I’d love to see a “none of the above” option offered in these polls, as in “If you could mark your ballot for ‘None of the Above’ to indicate your dissatisfaction with all the other choices would you do so?”
I believe that the approximately 50% of Canadians who don’t vote are doing that already by the only means permitted. A wasted vote is a vote cast for someone you don’t agree with just because the other options are worse. Politicians should have to earn our vote, not get it by default.
They say we have a duty to vote. What about the politicians duty to (a) tell the truth, (b) not to cheat on their expense accounts, (c) govern democratically, etc.?
If things are going to get better we must not rely on the politicians to make it so – they’re fine with the way things are now. We need to start thinking outside the box. The politicians don’t care who we vote for so long as we vote for someone because by doing so we give legitimacy to the system and the winner it produces. But the system is corrupt and invariably produces bad government that uses and abuses us. We can only expect change when we start denying politicians the one thing they can’t survive without.
Don’t vote . . .
. . . not because you don’t care, but because you do.
Wouldn’t we be giving up our democratic rights, something valiant Canadians have fought and died to preserve for us? Rights are something we can choose to exercise or not based on whether it is in our interests to do so. When exercising a right simply allows others to oppress us then that right becomes a wrong.
Focusing on our right to vote is a misdirection, a slight of hand used by politicians at election time to assure the legitimacy of the system their power and wealth depend upon. The focus ought to be on their responsibilities, not on our rights. Their responsibilities include:
1. Honesty – always telling the truth;
2. Integrity – doing as they promise to do, or, if that is not possible, resigning and seeking re-election on a different promise;
3. Accountability – being open in their dealings including the way they handle our money, especially for their own expenses;
4. Good faith – acting in the best interests of those who elected (employed) them rather than in the electoral interests of themselves, their party, or their leader;
5. Respect – dealing with each other as professionals charged with the job of working together to make wise decisions;
6. Stewardship – exercising the power delegated to them by their electors, not lording over us by claiming more power than we grant to them;
7. Perspective – understanding that they work for us, that they are the servants of the people and not our rulers.
Does this sound like a description of the way we are governed? No matter which party is in power?
Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. It is insane to keep going to the polls and casting a vote hoping for something better. If no one voted the politicians would lose their claim to legitimacy. Before they allowed that to happen they would be forced to effect real change – to start acting responsibly. But first we have to start acting responsibly.
Don’t vote.
Fathers aren’t dispensable just yet – life – 22 July 2009 – New Scientist.
The anecdotes of isolated success in non-traditional families notwithstanding, both biological and cultural (sociological) evolution provides ample evidence that a child”s welfare is optimized by being raised by his/her natural father and natural mother. Studies like this are supportive but not conclusive. History is conclusive. Where and when the traditional family thrives, a society prospers. Where and when it does not, everyone suffers.
The biggest threat to the traditional family, and therefore to society, is not from gays who want the legal right to marry. It is from governments which seek to replace the family by offering to look after everyone”s needs from cradle to grave. Neither individuals nor families can protect themselves adequately from criminals or foreign aggressors – government ought to confine its role to this and nothing else
‘”Progressive” is a good word don”t you think? Someone who is progressive is forward-looking, on-the-move, open-minded. Who would mind being thought of and labeled a “progressive”? No one.
Somehow (well, I know how but I”ll leave that for now) American liberals managed to turn the noble term “liberal” into an epithet, so they have adopted the term progressive to describe themselves. So far the term works, for all of the reasons suggested in my opening paragraph. I think it also works because the term implies opposition to the term “conservative” which conservatives have managed to turn into an epithet just as “liberal” has been.
Interestingly that aptly named party of oxymorons, the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada dropped the “Progressive” label when it merged with the Canadian Alliance to form the Conservative Party. The new party promptly installed a leader widely considered moderately libertarian but has, ever since, has been spending money hand over fist to show that they are really more “progressive” and less “conservative” than either of their predecessor parties ever were.
