Solitude

It’s a necessary condition of a happy life.

William Vallicella praises solitude of the kind enjoyed by introverts. (Introversion is at least one trait that we share.*) Vallicella ends by quoting Albert Einstein:

The introvert comes most fully into his own and most deeply savors his psychological good fortune in old age, as Albert Einstein attests in “Self-Portrait” in Out of My Later Years (Citadel Press, 1956), p. 5: “. . . For the most part I do the thing which my own nature drives me to do. It is embarrassing to earn so much respect and love for it. Arrows of hate have been shot at me too; but they never hit me, because somehow they belonged to another world, with which I have no connection whatsoever. I live in that solitude [emphasis added by LV] which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.”

Solitude doesn’t just mean being alone. An introvert can be alone, mentally, in a crowd. But being alone, physically (away from the madding crowd), makes it easier to marshal one’s mental resources and thus to cope with the world, and even to improve it.

Anthony Storr captures this state of mind in Solitude: A Return to the Self. Storr, in the book’s final paragraphs, summarizes his themes and conclusions:

This book began with the observation that many highly creative people were predominantly solitary, but that it was nonsense to suppose that, because of this, they were necessarily unhapppy or neurotic. Although man is a social being, who certainly needs interaction with others, there is considerable variation in the depth of the relationships which individuals form with each other. All human beings need interests as well as relationships; all are geared toward the impersonal as well as toward the personal….
The capacity to be alone was adumbrated as a valuable resource, which facilitated learning, thinking, innovation, coming to terms with change, and the maintenance of contact with the inner world of the imagination. We saw that, even in those whose capacity for making intimate relationships has been damaged, the development of creative imagination could exercise a healing function…. Man’s adaptation to the world is largely governed by the development of the imagination and hence of an inner world of the psyche which is necessarily at variance with the external world…. Throughout the book, it was noted that some of the most profound and healing psychological experiences which individuals encounter take place internally, and are only distantly related, if at all, to interaction with other human beings….
The epigraph of this chapter is taken from The Prelude. It is fitting that Wordsworth should also provide its end.

When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.

These are especially trying times for those who thrive on solitude. Aldous Huxley says this in The Perennial Philosophy:

The twentieth century is, among other things, the Age of Noise. Physical noise, mental noise and noise of desire — we hold history’s record for all of them. And no wonder; for all the resources of our almost miraculous technology have been thrown into the current assault against silence. That most popular and influential of all recent inventions, the radio, is nothing but a conduit through which pre-fabricated din can flow into our homes. And this din goes far deeper, of course, than the ear-drums. It penetrates the mind, filling it with a babel of distractions – news items, mutually irrelevant bits of information, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, continually repeated doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but merely create a craving for daily or even hourly emotional enemas. And where, as in most countries, the broadcasting stations support themselves by selling time to advertisers, the noise is carried from the ears, through the realms of phantasy, knowledge and feeling to the ego’s central core of wish and desire.

Mr. Huxley would hate the twenty-first century. The noise is beyond deafening. And it’s everywhere: beeping cell phones; loud one-sided conversations into cell phones; talking automobiles; ear-shattering “music” blasting from nearby automobiles, stadium loudspeakers, computers, TVs, and (yes) radios; screeching MoTown (or whatever it’s now called) blasting away in grocery stores (at the request of employees, I suspect); movie soundtracks worthy of the Siege of Stalingrad; and on and on.

Sound has become a substitute for the absorption and processing of information, that is, for thought. The decades-long crescendo in the West’s sound track lends support to the hypothesis that intelligence is on the decline.

And the decline is evident in more than noise. That so much time is wasted on dreck — often whole lifetimes — is a greater tragedy than the inevitable death of any particular artist, writer, or thinker. Equally tragic is the rejection of civilizing traditions, which are also sublime products of the human mind. Thus:

I hate modern art that swaps form for dead sharks; and modern music that exchanges harmony for noise…. I hate religious leaders who think that God is found “in the spaces” and that worship is therapy. I hate our pornographic culture, our tasteless battery foods, and our TV that treats adults like children and children like adults. I hate our obsession with irony, as if a shrug of the shoulders is cleverer than serious inquiry. I hate the death of chivalry, manners and the doffed hats. I hate our promotion of sex over romance – today’s Brief Encounters are very different things. I hate the eradication of guilt and shame, very useful concepts that hold us back from indulgence. [Tim Stanley, “Conservatives: Don’t Despair of Our Corrupt, Decadent Age. Write about It”, The Telegraph, August 2, 2013]

Life needn’t be like that. When all else fails, one can take refuge in one’s own mind, where beauty dwells — if one has cultivated a mind that is immune to the slings and arrows of this outrageous world.

* I am an INTJ, and especially strong in the I, T, and J dimensions. Here are my scores on the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS) (as of 02/16/17), which is similar to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The descriptive excerpts are from David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates’s Please Understand Me.

EXTRAVERSION 0 – INTROVERSION 10

The person who chooses people as a source of energy probably prefers extraversion, while the person who prefers solitude to recover energy may tend toward introversion.

SENSATION 8 – INTUITION 12

The person who has a natural preference for sensation probably describes himself first as practical, while the person who has a natural preference for intuition probably chooses to describe himself as innovative.

THINKING 20 – FEELING 0

Persons who choose the impersonal basis of choice are called the thinking types by Jung. Persons who choose the personal basis are called the feeling types…. The more extreme feeling types are a bit put off by rule-governed choice, regarding the act of being impersonal as almost inhuman. The more dedicated thinking types, on the other hand, sometimes look upon the emotion-laden decisions and choices as muddle-headed.

JUDGING 19 – PERCEIVING 1

Persons who choose closure over open options are likely to be the judging types. Persons preferring to keep things open and fluid are probably the perceiving types. The J is apt to report a sense of urgency until he has made a pending decision, and then he can be at rest once the decision has been made. The F person, in contrast, is more apt to experience resistance to making a decision, wishing that more data could be accumulated as the basis for the decision. As a result, when a P person makes a decision, he may have a feeling of uneasiness and restlessness, while the J person, in the same situation, may have a feeling of ease and satisfaction.
Js tend to establish deadlines and take them seriously, expecting others to do the same. Ps may tend more to look upon deadlines as mere alarm clocks which buzz at a given time, easily turned off or ignored while one catch an extra forty winks, almost as if the deadline were used more as a signal to start than to complete a project.

It is said that INTJs are type-proud. The reasons for that are evident in the foregoing passages.

A Moralist's Moral Blindness

The apotheosis of irrational rationality.

It’s time to revisit Bryan Caplan, a first-rate economist whose ventures into other fields usually discredit him.

In this episode, I reach back to 2010, when Caplan restated his version of the Golden Rule, which is that “we” ought to be treated just as “we” would treat others. (My take on Caplan’s earlier post is here.) Much as I like the Golden Rule, for its civilizing influence on humans, I am not a simple-minded moralist like Caplan and other libertarian purists.

Caplan objects to the “double standard” by which Americans, for example, would praise the killing of enemy civilians, were it a necessary act of war, but condemn the killing of 3,000 Americans by an enemy who proclaims his act necessary in the service of some objective. I wonder if Caplan would object to the “double standard” when faced with the prospect of his children being among the 3,000 Americans killed.

The Golden Rule also is known as the ethic of reciprocity, and for a good reason. For the Golden Rule to operate effectively, it must be accompanied by a reasonable expectation that your mundane acts of self-restraint and helpfulness will be returned in kind by persons whose lives touch yours, or with whom you share a bond of kinship or culture.

The Golden Rule simply doesn’t operate very well across the boundaries of family, friendship, and culture, Caplan’s wishful thinking to the contrary nothwithstanding. (Consider, for example, the rudeness that often prevails in anonymous encounters over the internet and on the highway.) And there is no inherent reason that the Golden Rule should operate well across those boundaries, just because Caplan (or any other intellectual) asserts that it should. Who died and left him (and his ilk) in charge?

There are other moral considerations at work, aside from reciprocity. One of them, which I discuss here, is the ethic of mutual defense:

[W]ho better to help you defend yourself than the people with whom you share space, be it a neighborhood, a city-state, a principality, or even a vast nation? As a member of one or the other, you may be targeted for harm by outsiders who wish to seize your land and control your wealth, or who simply dislike your way of life, even if it does them no harm.

If, like Caplan, you’re willing to allow an enemy to obliterate some of your fellow citizens because you have obliterated some enemy citizens, you are not to be trusted. You might as well be an enemy.

More generally, Caplan’s moral blindness betrays his Rationalism. As Michael Oakeshott explains,

the Rationalist never doubts the power of his ‘reason … to determine the worth of a thing, the truth of an opinion or the propriety of an action. Moreover, he is fortified by a belief in a ‘reason’ common to all mankind, a common power of rational consideration….
… And having cut himself off from the traditional knowledge of his society, and denied the value of any education more extensive than a training in a technique of analysis, he is apt to attribute to mankind a necessary inexperience in all the critical moments of life, and if he were more self-critical he might begin to wonder how the race had ever succeeded in surviving. (“Rationalism in Politics,” pp. 5-7, as republished in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays)

Thomas Sowell puts it this way:

One of the things intellectuals [his Rationalists] have been doing for a long time is loosening the bonds that hold a society [or a nation] together. They have sought to replace the groups into which people have sorted themselves with groupings created and imposed by the intelligentsia. Ties of family, religion, and patriotism, for example, have long been treated as suspect or detrimental by the intelligentsia….
Under the influence of the intelligentsia, we have become a society that rewards people with admiration for violating its own norms and for fragmenting that society into jarring segments. In addition to explicit denigrations of their own society for its history or current shortcomings, intellectuals often set up standards for their society which no society has ever met or is likely to meet.
Calling those standards “social justice” enables intellectuals to engage in endless complaints about the particular ways in which society fails to meet their arbitrary criteria, along with a parade of groups entitled to a sense of grievance, exemplified in the “race, class and gender” formula…. (Intellectuals and Society, pp. 303, 305)

Sowell’s attack is aimed at left-wing intellectuals, but it could just as well be aimed at libertarian purists like Caplan and his ilk.

Other about “Famous and Infamous Thinkers” can be found by going here and scrolling to that category.

A Platform to Stand On

I have no quibble with Christopher DeMuth.

Arnold Kling is somewhat dismissive of Christopher DeMuth’s (paywalled) proclamation in The Wall Street Journal:

The essential purpose of modern American conservatism is to conserve the American nation. My program for doing so would be in part antiprogressive. It would re-establish national borders, reduce our million annual illegal entries to zero, and calibrate lawful immigration to the needs of cultural assimilation, social harmony and economic growth. It would abolish all official racial and other group preferences, quotas and gerrymanders. It would liberate the energy sector.

