

Ragamuffin Studies has changed focus as my life has changed over the past eighteen months to two years. Started as a homeschooling blog, I am still blogging even though the Boychick has made the transition to high school, and even though my focus has changed from his schooling--and my university research, to other topics. I am not sure how successful those changes have been, since I do not meter my blog, but I do know that the number of comments has decreased over this year.

One of the most interesting results of clicking through some of the links to this particular blog, and on to the blogs of other blogs I frequented, was the experience of reading my own comments on those other blogs and realizing how thoroughly my life has changed over the last 18 - 24 months. It is an amazing transformation that grew out of seeds planted long ago; seeds that lay dormant for many years, but began the process of generation through the homeschooling process itself.

In one of my first overtly political posts, called Creeping Fascism, I wrote:

My son is not the servant of the State. He does not owe allegiance to a specific government, office or person. He owes allegiance to an idea. The idea that "governments are instituted among (human beings) at the consent of the governed." If he chooses to run for office or serve in the military--and himself becomes a servant of the citizens, then he will take an oath of fealty. Not to a flag, government, office or person. Rather, he will take an oath to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." To protect and defend an idea. The idea of Liberty.

This statement, written almost casually, reveals certain assumptions that I have about the nature of government and the importance of the individual, assumptions that were sown as I was brought up libertarian, hearing discussions at Papa's Kitchen Table University that regularly referred to Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand, among others. And although in my young adult years I chose to either ignore political thought and philosophy altogether, or I experimented with various political ideas that took me far from them, the roots of my upbringing and a certain sense of personal independence remained with me, formed as they were in my childhood.

Even when I was not overtly an individualist or a libertarian, the way I conducted my life remained individual and libertarian. I chose to practice my religion, but maintained an idiosyncratic rational approach to its beliefs and stories. I gave birth to my daughter at home, after carefully researching the subject. When certain questions were raised with respect to my views and their impact to my husband's security clearance, I pointed out that my political views were protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution. I used to regularly assert my fourth and fifth amendment rights when passing through the odious INS checkpoints fifty miles inside the borders of the United States. I taught my children to know their rights are and how to assert them in the face of the growing police state within the United States.

During all the years that I voted, I never voted for a single major-party candidate in a presidential election. I tended toward voting Libertarian, although I also voted Green or independent, depending on the candidates. I was outspoken about the bankruptcy of the two-party system.

And in doing these things, I was never afraid. I think that is the way of Americans raised when I was raised. We had a certain, somewhat naive optimism that our government respected our rights and our sovereignty. An optimism that I now know that my own children do not share.

After 9-11, I became aware that certain political ideas that I had been flirting with were neither rational nor idealistic. That event, and the Patriot Act that too swiftly followed, were the dawning of an adult awareness (in my 40's, no less!) that I did not live in the same United States that I was born into, and that my country as I was educated to understand it had not existed in my own lifetime. I had heard these very things said as I listened in on Libertarian meetings during my childhood, but in my very Aspie way, I focused on the United States of the Founders, and thought of the present in the same idealistic way.

In the years following 9-11, when I began to enjoy the fruits of my remarriage and newfound financial security, I took time off from politics and thinking about the implications thereof. I was able instead to focus on making a home for our quirky family and living the life of middle class security. Except. . .

Except that the Boychick was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, and as we entered the special education maze, I realized that we would not be the preppily dressed, straight arrow family of my imagination. (Alas, I would never fit into the Country Club Judaism of our synagogue). And in order to meet my son's needs--and my own, as it dawned on me that I am more than a little bit Aspie--we decided to homeschool him. Which brought me squarely into conflict with the growing notion in this country that our children belong to the state or that they exist to benefit that faceless entity we call "society." And as I observed the growing statism reflected through the legislation and political system of the United States through the lenses of homeschooling, those seeds planted back in my childhood began to germinate and sprout.

