Left-Anarchism: A Dog Chasing Its Own Tail - Part 2

I came across a post on Stephan Kinsella's blog in which he was expressing some frustration with the claims of left-leaning anarchists. As an ANCAP myself, I'll just say some of the responses he was addressing were, at the least, disheartening. It's a shame that most anarchists are of this variety. As I'll continue saying until I'm blue in the face - Less Proudhon and Marx, more Rothbard please!

In any case, there was a single response to his post by an apparently left-leaning anarchist who ultimately exclaimed that the burden was on the Kinsellas of the world to explain why hierarchy, in any context, isn't wrong. Clearly there is a lot more ground to be gained in arguing with people of more mainstream political persuasions. But, I have to admit, many left-libertarians have well-thought-out views - and they generally put up a much much much better fight than those of the mainstream. They make you defend your position on principled ground. And my arguments for my position have become stronger almost solely at the expense of discussions with other anarchists. For that, I'll show some gratitude.

In any case, the oft-displayed contentions of leftist-anarchists regarding "hierarchy" and "authority" left me to think for a pretty good amount of time on what these terms mean and how it relates to Anarcho-Capitalism. I'll admit to you at the drop of a hat that 99% of anything I've ever thought in the political arena - Rothbard had espoused on it earlier at some point. The guy was thorough if anything. But I have a contention with how leftists view hierarchy that I've never really seen touted before. I thought this was as good a place as any to throw it out there:

I think where most traditional anarchists run aground is in conflating conditional association and “rulership” or absolute authority. I’ve never seen another anarcho-capitalist bring this point to the forefront (so if I’m borrowing an idea that’s already out there I apologize for not tipping the proverbial hat) but I’ve thought quite a bit about this point and it’s the conclusion I’ve come to.

Let’s say that I invite you over to my house. A condition for entering my house is that you must remove your shoes. It could be said that I’m asserting some kind of “authority” over you – a hierarchy even – in that I’m somehow forcibly telling you what to do. But is this really the case? Some defenders of private property would say yes. But I think this is an oversimplified way to look at things.

I don’t believe, as property owners, we are ever asserting that we have specific rights to make others do whatever we want. You have just as much of a right to wear shoes when you’re in the house as you have when you’re on your own property. Instead, what I’d like to suggest, is that any power that we have is tangential to our own property rights – that, if we do indeed grant that property is a valid concept, we simply have control over who may or may not use that property and no other enforcible powers beyond that. Therefore, any expression of power or authority as such exists only to the extent to which we may withdraw our explicit or implicit consent for others using that property.

So, to get back to the analogy: If I tell you to remove your shoes before entering my house, I’m not claiming some authority over you in that I have some right to tell you what you can and can’t do. On the contrary, my request only has power to the extent that it is an implicit condition upon which you may use my property.

If we were to take such conditional interaction and, as other anarchists often do, conflate it with authority, then it would make a good deal of fairly ambiguous daily interaction immoral. Families, churches, and many other voluntary organizations would seem malicious and predatory under such a notion. In fact it would seem hard to justify trade as being anything other than malign under such a notion. For, if one was asked to shovel snow out of a driveway in exchange for money we could then say that person was being temporarily subjugated to the will of another. We may say, “Clearly this is absurd – the person in question is not being forced to do such a thing. He’s doing it of free will and association.” And such a point couldn’t ring any clearer. In fact, it would ring just as clear and for the same reasons in regards to the removing of your shoes before you enter my house, or in regards to labor being exchanged for wages on the floor of an assembly line.

This is why anarcho-capitalists will forever clash with anarchists of other stripes. Few self-described anarchists seem to be willing to differentiate conditional association with what ANCAPs would describe as “authority” (forced hierarchy), even if those anarchists (according to their own view) willingly subject themselves to many conditional associations in their everyday lives without recognizing them as such. It presents an inherent problem to their ideology, and I believe it’s largely (maybe even subconsciously) why many dismiss private property altogether, or subscribe to the labor theory of value – it’s the result of cognitive dissonance.