My program would also address causes of national disorder in which conservative politicians have been fully complicit. This would include returning to a balanced federal budget outside of wars and other emergencies; redirecting federal spending from personal entitlements and income transfers to public goods such as national defense and infrastructure; withdrawing the collective-bargaining privileges of public-employee unions; and instituting stable currency—not 5% inflation, not today’s official goal of 2% that quintuples prices in a lifetime, but zero.

And it would include not only the historical tried-and-true but also modern innovations. These include universal school choice and initiatives to mobilize science and enterprise to dominate China in advanced computation, communication and weaponry and to repatriate production of national essentials such as pharmaceuticals.

Kling says,

DeMuth’s ideas seem to me to fall somewhere between Trumpism and the establishment. He used to head up the American Enterprise Institute.

The first and second paragraphs in the quotation from DeMuth strike me as old-fashioned Republicanism of the Goldwater-Reagan variety. There’s nothing “establishment” (i.e., “bipartisan”) about any of it. To the extent it’s “Trumpist”, that means “Trumpism” isn’t just baloney.

I’d want to think harder about the implications of the third paragraph. If DeMuth means that government should throw money at certain outcomes, I’d demur. But if he means that government should back off in certain areas and let market outcomes dictate, I’d approve. But I will say that I’m entirely sympathetic to the repatriation of the production of national essentials — including but not limited to the production of fossil fuels and steel.

Good-bye Mr. Pitts

Another infamous thinker to deride.

This is an old (2009) but still-relevant post about the still-irrelevant Leonard Pitts Jr., a syndicated columnist whose offerings I used to read (occasionally) in The Washington Post. This masochistic practice served two purposes. First, it exercised my cardiovascular system (i.e., raised my heart rate and blood pressure). Second, it helped me to keep up with what passes for wisdom among the race-card-playing set.

Mr. Pitts, who is a syndicated columnist operating out of The Miami Herald, comes by his race-card-playing naturally, as a black and — given his age (b. 1957) — a likely beneficiary of reverse discrimination (a.k.a. affirmative action). I should note that Pitts plays the race-card game clumsily, probably because his mental warehouse is stocked with gross generalizations and logical fallacies.

I was provoked to write this post by a Pitts column, to which I will come, where (in passing) he defended the socialization of medicine because other things also have been socialized. By that logic, Pitts would excuse the murder of his wife because millions of murders already have been committed.

* * *

I begin my sampling of Pitts’s pathetic prose with “We’ll go forward from this moment”, of September 12, 2001 (a reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001):

Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but a family nonetheless.

No, “we” (the citizens of the United States) are most decidedly not a family, not even a feuding one. If there ever was anything like an American “family,” it existed in the years just after Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japanese forces. The degree of unity and resolve in the America of 1942-45 makes a mockery of the years following September 2001, during which disunity and irresolution became the standard pose of the media, academia, the Democrat Party, more than a few Republican “moderates,” many isolationist paleo-conservatives, and most libertarians.

Americans, now more than ever, are members of millions of separate families, churches, clubs, neighborhoods, work groups, etc. If there is anything shared by a majority of Americans, it is a taste for food in large quantities, vulgar entertainment, and a chance to feed at the public trough at the expense of other Americans.

The most notable schism in American life is one that has arisen since the onset of the Great Depression. It has come to this: Americans are deeply divided (though not evenly divided) about the rightful power of government in foreign and domestic affairs. There are three main camps. The largest favors surrender abroad and statism at home; the smallest favors surrender abroad and anarchy at home; the one to which I belong favors the full exercise of American might in defense of Americans’ legitimate overseas interest, together with a limited government devoted mainly to the protection of Americans from domestic predators and parasite.

It is obvious in what I have just said that Americans today do not even share a tradition of liberty, which has long vanished from the land. Because of this loss of liberty, Americans have become something less than citizens with a common birthright and something more like hostages in their own land, with little voice and almost no opportunity for exit. Many (perhaps most) Americans like it that way, many others don’t understand what has been lost to them, and some (too few) understand it all too painfully. Pitts and his ilk like it that way because they are in thrall to special-interest politics and cannot see how those politics have abetted our downward spiral into political bondage, social license, and weakness in the face of our foreign and domestic enemies.

* * *

Jumping to September 29, 2003, I find “Faithful often give religion a bad name”, in which Pitts proffers this:

People are always pleased to indulge their religiosity when it allows them to stand in judgment of someone else, licenses them to feel superior to someone else, tells them they are more righteous than someone else.
They are less enthusiastic when religiosity demands that they be compassionate to someone else. That they show charity, service and mercy to everyone else.
Consider that last month thousands of people wept on the steps of an Alabama courthouse in support of a rock bearing the Ten Commandments. And watching, you wondered: What hungry person gets fed because of this? What naked person is clothed, what homeless one housed?
It seemed a fresh reminder that religious people are often the poorest advertisement for religious life.
How much more convincing an advertisement, how much more compelling a testimony, if people of faith were more often caught by news cameras demonstrating against healthcare cuts that fill our streets with the homeless mentally ill. Or confronting the slumlord about the vermin-infested holes he offers as places for families to live. Or crusading to make the sweatshop owner pay a living wage to workers who are treated little better than slaves.

From what well of knowledge does Pitts draw his assertions that people are always pleased to indulge their religiosity when they can stand in judgment of others, but are less enthusiastic when compassion is in order? Does Pitts even know, let alone care, that residents of “Red” States — where religious fundamentalism is more prevalent — are much more generous in their charitable giving than residents of “Blue” States — where secular Europeanism is the norm?

And what about those persons who “wept on the steps of an Alabama courthouse in support of a rock bearing the Ten Commandments”? What is wrong with protesting the further distancing of government from morality? I suspect that Pitts doesn’t want public officials to be reminded of the Ten Commandments because one of them says “You shall not steal” — and that is precisely what government does when it taxes and regulates Americans toward poverty, often in the name of “compassion”.

And why would it be a compelling testimony for religion if “people of faith” were more often seen demonstrating against budget cuts that fill our streets with the homeless mentally ill, or confronting slumlords about vermin-infested holes, or crusading to make sweatshop owners pay a “living wage to workers”? Pitts can offer such advice only because he doesn’t understand or care about the implications of such actions: Higher taxes for hard-working families; more homeless persons as landlords raise rents to defray the costs of improving their properties; more starving poor, as “sweatshop” owners find new locales in which to recruit willing workers who have less exalted ideas than Pitts about what constitutes a “living wage”.

Pitts reveals himself as an ignoramus or a hypocrite — probably both — who is simply pleased to indulge his moral outrage when it allows him to stand in judgment of others.

* * *

Less than a month later (October 20, 2003) Pitts opined that “Race has always benefited whites“; to wit:

As a reader who chose to remain nameless put it, many people wonder if a given black professional “is there because of his/her skills and abilities, or because of affirmative action. Unfortunately, affirmative action policies leave many unanswered questions about a black person’s education and training, as well as skills and abilities. . . . How do we answer these questions?”
I will try my best to answer them with a straight face. It’s going to be difficult.
Because there’s an elephant in this room, isn’t there? It’s huge and noisy and rather smelly, yet none of these good people sees it. The elephant is this simple fact:
White men are the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action this country has ever seen.
That’s not rhetoric or metaphor. It’s only truth.
THE NATION’S CUSTOM
If affirmative action is defined as giving someone an extra boost based on race, it’s hard to see how anyone can argue the point. Slots for academic admission, for employment and promotion, for bank loans and for public office have routinely been set aside for white men. This has always been the nation’s custom. Until the 1960s, it was also the nation’s law. . . .
My correspondents feel they should not be asked to respect the skill or abilities of a black professional who may or may not have benefited from affirmative action. They think such a person should expect to be looked down upon. But black people have spent generations watching white men who were no more talented, and many times downright incompetent, vault to the head of the line based on racial preference.
So, here’s my question:
Would African Americans be justified in looking down on white professionals? In wondering whether they are really smart enough to do the job? In questioning their competence before they had done a thing?

Pitts deploys three shifty debating techniques: He changes the subject; subtly (and inappropriately) redefines a key term; falsely generalizes about a class of persons (white men); and then draws an unsupported conclusion from flawed premises.

The change of subject is obvious. Pitts, instead of addressing the question whether affirmative action leads to the advancement of under-qualified blacks, attacks whites for having been unqualified.

Why were whites unqualified? Because they, too, benefited from something Pitts chooses to call affirmative action, namely, “giving someone an extra boost based on race”. There is a basic problem with Pitts’s shifty redefinition of affirmative action: discrimination against blacks produces different results than discrimination against whites. The real elephant in the room, the one that it is impolite to mention, is that blacks and whites often have different skills. And for most jobs where intelligence matters there are many more qualified whites than blacks.

It is therefore wrong to paint whites with the same “affirmative action” brush. Despite Pitts’s implication to the contrary, blacks would not have been justified in looking down on white professionals, as a group. But the converse is not true. Certainly, there are and have been superb black doctors and miserably incompetent white ones, but faced with a choice between, say, a white doctor of unknown skill and a black doctor of unknown skill, a person (black or white) would prudently choose the white doctor.

* * *

In “Leave education to the principals, teachers, parents” (November 28, 2007), Pitts subscribes to romantic claptrap:

No one becomes a teacher to get rich. You become a teacher because you want to give back, you want to shape future generations, you want to change the world.

Oh spare me! You become a teacher because

you enjoy teaching, in general

you enjoy teaching a particular subject because you know it well

you enjoy the power of being in charge of a classroom (to the extent that you’re mentally and physically capable of being in charge)

it’s the best job you can get, given your intelligence and particular skills

some or all of the preceding statements apply to you.

Teaching is a job, not a mystical calling.

Pitts is right to say that

much of what ails American schools can be traced to a bureaucracy that: a) doesn’t pay enough; b) does too little to encourage and reward creativity; c) doesn’t give principals authority over who works in their schools; d) makes it nearly impossible to fire bad teachers.

The key word is “bureaucracy”. American schools will not improve until they are privatized, allowed to compete with one another, and allowed to hire teachers who know their subjects as opposed to NEA-approved hacks with “education” degrees. Some schools will be better than others, of course, but that’s true now. What isn’t true — or possible — now is that most schools will improve, or go out of business. (Public schools sometimes are “closed” for conspicuous failure, only to re-open in the same place, and with most of the same students and teachers.)