So how does one claim the term “progressive”? What does it actually mean? I suggest that the best definition is a modified version of one proposed by Janet Ajzenstat as related in this article by Link Byfield. She says that “progressivism . . . is the ideology that the state must grow ever stronger.” The corollary, Byfield points out, is that “everything and everyone else (must) get (comparatively) weaker ââ‚“ individuals, families, churches, local communities, businesses and markets.
My modification of the definition is to replace the word “ever” with “progressively”:
A progressive is one who believes that the state must grow progressively stronger at the expense of the individual, the family and all other voluntary institutions and relationships.
A progressive believes in state power, that the careful and democratic selection of good, honest, decent people to positions of civil leadership is the good citizen”s first duty, followed by obedience as his or her second. A progressive believes that well-intended initiatives undertaken by such leaders would inevitably yield favourable results if we would all just get behind such initiatives.
A progressive is thus a well-intentioned, civic-minded optimist. He or she does support worth-while voluntary organizations but reserves his or her greatest faith and hope for the initiatives of the well-led state. At heart, a progressive is a genuinely good person. But there is a poison pill, a cancer in the core of progressivism and for that reason it must be opposed.
A progressive thinks, “I am a good person. I will set things right if you will just entrust me with whatever power I need to do so.” Since not all have the capacity or desire to lead this becomes “Obama is a good person. He will set things right if we will all just entrust him with whatever power he needs to do so.”
Where is the flaw in this? Where is the poison pill, the cancer?
Is Obama not a good person? Do progressives and their leaders harbour evil intent? Not at all. But nevertheless they continue to pave the road to hell.
The flaw, the poison, the cancer, are the two truths which progressivism either ignores or rejects. First, determining the best solution to a problem is best done by the person, or persons closest to the problem. Second, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Lord Acton). Thus, progressivism, as a result of the first, is impotent and, as a result of the second, is dangerous.
The first truth fatal to progressivism is rooted in human epistemology – understanding how we know what we know. The progressive”s fatal hubris (or fatal conceit as Hayek called it) is best brought to mind by thinking of the proverbial difficulty of drafting a letter by committee. The problem lies in the fact that words are only imperfect (imprecise) symbols by which we can only ever hope to convey a portion, by no means all, of what we are actually thinking.
Think of the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning. The latter is an exercise in the very precise logical articulation of the law of identity. It”s not hard to articulate the steps that lead inexorably from premises to conclusion. “Some cats are black. All cats are animals. Therefore, some animals are black.” Pretty boring stuff. Easy to articulate though.
However, with inductive reasoning it is much harder to precisely articulate the mental process. For example: “all the ice I have ever touched is cold; therefore all ice is cold,” is a poorly described process of inductive reasoning. Why “poorly described?” Because I have left out so much critically important information which I actually used to arrive at my conclusion. I failed to recite the countless times I have actually touched ice throughout my life. Surely that fact is important. What about all the experience I have had in relying on my sense of touch and ow this informs my confidence in my sense of touch? This too is important. I could go on. The point is that with inductive reasoning we use much more information, in fact to some degree we use every experience we have ever had, than we can possibly convey in words. But words (written or spoken) are the only means we have to convey the basis of our conclusions to others – and the only means we have to learn from others.
Thus the well-intentioned leader in whom the progressives have placed so much confidence suffers under a terrible epistemological handicap as he attempts to live up to his promise. The knowledge that he (including his cabinet, his advisers, etc.) has about a problem and how to fix it is nowhere near as much as the knowledge disbursed in the minds of all the people who live, and deal with the problems each and every day of their lives. How can one person (or small group), with strictly limited relevant knowledge hope to come up with a better solution to a problem than a larger number, all of whom are free to think and act, individually or collectively, on a solution? This is the value of markets, free markets, over state management.
