A Window onto John Locke

Here is Yale professor Steven B. Smith on the opening chapters of John Locke's Second Treatise of Government.



I suspect that this was filmed in an empty auditorium for Yale's online offerings because there is no interaction at all between Prof. Smith and anyone else in the room. Also, no one laughs at his jokes (although that has happened to me before in a full classroom).

Consent and res publica

As most of you know already, John Locke stands as something like John the Baptist to the political geniuses of the American founding, a prophet of the coming of a never-before-seen constitutional republic. His political teaching became the summary statement of early modern liberalism, in much the same way as Francis Bacon’s earlier teaching on the scientific method helped form the base from which modern science and technology was launched. But though both Locke’s and Bacon’s positions have been controverted in the last four hundred years, Locke found his nemesis in the very next generation in David Hume, a near contemporary of the American founding, who was particularly exercised to see to it that the “Whiggishness” Locke spoke for did not become entrenched in the mind of the British public.

Hume was a severe critic of the state of nature/social contract theory for the grounding of political authority and rights. Central to the contract story is the moral equality of all human individuals, and hence the necessity for consent in government—no one is born with a presumptive right to rule over his fellows. The principle is admirably stated by the Lockean acolyte Thomas Jefferson, who acutely observed that “the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.” Jefferson aimed this shot at the likes of Hume (if not Hume specifically), whom he in his typically bombastic fashion considered an enemy of mankind for the content of his wildly popular essays and magisterial six volume History of England (still very worth reading). Hume’s analysis of the matter led him to this conclusion:

My intention here is not to exclude the consent of the people from being one just foundation of government where it has place. It is surely the best and most sacred of any. I only pretend, that it has very seldom had place in any degree, and never almost to its full extent.

Hume died in 1776, just as things were getting interesting on this side of the Atlantic, and so did not witness the birth of a nation making explicit its embrace of Lockean consent as the center piece of legitimate government. And yet, contra Jefferson, Hume wrote that he considered himself “American in my principles”, while being skeptical of abstract thought, especially political, ideological abstractions. Looking to history for guidance, which is what any self respecting empiricist historian would do, Hume saw no evidence that any group of people had ever gathered, recognized their meager and dangerous prospects as individuals, and consented to cede their individual prerogative to take matters into their own hands and to place their trust in a government to protect their rights. And yet this is almost precisely what the American colonies did vis-à-vis the overbearing George III and Parliament. Declaring that the King was menacing their rights instead of protecting them, they sought to form a government that would protect their rights and be responsive to the principle of consent.

Hamilton, a noted fan of Hume (and like Hume Jefferson’s enemy), counted consent the “pure original fountain of legitimate authority” (Federalist 22), channeling the spirit of Locke as accurately as Jefferson ever did. And though the Wilsonian Progressives and their ideological descendants are wont to claim Hamilton’s patrimony of large ideas for energetic government, and a large scope for it too; they yet have little use for the consent of the governed, preferring the rule of experts to guide the hapless and sadly incapable mass of the people who need to be “nudged”, in Cass Sunstein’s phrase, in order to get to the right conclusions. None of these philosophers and statesmen—Locke, Hume, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson—though distrustful of human frailty and moral shortcomings, were so literally dismissive of the consent of the governed as our present day elites. That the elites of our time, both inside and outside the government of our constitutional republic, eschew the role of the public in the res publica, “the affair of the people” as the ancient Latin has it, is both dangerous and remarkable. This mindset undermines not only the constitution, but the thinking that underpins it; and thus the Lockean natural rights /state of nature /social contract understanding that suffused the thinking of the Founders and yielded the unambiguously best constitution in history, gives way to a Humean theoretical skepticism regarding our own actual beginnings—a most unhistorical and un-empirical view.

But what is that to the dilettantes running the joint, immersed in rationalist abstractions like “History” and utterly oblivious and dismissive of Nature, and Nature’s God?

First Epistle to Tim

Dear Tim,

There are some who call you...Tim, right? Well, I can see you're a busy man, but I do want to respond to your comments on the post below, "Is It Incompetence or Sabotage?".

As the inspiration so to speak, of the post--in a personal email I directed David's attention to the Muir cartoon and the Politico piece he combined in his post--I must consider that your comments are directed at me as much as at David, since I consider his brief handling of the material very much in keeping with his usual high achievement. Hence the charge of unChristian writing and thinking--are these thought crimes in your estimation?--, and the unmannerly and unChristian error of mixing politics and faith that forms the central thrust of your plaint is pointed at me as well.