Ultimately the distinction is clear. Private property as such is not simply a throwback to a feudal system (as other anarchists often claim) where owners of large tracts of land claim ownership over the lives of serfs. Instead we claim that any such command or power, as it may be perceived, can exist only, and unequivocally, as an expression of property rights -and nothing else. We submit then that all voluntary association, trade, or hierarchy is derived from the ownership of ourselves and willful consent therein – and that, as such, by nature their exhibition cannot be coercive. Even more clearly, the idea of restraining men from such voluntary association would be, by definition, explicitly coercive. In this way the anarcho-capitalist position is clear; free men of free association born out of an inherent ownership of self, labor, and the product thereof, reasoned simply and deductively. In this way, I don’t believe the onus is on Rothbardians to further justify self-ownership and free association. The onus is instead on detractors to explain why men should not own themselves or should be restricted in their associations with other free men.

Left-Anarchism: A Dog Chasing Its Own Tail

I've often been enamored of thinkers who would describe themselves as left-leaning libertarians. People like Roderick Long and Sheldon Richman have continuously offered great insight and nuance with the broadly libertarian community. That being said, if there's anything that repels any interest that I once held in this faction it's articles like this.

Social Anarchists, Free-Market Leftists, Liberaltarians, or whatever you'd like to call them are well-known within the larger libertarian community for the animus and contention they hold for their more right-leaning libertarian brethren - whom they've often dubbed "vulgar" libertarians. I've seen the term used in two distinctly different contexts. The first, and most often used, condition refers to a libertarian who leans in the direction of being critical of lower-class recipients of government entitlements but whom often disregard the artificial entitlements bestowed upon corporations and businesses in general. To be fair, I think they make a very good point. And few libertarians who don't already find themselves in the orbit of ethics a la Rothbard often defend entities that, if they were consistent, they shouldn't.

The other context the "vulgar" prefix is used in is regarding liberty-minded people who fall under the "thin-libertarian" category. These are people who, ideologically perhaps, value liberty as the overwhelmingly primary moral litmus test. "Thick-libertarians" find that the value of liberty is necessarily bound with other social values (compassion, equality, etc.). Left-libertarians are generally of the latter variety. Many of them support liberty only so far as it is the most effective path to realize these other values. So, a thin-libertarian may believe the minimum wage is wrong because it coerces employers and restricts their freedom of association. A thick-libertarian may believe the minimum wage is wrong because it ultimately unemploys people. Not all consequentialist libertarians consider their valuation of liberty to be thickly bound but it is a point worth debating.

What strikes me negatively about many left-leaning libertarians is that, because of their thickly bound values, they often put themselves in awkward and somewhat inconsistent positions. In the article above, it seems to me that the author, although recognizing that public monopolization of various services is wrong (note: even for the consequential reasons entailed by the multiple values they hold), twists himself into the odd knot of defending public unions. Why? Well, it seems, from the author's point of view, such a defense is warranted when there are more egregious acts taking place that benefit the likes of another interest group - the owners of capital (read: business).

Now, while I think it's worth debating which interest groups are the worst offenders of what we would commonly describe as freedom, it's not clear to me how one group, even if we somehow would prove them to be less offensive than another, should somehow be defended in light of that relative status. In fact, that kind of twisted logic seems to be the logical inverse of what their right-leaning opponents so often exhibit. Right-leaning libertarians, looking at net government transfer payments overwhelmingly leaning in the direction of the lower-class, often ignore some of the more complicated benefits and power bestowed on business and end up defending these companies from the onslaught of the left in general - pointing out how (in their mind) government clearly favors labor over capital. Left-leaning libertarians, conversely, seem to be overlooking the parasitic nature of the interest groups they are defending while drawing focus to corporate welfare instead.

And, again, to be fair, not all people in the left-libertarian camp are guilty of this. But it seems to me, by their own account of what logically constitutes a "vulgar" libertarian, many of them are simply just as guilty as the people they label. This isn't confined to the current national discussion regarding public sector unions and their fate: I've seen left-libertarians defending what they ought not, by their own ideological account, simply because their knee-jerk reaction, like those they bemoan, is to provide a relative defense for a particular interest group with whom they focus on or sympathize. It appears to me that all libertarians would find it silly to deflect the wrongness of someone being arrested for smoking marijuana simply because there are even more aggressive actions taking place. Why would libertarians (of either the left or right variety) want to start behaving as such issues like this then?