The second truth is perhaps best illustrated by even a casual glance at modern history. The past century is said, with good cause, to have been the bloodiest in human history. It is also marked as the one which witnessed the greatest concentration of state power. In their day progressives who were not yet prepared to go as far, nevertheless greeted the rise of communism as as a bold and well-intentioned experiment. Fascists and National Socialists advocated the concentration of all power in the machinery of state for the betterment of society. Coincident with the rise of totalitarianism was the outbreak of war, between nations, races, and any other identifiable social groups.
But anything can be taken to an extreme and progressives do not favour the total concentration of power in the state. True enough, but just as communist regimes illustrate Lord Acton”s point about absolute power, the progressive”s welfare state illustrates his point about power per se.
The corruption brought about by progressivism is not simply that of political patronage, or of politicians who inflate their expense accounts, or of those who bestow largess on supportive constituencies. These are trifles compared to the spiritual corruption progressivism promotes and upon which it feeds. The more power is granted to the state to solve our problems, the more our mindset turns away from that of self reliance, and of cultivating goodwill among those of our neighbours with whom we hope to voluntarily associate to our mutual advantage. Instead it cultivates an attitude of dependency on our part, and of at best apathy, if not hostility towards our neighbour”s plight.
In my community there is a day known as “Cheque Day”. It is the day of the month when all those who depend on the money they receive from the government get their cheques. On Cheque Day a few debts get paid, rent gets paid, groceries are purchased . . . and so does liquor, and lottery tickets. Liquor as people try to forget the fact that they no longer live but just endure a stagnant existence from one Cheque Day to the next. An existence they just as often try to end through suicide as through seeking education or employment. Similarly, buying lottery tickets is a rejection of this pale imitation of life – foregoing food, shelter and clothing just for the slimmest chance that they can escape their reliance on Cheque Day.
Believing that the state will solve our problems relieves us of the need to think and fight and strain and struggle and think some more, and fight some more and to hurt and to fail but also to succeed – in short, to live. The corruption of becoming progressively dependent on the state is to die, slowly, spirit first.
Rather than cultivating goodwill among our neighbours and seeking opportunities to make common cause in tackling a mutual problem, progressivism pits each one of us against the other. It is not by voluntary association that we solve our problems. It is by electing well-intentioned leaders who will then tell us what to do, and by our obeying them. But when our leaders discover that not all of our interests coincide and that choices of which problems to solve and where the resources to solve those problems should come from arise, what happens? Well, we better make sure that our leaders understand that our needs are much more pressing and urgent than those others. Our community deserves a new sewage system more than their community. People my age deserve help with education, or home ownership, or medical care much more than those older/younger than me. My cause deserves more assistance than the rest.
Of course, this is not how the battle of all against all is presented in public – too tactless. Instead advocates for new, or expanding, state programs publicly support each other”s proposals while privately, behind the scenes, lobbying for their own to the detriment of the others. Such advocates are not stupid. They know that resources are not unlimited. And so it is a war of all against all – but not in a Hobbesian state of nature, but within the leviathan of the progressive state. Progressively increasing the power of the state is to corrupt the naturally-occurring goodwill among those whom we would hope to voluntarily attract to our joint enterprises by replacing persuasion with force – the power of the state to make the decision and enforce compliance – and thus corrupt social relations with war.
Because some of the facts stated in support of this argument are well-accepted, the proliferation of warfare in more modern times for example, state power is certainly not universally heralded as a good thing in itself. Therefore, tying the term “progressive” more closely to the term “state power” in my proposed definition of progressivism offers the opportunity to take some of the shine off the term. Even the term “progress” can have an unfavourable connotation. Things can become “progressively worse”. A disease “progresses”. Progressivism even sounds like a disease – a socio-political cancer. Someone advocating progressively increasing state power ought to be referred to, not as a progressive but as a progressivist.
Now what about the opposite – those who wish to diminish the power of the state? “Regressives?” Hardly. May as well call ourselves “reactionaries” as the progressivists would.