So you consider it "ironic" that the Titus 3 quote on being subject to principalities and powers hovers hard by the "very unchristian" criticism pouring forth from this blog. I notice in the same sentence the irony has turned to evil (assuming for the sake of the argument that what we are saying is evil)--someone who speaks evil of the president in the name of Christ or of Christianity is doing evil itself, or have I missed your meaning? You equate criticism with evil speaking, and evil speaking with political insurrection, and consider it antithetical to the teachings of our Lord and Savior, who called Herod--a political leader--a fox, and over turned the tables in the temple. You also implicitly equate the despotism known in antiquity with the self governance of post-Reformation, post-Enlightenment democracy, at least some of the values to which I assume you at least partly subscribe--equality before laws equally applied, the worth of individuals as individuals, natural law as the ground of natural right, the sovereignty of the people over their government servants--oh wait--that last one is the rub isn't it?

In your confusion, you have forgotten--or never knew--that in the Lockean liberal theory of politics, which Francis Fukuyama ably argued to be the basis and the high point of Western political achievement, individuals form governments for their own purposes. Governments exist for the sake of the people, not the other way around, as was the default assumption across the ancient world. The apostle Paul, from which the bulk of the political citations concerning "principalities and powers" flow, was concerned to shepherd the early churches past the suspicious and brutal idolaters of the Roman emperor and his minions. Paul's advice and teaching to the churches of the first century, under Roman dominion, makes sense to a culture based in slavery; indeed, not a few of the early adherents were slaves. What would your advice be to black slaves in say, the 1760's America; should they submit without complaint to their "masters"? In centuries in which the full implications of the intrinsic worth of every individual inherent in Christ's teachings unfolded, the understanding of the relation to the political order necessarily changed from that of those steeped in a society that accepted as matters of fact slavery and despotic rule. Would you bring back slavery, or do you long for an enlightened despotism headed by such as a Barack Hussein Obama? David and I certainly agree that despotism is the trajectory with this bunch in the White House. But respect for authority by citizens looks different in a small L liberal political culture than it does in an ancient despotism.

If you conflate Caesar and Obama in your mind--a philosophical tic you share with the One--you will miss the, for some, obvious differences between free government and despotism, and hence the range of thought, speech, and action open to free citizens of a free society. You seem to suggest that the ambit of political speech, thought, and action available to Christians in the present day should be circumscribed by that of the ancient world, as if the revelation of Christ through the writings of ancient authors also lock us into the political, social, and cultural understandings of the writers themselves. I don't think so, and neither did the writers of our Declaration and Constitution.

And thus, David and I will continue to be critical, ironic, insubordinate, and as large a pain to figures in positions of authority as we have been up to now, and we will not consider it evil-speaking or "insipient trash" (sic.), your Sojourner-inspired jeremiad to the contrary notwithstanding. I will have more to say in a further epistle. Until then Tim, take some wine for your sour stomach.

**************
David adds:

Thank you for your comments, Tim. The comments feature is there for discussion. Thank you also for identifying yourself, and please don't take Harold's bit 'o fun with the Monty Python connection the wrong way. It's healthier to join in the laughter, and carry on from there. (Here's the video for anyone who skipped the link.)



I guess it helps to put a face with a name, even if it is a randomly chosen one. Tim the Sorcerer at least is an impressive Scotsman.

I offer a partial justification for the Christian integrity of the blog and for vocal Christian opposition to the present government's policies in the post that follows above.

Harold I am eager to read these other epistles you have in mind. Let me say, friend, you're like a big jam doughnut with cream on the top. That is, I... I mean that, uh, like a doughnut your arrival gives us pleasure and your departure merely makes us hungry for more. (Oh, where have I heard that?)

Harold: LOL...is that one of yours Innes?

Guns and Public Safety

New York City is a little safer today because an armed citizen with a steady hand blew away four armed men who were robbing his store. This account in the New York Times is moving.

They strode into the restaurant supply store in Harlem shortly after 3 p.m. on Thursday, four young men intent on robbery, one with a Glock 9-millimeter pistol, the police said. The place may have looked like an easy mark, a high-cash business with an owner in his 70s, known as a gentle, soft-spoken man.