Thus, in May 2009, two years after the first political blog entry, I wrote in The Wrong Side of A Do-Gooding Law that:

I was a more than slightly crunchy mom, and my awakening and my return to my libertarian roots . . . was catalyzed by 9-11 and home education. As I began to realize that . . . statists and do-gooders wanted to control what I teach my children and how I raise them, I understood that the only thing that stands between me and absolute tyranny is the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

And during the past 18 months, I see what profound changes in my life were brought about as I went through the stages of awakening to the peril to our liberty; and through the sense of grief and aloneness that waking up caused; and finally into the fullness of awareness that my historical and philosophical explorations have created. I now understand that this is not merely a political crisis--it is a crisis brought on by irrational ideas about what is goodness, and how human beings can best achieve it in order to live their lives in liberty. This mature understanding of ideals that I learned during my libertarian childhood has now brought me full circle and more, to a confidence in living Liberty that enables me to take action and assume leadership through the public espousal of unpopular ideas without fear.

This is the idea of R3volution--action taken to secure for ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty--done out of love and firm resolve, rather than out of fear and mindless violence. Thomas Jefferson understood that the revolution is a turning in the minds of individuals--a change wrought through ideas, and only after such a revolution could a rebellion against tyranny be successful. That if a revolution is to be brought about, it cannot be begun by the initiation of force against others, but rather as forceful defense of the natural rights inherent in individual human beings.

The R3voltion is the process of sparking the idea of liberty in the mind. And only then will the fires of liberty be ignited in the heart, and principled action taken to secure a future in which liberty can be lived.

A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing

Recently I had the experience of hearing a Catholic deacon give a talk regarding the issue of forgiveness. His overall message was a good one--one that I hope the principal audience will hear--but his discussion was marred by a mistaken statement of Jewish understanding of forgiveness that led in turn to an implied sense of superiority of Christianity over Judaism. I know from my years in Jewish-Catholic dialogue how often and uncounsciously such statements and the ensuing triumphalist implications occur as well-intentioned Christians say things about Judaism that make Jews wince.

For example, I have had more than one well-meaning Christian tell me that "Jews worship a god of laws and judgment" but that Christians "worship a god of love." In response, my gut wants me to respond by saying something like: "Huh? It was Christianity that invented the concept of hell and a god that condemns people to eternal torment and punishment. Doesn't sound particularly loving to me." But I don't say it. I wince and remind myself that the self-proclaimed Christian expert on Judaism has probably never been to a Jewish worship service and thus has never heard Jews pray "Ahavah rabba ahavtanu . . .With great love have You loved us, Eternal our G-d . . ."

When such statements are made as part of a sermon, I wince particularly hard because I am unable to respond to or correct the speaker. This is the experience that I had with respect to the deacon and his mistaken understanding that led in turn to a mistaken interpretation that led ultimately to the "wince factor."

In this case, the deacon was discussing the question of how many times one must forgive another, and he related it back to a story in the Christian scriptures. The relevant bit is this:
"Now the Jewish requirement is to forgive up to three times, isn't it? So the man decided to take the three and add four more to make seven. But Jesus said, 'Seventy times seven.'"
At the point where he said "isn't it?", he looked directly at the Engineering Geek and me, seated at the center aisle side of pew 3. We both shook our heads. But the good deacon ignored us, going on instead to a smug conclusion about the superiority of Christian forgiveness over the apparently antiquated practices of the Jews.

His mistake? There is no numerical limit to how often a Jew should forgive someone. That is entirely up to the judgment of the individual who can consider the offense and the circumstances that are unique to the situation. The deacon transposed the limit of three from the offender to the offended against. The actual question that this number is in answer to is this: "How many times must a person ask forgiveness of another and be refused?" The answer is three times.

Suppose that one person has wronged another person. Jewish tradition has it that one cannot request forgiveness from G-d* for a wrong against another person. Rather we are required to make good with the person we have wronged. To do so, a person must acknowledge the wrong, resolve not to do it again, and then go to person and ask pardon by stating those acknowlegments. But how should a person carry guilt if the wronged party refuses to forgive? The answer is that a person must ask forgiveness three times spread out over a period of time. If after the third attempt, no forgiveness is forthcoming, then provided that repentence is sincere, a person can go on with her life knowing that the problem now belongs to the other person. In this way, one person cannot forever withhold forgiveness from another out of spite and thus perpetuate the hurt and the harm.