“Conservative?” No, it has become an epithet and conservatives, especially many social conservatives, advocate increasing state power over some elements of our lives while other conservatives are too ready to advocate militaristic efforts to increase the power of their state over other states and their citizens.
“Libertarian?” It”s the most accurate but it”s an awful mouthful and is, at best, emotionally unevocative. “Individualist” is even more of a mouthful.
I wish “freedom” had an adjective form (“freedomist”, “freedomite”) or that “liberal” had not already been sullied beyond redemption. Others such as “minarchist”, or “minimalist” are too obscure.
What about “humanism”? This from dictionary.com:
1. any system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values, and dignity predominate. 4. Philosophy. a variety of ethical theory and practice that emphasizes reason, scientific inquiry, and human fulfillment in the natural world . . . .
Interesting. I believe it is favourably evocative. I don”t know it to be used in a political context and yet it seems to me it can be appropriately used, without twisting its meaning, to advocate improving human welfare by reducing state power. It leads naturally into a discussion of human rights. Properly understood these are rights that all humans share and would thus be limited to the rights to life, liberty and property alone.
Anyway, I’ve run out of steam on this subject, at least for now.
In response to a scientific article two people wrote very dissonant comments. One, Rebekkah, condemned science and recited a very narrow fundamentalist view of the world. The other, Joshua declared emphatically that religion was entirely bogus and that all he could see was all that there is.
My comment:
Science vs religion again eh? Rebekkah”s diatribe is no sillier than Joshua”s categorical absolutism. Our universe appears to have been fine tuned for intelligent life. Better explanations than chance are: (a) God, (b) a multiverse (a virtually infinite number of universes), or (c) both. (See John Leslie)
Option (b) makes the best logical starting point but I can”t imagine (b) without there being many technologically (and ethically) sophisticated civilizations which can, and do, populate countless numbers of what we can think of as full immersion virtual reality simulations with beings like us. The more sophisticated, the more the distinction between the “virtual” and the “real” becomes meaningless.
Think of it. We are on the verge of developing such technology ourselves. What are the odds that no other civilizations have done so? And if they have, aren”t the odds of our being in one of those numerous “simulations” much greater than the odds of being in the one and only “reality”. (See Nick Bostrom)
Perhaps there is no reality underlying these simulations. Physicist Richard Gott III has proposed a manner for a universe to create its own ancestor-universe. This seems even more plausible an explanation for origins when one thinks of these universes as simulations.
So, once upon a time (in most senses not temporally connected to us but in another sense in our future) a technologically and ethically sophisticated being began running a simulation in which another did likewise and so on until one began running the simulation in which the “first” (first in our story anyway) found himself.
Fantasy? Rebekkah would dogmatically dismiss it for rendering a natural explanation for the supernatural. Joshua would dismiss it based on his pseudo-certitude concerning, well, everything. I find the scenario an appealing possibility that suggests that there may be a perfectly rational explanation for all aspects of actual human experience. It is at least cause enough to keep one”s mind at least partially ajar.
$1.4-million for every job saved – The Globe and Mail.
Thank goodness the government is looking out for us in these troubled times. If it were left up to me I would never have thought of this solution. I would never have thought to take a million and a half dollars from other Canadians and give it to a business which loses money hand over fist in the hope that doing so will save 1 auto worker’s job. I am far too simple-minded to come up with something so ingenious.
I know it is the Conservative government which did this but thank goodness they had the Liberals and NDP to appeal to their conscience and make sure they went through with this bold plan. They would have preferred even more money be spent, maybe $2 million or more per job just to make sure it worked.
No, I would never have thought of such a wonderful plan. I would have treated the car makers like everyone else. I would have said, well, if you can”t make cars that people want to buy it is better to close up and let those who can do your work instead. Now I can see how utterly unimaginative that would have been.
What would we ever do without governments to solve our problems for us? (Oh how I would so very much like to find out!)