But Charles Augusto Jr., the 72-year-old proprietor of the Kaplan Brothers Blue Flame Corporation, at 523 West 125th Street, near Amsterdam Avenue, had been robbed several times before, despite the fact that his shop is around the corner from the 26th Precinct station house on West 126th Street.

There were no customers in the store, only Mr. Augusto and two employees, a man and a woman. The police said the invaders announced a holdup, approached the two employees and tried to place plastic handcuffs on them. The male employee, a 35-year-old known in the community as J. B., struggled with the gunman, who then hit him on the head with the pistol.

Watching it happen, Mr. Augusto, whom neighborhood friends call Gus, rose from a chair 20 to 30 feet away and took out a loaded Winchester 12-gauge pump-action shotgun with a pistol-grip handle. The police said he bought it after a robbery 30 years ago.

Mr. Augusto, who has never been in trouble with the law, fired three blasts in rapid succession, the police said.

The first shot took down the gunman at the front. He died almost immediately, according to the police, who said he was 29 and had been arrested for gun possession in Queens last year.... Mr. Augusto’s other two blasts hit all three accomplices, who stumbled out the door, bleeding. One of them, a 21-year-old, staggered across 125th Street and collapsed in front of...one of the city’s biggest housing projects. ...[A]n ambulance rushed him to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, where he was dead on arrival. The police said he had a record of arrests for weapons possession and robbery. Another wounded man left a blood trail that the police followed to 125th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. The fourth wounded man was picked up, on the basis of witness descriptions, at 128th Street and St. Nicholas Terrace. Both were taken to St. Luke’s.

This is a television report on the incident.



As the WPIX video above reports, Mr. Augusto's shotgun is unregistered, so he faces prosecution for violation of New York gun laws. The laws covering shotguns are more permissive than those pertaining to handguns, however. They require merely a permit, not a license. Furthermore, the New York Times reports, "Under long-established New York law, a person is allowed to use deadly physical force when he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to meet the imminent use of deadly physical force and there is no reasonable chance of retreating from the danger."

All the same, if more people were legally armed--at the very least in their homes and businesses--there would be less need for being armed. It's paradoxical, but true. The same logic applied to the Cold War standoff between the Warsaw Pact and NATO. The existence of nuclear weapons and the credible threat of their use in response to aggression preserved peace between the two alliances. As Robert Heinlein is reported to have said, "An armed society is a politie society."

John Locke, the chief theorist of our liberal democratic system of government and way of life, would view Mr. Augusto's actions as perfectly reasonable and defensible. In the Second Treatise of Government, he argues,

...it being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the commonlaw of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.

And hence it is, that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life: for I have reason to conclude, that he who would get me into his power without my consent, would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for no body can desire to have me in his absolute power, unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom, i.e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my preservation; and reason bids me look on him, as an enemy to my preservation, who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it;...

This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief, who has not in the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther than, by the use of force, so to get him in his power, as to take away his money, or what he pleases, from him; because using force, where he has no right, to get me into his power, let his pretence be what it will, I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my liberty, would not, when he had me in his power, take away every thing else. And therefore it is lawful for me to treat him as one who has put himself into a state of war with me, i.e. kill him if I can; for to that hazard does he justly expose himself, whoever introduces a state of war, and is aggressor in it (sections 16-18).

In brief, anyone who would put me in his absolute power, for example at the point of a gun, should be assumed for the sake of one's self-preservation to have murderous intent. And so, being for the moment beyond the protective reach of the civil authorities, anyone in that situation has the moral right to protect himself with deadly force. Even viewing the matter from within a Christian moral framework, I am under no obligation to prefer the life of a murderous aggressor to my own or to that of my family or employees or, for that matter, any innocent person I find being threatened in that way.

This is the thinking of one local observer who was interviewed for the report: “If I were him, I would kill a dozen of them,” he said. “You have to protect your workers and your family. Case closed.”

The good sense of this statement is intuitively obvious. It follows that if people have the right to exercise that freedom, they should have the freedom to obtain the means to it, i.e., to own a gun. It follows in addition that training people in the proper use of fireams, so that in the event they should have to defend themselves they can do it responsibly and safely, is a public good. Instead of teaching children how to use condoms in order to make what some regard as inevitable teenaged sexual activity safer, the public schools (if we are to have public schools) should be training children in the use of firearms the same way they offer driver's education.