The problem, for Pitts and other “liberals”, is that it just isn’t “fair” for some children to have access to better schools than others, even though that also is true now, and even though bright children of less-affluent parents undoubtedly would have access to scholarships funded by affluent graduates of better schools. No, in the name of “fairness”, Pitts and his fellow “liberals” would rather hope for a transformation of public schools that will never happen, precisely because public schools are beholden to the NEA, which is nothing more than a union designed to guarantee work for incompetents who cannot master real subjects.

* * *

I come now to the column that touched off this post: “No ability to explain us to us”. Though the thread of Pitts’s “logic” is tangled, he his main concern seems to be national unity, or the lack thereof.

He rests his point on the fact that not everyone is happy with the election of Barack Obama or his policies, which he traces to racism or out-and-out nuttiness:

Last year, Barack Obama was elected president, the first American of African heritage ever to reach that office. If this was regarded as a new beginning by most Americans, it was regarded apocalyptically by others who promptly proceeded to lose both their minds and any pretense of enlightenment.
These are the people who immediately declared it their fervent hope that the new presidency fail, the ones who cheered when the governor of Texas raised the specter of secession, the ones who went online to rechristen the executive mansion the “Black” House, and to picture it with a watermelon patch out front.
On tax day they were the ones who, having apparently just discovered the grim tidings April 15 brings us all each year, launched angry, unruly protests. In the debate over health-care reform, they are the ones who have disrupted town hall meetings, shouting about the president’s supposed plan for “death panels” to euthanize the elderly.
Now, they are the ones bringing firearms to places the president is speaking.
The Washington Post tells us at least a dozen individuals have arrived openly — and, yes, legally — strapped at events in Arizona and New Hampshire, including at least one who carried a semiautomatic assault rifle. In case the implied threat is not clear, one of them also brought a sign referencing Thomas Jefferson’s quote about the need to water the tree of liberty with “the blood of … tyrants.”

Is Pitts suggesting that most of the 60,000,000 Americans who voted against Barack Obama (46 percent of those casting a vote in the election of 2008) immediately hailed Obama’s election as a “new beginning”? To be sure, there was a honeymoon period around inauguration day, when about two-thirds of voters hopefully approved of Obama and his net approval rating hovered between 25 and 30 percent. But the honeymoon was over almost as soon as it had begun, as Americans began to grasp the bankruptcy (pun intended) of Obama’s policies.

But rather than acknowledge the awakening of most Americans to Obama’s threats to liberty and prosperity, Pitts stoops to barely veiled charges of racism and irrationality. To hope that Obama fails is not to wish ill for the nation; to the contrary, it is to hope that Obama’s policies fail of realization because they are seen (rightly) as inimical to liberty and prosperity. To find racism in talk of secession is a ploy by a columnist who is willing to sell his liberty cheap (or give it away), as long as the president’s skin is of the right color.

Then we have the concatenation of

the ones who went online to rechristen the executive mansion the “Black” House, and to picture it with a watermelon patch out front.
On tax day they were the ones who, having apparently just discovered the grim tidings April 15 brings us all each year, launched angry, unruly protests.

In other words, some racists oppose Obama and his policies; therefore, opposition to Obama and his policies is racist. Pitts evidently failed Logic 101, for he could just as well suggest that some racists (i.e., reverse racists) support Obama and his policies; therefore, support of Obama and his policies is racist.

A relative handful of those publicly protesting Obamacare — themselves a relative handful of the millions who oppose or question it — happen to have carried guns (legally) to the forums at which they (or others) voiced protests. Pitts verges on a Soviet-style declaration that those who oppose the regime are, by definition, mentally ill and must be locked up, for their own safety.

As noted earlier, Pitts is unfazed by the fact “that our libraries, schools, police and fire departments are all ‘socialized’”. If one more thing — namely medical care — is socialized, so what? And, given the number of murders committed every year, if one more person is murdered, so what?

All of that aside, Pitts’s real point has do with the kind of country America will become:

These are strange times. They call to mind what historian Henry Adams said in the mid-1800s: “There are grave doubts at the hugeness of the land and whether one government can comprehend the whole.”
Adams spoke in geographical terms of a nation rapidly expanding toward the Pacific. Our challenge is less geographical than spiritual, less a question of the distance between Honolulu and New York than between you and the person right next to you. . . .
We frame the differences in terms of “conservative” and “liberal,” but these are tired old markers that with overuse and misuse have largely lost whatever meaning they used to have and with it, any ability to explain us to us. This isn’t liberal vs. conservative, it is yesterday vs. tomorrow, the stress of profound cultural and demographic changes that will leave none of us as we were. . . .
Round and round we go and where we stop, nobody knows. And it is an open question, as it was for Henry Adams, what kind of country we’ll have when it’s done.
“Can” one government comprehend the whole? It may be harder to answer now than it was then.
The distances that divide us cannot be measured in miles.

Pitts is right about the distances that divide Americans, but those distances have divided Americans for generations. (I repeat: “We” are not a family.) The only way to reconcile those differences is to restore the basic scheme of of the Constitution, which is to

establish one nation united in common defense,

with open internal borders, and

free movement of goods across those borders, for prosperity’s sake, and

free movement of people between and within the several sovereign States, so that individuals may associate with those whom they find most congenial.

Such a wise scheme will not do for collectivists like Pitts, who cannot abide the thought of a world other than one made to their specifications. If the Pittses persist in their collectivist zeal, America will proceed from a (cold) civil war to secession, a military coup, or even revolution. And the fault will lie with the Pittses, because they are the true enemies of liberty.

* * *

Having reacquainted myself with Mr. Pitts, and having thereby exercised my cardiovascular system, I bade him adieu — not fondly but forever.

Blog History and Index of Posts

Seek and you shall find.

I started blogging in the late 1990s with a home page that I dubbed Liberty Corner (reconstructed here). I maintained the home page until 2000. When the urge to resume blogging became irresistible in 2004, I created the Blogspot version of Liberty Corner, where I blogged until May 2008.

My weariness with “serious” blogging led to the creation of Americana, Etc., “A blog about baseball, history, humor, language, literature, movies, music, nature, nostalgia, philosophy, psychology, and other (mostly) apolitical subjects”. I posted there sporadically from July 2008 until September 2013.

But I couldn’t resist commenting on political, economic, and social issues, so I established Politics & Prosperity in February 2009. My substantive outpourings ebbed and flowed until March 2019, when I hit a wall.

I then started blogging at Realities, in an attempt to focus on short, punchy posts, and to substitute quantity for length. That’s the way I started, but it’s not in my nature to say a little bit when there’s a lot to be said. So I resumed blogging at Politics & Prosperity, and brought back with me all of the posts that I had published at Realities from April to August 2019.

My blogging stint at Politics & Prosperity finally ended in June 2022. In July 2022 I decided to republish old P&P posts at Substack, using the moniker Loquitur’s Letter. (My nom de guerre, Loquitur Veritatem is Latin for truth-teller.) I have since begun to mix new posts with the old ones.

I have published about 4,000 posts at my various blogs. There’s a page at Politics & Prosperity — “Favorite Posts” — which provides links to what I consider to be the best of the posts I published at P&P and the other blogs mentioned above.

What follows is a complete index of the posts I’ve published at Loquitur’s Letter. Some posts are assigned to more than one category. The series “Not-So-Random Thoughts” defies categorization, so I will link to entries here: I, II, III.

Change (12/14/22)

Columnist, Heal Thyself (08/23/22)

The Danger of Marginal Thinking (10/27/22)

The Downside of Capitalism (07/28/22)

Economists and Voting (11/06/22)

The Great Resignation in Perspective (11/23/22)

How Not to Be an Effective Altruist (12/23/22)

How (Not) to Combat Homelessness (12/12/22)

The Interest-Group Paradox (05/21/23)

Is the Bear Market Over? (02/02/23)

Jonathan Swift Redux (01/11/23)

The Keynesian Multiplier: Fiction vs. Fact (07/05/22)

Leftist Condescension (10/17/22)

“Libertarian Paternalism” Revisited (07/29/22)

The Myth of Social Welfare: Part I (11/13/22)

The Myth of Social Welfare: Part II (11/15/22)

Neo-Utilitarianism (09/28/23)

Our Enemy, the State (02/15/23)

The Present Inflationary Episode in Perspective (09/05/22)

The Real Story about Economic Growth (09/14/23)

The Relative Depth of Recessions Since World War II (11/28/22)

Socialism, Communism, and Three Paradoxes (02/01/23)

Socialist Calculation and the Turing Test (09/06/22)

Social Security: A Primer (08/30/22)

The State of the Economy and the Myth of the “Red Hot” Labor Market (08/09/22)

Stats and Commentary: January 14, 2023 (01/14/23)

Stats and Commentary: January 31, 2023 (01/31/23)

Stats and Commentary: February 26, 2023 (02/26/23)

Stats and Commentary: May 10, 2023 (05/10/23)

Supply-Side Economics: Getting Down to Cases (10/12/23)

A Third-World Country? (01/13/23)

What Will Happen When the Social Security Trust Fund Is Depleted? (02/25/23)

When Marginalism Matters (06/20/23)

Entertainments, Trivia, and Nostalgia

About Me (11/04/22)

Achilles and the Tortoise Revisited (04/26/23)

All-Purpose Culprits (02/03/23)

Attaining Social Justice (10/16/22)

At The Dawn of Wokeism (12/05/22)

The Bad News and Bad News about Major-League Baseball (12/10/22)

A Baseball Memory (04/12/23)

Baseball’s Greatest Hitters for Average (05/19/23)

A Blast from the Past (12/23/22)

The Cocoon Age (11/16/22)

Daylight Saving Time Doesn’t Kill (11/02/22)

Driving and Politics (08/02/22)

Farcebook (02/12/23)

First As Tragedy … (02/12/23)

Getting It Perfect (08/06/22)

Ghosts of Christmases Past (08/21/22)

I Hate to Hear Twenty-Somethings Speak (11/15/22)

“Inherit the Wind” in Retrospect (05/28/23)

Intermission: More Great Hitters (06/09/23)

I’ve Got a Little List … (08/03/22)

Knot for Me (10/03/22)

Like a Fish in Water (09/24/23)

Looking Askance at History (08/24/22)

A Look Back at a Look Forward (01/20/23)

A Look into the Vanished Past (09/09/22)

Music or Noise? (10/17/22)

Names Aren’t What They Used to Be (11/27/22)

A Night at the Movies (07/27/22)

The Passing of Red Brick Schoolhouses and a Way of Life (08/18/22)

A Picture Is Worth … (01/27/23)

Reflections on Aging (11/02/22)

Rich October Skies (10/04/22)

Since When? (09/09/22)

Stuff (“Liberal” Yuppie) White People Like (11/20/22)

Summer School? (09/05/22)

Superiority (09/21/22)

The Silent Generation Perseveres (02/11/23)

Theodore Dalrymple Speaks for Me (05/21/23)

There’s No Place Like Home (03/22/23)

To Pay or Not to Pay … (04/18/23)

Wordplay (09/12/22)

Famous and Infamous Thinkers

Aristotle (recycling Zeno):

Achilles and the Tortoise Revisited (04/26/23)

Bryan Caplan:

David Brooks and Bret Stephens, “conservatives” at The New York Times:

Columnist, Heal Thyself (08/23/22)
Our Miss Brooks (08/24/22)
Miss Brooks’s “Grand Bargain” (08/25/22)
David Brooks, Useful Idiot for the Left (08/27/22)
Baseball or Soccer? (08/28/22)
A Bobo in Cloud-Cuckoo Land (08/30/22)
Babbling Brooks Rides Again (09/02/22)

Leonard Pitts Jr.