In “The downside of up”
yet another champion of conservatism shows how intellectually bankrupt conservatism is. This time it is former Reform Party leader Preston Manning.
Manning”s thesis is that the lesson we should take from the recent economic downturn is that free markets don”t work. He says the smaller government of the last few decades resulted from carrying the pro-market principles he once espoused too far. In his own words, “Not until the recent financial meltdown and economic downturn did we come to realize that there are limits to the application of this ideology.” He now advocates an increased role for government saying that “both law and freedom have essential roles to play in achieving a better economic paradigm.”
Now take a careful look at that last statement. The phrase “both law and freedom” discloses the depth of Manning”s treachery. There was a time, when it was politically savvy for conservatives to acknowledge that the function of the law was to preserve individual freedom. Manning”s juxtaposition of “law” and “freedom” necessarily implies (a) that the law can and should have another objective, and (b) that this objective must involve the restriction of freedom.
Gee Mr. Manning, where do we sign up to help with your gentle crusade against the excesses of freedom? Excesses like wealth, prosperity, personal liberty, and social harmony far exceeding that of any of the civilizations you claim to take your lessons from. Just what our world needs, another person calling for more and bigger government. Thanks so, so much.
The economic and technical advances of the last decades occurred against a backdrop of governments which generally opted to keep their hands in their own pockets than in the pockets of their citizens. The philosophy of freedom which conservatives said they believed in actually worked. Even the recent downturn is evidence not of markets failing but of how markets can self-correct. Left alone the market would have disposed of failed businesses and even industries, redirecting capital into those which actually produced the goods and services people actually want.
But conservatives must be the most loathsome invertebrate species on the planet. Having won all the battles they still conceded the war. They are not potential allies of libertarians but a dangerous distraction from a philosophically consistent defence of freedom. I would prefer to contend with an avowedly socialist government. Freedom would be better served by the more open and honest display of collectivist errors then the subtle treachery of woolly wolves such as Harper and Manning.
I used to believe Preston Manning was the greatest Prime Minister Canada never had. Now I see that he would have proved Stephen Harper”s equal in disappointing those of us who truly appreciate the power of the sovereign individual to create the wealth prerequisite to the welfare of every person in our society. Platitudes such as this,
“Now is the time — when the economic slowdown is creating new opportunities as well as hardships — for those of us who are pro-government and those of us who are pro-market to recognize each in the other the necessary complements to our own one-sidedness.”
are just a coward”s way of couching the betrayal of principle in emotionally-laden mush. Saying, “can”t we all just be friends” to those philosophically opposed to freedom is simple surrender. To conservative traitors those of us who still believe individual freedom is worth fighting for say: we don”t need you, we don”t want you and frankly, we can”t stand you.
I was reading about Jainism and came across this 9th century argument against a universal creation. I like them.
“Some foolish men declare that Creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill-advised, and should be rejected.
1. If god created the world, where was he before creation?
If the “world” is all that there is then God must have created himself in the process of creation.
2. If you say he was transcendent then, and needed no support, where is he now?
And if where he is is not a part of his creation, then who created that?
3. No single being had the skill to make the world – for how can an immaterial god create that which is material? How could god have made the world without any raw material? If you say he made this first, and then the world, you are face with an endless regression. If you declare that the raw material arose naturally you fall into another fallacy, for the whole universe might thus have been its own creator, and have risen equally naturally.
This is really the essence of my comments to #1 and #2.
4. If god created the world by an act of will, without any raw material, then it is just his will made nothing else and who will believe this silly stuff?
Weak.
5. If he is ever perfect, and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him? If, on the other hand, he is not perfect, he could no more create the universe than a potter could.
This is a very powerful point. If God is literally perfect and complete and unchanging then the universe must be as old as He is because His will to create it must be co-terminus with Himself. If He is outside of time then this is really he same as saying he universe is eternal since it, and God, has existed from all time. However, the concept of “before time” makes no sense as time is just an ordering of events. Time has no meaning when a single even is considered in isolation. If you have events A and B where A preceded B then you have time. If you call B “time”, referring to a situation where the passage of time is observed, and A “before time”, referring to a situation where no change occurs, then A and B considered together do constitute time.