Our Bodies, Ourselves

In that 1970's tract of feminist political thought masquerading as a medical self help book, women were encouraged to regard their bodies as the battleground where the forces of reaction--the Establishment patriarchy grounded in Christianity and capitalism, warred against the progressive, enlightened socialism of the New Left. The same seminal, revolutionary moment brought the slogan that helped collapse the important distinction between what is private and what is public, and what is the legitimate extent of government control and intrusion into private lives: The personal is the political. The Supreme Court almost at the same time famously derived a right to privacy from the "emanations of penumbras" of certain of the articles of the Bill of Rights which finds a right to privacy, and which disallows states from legislating restrictions on abortion, validating in one way the right of a woman to her own body (skipping over of course the baby's right to hers--that, apparently was an emanation not appearing in the particular penumbra examined by Justice Douglas.)

It is interesting then to find that same tender concern for the privacy rights of individual bodies kicked to the curb deep in the legalese of the House bill conjuring universal, affordable, non-budget busting health care for all God's children. The bill contemplates boards of experts to advise--no, rule on--both what treatments are necessary and feasible, and which citizens are worth spending the republic's limited treasury on. (Funny--for other purposes, the Treasury is always unlimited--no end to the Blue Sky projecting for the goodness of what the Congressional shepherds intend for its little flock, or what the Congress spends on itself.)

The Congress' insistence on making government the provider of health services forces the logic of the distortion of the public/private distinction to its ugly end: your body is not your own, if the government is paying for its upkeep. It's hard to think of a deeper intrusion into private right than the loss of control over one's own health and life, because, well, there isn't one.

Our Bodies, Our Selves co-author (there were twelve) Nancy Miriam Hawley said of writing the book that "We weren't encouraged to ask questions, but to depend on the so-called experts. Not having a say in our own health care frustrated and angered us. We didn't have the information we needed, so we decided to find it on our own." This laudable, and I should say, quintessentially American attitude, helped foster a take-it-back kind of can-doism recognizable in many aspects as what makes America great and exceptional. And of course that is exactly what is under attack in so much of the legislation of this radical left Congress, unleashed under the aegis of the age of Obama.

It occurs to me that this is not merely an assault on the Constitution and way of life of these United States, a solemnly constituted people, although that is serious enough. It goes beyond the Constitution and self understanding of the people of the United States as encoded in our official public documents, all the way to the natural rights philosophy that grounds the constitution and that self understanding itself. It undercuts the first principle of freedom, articulated most famously by John Locke in his theory of labor, property, and freedom. A person has a natural right to what will sustain his life because he owns his body, his self. He has absolute dominion (humanly speaking), and property in, his own person and body. All property right, and all right whatever, follows from that fact. Personal freedom, personal property, constitutional government by consent, and the rule of law all begin in this natural right to one's own self. This is the basis for the well known triad of Lockean natural rights in the Declaration, of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (or property, as Locke has it).

The intrusion into what one may do with one's body, is, like the intrusion into what one may do with one's property, fraught. There is some State interest in restricting property rights in the interest of the greater public good. Pig farms, abattoirs, and salvage yards are not permitted in residential neighborhoods. Likewise, ingestion of narcotic drugs is restricted because of the danger to the public from people out of their minds on them. To the extent that your personal actions or the property that you control is a threat to the health, safety, or welfare of other equally endowed rights-holders--that is to say, every other person, it falls within the province of the public legislation to limit it. Against such legislation seen to exceed these limits, the Supreme Court has established a benchmark which must be met or overcome--strict scrutiny. The Court will apply strict scrutiny to any law thought to impose an undue burden on any fundamental right, or thought to bring invidious discrimination to groups or individuals based on race, sex, religion, and a growing list of things. The restrictions on abortion that Roe swept away were thought to impinge just such a fundamental right--the right of a woman to choose whether or not to carry a baby to term, not withstanding the state's interest in the protection of life and the interest in the ongoing generation of citizens.