*For this reason, murder essentially becomes unforgivable. The victim is dead and cannot forgive or withold forgiveness, and therefore a murderer must carry his crime to the grave with him.

So the deacon got the basic fact wrong, and from there completely misunderstood what the man in the story's answer meant. The man said that one should forgive seven times. In Jewish numerology the number seven symbolizes completeness. One must forgive completely. (This might sound difficult but if you think about it, forgiving a little bit is like being a little bit pregnant. Forgiveness, if it is forgiveness, is all or nothing. Either you forgive or you don't).

In any case, it does not appear that Christianity is superior to Judaism on the question of how often one must forgive another. In any case, the proof--as they say--is in the pudding. And it appears to me that forgiveness is a difficulty that people of all faiths and none at all have with each other.

"A little learning is a dangerous thing," wrote Alexander Pope in his Essay on Criticism. It can certainly create the wince factor in someone who has drunk more deeply of the Pirean Spring with regard to a particular subject or tradition.

Of course, this is not a danger limited to givers of sermons. Indeed, it applies to all humanity--including bloggers.

Crimethink: The Collectivist War on Ideas

"To even consider any thought not in line with the principles of Ingsoc. Doubting any of the principles of Ingsoc. All crimes begin with a thought. So, if you control thought, you can control crime. "Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death, Thoughtcrime is death. The essential crime that contains all others in itself."

-- Newspeak Dictionary: Definitions from Orwell's 1984

"Threat reports that focus on ideology instead of

criminal activity are threatening to civil liberties . . ."

-Michael German, ACLU Analyst, writing about the MIAC Report

I have been thinking quite a bit about politically correct language and the style of argumentation that is coming from the statists lately. In fact, I have been thinking about it since last fall, when I first ventured an unpopular opinion at that rumored bastion of free throught, the university. However, in the past several months, my thoughts have become focused on two issues, the redefinition of certain ideas as extremist and therefore outside ordinary discourse, and the inability of collectivists to construct or recognize an argument from principle. I think these two issues are likely related.

The redefinition of ideas (rather than actions) as extremist is really an extension of the redefinition of certain words and ideas as politically incorrect. Labelling some speech as politically incorrect narrows the terms of discourse and limits the ability of individuals to discuss any and all ideas. When judicial sanctions and legal punishments are imposed upon individuals who persist in discussing such ideas then the Western concepts of free thought and free expression are violated. However, social sanctions are also limiting, and it is through this nudge effect that certain ideas are expunged from discourse.

The imposition of politically correct discourse upon Western culture in modern times came from the Frankfort School, a Marxist think tank founded in Europe for the purpose of spreading a social correlate of Marxist economics. The Frankfort School thus established what they called "critical theory" which is critical, but it is not a theory. It is simply a method to bring down Western culture by criticizing it in all its aspects, without suggesting an alternative to any of its institutions and/or ideas. The Frankfort School moved to Columbia University in New York during WWII, and brought the concept of political correctness with it. This Social Marxism was spread first in academia and then throughout the culture courtesy the Consciousness Revolution of the 1960's.

What is so insidious about political correctness is that it supresses the free expression of ideas that do not conform to those approved by a self-appointed cultural elite. These people have placed themselves into the position of deciding what ideas may be discussed and which ones may not. For the past decades, they have relied on self-censorship and social nudging to enforce their particular ideological orthodoxy. More recently, through the use of academic judicial processes and by laws against hate speech and hate crimes, they have sought to impose such censorship from above. As Willian Lind put in an AIA address in 2000:

"America today is in the throws of the greatest and direst transformation in its history. We are becoming an ideological state, a country with an official state ideology enforced by the power of the state. In "hate crimes" we now have people serving jail sentences for political thoughts. And the Congress is now moving to expand that category ever further. Affirmative action is part of it. The terror against anyone who dissents from Political Correctness on campus is part of it." (The Origins of Political Correctness: An Accuracy in Academia Address).

There are two particularly troubling aspects of this supression of ideas.

One is that, as free Americans find their voices and try to use reason to support our founding ideas, they find that more and more concepts are being subsumed under politically correct labels. Thus recently, a popular talk-show host was accused of a "smear campaign" for correctly labeling former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones as a Marxist, even though Jones used that label for himself. Apparently, labels for ideas such as socialism, fascism, and Marxism, are now themselves politically incorrect and may not be spoken. At least, not by us.