Good-bye Mr. Pitts (12/27/22)

Peter Singer, et al.

Abortion Q&A (12/26/22)
How Not to Be an Effective Altruist (12/23/22)
More Thoughts about Abortion (10/08/22)

Thomas Sowell (famous, not infamous)

Thomas Sowell’s “Intellectuals and Society” (08/27/22)

Cass Sunstein, plausible authoritarian:

1 (07/31/22)
2 (07/31/22)
3 (08/01/22)
4 (08/01/22)
5 (08/02/22)
6 (08/05/22)

Richard Thaler

“Libertarian Paternalism” Revisited (07/29/22)

History

1963: The Year Zero (08/07/22)

The Bitter Fruits of America’s Disintegration (11/01/22)

The British Roots of the Founding, and of Liberty in America (08/07/22)

A Conspiracy Theory (07/12/23)

The Constitution: Myths and Realities (08/18/22)

Communism vs. “Communism” (02/02/23)

Convergence Theory Revisited (10/10/22)

Democracy or Republic? (09/03/22)

Election 2020: Lost or Stolen? (10/08/22)

For the Never-Trump “Conservatives” out There (08/19/22)

“Inherit the Wind” in Retrospect (05/28/23)

Is The Constitution a Contract? (01/31/23)

Looking Askance at History (08/24/22)

The Modern Presidency, from TR to JRB (09/24/23)

Monarchs of England (08/07/22)

Obamagate and Beyond (10/28/22)

My Defense of the A-Bomb (05/29/23)

Peak Civilization (08/10/22)

A Premature but Prescient Requiem for the Constitution (12/11/22)

Presidential Trivia (11/12/22)

Scott Adams and Racism (02/28/23)

Since When? (09/09/22)

The Supreme Court Recognizes the Legality of Secession (04/18/23)

Thomas Sowell’s “Intellectuals and Society” (08/27/22)

Thoughts on 9/11 (09/11/22)

Turning Points in America’s History (08/29/22)

U.S. Supreme Court: Lines of Succession (11/02/22)

Intelligence and its Application

About Me (11/04/22)

Data vs. Statistical Relationships (08/31/22)

Free Will, Crime, and Punishment (09/23/22)

Has Humanity Reached Peak Intelligence? (07/18/22)

How’s Your Implicit Attitude (08/03/22)

“Intelligence” as a Dirty Word (08/06/22)

Intelligence, Personality, Politics, and Happiness (01/28/23)

Intelligence: Selected Readings (10/29/22)

Intuition vs. Rationality (07/23/22)

IQ, Political Correctness, and America’s Present Condition (09/12/22)

Is Consciousness an Illusion? (09/20/22)

Jerks and Psychopaths (08/08/22)

O.J.’s Glove and the Enlightenment (03/24/23)

A Picture Is Worth … (01/27/23)

The Residue of Choice (08/19/22)

Solitude (12/28/22)

That Which Dare Not Be Named (07/07/23)

Words Fail Us (08/15/22)

Language: Its Uses and Abuses

Achilles and the Tortoise Revisited (04/26/23)

At The Dawn of Wokeism (12/05/22)

“Capitalism” Is a Smear-Word (02/01/23)

Communism vs. “Communism” (02/02/23)

Defending the Offensive (09/25/22)

“Intelligence” as a Dirty Word (08/06/22)

A Lawyerly Variation of a Fallacious “Proof” (04/23/23)

Preposition Proliferation (12/24/22)

Scott Adams and Racism (02/28/23)

Since When? (09/09/22)

Tolerance (09/27/22)

What Is Tribalism? (01/28/23)

Wordplay (09/12/22)

Words Fail Us (08/15/22)

Writing: A Guide:

Introduction and Part I (08/08/22)
Part II (08/09/22)
Part III (08/12/22)
Part IV (08/12/22)

Liberty, Rights, and the Constitution

Abortion Q&A (12/26/22)

An Agenda for Conservatives (10/20/22)

The Biden Plan (09/01/22)

The British Roots of the Founding, and of Liberty in America (08/07/22)

The Constitution: Myths and Realities (08/18/22)

Data vs. Statistical Relationships (08/31/22)

Democracy or Republic? (09/03/22)

Dystopian Prospects (01/22/23)

Freespace and Me (10/18/22)

Getting “Free Speech” Wrong (07/04/23)

How the Constitution Was Lost (04/26/23)

How Will Civil War II Start? (04/15/23)

If Men Were Angels (03/26/23)

IQ, Political Correctness, and America’s Present Condition (09/12/22)

Is The Constitution a Contract? (01/31/23)

Is There a Right to Privacy? (07/25/22)

Judicial Restraint = Judicial Activism (08/10/23)

A Lawyerly Variation of a Fallacious “Proof” (04/23/23)

The Libertarian-Conservative Divide (11/18/22)

A Man on Horseback? (09/07/22)

A More Perfect Constitution (12/17/22)

A More Perfect Constitution: Excerpt 1 (09/28/23)

A More Perfect Constitution: Excerpt 2 (09/29/23)

A More Perfect Constitution: Excerpt 3 (10/24/23)

More Thoughts about Abortion (10/08/22)

The Most Disturbing Thing about Biden’s Speech (09/08/22)

Natural Law and Natural Rights Revisited (07/01/2023)

Natural Rights, Liberty, the Golden Rule, and Leviathan (07/25/22)

Obamagate and Beyond (10/28/22)

On Liberty (07/04/22)

Our Enemy, the State (02/15/23)

Out-Takes from “Obamagate and Beyond”

A Picture Is Worth … (01/27/23)

A Premature but Prescient Requiem for the Constitution (12/11/22)

The Principles of Actionable Harm (12/19/22)

Pseudo-Libertarian Sophistry vs. True Libertarianism (02/10/23)

The Real Tragedy of the End of “Free Speech” (06/07/23)

The Right to Revolution (09/03/22)

Saving the Innocent (09/07/22)

The Slippery Slope from Liberty to Tyranny (08/15/22)

Social Security: A Primer (08/30/22)

Social Norms and Liberty (08/14/22)

State Action As Private Action (12/21/22)

The Supreme Court Recognizes the Legality of Secession (04/18/23)

That Which Dare Not Be Named (07/07/23)

Thomas Sowell’s “Intellectuals and Society” (08/27/22)

True Libertarianism and Its Enemies (11/26/22)

What Do Wokesters Want? (12/02/22)

What Is a “Living Constitution?” (10/03/23)

What’s to Be Done about Section 230? (02/25/23)

Who’s the Real Fascist? (09/05/22)

Why Freedom of Speech? (07/14/22)

Metaphysical Matters

Achilles and the Tortoise Revisited (04/26/23)

Einstein’s Errors:

Prologue (08/27/22)
Part I: The Impetus for this Series (08/28/22)
Part II: The Standard Explanation of Special Relativity (08/31/22)
Part III: A Fatal Flaw? (09/10/22)
Part IV: A Further Look at Simultaneity (09/21/22)
Part V: The Velocity Conundrum (10/19/22)
Part VI: Getting Light Right (10/30/22)
Part VII: Further Thoughts on the Meaning of Spacetime and the Validity of the Special Theory of Relativity (STR) (11/10/22)
Part VIII: Mettenheim on Einstein’s Relativity (12/02/22)
Part IX: Spacetime Isn’t Time (12/02/22)

Existence and Atheism (07/09/22)

Is Consciousness an Illusion? (09/20/22)

Free Will, Crime, and Punishment (09/23/22)

The Least Evil Option (09/23/22)

The Myth of Social Welfare: Part I (11/13/22)

The Myth of Social Welfare: Part II (11/15/22)

Philosophical Musings:

Part I: Time, Existence, and Science (11/04/22)
Part II: Evolution or Devolution? (11/05/22)
Part III: Survival and Thinking (11/06/22)
Part IV: Irrational Rationality (11/07/22)
Part V: Desiderata as Beliefs (11/09/22)
Part VI: Beliefs, Herds, and Oppression (11/10/22)

The Reality of Consciousness (10/01/23)

Words Fail Us (08/15/22)

Politics, Politicians, and Government in Action

1963: The Year Zero (08/07/22)

An Agenda for Conservatives (10/20/22)

America Is Dead (06/06/23)

America’s Mega-Depression (08/17/22)

The Apotheosis of Equality (11/07/22)

Asymmetrical (Ideological) Warfare (11/08/22)

Attaining Social Justice (10/16/22)

The Balloon Test? (02/13/23)

The Biden Business: What’s Next (06/26/23)

Biden: Blood and Money Revisited (09/22/23)

Biden Has Money in the Bank and Blood on His Hands (07/29/23)

The Biden Plan (09/01/22)

The Bitter Fruits of America’s Disintegration (11/01/22)

Cabinetry (08/23/23)

Can Left and Right Be Reconciled? (10/07/22)

Change (12/14/22)

Change Horses Midstream? (10/15/23)

China to the Rescue? (08/07/23)

“Climate Change” (11/08/22)

Communism vs. “Communism” (02/02/23)

A Conspiracy Theory (07/12/23)

Convergence Theory Revisited (10/10/22)

The Culture War (08/16/22)

The Danger of Marginal Thinking (10/27/22)

Data vs. Statistical Relationships (08/31/22)

The Death of a Nation (11/29/22)

Democracy or Republic? (09/03/22)

The Detroit Template (03/02/23)