Yet now we begin to see legislation restricting what we consume, starting with trans-fats and tobacco. Sugar, alcohol, and non-organic milk are soon to follow. If Congress is paying for our health care, they will certainly not blanch at serving up as laws and regulations all kinds of good ideas about how we should live. (For a fuller discussion, go here) The property we have in our bodies--literally, what is proper to us, and us alone--is, under the health care monstrosity being considered, about to be taken, in much the same way as real property is taken, via something like eminent domain. The government in such cases abrogates personal property rights in favor of a public good--new highway or sewer line needs to run through your yard, so out you go--thanks for playing.

This seems to be what is in prospect for our most personal property, our bodies. We will have restrictions on choice of procedure and drug regimen based on what an expert panel decides is right (read cheapest) for situations like ours--not even a revue of the actual case at hand, just categories of cases, rated first and foremost by age and ability to contribute. Anyone recall just now the Nazi propaganda initiative against the "useless feeders"--disabled, retarded, insane, aged, etc? Anyone not full of Aryan health and vigor was given the heave-ho. But that's really unfair isn't it, to bring in all those Nazi comparisons. Although they didn't cotton to any natural rights either did they? Everyone created equal? Capable of self government? Government by consent? Freedom for self-actualization? I can hear Hermann Goering cocking his pistol at the very sound of those ideas.

The natural right basis of our Constitution is to be overthrown to accommodate the State's spurious interest in equalizing health outcomes. We will all be made miserable at the same rate by government employees masquerading as health professionals who give a damn. Oh, except for Congress. And their staffs of thousands. And the entire federal workforce. And Hollywood and Silicon Valley elites. And all unionized workers. (want to rethink that offer of union representation at your workplace now?) All the rest of us will queue up and wait for whatever rationed bit of drug therapy or surgical expertise is left over, and our right of personal decision over what is most personally proper to us, our bodies, will have been taken under something very much like the doctrine of eminent domain, where the State's interests supersedes our own.

Makes you wish for the timely publication of a good feminist tract regarding personal body decisions and our right to make them. Oh wait--they've got their abortions paid for in this thing, so we won't be hearing any objections from them this time about "experts" or patriarchal intrusion into personal lives.

If only we had a Court that could look for some more penumbral eminations...

Remind Them Who They Work For

I'm going to Morristown NJ today to join the grass roots tax protest that Rick Santelli got started back in February with his on air rant about intrusive government. I hope all of you reading this will join us for tea somewhere in a village green near you. This could be the beginning of wresting back some modicum of control for the people of whom, by whom, and for whom our government theoretically exists. Theoretically I say; it is beginning to feel like a cruel joke to speak of a free, elective government, instituted and controlled by the people whose consent alone to be governed makes that governing legitimate. We have already had a revolution of sorts, a decades-long, slow-motion blanketing of our established rights and freedoms by the blob of big government bureaucracy and the machinations of petty tyrants on the make.

John Locke had a revolutionary thought: when the controversy between a government and the people erupts over infringement of right and law-abidingness, it is the legislative that is in rebellion, not the people.

"[W]hen they, who were set up for the protection, and preservation of the People, their liberties and Properties, shall by force invade, and endeavor to take them away; and so putting themselves into a state of war with those, who made them the Protectors and Guardians of their Peace, are properly, and with the greatest aggravation, Rebellantes, Rebels." (sec 227)

And if, he goes on to say, someone should think that a doctrine of resistance to such tyranny is not to be allowed, "they may as well say upon the same ground, that honest men may not oppose robbers and pirates, because this may occasion disorder or bloodshed. If any mischief come in such cases, it is not to be charged upon him, who defends his own right, but on him that invades his neighbors." (sec 228)

Do they really want to press this rebellion against us any longer?

Wealth Creation and Public Policy

One of the defining questions for thoughtful and morally serious human beings pertains to material prosperity: "How is wealth created?" How does a people lift itself out of poverty into widely enjoyed abundance? This question of not-mere-academic debate between American liberals and conservatives. Thus, we are asking how best to respond to this recession that is bordering on a depression. President Obama talks about the wealth creative capacity of the private sector, but he throws trillions of borrowed, government dollars into spending on just whatever Congressmen pull off their wish lists, as well as a some sensibly targeted investments in infrastructure, and the like.