If an idea may not be spoken, it first becomes unspeakable and then becomes unthinkable.

Having no way to name the concept, opponents to an idea become inarticulate. The battle is lost to the politically correct mavens before it is begun; It is lost, not to superior arguments, but to the refusal to name the insidious nature of political correctness. This is why it is so important for those of us who oppose such censorship to define our terms and argue our position from principle, and to do so as consistently, rationally and firmly as possible. We must refuse to self-censor. We must name the ideological origins of politically correct censorship and name the motives of those who wish to silence us.

The second problematic aspect of political correctness is that its proponents group together a set of positions that do not logically rely on one another, thus linking them into a series by which they can shift the discussion. For example, if I were to argue that parents have the right to educational choices for their children, (as I have) a proponent of PC would (and has) immediately launched into a diatribe of name-calling, accusing me of being a creationist (which I am not). If I defend myself against such an objection, I have conceded to political correctness, and if I do not defend myself, I am conceding to an untruth. Instead of being caught in this false dilemna, I must recognize that in shifting the discussion, the PC czar has conceded that he has no argument; the whole thing has devolved into name-calling. At that point, the discussion is essentially over. All that remains is for me to name what has happened. Calmly and clearly. There is no way to "win" such a dilemna, but by bringing the reality into the light of day, I can inform reasonable listeners about what is really going on.

As for the opponent, usually when he finds he has no argument, he gets mad:

For example, consider the following diatribe by a supporter of statism from a Facebook page. This person had been challenged several times to answer a direct question after calling a Native American from Utah who opposes certain Obama policies a racist, even though the policies he oppose have nothing to do with race. Backed into a corner, he responded:

"Apparently you psycho GOP sheep would be more comfortable if obama told our kids, "Ignore evolution, intelligent design (RELIGION) is the only truth. Join the army someday, hopefully you won't be sent to a foreign land to die based on bad intelligence (LIES). And don't forget to abstain from sex, but if you can't, whatever you do, don't wear a condom."There was no partisanship in the speech. Eat your (expletive deleted) words and admit that you made up your minds about the speech before the speech even happened. Why? Because you don't want to share this country anyone who isn't like you. What other reason is there to still be a republican? GW Bush was the worst president in the history of the united states. Where was your outrage then? Small thinking out of small towns, people living in small bubbles. When election time rolls around the GOP will pander to your beliefs, to get your vote and rob you (expletive deleted) blind when they are in power. And with a black president, the GOP are starting to lose their (expletive deleted) minds. Back to the good ole days, right? When bush and his corrupt scum of a white house spent every day trying to (explitive deleted) the middle class out of every dime and commit war crimes. (Expletive deleted) who created this bullshit nutjob KKK group and (expletive deleted) all you parents who are actually scared of this president. Most of you wouldn't even know how to identify socialism even if it was anywhere near what the president said. Which it wasn't. Psychos." (Name expunged to protect the guilty).

Notice that there are no arguments in this piece of very poor writing. It is a string of undemonstrated assertions, repetitive lies, and name calling, originally complete with the repeated use of a certain strong Anglo-Saxon word beginning with F. (Although this is the worst I've seen, almost every non-argument I've encountered is there). What this writer wants is for his interlocutors to argue each claim.

But there are no arguments here at all, and nothing worthy of response.

He is not even wrong.*

*A friend showed . . . [physicist Wolfgang Pauli]the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli's views. Pauli remarked sadly, 'That's not right. It's not even wrong.' " Peierls, 1960).

This is the reality of it: those who impose PC have no arguments. If they did, they would not have to attempt politically correct censorship. This is why they use propaganda techniques, such as subject-shifting, name-calling and the big lie, rather than engaging in principled discussion. Ultimately, they believe they are right, not from rational thought, but by some magical superiority. This is why they cannot construct an argument. Their sense of rightness comes not from reason, but from emotion. They feel it, so therefore it must be true. This is, as I have pointed out many times in this blog, the vision of the annointed. Until such a person chooses to think rationally about his claims, there is no point in continuing the discussion.