Did the GOP Under-Perform in House Races? (11/11/22)

Disposition and Ideology (10/08/22)

Dystopian Prospects (01/22/23)

Election 2020: Lost or Stolen? (10/08/22)

For the Never-Trump “Conservatives” out There (08/19/22)

Freespace and Me (10/18/22)

Further Thoughts about China and the Future of America (08/17/23)

The Great Resignation in Perspective (11/23/22)

The Hardening of Ideological Affiliations in America (11/12/22)

His Life as a Victim (08/25/22)

How the Constitution Was Lost (04/26/23)

How to View Defense Spending (08/20/22)

How Will Civil War II Start? (04/15/23)

Hurricane Hysteria (09/30/22)

If Men Were Angels (03/26/23)

The Interest-Group Paradox (05/21/23)

IQ, Political Correctness, and America’s Present Condition (09/12/22)

Is the Police State Here? (08/13/22)

Is Taxation Slavery? (08/14/22)

I Want My Country Back (02/10/23)

Leftism as Crypto-Fascism (08/24/22)

Leftism in America (07/26/22)

Leftist Condescension (10/17/22)

The Left-”Libertarian” Axis (07/22/22)

Left-Libertarians, Obama, and the Zimmerman Case (09/29/22)

The Libertarian-Conservative Divide (11/18/22)

Looking Askance at History (08/24/22)

A Man on Horseback? (09/07/22)

The McNamara Legacy: A Personal Perspective (09/10/22)

The Meaning of the Red Ripple (11/09/22)

A Measure of Political Polarization: The Decline of Collegiality in the Confirmation of Justices (09/12/23)

The Modern Presidency, from TR to JRB (09/24/23)

Moral Courage, Moral Standards, and Political Polarization (11/24/22)

More Pseudo-Libertarianism (02/09/23)

The Most Disturbing Thing about Biden’s Speech (09/08/22)

The Myth of Social Welfare: Part I (11/13/22)

The Myth of Social Welfare: Part II (11/15/22)

Neo-Utilitarianism (09/28/23)

A New Political Paradigm? (07/10/22)

Obamagate and Beyond (10/28/22)

O.J.’s Glove and the Enlightenment (03/24/23)

Obamagate and Beyond (10/28/22)

Our Enemy, the State (02/15/23)

Out-Takes from “Obamagate and Beyond”

The Paradoxes and Consequences of Liberty and Prosperity (05/15/23)

Peak Civilization (08/10/22)

Perpetual Victimhood (07/20/23)

The Persecution of Trump Will Backfire on Democrats (06/10/23)

A Platform to Stand On (12/28/22)

Political Ideologies (09/18/22)

“Political Ideologies”: A Codicil (12/11/22)

Politics, Sophistry, and the Academy (10/16/22)

Presidential Trivia (11/12/22)

A Premature but Prescient Requiem for the Constitution (12/11/22)

The Principles of Actionable Harm (12/19/22)

The Real Story about Economic Growth (09/14/23)

The Right to Revolution (09/03/22)

The Roots of Statism in America (09/28/23)

Saving the Innocent (09/07/22)

Scott Adams and Racism (02/28/23)

The Slippery Slope from Liberty to Tyranny (08/15/22)

Socialist Calculation and the Turing Test (09/06/22)

Social Security: A Primer (08/30/22)

Socialism, Communism, and Three Paradoxes (02/01/23)

Society and Genetic Kinship (02/04/23)

State Action As Private Action (12/21/22)

Stats and Commentary: January 14, 2023 (01/14/23)

Stats and Commentary: January 31, 2023 (01/31/23)

Stats and Commentary: February 26, 2023 (02/26/23)

Stats and Commentary: May 10, 2023 (05/10/23)

Supply-Side Economics: Getting Down to Cases (10/12/23)

A Third-World Country? (01/13/23)

Thomas Sowell’s “Intellectuals and Society” (08/27/22)

Thoughts on 9/11 (09/11/22)

The Transgender Fad and Its Consequences (09/28/22)

True Libertarianism and Its Enemies (11/26/22)

Trump vs. Biden: 1 (09/15/23)

Trump vs. Biden: 2 (11/02/23)

Trump vs. Biden: 3 (11/04/23)

The State of the World (12/31/22)

Summer School? (09/05/22)

Turning Points in America’s History (08/29/22)

The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy (07/27/23)

Victor’s Justice (09/11/23)

The Way Ahead (09/15/22)

We, the Children of the Enlightenment (09/25/22)

What Do Wokesters Want? (12/02/22)

What Is Tribalism? (01/28/23)

What’s the Use? (12/21/22)

What’s to Be Done about Section 230? (02/25/23)

What Will Happen When the Social Security Trust Fund Is Depleted? (02/25/23)

When in the Course of Human Events … (01/09/22)

When Marginalism Matters (06/20/23)

Where Will It All End? (08/22/22)

Who’s the Real Fascist? (09/05/22)

Whither (Wither) America? (08/10/22)

Why the Mar-a-Lago Raid? (09/13/22)

Science, Pseudoscience, and the Tools of Science

Achilles and the Tortoise Revisited (04/26/23)

Analytical and Scientific Arrogance (08/22/22)

“Climate Change” (11/08/22)

“Climate Change”: A Bibliography (10/05/22 — updated frequently)

CO2 Fail (07/26/22)

Deduction, Induction, and Knowledge (06/09/23)

Demystifying Science (09/06/22)

Einstein’s Errors:

Prologue (08/27/22)
Part I: The Impetus for this Series (08/28/22)
Part II: The Standard Explanation of Special Relativity (08/31/22)
Part III: A Fatal Flaw? (09/10/22)
Part IV: A Further Look at Simultaneity (09/21/22)
Part V: The Velocity Conundrum (10/19/22)
Part VI: Getting Light Right (10/30/22)
Part VII: Further Thoughts on the Meaning of Spacetime and the Validity of the Special Theory of Relativity (STR) (11/10/22)

Getting It Perfect (08/06/22)

How’s Your Implicit Attitude? (08/03/22)

The Human Conceit (07/30/22)

Hurricane Hysteria (09/30/22)

Is Consciousness an Illusion? (09/20/22)

Is Science Self-Correcting? (09/20/22)

Is Scientific Skepticism Irrational? (06/07/23)

The McNamara Legacy: A Personal Perspective (09/10/22)

Measuring the Urban Heat Island Effect (09/26/23)

Modeling Is Not Science (07/07/22)

My War on the Misuse of Probability (07/10/22)

O.J.’s Glove and the Enlightenment (03/24/23)

Pattern-Seeking (09/20/22)

Philosophical Musings:

Part I: Time, Existence, and Science (11/04/22)
Part II: Evolution or Devolution? (11/05/22)
Part III: Survival and Thinking (11/06/22)
Part IV: Irrational Rationality (11/07/22)
Part V: Desiderata as Beliefs (11/09/22)
Part VI: Beliefs, Herds, and Oppression (11/10/22)

Politics, Sophistry, and the Academy (10/16/22)

The Reality of Consciousness (10/01/23)

Social Constructs (07/27/22)

Socialist Calculation and the Turing Test (09/06/22)

Understanding Science (10/19/22)

What Is Natural? (06/10/23)

When in the Course of Human Events … (01/09/22)

The White House Brochures on Climate Change (11/03/22)

Words Fail Us (08/15/22)

War, Peace, and Strategy

An Addendum to “Grand Strategy”: Neo-Isolationism (10/1/22)

Analytical and Scientific Arrogance (08/22/22)

The Balloon Test? (02/13/23)

But Wouldn’t Warlords Take Over? (08/20/22)

China to the Rescue? (08/07/23)

The Folly of Pacifism (02/18/23)

Further Thoughts about China and the Future of America (08/17/23)

Further Thoughts about Cyber-War (11/09/22)

A Grand Strategy for the United States (09/29/22)

How to View Defense Spending (08/20/22)

The Human Cost of Dithering (02/12/23)

The Iraq War in Retrospect (08/03/22)

Is This How It Ends? (11/30/22)

The Least Evil Option (09/23/22)

“Liberalism” and Sovereignty (08/26/22)

A Man on Horseback? (09/07/22)

The McNamara Legacy: A Personal Perspective (09/10/22)

The Meaning of the War in Ukraine (07/26/22)

My Defense of the A-Bomb (05/29/23)

Mutual Deterrence and the War in Ukraine (09/27/22)

Pay Any Price? (07/13/22)

The State of the World (12/31/22)

Thomas Sowell’s “Intellectuals and Society” (08/27/22)

Thoughts on 9/11 (09/11/22)

Turning Points in America’s History (08/29/22)

War, Slavery, and Reparations (11/13/22)

War with China? (11/19/22)

The Way Ahead (09/15/22)

The World Turned Upside Down (01/12/23)

World War II in Retrospect (07/08/22)

Why the Left Hates Israel (and Further Thoughts) (10/15/23)

Abortion Q&A

Examining several facets of a moral, legal, and scientific issue.

Using a Q&A format, this page summarizes my writings on abortion in the 18 years, since I first voiced my opposition to it

WHY DO I OPPOSE ABORTION?

My objections to abortion are moral and prudential. Morally, I cannot condone a brutal, life-taking practice for which the main justification is convenience. (See, for example, tables 2 through 5 of “Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Qualitative and Quantitative Perspectives”, a publication of the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion organization.) Prudentially, I do not want to live in a country where blameless life can be taken easily, with the encouragement of the state or at the state’s insistence. Abortion is a step down a slippery slope.

There have been serious proposals to allow post-natal abortion — infanticide. The next step, which has been taken in some “civilized” countries (not to mention the Third Reich and Soviet Russia) is involuntary euthanasia to “rid the populace” of those deemed unfit.

Ah, but who does the “deeming”? That is always the question. Given the rate at which power is being centralized in this country, it is not unthinkable that decisions about life and death will be placed in the hands of agencies of the federal government.

If anyone thinks it cannot happen here, think again. No nation or class of persons is immune from the disease of power-lust. The only way to prevent it from spreading and becoming ever more malevolent is to resist it at every turn.

I address the slippery slope toward state-imposed eugenics at several points below.

WHY DO I CALL ABORTION MURDER?