Yesterday at The King's College, David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values hosted Cornell economist and New York Times contributor Robert H. Frank and Time magazine columnist Justin Fox in a discussion of the paradox of thrift. Prof. Frank defended the President's stimulus spending, saying that if we are going to borrow money in order to spend more to create demand for production, it makes more sense for the government to borrow at 3% than for private citizens to borrow at 22% on their credit cards--as though those were the only two alternatives. He also contrasted government spending on projects like bridges and tunnels that facilitate commerce and prevent death by bridge collapse which passes all sorts of costs on to the rest of us over against private spending on silly consumables. (He did mention comparable investments that individuals could make, but of course at a much higher rate of interest.)

The problem that some in attendance pointed out is that when given the go ahead to spend, government directs the spending largely in ways that are politically advantageous to officeholders, not economically advantageous to the country as a whole. Furthermore, once given the green light for a prudent burst of public spending, government just keeps going and going. A businessman in the audience suggested somehow arranging a 4% interest rate for mortgages so people could refinance their homes, and spend the resulting income that it would free up on whatever they see fit. Business would boom. Government revenues would rise. Et cetera.

This is why economists are not the most trusted profession. They are not the scientists they boast of being. On this point, read Harvey Mansfield's recent article, "A Question for the Economists" (Apr. 13, 2009, The Weekly Standard).

Mary Anastasia O'Grady recently entertained this question of wealth creation and general prosperity in relation to Latin America with foreign aid in mind "Aid Keep Latin America Poor," Wall Street Journal, Apr. 9, 2009). Among other sources of wisdom on the subject, including Lord Peter Bauer, she cites Alvaro Vargas Llosa's Lessons From the Poor: The Triumph of the Entrepreneurial Spirit (Independent Institute, 2008):

"The decisive element" in bringing a society out of poverty is "the development of the entrepreneurial reserves that exist in its men and women," Mr. Vargas Llosa writes. "The institutions that grant more freedom to their citizens and more security to their citizens' possessions are those that best facilitate the accumulation of wealth."

In an earlier post on development in Africa, I cited John Locke whom I will cite again. In his great Second Treatise on Civil Government (section 42), Locke appeals to the shrewdness of every ruler, saying:

This shews how much numbers of men are to be preferred to largeness of dominions; and that the increase of lands, and the right employing of them, is the great art of government: and that prince, who shall be so wise and godlike, as by established laws of liberty to secure protection and encouragement to the honest industry of mankind, against the oppression of power and narrowness of party, will quickly be too hard for his neighbours.

The lessons concerning "established laws of liberty" and the encouragement of the "honest industry of mankind" is a lesson that is continually in need of review, whether you are President of these prosperous United States or a South American oligarch.

Too Cool For Rule

These annual economic meetings of international groups such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the G20 are now well established holidays for the world wide coalition of free lance protesters, thrashers for hire, soccer hooligans, the permanently unemployed, larking college students, Euro trash, and professional anarchists that have become a reliable part of the festivities. In prior centuries these same types would have been on pilgrimage to some holy site or on some crusade or other. True believers, in Eric Hoffer's taxonomy.

But actually, these people seem to be several intellectual and moral rungs lower than the people Hoffer analysed, or for that matter, most of the simple medieval souls hoping to cleanse themselves of guilt by trudging cross country to adore some relic or attempting to repulse the Turk. For what animates these latter day believers is actually anti-belief or nihilism. The activists among them, as opposed to those showing up mainly to show off on twitter, are self-acknowledged anarchists, who claim to deny all authority and structure of any kind. This is the very definition of "idiot", as its Greek root, idios, indicates. An idios is a person unable--to be unwilling would have been unthinkable to a Greek--to participate in the political order. Anarchy, as the alpha privitive, a, and arche, rule, indicate in the Greek, is "no rule."

For events limited in time, "anarchy" suits as a descriptor well enough. But masquerading as a political philosophy it is closer to a bad joke. Only for a pampered, self absorbed, narcissistic generation well enough off to travel the continent chasing these events could it pass for a political stance. These are people who have known very little of the suffering this world is capable of dispensing--they are naifs, despite their self image as sophisticates or cosmopolites.

Take for instance this example of a policy idea flowing from anarchism. Abolish money. I wonder how long the committee worked on that one. Oh, wait. There are no committees in anarchism--no structure or authority, remember? Must have been a lone wolf, working under his own authority. But the idea certainly caught on, as the crowd was heard chanting it as one of their main suggestions to the gathered dignitaries and functionaries of the world's top governments. (Bank of London employees were seen taunting them with 10 pound notes out the windows). It might be that the Pauline remonstrance on the love of money being the root of evil lingers on as a sort of race memory, the dying echo of a culturally Christian Europe; more likely it is what passes for thought among thoughtless people.