Teh Gays Are Stupid

I heard some banter on the radio this morning regarding some public service announcements circulating in the NY area with celebrities trying to call people out for using the term "gay" to refer to something they don't like - or something that is unacceptable. It looks like they are set up as little sketches with said celebrities calling the would-be-haters out on their horrible social gaff. The specific one I was treated to was one involving the comedian Wanda Sykes - berating a couple of customers for using "gay" to refer to something "stupid" or "dumb."

Now, my personal ethical view isn't particularly thick in regards to issues like this (refraining from offending others). I understand where people are coming from when they think it's unbecoming to speak a certain way or use certain terminology that might be offensive - and I have no problem with those people disassociating themselves from said parties. But I've always kind of felt that the crusade to socially punish or excommunicate people for the words they use is a little over-the-top (and not in the Sylvester Stallone trucking around the country while entering arm-wrestling competitions kind of way). Contrary to popular belief, I don't think pressuring people to speak one way or another pushes us further along in any way socially - in fact I think it makes people dishonest and vengeful, slowing progress if anything. If there's someone out there who is an unapologetic bigot, I want that person out in the open - I can choose to withhold my associations with that person much easier this way.

Regardless of how you feel about social pressuring with regard to language usage, the ad really struck me as ironic if nothing else. Why is using the term "gay" bad in this context? It's bad because it's a term that describes a human characteristic. And it's using that broad human characteristic to denote something "bad" or something contemptible. This usually rubs people in the West the wrong way even when it's a characteristic we choose - but it seems much worse to us when it's something that we're largely born with. This is why race and gender are excellent social fire-starters.

Did you catch where the makers of the commercial messed up?

They explicitly implored people to stop using the human (and possibly genetic) characteristic of "gay" to denote something that's "stupid" and/or "dumb." But "stupid" and "dumb" are not etymological synonyms for "bad." Their usage has had a similar trajectory - ascribing "bad" or "contemptible" properties to a human (and largely genetic) characteristic. "Stupid" is a term that has been used for centuries. It can mean stunned or astonished - but more often than not it's been used to describe mentally "slow" people - this includes people with all kinds of mental disabilities (particularly before we started pulling different disorders apart). "Dumb", before being lumped in with "stupid", "gay", and "retarded", meant someone who doesn't have the physical capability to speak - usually due to injury or genetics.

So what are us passersby supposed to gain from this little exercise? That it's not OK to use the language of personal characteristics like "gay" and "retarded" as negative connotation but for other language of personal characteristics like "stupid" and "dumb" it's perfectly alright? Don't get me wrong here; I think people can be wrong in simply mis-using words (in that way I can probably be the grammar-police sometimes) - but I'm a firm believer in language being fluid and changing. Sometimes words come to mean completely different things, even when easily traced back to roots that suggest its social mis-use (currently or previously). Language is a subject that's beyond my personal expertise, but it doesn't strike me as unconventional to realize that words mean, in large part, simply what people mean by them. If I start using the term "shoe" to mean "bad" and it catches on, culturally, it won't mean that people using the term "shoe" in 50 years to describe bad things have anything against shoes. It's possible that a word can be completely divorced from its etymology - in fact, an awful lot of English words and phrases have been and are currently.

So, my point isn't that people don't mis-use words, or that they don't sometimes use them for bigoted reasons. My point is short and sweet - but threefold:

• Policing someone's language does not police their mind. You're not going to get rid of irrational hatred by keeping people from espousing it

• The meaning of words can change over time; as such, terms can completely disconnect themselves from their original meaning in casual usage

• If you want to berate someone for walking on thin ice, it's probably a good idea to make sure that you too are not on comparably weak ground

The Slip Knot of Tribalism

I've been bouncing around a libertarian democratic strategy in my head. I've kind of run the gamut on views regarding voting, from self-compromise to refusal to vote for the lesser of two evils; from believing voting is a duty to believing it to be almost a crime; from thinking it makes all the difference in the world to thinking it's virtually meaningless at the margin. But I'm brushing these unuseful devils aside for the moment.