First, there’s the obvious fact that abortion results in the death of a living being. But that’s a mild way of putting it. The methods used in abortion would be termed “brutal” by opponents of capital punishment, who usually are pro-abortion. Consider this (from Wikipedia as of April 7, 2018):

From the 15th week of gestation until approximately the 26th, other techniques must be used. Dilation and evacuation (D&E) consists of opening the cervix of the uterus and emptying it using surgical instruments and suction. After the 16th week of gestation, abortions can also be induced by intact dilation and extraction (IDX) (also called intrauterine cranial decompression), which requires surgical decompression of the fetus’s head before evacuation. IDX is sometimes called “partial-birth abortion“, which has been federally banned in the United States. [Ed. note: One small step for humanity.]
In the third trimester of pregnancy, induced abortion may be performed surgically by intact dilation and extraction or by hysterotomy. Hysterotomy abortion is a procedure similar to a caesarean section and is performed under general anesthesia. It requires a smaller incision than a caesarean section and is used during later stages of pregnancy.

What happens in an intact dilation and extraction? This (according to Wikipedia as of April 7, 2018):

Feticidal injection of digoxin or potassium chloride may be administered at the beginning of the procedure to allow for softening of the fetal bones or to comply with relevant laws in the physician’s jurisdiction. During the surgery, the fetus is removed from the uterus in the breech position, with mechanical collapse of the fetal skull if it is too large to fit through the cervical canal. Decompression of the skull can be accomplished by incision and suction of the contents, or by using forceps.

Almost enough said. For more, go here for an excerpt of an interview of philosopher Don Marquis.

WHY DID THE “RIGHT” TO AN ABORTION BECOME A POLITICAL CAUSE?

Daniel J. Flynn makes this astute observation in a piece at The American Spectator:

Students did not end the Vietnam War. They ended the draft. And once the draft ended, their protests, at least on a mass scale, ended, too.
Wikipedia, not normally my go-to source for history, lists more than 100 major events on its page documenting protests against the Vietnam War. The very last one occurred one week before Richard Nixon ended the draft. Small, scattered protests, of the like that do not appear Wikipedia’s radar—one in Central Park in 1975 involving Joan Baez and others comes to mind—continued. But even as the killing continued the big protests did not because the draft did not.

And it is true that U.S. combat operations continued after the end of the draft. So I must agree with Flynn’s observation.

What does it have to do with abortion? It’s mostly about the “Me” generation — the Baby Boomers who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s. Look at this graph from this article in Wikipedia:

Graph of U.S. abortion rates, 1973–2017, showing data collected by the Guttmacher Institute

This source addresses some of the causes of the decline in the abortion rate since 1980. There are others, such as easier access to contraceptives and the growing awareness (and fear of) HIV/AIDS.

But the most obvious cause of the decline is the aging of Boomers. A large fraction of the women who were born during the peak baby-boom years (1946-1960) would have been “past it” by the mid-1990s*. And that’s when the abortion rate ended a period of relatively steep decline (see above graph). The abortion rate continued to decline at more gradual rate through the early 2000s, when it leveled off, then began to decline at a faster rate after 2008. (The most likely cause of the steeper decline since 2008 is the enactment by several States of stricter controls on abortion.)

This isn’t to absolve later generations of their sins. Most college graduates and college-goers** of the X, Millennial, and Z generations have drunk the Kool-Aid of “wokeness”. But the Boomers — notable for their self-centered depravity — were and are especially dangerous because so many of them became prominent in politics, the law, and the internet-media-academic complex.

The Boomers (or too many of them) epitomize the left’s arrested state of adolescent rebellion: “Daddy” doesn’t want me to smoke, so I’m going to smoke; “Daddy” doesn’t want me to drink, so I’m going to drink; “Daddy” doesn’t want me to have sex, so I’m going to have sex. But, regardless of my behavior, I expect “Daddy” to give me an allowance, and birthday presents, and cell phones, and so on. “Daddy,” in the case of abortion, is government.

As amply demonstrated by the reaction to the leaked decision on Dobbs (2022) — and the later announcement of that decision — too many persons of the left simply are simply unthinking, selfish adolescents who want what they want: period. The left’s stance on abortion should be viewed as just one more adolescent tantrum in a vast repertoire of tantrums.
__________
* The late Norma McCorvey (a.k.a. Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade) epitomized the Boomers. She was born in 1947 and began her eventually successful suit to legalize abortion when she was 21.

** College-goers, as distinct from students who are striving to acquire knowledge rather than left-wing propaganda, and to exercise their critical faculties instead of parroting left-wing slogans.

WAS THE “RIGHT” TO AN ABORTION REALLY THE “LAW OF THE LAND”?

No, not really. The U.S. Supreme Court is not the final arbiter of the Constitution’s meaning.

The answer — departmentalism — is found in Michael Stokes Paulsen and Luke Paulsen’s The Constitution: An Introduction:

All branches of government are equally bound by the Constitution. No branch of the federal government— not the Congress, not the President, not even the Supreme Court— can legitimately act in ways contrary to the words of the Constitution. Indeed, Article VI requires that all government officials— legislative, executive, and judicial, state and federal—“ shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.” Thus, the idea of a written constitution is closely tied to the idea of constitutional supremacy: In America, no branch of government is supreme. The government as a whole is not supreme. The Constitution is supreme. It is the written Constitution that prevails over every other source of authority in the United States.

Further, as sovereign entities and parties to the constitutional contract, the States can (and should) refuse to implement unconstitutional decrees emanating from the central government.

IS ABORTION A NATURAL RIGHT?

The road to natural rights is through natural law. Natural law is about morality, that is, right and wrong. Natural rights are about the duties and obligations that human beings owe to each other, given natural law.

Believers in natural law claim to start with the nature of human beings, then derive from that nature the “laws” of morality. Believers in natural rights claim to start with the nature of human beings, then derive from that nature the inalienable “rights” of human beings.

A natural law would be something like this: It is in the nature of human beings to seek life and to avoid death. A natural right would be something like this: Given that it is natural for human beings to seek life and avoid death, every human being has the right to life.

Natural law is “discovered” in the sense that it consists of norms that arise from human nature. An example would be the Golden Rule, or ethic of reciprocity. It seems most likely to have arisen from experience and normalized through tacit agreement before it was enunciated by various “wise men” over the ages.

The main alternative to the idea of natural law as arising from human nature is that it preexists in divine ordinance. But the two ideas can be reconciled by saying that human nature, by design, manifests divine intent.

In any event, if the Golden Rule is natural law, it seems not to offer room for a natural right to an abortion, that is, abortion on demand for any reason whatsoever. Doing unto others as one would be done unto would seem to prohibit the arbitrary taking of a life. (This raises the question whether a fetus is a “person” or a “human being”, to which I will come.)

Moreover, if there is a fundamental natural right, one that underlies all others, it is the right to life. There are rare instances in which persons willingly and voluntarily succumb to death, but they are notable exceptions that underscore the basic human urge (natural law) to go on living. This, too, argues against the killing of a fetus.

So, as a general matter (which admits limited and specific exceptions), there isn’t a natural right to an abortion.

WAS THERE REALLY A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO AN ABORTION?

There was, but only in the sense that the U.S. Supreme Court fabricated such a right in Roe v. Wade (1973). As the majority in Dobbs explained at length, the right to abortion was not and is not rooted in the nation’s history.

Abortion was considered murder long before States began to legislate against it in the 19th century. The long-standing condemnation of abortion — even before quickening — is treated thoroughly in Marvin Olasky’s Abortion Rites: A Social History of Abortion in America. (excerpt here). Olasky corrects the slanted version of American history upon which the U.S. Supreme Court relied in Roe v. Wade. The criminalization of abortion by most States in the 1800s did not mean that it was generally approved of or thought of as a right at the time of the ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It was certainly not thought of as a right at the time of the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868.

The majority in Roe v. Wade found for abortion by invoking a general privacy right, which had been invented in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). But the Court could not decide whether the right is located in the Ninth Amendment (reserving unenumerated rights to the people) or the Fourteenth Amendment (guaranteeing due process of law). Neither amendment, of course, is the locus of a general privacy right because none is conferred by the Constitution, nor could the Constitution ever confer such a right, for it would interfere with such truly compelling state interests as the pursuit of justice. By the logic of the majority’s reasoning, infanticide in the confines of one’s home would be permissible if the States hadn’t legislated against it before 1787.

The spuriousness of the majority’s conclusion is evident in its flinching from the logical end of its reasoning: abortion anywhere at anytime. Instead, the majority delivered this:

The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute. . . . We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.

That is, the majority simply drew an arbitrary line between life and death — but in the wrong place. It is as if the majority understood, but wished not to acknowledge, the full implications of an absolute privacy right. Such a right could be deployed by unprincipled judges to decriminalize a variety of heinous acts.

In sum, the constitutional “right” to an abortion was a fabricated judicial whim. A later Court went part of the way (but, sadly, not all the way) in exposing the Roe Court’s fabrication. I refer to Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). As blogger Patterico noted, Casey

1) upheld the central holding of Roe on stare decisis grounds; 2) stripped the abortion right of its status as a “fundamental right” under the Constitution; and 3) replaced Roe‘s trimester framework with a rule tied to viability.

Stare decisis is a vile legal doctrine that has enabled the long and costly accretion of powers by the federal government. The majority in Dobbs (excluding the pusillanimous chief justice) rightly rejected stare decisis.

I address viability below.

IS A FETUS A “PERSON”?

This question is related to the Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade that a fetus isn’t a “person” — and therefore entitled to constitutional protection — until it becomes “viable” in the third trimester of pregnancy.

The “personhood” issue is legalistic rather than scientific. Personhood is an abstraction, not a physical fact. A human being is created at the moment of conception. It may be a rudimentary human being, but it is one nevertheless. And it has the potential to become a fully formed human being.

If it is permissible to kill a human being who is still in the formative stage, it should be permissible to kill anyone who hasn’t yet reached his full height. Perhaps that should be the cut-off point for “personhood”.

WHAT ABOUT THE VIABILITY ARGUMENT?

There is a phony pro-abortion argument that a fetus is fair game (so to speak) until it is viable. That is, until it could survive (as a newborn child) outside the mother’s womb. But that is a circular argument because a fetus that is aborted before it could have survived outside the mother’s womb would have attained viability had it not been aborted.

The viability argument comes down to this: It is all right to kill a fetus before it becomes viable so that it cannot become viable.

Moreover, when does a human being become “viable’, that is, capable of living without assistance? Certainly not at birth, and certainly not during early childhood. Possibly at puberty, but not in the United States or most Western countries, with their cossetted hordes of adolescents. And not even at graduation from high school for those who take it as their birthright to extend adolescence to age 22 and, sometimes, well beyond it.

WHY SHOULDN’T A WOMAN CONTROL HER OWN BODY?