I will grant them this however: the notion of no money is consistent with anarchism. What these lunatics are actually demanding without knowing it is a return to the state of nature, that pre-political state of affairs where each man fends for himself because there is no organized political order. Thoughtful people, when they speculate about such a time, realize with Locke that there could have been no considerable amount time spent that way because of the danger from men unrestrained by law or force. Hobbes' famous description captures it best--the life of man in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Every man realizes that alone he is at his most vulnerable; association and cooperation is the only way to survive. Locke has the invention of money coming just prior to the invention of government in his rational reconstruction of pre-history because he knew the invention of money was a social necessity, and does not need government planning to implement. So, even if a non-political or apolitical state of affairs could be imagined, money in some form would still be necessary in order to prevent the solitary and poor scenario. Most of what is necessary to bare existence is of short duration and, unless you live on a tropical island paradise, is difficult to obtain. The idea of exchange, the division of labor, and some medium to facilitate exchange are the first ideas to raise men from the Hobbesian nightmare of the bellum omnium contra omnes--the war of all against all--and into primitive pre-political cooperatives of the sort these Euro slackers seem to have in mind. But even the Stonehenge builders, whom many of these revelers surely worship, knew anarchism of the sort contemplated here was out of the question, and most certainly had some concept of money equal to their astronomy and engineering prowess.

Maybe the lingering race memory guiding our little tantrum-throwers is not of St Paul but of St Marx, he of the withering away of the state, and of changed human nature that makes it possible

"to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming a hunter, a fisherman, shepherd, or critic." (from The German Ideology.)

Or without ever growing up either. This is the fantasy world where everyone produces according to his ability, and consumes according to his need. And all of it done without the greed and inhumanity of capitalists or money. John Maynard Keynes was right; every age is ruled by some long dead economist or philosopher.

Why couldn't ours be Adam Smith instead of Karl Marx?

Killing the Economy With Good Intentions

The Constitution should require entrance exams for elected public office. Too many Congressmen, for example, do not understand the basics of economics, and yet they throw themselves into "fixing" the economy or using economic policy to remedy what they see as social ills.

One basic principle of economics and of public policy is the so-called law of unintended consequences. Rob Norton, former economics editor at Fortune magazine, explains it this way:

The law of unintended consequences, often cited but rarely defined, is that actions of people—and especially of government—always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended. Economists and other social scientists have heeded its power for centuries; for just as long, politicians and popular opinion have largely ignored it. …

Most often, however, the law of unintended consequences illuminates the perverse unanticipated effects of legislation and regulation. In 1692 the English philosopher John Locke, a forerunner of modern
economists, urged the defeat of a parliamentary bill designed to cut the maximum permissible rate of interest from 6 percent to 4 percent. Locke argued that instead of benefiting borrowers, as intended, it would hurt them. People would find ways to circumvent the law, with the costs of circumvention borne by borrowers. To the extent the law was obeyed, Locke concluded, the chief results would be less available credit and a redistribution of income away from “widows, orphans and all those who have their estates in money.” (Concise Encyclopedia of Economics)

We have seen this in the current housing/credit/economy crisis. Well meaning Democrats pressured Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and banks in general to make housing loans to poor people who could not afford houses. Banks developed loan products that in turn attracted people of all sorts to purchase them. What we are now calling "toxic loans" flooded the system. Housing demand shot up, and then home prices followed, creating a price bubble. When the bubble burst, as inevitably it had to, the collapse was systemic and catastrophic. Here we are. Good intentions. Bad policy. Unintended consequences.

Iowahawk's adaptation of Margaret Bourke-White's 1937 original

It's the poor who pay the price for ill-advised government "help"

A "must read" on this subject is The Economist's View of the World by Steven Rhoads (Cambridge, 1985). This University of Virginia professor explains what basic economic concepts people people need to understand in order to be effective public servants in the modern world. He then brings political wisdom to economics, explaining how a fuller, political perspective needs to supplement the economist's understanding of human affairs.

Saddleback Aftermath

Kathleen Parker, reflecting on Rick Warren's much-ballyhoo'd Civil Forum, has decided, at the risk of heresy, that it is not good for America that a minister of a church should shoulder his way onto the national political stage. Though I disagree with her in general, she does draw attention to one of the central conceptual tensions running through the American Founding.