The fact is that we live in something that resembles a democratic republic - and we are not likely to succeed without doing one of two things:

• convincing the majority of Americans to withhold their political consent
• convincing Americans to vote for someone to dismantle things from the inside

Unfortunately (or maybe even fortunately depending on how you look at it), these two conditions are almost mutually inclusive - it's hard to imagine one without the other. Or, at the point that you have one, of what use is the other? In either case, achieving one or both of these conditions would be the ultimate pragmatic goal for libertarians if they want to see their vision(s) come to fruition.

Given the libertarian track record for convincing the larger population of the main tenets of libertarianism - this would seem almost impossible. But I think I have good reason to believe that a single prominent politician (from either side) managing to get his foot in the door (in terms of public image) could be just enough to turn the demographic tide for libertarians. And, even more interestingly, it could be due to a human trait we've been known to loathe; tribalism.

My argument goes something like this:

As humans, we tend to break ourselves off into various factions - geographically, politically, economically, religiously, etc. Our least fractious divides (ie: standards by which we have the fewest over-arching divisions) are probably geography and politics. In these two areas we are fiercely tribal. But the number of large groups are few - and they represent the vast majority of Americans. There are few people who don't feel tied to this country in a national sense...this seems to transcend almost all other divisions to some degree. And on the political side, although we often disagree vociferously, we generally have found ourselves behind one of two groups - Republicans and Democrats. Igniting support for the libertarian cause in any of these groups would be the best bet to realize one of the two conditions for libertarian victory.

Ok - so far so good. But this is obvious; where does it get us? Well, we're often not fighting conventionally on these fronts because we see no hope of personally persuading so many people to "switch sides" so to speak. But I think we can bridge that impossible gap (just maybe) with the help of that tribalistic pull we lament so much.

A few years ago, I would have fancied myself a neo-conservative. I was defending one George W. Bush against a sea of detractors from the left. Right or wrong, I was burning rubber in that direction. The things that drove me were a sense that the people on the other side hated this country....and that my "team" was bent on saving it. We were heroes (haha - I know trust me!). So what turned a die-hard supporter of the Iraq War into an anarchist? It's simple. One Republican - Jason Lewis.

Jason Lewis is an FM talk-radio personality who occasionally fills in for one Rush Limbaugh - whom I used to listen to quite frequently in those days. Jason Lewis was of a different caliber though. He seemed well educated in the areas of history and economics. His logic seemed particularly unforgiving - utterly destroying dissenting callers and their arguments. Of course, looking back now, he doesn't seem to deserve the altar I'd placed him on. But some very compelling arguments from one of "my guys (Republicans)" inspired me to acquire the same knowledge that he had - so that, I too, could make such devastating arguments.

I proceeded to snag some books off his reading list; among which were Milton Friedman's FREE TO CHOOSE and Henry Hazlitt's ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON. Those books, in turn, led me to the works of scholars of the Austrian school of economics - Hayek and Mises. That led me, in turn to Rothbard, and so on and so forth. When I try to think back to how I felt before all this happened - I couldn't have imagined sliding down the political slope so far as to eventually hold views almost antithetical to those I held at the time. The leftists, whom made similarly compelling arguments, didn't budge me at all. So what happened?

At the heart of it, everything boiled down to one guy who was on my "team" who pointed me in the general direction of liberty. Once pointed in that direction, there was no turning back. My tribalism (that is, my red vs. blue mentality) almost acted as a slip knot securing the path I would ultimately take regarding my political philosophy. It took one prominent man in my corner (or what I perceived to be my corner) to throw me a bone - and that was all she wrote.