That question is a dodgy way of trying to get around the fact that a fetus has a life of its own — literally. The fetus may be dependent on the woman who is carrying it, but it is not her body. The fetus is a separate human being, no matter how dependent on its mother. Further, as discussed above, dependency doesn’t end with birth. In fact, these days it often continues until a child is a twenty-something. There are some advocates of post-natal infanticide, but only enthusiasts of euthanasia would extend murder beyond that stage.

There is a similarly slippery argument for abortion. It is the self-defense argument, which is sometimes billed as a property rights argument. A leading example is found in Judith Jarvis Thomson‘s article, “A Defense of Abortion” (Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1 (1971): 47-66), which is available online here. It goes like this: A fetus is an “uninvited guest” in or “invader” of its mother’s body, which is the mother’s property. The mother may therefore do with the fetus as she will.

But a fetus is neither an uninvited guest nor an invader. Rather, it is a life, and that life — by biological necessity — is (almost always) its mother’s responsibility:

Conception, in almost all cases, is the result of a consensual act of sexual intercourse.

Conception is a known consequence of the act of sexual intercourse.

Life indisputably begins at conception.

A woman who conceives a child by an act of consensual sex has therefore incurred an implicit obligation to care for the life that flows from her act.

Given that the existence of a fetus cannot cause harm to anyone but its mother, the only valid route for terminating the life of a fetus would be a legal proceeding that culminates in a judicial determination that the continuation of the life of the fetus would cause grave physical harm or death to the mother.

A person who argues otherwise can do so only by regarding the fetus a sub-human implantation for which the mother bears no responsibility. Such a person might as well argue for a right to dispose of surly teenage children through involuntary euthanasia. The principle is the same: Kill the life you brought into the world because its presence is inconvenient or irritating. (For brilliant demolitions of arguments similar to Thomson’s, see this by Matt Walsh and this by Glen Whitman.)

IF ABORTION WERE ILLEGAL, SHOULD A WOMAN WHO ABORTS A CHILD FACE LEGAL CONSEQUENCES?

Kevin Williamson infamously said that women who have an abortion are guilty of murder and should be executed. That view, which he stated more than once — before he was hired by The Atlantic — led to his firing by The Atlantic when its spineless editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, bowed to a (figurative) lynch mob.

Where does that leave me? I will answer by repeating (with light editing) something that I wrote almost 15 years ago.

How much jail time? Anna Quindlen asked that question in a Newsweek article she wrote in 2007 about the punishment for abortion. Quindlen observed that

[i]f the Supreme Court decides abortion is not protected by a constitutional guarantee of privacy, the issue will revert to the states. If it goes to the states, some, perhaps many, will ban abortion. If abortion is made a crime, then surely the woman who has one is a criminal.

The aim of Quindlen’s column was to scorn the idea of jail time as punishment for a woman who procures an illegal abortion. It reminds me of the classic definition of chutzpah, given by Leo Rosten: “that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan”. The chutzpah, in this case, belongs to Quindlen (and others of her ilk) who believe that a woman should not face punishment for an abortion because she has just “lost” a baby.

Balderdash! If a woman illegally aborts her child, why shouldn’t she be punished by a jail term (at least)? She would be punished by jail (or confinement in a psychiatric prison) if she were to kill her new-born infant, her toddler, her ten-year old, and so on. What’s the difference between an abortion and murder? None (see above), except where the life or health (beyond mere anxiety) of the mother is at stake.

Quindlen, who predictably opposes capital punishment, is consistent in her (typical) leftist opposition to justice. The Quindlens of this world somehow manage to make victims out of criminals.

IS ABORTION A STEP DOWN A SLIPPERY SLOPE?

Every time the state fails to defend innocent life it sets a new precedent for the taking of innocent life. Thus we come to the slippery slope.

Ross Douthat uses the Williamson case as a springboard to highlight “liberal” extremism in the defense of abortion:

[M]y pro-choice friends endorsing Williamson’s sacking can’t see that his extremism is mirrored in their own, in a system of supposedly “moderate” thought that is often blind to the public’s actual opinions on these issues, that lionizes advocates for abortion at any stage of pregnancy, that hands philosophers who favor forms of euthanasia and infanticide prestigious chairs at major universities, that is at best mildly troubled by the quietus of the depressed and disabled in Belgium or the near-eradication of Down syndrome in Iceland or the gendercide that abortion brought to Asia, that increasingly accepts unblinking a world where human beings can be commodified and vivisected so long as they’re in embryonic form.

Abortion is of a piece with selective breeding and involuntary euthanasia, wherein the state fosters eugenic practices that aren’t far removed from those of the Third Reich. And when those practices become the norm, what and who will be next? Instead of reflexively embracing “choice”, leftists — who these days seem especially wary of fascism (though they locate it in the wrong place) — should be asking whether “choice” will end with fetuses.

In sum, abortion is of a piece with Hitlerian eugenics. If you consider that to be an exaggeration, consider this piece by Patricia E. Bauer (a former reporter and bureau chief for The Washington Post), whose child has Down’s syndrome:

Many young women, upon meeting us, have asked whether I had “the test.” I interpret the question as a get-home-free card. If I say no, they figure, that means I’m a victim of circumstance, and therefore not implicitly repudiating the decision they may make to abort if they think there are disabilities involved. If yes, then it means I’m a right-wing antiabortion nut whose choices aren’t relevant to their lives….
The irony is that we live in a time when medical advances are profoundly changing what it means to live with disabilities. Years ago, people with Down syndrome often were housed in institutions. Many were in poor health, had limited self-care and social skills, couldn’t read, and died young. It was thought that all their problems were unavoidable, caused by their genetic anomaly.
Now it seems clear that these people were limited at least as much by institutionalization, low expectations, lack of education and poor health care as by their DNA. Today people with Down syndrome are living much longer and healthier lives than they did even 20 years ago. Buoyed by the educational reforms of the past quarter-century, they are increasingly finishing high school, living more independently and holding jobs.
That’s the rational pitch; here’s the emotional one. Margaret is a person and a member of our family. She has my husband’s eyes, my hair and my mother-in-law’s sense of humor. We love and admire her because of who she is — feisty and zesty and full of life — not in spite of it. She enriches our lives. If we might not have chosen to welcome her into our family, given the choice, then that is a statement more about our ignorance than about her inherent worth.
What I don’t understand is how we as a society can tacitly write off a whole group of people as having no value….
And here’s one more piece of un-discussable baggage: This question is a small but nonetheless significant part of what’s driving the abortion discussion in this country. I have to think that there are many pro-choicers who, while paying obeisance to the rights of people with disabilities, want at the same time to preserve their right to ensure that no one with disabilities will be born into their own families. The abortion debate is not just about a woman’s right to choose whether to have a baby; it’s also about a woman’s right to choose which baby she wants to have.

Amy Welborn makes this apposite comment:

This is not about “having” or “not having” babies with disabilities – the common way of discussing such things, when they are discussed at all. It is about “killing” or “not killing” babies with disabilities. Period.

And Wilfred McClay adds this perspective:

I myself recall having a conversation with a Down’s syndrome adult who noted the disparity between Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s well-publicized support for the Special Olympics, and his equally well-known insistence that no woman should have to bear the indignity of a “defective” or unwanted child. “I may be slow,” this man observed, “but I am not stupid. Does he think that people like me can’t understand what he really thinks of us? That we are not really wanted? That it would be a better world if we didn’t exist?”

This from a speech given by Malcolm Muggeridge in 1978:

If people are only considered to be economic entities whose value is measured by the quality and/or quantity of their productivity, then what conceivable justification is there for maintaining, at great expense and difficulty, mentally and physically handicapped people and elderly? I know, that as sure as I can possibly persuade you to believe: governments will find it impossible to resist the temptation … to deliver themselves from this burden of looking after the sick and the handicapped by the simple expedient of killing them off. Now this, in fact, is what the Nazis did … not always through slaughter camps, but by a perfectly coherent decree with perfectly clear conditions. In fact, delay in creating public pressure for euthanasia has been due to the fact that it was one of the war crimes cited at Nuremberg. So for the Guinness Book of Records you can submit this: That it takes just about 30 years in our humane society to transform a war crime into an act of compassion. That is exactly what happened.

Not only can it happen in America, it is happening in America. In addition to abortion as a means of selecting “superior” specimens, there is genetic engineering, a more overt and frightening project of super-Frankensteinian scale.

There is the long-standing and partly successful push for voluntary euthanasia (a.k.a, assisted suicide). When and where it becomes legal, it provides cover for involuntary euthanasia. It is better to keep it illegal and let those who are truly desperate find reluctant help than to authorize it and invite all-too-willing help. (See Theodore Dalrymple.)

Another initiative, fortunately sidetracked for now, is forced mental screening of school-age children. Though this endeavor was pilloried as a plot by Big Pharma, it carried the seeds of thought- and behavior-control cloaked in a health-care guise. Something like it will be resurrected when the masters of practical thought-control — the Facebook, Google, YouTube generation — come to full political power.

The place to stop Hitlerian schemes is at the outset, before they gain a foothold and provide an excuse for other schemes that wear superficially benign masks. Every Supreme Court decision that enables interference in the lives, liberty, and property of Americans becomes an invitation to — and excuse for — further interference.

(Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland warned strongly against the evil side of eugenics in “The Death of Hippocrates” (The New Republic, September 12, 2004). The article is now hidden behind a paywall, but I excerpted much of it when it appeared. The excerpts are at the bottom of this post.

See also Amy Harmon’s “The Problem With an Almost-Perfect Genetic World“, The New York Times, November 20, 2005, excerpted at length here.

Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc., is devastating in its revelations about the racist motives of Margaret Sanger, a founder of Planned Parenthood, and of abortion’s “disparate impact” on blacks. For a synopsis of Thomas’s opinion, see “Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Margaret Sanger Walk Into a Segregated Bar…“, by John Zmirak, The Stream, May 29, 2019.)

INVOKING HITLER IS JUST A SCARE TACTIC ISN’T IT?

In answer, I turn to philosopher Jamie Whyte‘s Bad Thoughts – A Guide to Clear Thinking. Specifically, to one of Whyte’s logical errors, which is found under “Shut Up — You Sound Like Hitler” (pp. 46-9). Here’s the passage to which I object:

Anyone who advocates using recent advances in genetic engineering to avoid congenital defects in humans will pretty soon be accused of adopting Nazi ideas. Never mind the fact that the Nazi goals (such as racial purity) and genetic engineering techniques (such as genocide) were quite different from those now suggested.