Two major streams of influence feed into the mighty river that America has become, and the currents from these two streams rarely flow in the same direction or at the same velocity, which makes for some of the whirlpools, eddys, and white water rapids that periodically characterize our political culture. The Judeo-Christian patrimony of the Reformation is one stream; the rationalist Enlightenment enthronement of Reason is the other. We can never forget--though many folks are now working to obliterate the memory--that America was a haven for Christians considered religious troublemakers by the Anglican establishment in England. The Pilgrims themselves intended to set up a shining city on a hill, and finally get the balance right between church and state. They didn't get it right; but they, and the waves of English settlers coming after, knew instinctively and experimentally that natural law, whether informed more by St Paul's epistle to the Romans, or by John Locke's rationalist paean to "reason, our only star and compass", is the only sure basis for a free government of morally equal individuals. We don't create ourselves, but we do create our government. The first fact informs and limits the second. Throw out the first, and the second consumes human dignity and liberty. This much I think was understood by earlier generations without having to be stated.


This assumption, that natural right flowing from natural law is the ground of political liberty, is now hotly debated, and the default position among the Illuminati and cognoscenti is that religion, if it must exist at all, is entirely and properly a personal matter. In a secular culture--and how can a modern nation have anything other than a secular culture?--faith must not be allowed into the public square. Too metaphysical. Not scientific. And so eighteenth century. Besides, the political technologists over at the English department of your local university, having applied "deconstruction", the ultimate ideological solvent, have deconstructed everything from human nature, natural law, and even the human person, to race, class, and gender and have found that old Thomas Hobbes had it substantially right--that "the general inclination of all mankind, is [a] perpetual and restless desire for power after power, that ceaseth only in death." Every action, every thought, every intended purpose is but a stratagem for hegemony and domination in the minds of our postmodern guides.


Religion is then just another mask for the Hobbesian desire for power. Faith then, in the political arena, is much to be feared. Any metaphysics or religion is, ipso facto, fraudulent--only a mask for power seeking oppressors

Ms Parker does not, in the piece linked above, plumb the philosophical roots of her unease with religion in American politics. But she does consider the spectacle of a Protestant minister holding a political forum to be a dangerous incursion on the establishment clause of the constitution. And what, she wonders, is the real value of knowing the candidates' personal religious views? From her article:


Both Obama and McCain gave "good" answers, but that's not the point. They shouldn't have been asked. Is the American electorate now better prepared to cast votes knowing that Obama believes that "Jesus Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him," or that McCain feels that he is "saved and forgiven"?
What does that mean, anyway? What does it prove? Nothing except that these men are willing to say whatever they must -- and what most Americans personally feel is no one's business -- to win the highest office.


One can appreciate the cynicism--and wisdom through experience--shown in those sentences. But what cultural expression or political stance has not been used cynically by ambitious politicians? And what era exactly would it be where politicians were not seeking power after power, assuming along the way whatever mask necessary? Parker cites Thomas Jefferson, the leading spokesman among the Founding generation for Enlightenment rationalism, on the proper attitude toward religious belief:


"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."


But Jefferson assumed that his Rationalist Deism would not only hold, but develop into an even stronger ground for a free and virtuous society, a position we now know to be untenable. In quoting Jefferson here, Parker subtly points to the charge that religious nuts are bent on establishing a theocracy in America by destroying the sacred separation of church and state, and are therefore the ones who threaten the Founding Father's understanding of America.

Parker is agitated by all this because she knows nothing of Redemption through faith, denies that a politician making a claim of faith can be genuine, or that information concerning a candidate's faith can add anything to the national conversation; denies that religion, in short, has a place at all in our political life. But as the Pilgrims' attempt at achieving the right balance between church and state failed, and as the 18th century Enlightenment project of sweeping away religion failed, so too will resurgent atheism's antipathy toward Christianity fail to remove faith from the political consciousness of the American people.

Besides--Rick Warren would probably never have stepped up to put on this affair if the Fourth Estate had not ceded its august--and constitutionally protected--responsibilities. It was into a giant journalistic and media vacuum that Warren stepped. The political culture is surely better because of it, Kathleen Parker to the contrary notwithstanding.