In light of that revelation, maybe the efforts of people like Ron and Rand Paul aren't futile (or maybe similar people in the opposing party - I'm not currently aware of any). Maybe if one of them wrangled their way into the position of being "our guy" going up against "their guy" our tribalism would take hold. That's not the right reason to support anyone. But maybe support for the wrong reasons would lead us to support for the right reasons - as it did with me. Maybe the political cheer-leading would force people into positions where they would have come to understand and support the views of "our guy"...and that would be enough to spark the flame so to speak.

As to getting one of these people into such a position - that, I suppose, is the tough question. I'm not sure what the best way to affect such a role change would be. But judging from recent elections and the mood of different factions on the Right as of now, it seems further from impossible than it ever has before. Maybe some of the supposed front-runners will have such a rough time in this fractious political environment that someone who is more marginally supported would have a real chance. Ron Paul has certainly proven (with the CPAC straw-poll) that his views resonate with at least some people on the Right. If he could manage to make it to the fore-front, and Republicans found themselves defending him, is it possible that we might bear witness to a true paradigm shift?

It's a strategy worth considering - one that is much easier to implement as well.

Public Service and Self-Aggrandizement

I didn't happen to catch the State of the Union Address last night. In fact, I probably haven't watched one in several years. But it's often interesting to see the intrepid responses to it the following day. And although this year was somewhat lackluster in that respect, a focus of a good part of Obama's speech apparently did not go unnoticed. He gave a considerable amount of thought and time to teachers and education in general. I won't bother waging into the polemics of federalism deep in the heart of a centralized democracy here - but I will peer beyond the veil into a topic closer to home; self-aggrandizement.

The web was a-flutter last night with the high-fives of teachers, speculating upon and cherishing several quotes from the address regarding the importance of... well... teachers. Now, I want to preface my response here by stating that I believe that teachers are very important; that two of my parents are/were teachers; that some of the more influential people in my life have been teachers; and that I have no qualms with being proud of what you produce - in almost any capacity. But I can't help but notice that there are a group of professions, which are largely centered around public service although not exclusively, which, for lack of a better phrasing, pat themselves on the back constantly - as to say not only are they important, but that they are somehow especially important.

Among their ranks are chiefly:

- Teachers

- Social Workers

- Police

- Firemen

- Military

- Truck Drivers

Each group makes its own arguments with respect to their relative importance. And, while some of these groups may have a more legitimate claim to it than others, no one can deny that all play an important role. I suppose my question is rather, "Why is it only these people who are so self-glorifying in a unanimously outward way?"

The teacher will claim that nothing is possible without education. The social worker will claim that without them people would fall through the cracks of society. The policeman will claim that without him, criminals would run rampant. The fireman will claim that without him businesses and residences would be wrought with destruction. The soldier will claim that he is defending your ability to do pretty much everything that you do. The truck driver will claim that you would not be able to buy much of anything if he hadn't transported the items first.

To these claims I say; fair enough.

But what, precisely, imbues your claim of importance with a corollary need to expound upon it any more than say - mine?

I sit in an office all day generating AWK code for various scripts for my employer. It sounds very vanilla and unimportant - but it too has purpose (importance). The code that I write allows medical groups to process their billing in short order and through far less people. This, in turn, means those medical groups have lower operating costs, which, also in turn, means that the consumers of health care (which I imagine would be pretty much all of us at some point) ultimately pay less for their services. I basically help doctors provide more affordable health care. But how pretentious would I sound if I walked around waving the importance of my job in everyone's face?

After all, what would I say to:

The construction worker, without whom I would have no home or business to work in?

The engineer, without whom I would have no vehicles to get back and forth?

The road worker, without whom I would have no road to drive those vehicles on?

The store clerk, without whom I would not be able to buy the every-day products I need?

The accountant, without whom I would not be able to reliably contract services through the exchange of funds?

The maintenance worker, without whom the basic facilities which I enjoy so frequently would fall into disrepair?

The lawyer, without whom I may find myself a helpless victim to the injustices of other individuals or groups?

The entrepreneurial botanist, without whom I might not be able to afford cheap, reliable food year-round?

The nurse, without whom I would not be able to take care of myself in illness?