6. If he is formless, actionless, and all-embracing, how could he have created the world? Such a soul, devoid of all modality, would have no desire to create anything.
7. If you say that he created to no purpose, because it was his nature to do so then god is pointless. If he created in some kind of sport, it was the sport of a foolish child, leading to trouble.
8. If he created out of love for living things and need of them he made the world; why did he not make creation wholly blissful, free from misfortune?
These all go to showing that God did not create the world because creation does not disclose any beneficent purpose. I disagree with this one but I like t all the same because there are those who do reject the purposefulness of creation and this shows that if they do they should also reject creation by God. Creation necessarily implies purpose and if that purpose does not include a role for evil then God cannot be both benevolent and omnipotent. If he is both then the existence of evil serves a benevolent purpose. The only persuasive argument is that overcoming evil permits growth. If allowing that this is the only way growth may occur poses a limit to His omnipotence I am fine with that.
Thus the doctrine that the world was created by god makes no sense at all.
I like Richard Gott III”s idea that a universe may spawn another universe which spawns another which spawns the first. If this is how God does it, I think all objections are overcome but so is the idea of a literally unchanging God. Perhaps that is the real heresy that needs to be discarded.
A Libertarian Solution to Evolution Education Controversy: No More Public Schools | Wired Science from Wired.com.
Excellent article on how the public school system creates social conflict using the way evolution is forced down student”s throats as an example.
Freedom of religion is held up as an example of relative harmony between people with very different and very strong beliefs. The suggestion is that freedom in education, a free market in institutions of learning, would also do away with much of this conflict.
The Athanasian Creed says:
“Now this is the catholic faith: We worship one God in trinity and the Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the divine being. . . .
“What the Father is, the Son is, and so is the Holy Spirit. . . .
“For this is the true faith that we believe and confess: That our Lord Jesus Christ, God”s Son, is both God and man.
“He is God, begotten before all worlds from the being of the Father, and he is man, born in the world from the being of his mother — existing fully as God, and fully as man with a rational soul and a human body; equal to the Father in divinity, subordinate to the Father in humanity. . . .
“Although he is God and man, he is not divided, but is one Christ.
“He is united because God has taken humanity into himself; he does not transform deity into humanity.
“He is completely one in the unity of his person, without confusing his natures.
“For as the rational soul and body are one person, so the one Christ is God and man.
Wikipedia says:
“The ”Athanasian” Creed boldly uses the key Nicene term homoousios (”one substance”, ”one in Being”) not only with respect to the relation of the Son to the Father according to his divine nature, but that the Son is homoousios with his mother Mary, according to his human nature.
It might be foolish to even try to apply logic to this alphabet soup of self-contradiction but if Christ is one in being with God and Mary is one in being with Christ, then is not Mary one in being with God. Doesn’t this mean there ought to be a quaternity rather than a trinity?
So let”s see. The car makers are losing money because we are not buying their cars. Foolishly we think we own our money and we think that we get to decide how to spend it. That”s why we each call it “my” money. So we decide we want to save it, or spend it on something other than a car, or maybe even on a foreign car instead. Silly isn’t it?
Silly because that”s where the government steps in and says, “You won”t give the car makers your money in exchange for the cars they make so we will take your money from you and give it to them anyway. And by the way, you don”t get a car.”
We would be better off if the government just forced us to buy cars. Maybe hold a lottery and one in every several households over a certain income level has to buy one. Or maybe we all have to take turns buying a car every 4 or 5 years from these guys. At least these ways we”d get a new car (albeit one we would not have purchased if we actually lived in a free country). Instead we are just being robbed blind by the government and the loot is handed over to undeserving corporate scumbags and their parasitic employees. And this is what leftists call social “justice”?