All this being said, the ways of gauging any profession's particular importance is elusive (as the subjective nature of value is not inter-personal). Such subjective evaluation is generally revealed collectively through our actions in the price of labor. Where the demand for any one particular type of labor is extremely high and such labor is in short supply, people will be willing to pay much more for that person's services. It's the meshing of a particular person's unique ability to do something with the public's demand for that "something" to be done that determines it's literal price.

Does this mean that a basket-ball player is more important than a teacher? Well, certainly you couldn't make that claim for any one individual. But what the price-system can tell you is that there either isn't a whole hell of a lot of demand for teachers or that teachers' abilities are not exactly unique. This applies even more for, say, janitors. It applies (only slightly) less to programmers like myself. It applies marginally less for doctors. And it applies a whole hell of a lot less for hedge-fund managers, CEOs, and film-makers.

So what's my point in all of this?

My point is that any of these professions that I'm discussing isn't objectively less important from an inter-personal standpoint than any of the others. But, by the same token, it certainly isn't objectively more important either. So I'm confused as to why a teacher will jump through hoops in glorifying themselves constantly while, say, carpenters don't generally seem to feel the need to do so.

The only connection I can draw between the biggest offenders of self-aggrandizement amongst professions is that most (but not all) seem to fall under the rubric of public service. Now maybe one can feel that service of a people, through the state, is somehow more important than regular civilian service. I fail to see how that objectively pans out but soldiers are very fond of doing things "for their country." Maybe teachers feel the same way.

In that way, maybe those people think that there is some inherent sacrifice that comes with such services. With respect to danger, there are certainly a number of public occupations in which you risk your life - but there are also certainly plenty of private occupations that are equally risky (an exception might be soldiers in specific wartime periods). Or maybe teachers, policemen, and the like think that they are operating with marginally lower compensation than they would otherwise receive - although I think their counterparts in the private sector might have a thing or two to say about that.

So, I can't help but be left scratching my head. I certainly don't have a problem with people reaping the accolades and compensation from a service they've rendered; particularly if something they've done has resulted in benefiting the lives of the many. But in that respect, I don't typically find myself in the position of supporting wayward gloating and self-glorifying rhetoric. In fact, more often than not, I'm usually defending the people who have arguably done the most to benefit society (voluntarily no less) from people who not only wish to demonize them but to actively aggress against them.

On the flip side of that coin, I suppose I could ask why many people in public service, who would all but crucify the likes of Ayn Rand for her brand of individual egoism, would engage so fervently in the praise of their own individual contributions to society. Maybe the story of such behavior among these professions, whether the individuals are Left of Right in orientation (politically), is tied to statist views more than one would think. For the statist, justice is a call for theft; compassion a call for violence - why wouldn't I suspect that a call for collective contribution might be bore out of an inflated sense of self-importance...even entitlement?

Maybe this is the tragedy of the way things are; that there are a vast many of marginal importance bellowing the sordid incantations of sacrifice and piety. Whereas many who shake their heads at this are met only with the echo of their own voices when we proverbially ask, "Where is John Galt?" Indeed, the John Galts of this world are perhaps too busy giving birth to new epochs of mankind to revel in their own boastful incantations.

Actions speak louder than words.

The Death of Language

I'm not going to delve too deeply into the fray regarding the national debate that was sparked by the recent tragedy in Tucson - largely because I feel that the discussion that ensued was so utterly childish and pedantic that I find it less than unfruitful to address it in full. But I will take note of something about this particular case that I happen to find intriguing.

We've heard a substantial number of people harangue their political opposition over the use of martial imagery and metaphor which they believe, apparently, is indistinguishable from the literal for some of us. We have been told that, because a person could take a euphemism and extrapolate an entirely different message from it, that these verbal colors are not acceptable for the public pallet - that we must stop the proverbial waving of the red cloth in front of society's deranged bulls.

Now, to be sure, we've had this collective argument before in different capacities. Shifting the guilt of individuals onto political rivals isn't a new sheet in anyone's playbook. Society found its witches at almost every point of contemporary tragedy (Waco, OK City, Columbine, you name it). But I've never recalled the accusations being not only so particularly vague but also unfounded. Normally when one of this nation's wayward sons travels out into the thick with a firearm and bad intentions at hand, we find ourselves going back through things that the person was connected to - the things in his life that might have influenced him so profoundly.

In the case of Waco, we found religious fundamentalism. For OK City, we found anti-government (pro-militia) sentiment. For Columbine we found "scary" music and movies. But in this particular instance, we found no need to even dig at all to support our superficial hypothesis of causation. We were pointing fingers before we, quite frankly, knew a single thing about this killer - and we did it, un-mistakingly, for political expediency.

Now several days have passed.

Should I be somewhat surprised that our usual witch-hunt has not ensued to the point of actually tearing through his objective influences? Because I am. For once, I'm actually surprised by the sheer intellectual laziness of many of my fellow citizens, but perhaps less surprised by the political opportunism which has subsequently been employed in its stead.

So where do we stand now?

Well, we stand even deeper in this political bog. But why? Why should I or anyone else feel the need to defend the concepts that Western civilization was built upon - free will, personal responsibility, free speech? We're not engaging some group of transcendental relativistic nihilists here; these are our fellow Americans - who live the majority of their lives by these simple principles, even if they don't commonly recognize it as such. Have we really become so far removed from a liberty so fundamental as our most base means of communication - speech - that we now honestly question if the weight of our words can irrevocably drag us off of the cliff of reason, like lemmings being lead to their death?

In some respects, I suppose it's hard for me to imagine that we're really having a conversation about what kind of language is acceptable. I find that no less contemptible than us having a conversation about what colors are not appropriate for painting. It's almost provokes more confusion than ire.

However, the sensibilities I'm putting forth haven't been lost on all of us. A great many people have stood their ground in defense of liberty and common sense. And given the panic and outrage that has unforgivably been pointed in their direction, they surely deserve all the credit due to them. They have put forth rebuttals that even I can't bring myself to write out of a sheer lack of respect for liberty's detractors.

The one point that I do find interesting in all of this - and one that I haven't seen anyone pick up on - is that we're having this very off-putting debate about the language we use in political discourse..... in light of the crimes of a crazy man who believed (apparently) that language itself was a form of mind control. It's incredibly unfortunate that this irony is lost on all of us in the middle of the mess. What may prove harder for me to discern, at this point, is if the criminal's belief in "language as master" is any less crazy than the public's apparent belief in it.

A Bird in the Hand

I've only occasioned to catch Alex Jones' commentary a few times over the past several years. But he did a brief segment today on a radio show I frequent during my morning drive. The subject: Birds dropping dead from the sky in Arkansas.

Of course, it didn't take long for the conversation to make an outward spin towards talk regarding more general and larger conspiracies. But for a short time some conspiracies regarding the death of said birds were discussed. There was a time in my life where I was far more open to conspiracy theories (as I was to New Age philosophy and spiritualism - but that is another story). But it seems like in recent years, at least for me, most talk from conspiracy wonks meet their end in a long path of logical fallacies. In short, it's hard for me to listen to most conspiracy-theorists without them sounding a little crazy - or at the least unfounded.

Luckily, Alex didn't disappoint.

Unwinding the story, he relayed how "suspicious" it was that the birdly body count kept rising from story to story. I couldn't begin to tell you how quickly my brain began to dismiss every tidbit of opinion that followed that statement. "Suspicious?" I thought. Body-counts (avian or otherwise) rising as a story unfolds doesn't sound suspicious at all. Generally the numbers will match what can be confirmed at any given time. And over time, you might expect that number to remain the same, but it wouldn't be particularly suspicious if it increased...as with any story about a flood, earthquake, or bombing.

In fact, what would be "suspicious" is if that number decreased over time. And even then, I would generally attribute that to over-zealous and shoddy early reporting...not to some global conspiracy to kill us all off via fluoride in our faucet-water. Then again, maybe I'm just one of the "sheeple" as Alex would put it.

Baaaaaaah.