Whyte seems to believe that policies should be judged by their intentions, not their consequences. Genetic engineering — which Whyte defines broadly — is acceptable to Whyte (and millions of others) — because its practitioners mean well. By that standard:

Obamacare, which caused health-insurance premiums and medical costs to rise ever higher, was a success because it was meant to cut premiums and costs.

Measures to combat CO2 emissions have been successful, even though they have resulted in higher energy costs and there is no demonstrably significant relationship between CO2 emissions and global temperature (whatever that is), and no well- understood relationship between global temperature and human flourishing. (Though people tend to migrate from cold climates to warm ones, and warming produces higher crop yields.)

FDR’s New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by several years..

I cannot find a moral distinction between such “benevolence” and Hitler’s goal of racial purity.

Whyte, in his eagerness to slay many dragons of illogic, sometimes stumbles on his own illogic. Whyte to the contrary notwithstanding, not all invocations of Hitler are inapt. Genetic engineering, Whyte’s primary example, can be Hitlerian in its consequences, regardless of its proponents’ intentions.

I say “can be Hitlerian” because genetic engineering can also be beneficial. There is, for example, negative genetic engineering to cure and treat particular disorders.

I will continue to invoke Hitler where the invocation is apt, as it is in the cases of abortion, involuntary euthanasia, and the breeding of “superior” humans.

(Speaking of philosophers, see this for a demolition of a pro-abortion philosopher’s casuistry.)

IS THERE A UTILITARIAN OR ETHICAL ARGUMENT FOR ABORTION?

It’s patently absurd to think of measuring individual degrees of happiness, let alone summing those measurements. Suppose the government takes from A (making him miserable) and gives to B (making him joyous). Does B’s joyousness cancel A’s misery? Only if you’re B or a politician who has earned B’s support by joining in the raid on A’s bank account. (For more, see this and this.)

Nevertheless, the world is burdened by “ethicists” like Peter Singer, the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Some years ago, Singer sought to exploit the tragic, state-ordered murder of Terry Schiavo, This is from WorldNetDaily:

During the next 35 years, the traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific, technological, and demographic developments, says controversial bio-ethics professor Peter Singer.
“By 2040, it may be that only a rump of hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalists will defend the view that every human life, from conception to death, is sacrosanct,” says Princeton University’s defender of infanticide. “In retrospect, 2005 may be seen as the year in which that position (of the sanctity of life) became untenable,” he writes in the fall issue of Foreign Policy.
Singer sees 2005’s battle over the life of Terri Schiavo as a key to this changing ethic.
The year 2005 is also significant, at least in the United States, for ratcheting up the debate about the care of patients in a persistent vegetative state,” says Singer. “The long legal battle over the removal of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube led President George W. Bush and the U.S. Congress to intervene, both seeking to keep her alive. Yet the American public surprised many pundits by refusing to support this intervention, and the case produced a surge in the number of people declaring they did not wish to be kept alive in a situation such as Schiavo’s.”…

Yes, people say that they don’t want to share Terri Schiavo’s fate. What many of them mean, of course, is that they don’t want their fate decided by a judge who is willing to take the word of a relative for whom one’s accelerated death would be convenient. Singer dishonestly seizes on reactions to the Schiavo fiasco as evidence that euthanasia will become acceptable in the United States.

Certainly, there are many persons who would prefer voluntary euthanasia to a fate like Terri Schiavo’s. But the line between voluntary and involuntary euthanasia is too easily crossed, especially by persons who, like Singer, wish to play God. If there is a case to be made for voluntary euthanasia, Peter Singer is not the person to make it.

Singer gives away his Hitlerian game plan when he advocates killing the disabled up to 28 days after birth. Why not 28 years? Why not 98 years? Who decides — Peter Singer or an acolyte of Peter Singer? Would you trust your fate to the “moral” dictates of a person who thinks animals are as valuable as babies?

Would you trust your fate to the dictates of a person who so blithely dismisses religious morality? One does not have to be a believer to understand the intimate connection between religion and liberty, about which I have written here and here. Strident atheists of Singer’s ilk like to blame religion for the world’s woes. But the worst abuses of humanity in the 20th century arose from the irreligious and anti-religious regimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.

There’s more, from an article at LifeSiteNews:

In a question and answer article published in the UK’s Independent today, controversial Princeton University Professor Peter Singer repeats his notorious stand on the killing of disabled newborns. Asked, “Would you kill a disabled baby?”, Singer responded, “Yes, if that was in the best interests of the baby and of the family as a whole.”…
“Many people find this shocking,” continued Singer, “yet they support a woman’s right to have an abortion.” Concluding his point, Singer said, “One point on which I agree with opponents of abortion is that, from the point of view of ethics rather than the law, there is no sharp distinction between the foetus and the newborn baby.”

Let us be clear: Singer admits that it is the people who don’t support a woman’s “right” to have an abortion who insist that there is no distinction between the fetus and the newborn — or the fetus and an old person whose death might be convenient to others. Given Singer’s endorsement of involuntary infanticide — abortion and the killing of “disabled” newborns (“disabled” as determined how and by whom?) — Singer accepts, by implication, the rightness of involuntary euthanasia.

(There is much more about Singer’s “ethics” here, including his obvious support for “death panels”.)

ALL OF THAT ASIDE, DOESN’T ABORTION LEAD TO A LOWER RATE OF CRIME?

This question lends itself to rigorous statistical analysis. I begin with Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt (with Stephen J. Dubner). Here’s how The Washington Post reported Levitt’s findings about the drop in crime:

Freakonomics is packed with fascinating ideas. Consider Levitt’s notion of a relationship between abortion access and the crime drop. First, Freakonomics shows that although commonly cited factors such as improved policing tactics, more felons kept in prison and the declining popularity of crack account for some of the national reduction in crime that began in about the year 1990, none of these completes the explanation. (New York City and San Diego have enjoyed about the same percentage decrease in crime, for instance, though the former adopted new policing tactics and the latter did not.) What was the significance of the year 1990, Levitt asks? That was about 16 years after Roe v. Wade. Studies consistently show that a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by those raised in broken homes or who were unwanted as children. When abortion became legal nationally, Levitt theorizes, births of unwanted children declined; 16 years later crime began to decline, as around age 16 is the point at which many once-innocent boys start their descent into the criminal life. Leavitt’s [sic] clincher point is that the crime drop commenced approximately five years sooner in Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York and Washington state than it did in the nation as a whole. What do these states have in common? All legalized abortion about five years before Roe.

Well, Steve Sailer (among others) has attacked Levitt’s findings:

First, Levitt’s theory is predicated — at least publicly — on abortion reducing the proportion of “unwanted” babies, who are presumed to be more likely to grow up to be criminals. The empirical problem with this is that legalization (which occurred in California, New York, and three other states in 1970 and nationally in 1973), didn’t put the slightest dent in the illegitimacy rate, which is, by far, the most obvious objective sign of not being wanted by the mother and father, and has been linked repeatedly with crime…
… [But] the growth in the illegitimacy rate didn’t start to slow down until the mid-1990s when the abortion rate finally went down a considerable amount.
My article [in the May 9, 2005 edition of The American Conservative] offers a simple explanation, drawn from Levitt’s own research, of why legal abortion tends to increase illegitimacy. [Ed. note: Read the whole thing.]
Second, the acid test of Levitt’s theory is that it predicts that the first cohort to survive being culled by legal abortion should have been particularly law-abiding. Instead, they went on the worst teen murder rampage in American history….
For example, the 14-17 year olds in the not particularly murderous year of 1976 were, on average, born about 1960 (i.e., 1976 – 16 years of age = 1960), so they didn’t “benefit” from being culled by legalized abortion the way that the 14-17 years olds during the peak murder years of 1993 and 1994 should have benefited, according to Levitt.
In contrast, the homicide rate for the 25 and over cohort (none of whom enjoyed the benefits of legalized abortion) was lower in 1993 than in 1983.

If the legalization of abortion did result in less crime it’s only because abortion became more prevalent among that segment of society that is most prone to commit crime. (I dare not speak its name.) What policy does Levitt want us to infer from that bit of causality? Would he favor a program of euthanasia for the most crime-prone segment of society? Now there’s a fine kettle of fish for leftists, who favor abortion and oppose “oppression” of the the segment of society that is the most crime-prone.

In any event, if abortion does anything, it leads to more crime by women because it “frees” them from child-rearing. In the following graph, the blue and orange lines denote pre- and post-Roe years (with a one-year lag for Roe to take effect).

Derived from Statistical Abstracts of the United States: Table HS-24. Federal and State Prisoners by Jurisdiction and Sex: 1925 to 2001; and Table 338. Prisoners Under Federal or State Jurisdiction by Sex.

It’s women’s lib at work. (A semi-facetious remark.)

In fact, Levitt’s findings are built on statistical quicksand. This is from the abstract of a paper by Christopher L. Foote and Christopher F. Goetz of the Boston Fed:

[A] fascinating paper by Donohue and Levitt (2001, henceforth DL) . . . purports to show that hypothetical individuals resulting from aborted fetuses, had they been born and developed into youths, would have been more likely to commit crimes than youths resulting from fetuses carried to term. We revisit that paper, showing that the actual implementation of DL’s statistical test in their paper differed from what was described. . . .We show that when DL’s key test is run as described and augmented with state‐level population data, evidence for higher per capita criminal propensities among the youths who would have developed, had they not been aborted as fetuses, vanishes.

Whatever abortion is, it most certainly is not a crime-fighting tool.

BUT IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS, ISN’T ABORTION CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY?

Unsophisticated, self-styled libertarian defenders of abortion hold an “anything goes” view of liberty that is in fact antithetical to liberty. They may call themselves libertarians, but they might as well be anti-war protesters who block traffic or “greens” who burn down ski lodges and sabotage power facilities.

Liberty requires each of us to pursue happiness without causing harm to others, except in self-defense. Those libertarian defenders of abortion who bother to give the issue a bit of thought try to build a case for abortion around self-defense, arguing that a woman who aborts is defending herself, and that no one should question her act of self-defense. But that is a ridiculous argument, as I show above.

Where, then, lies a valid libertarian defense of abortion? In privacy? Not at all. Privacy, to the extent that it exists as right, cannot be a general right, as I have also argued above. If privacy were a general right, a murderer could claim immunity from prosecution as long as he commits murder in his own home, or better yet (for the murderer), as long as he murders his own children in his own home.

A “practical libertarian” might argue that legalizing abortion makes it “safer” (less dangerous to the mother), presumably because legalization ensures a greater supply of abortionists who can do the job without endangering the mother’s life, and at a lower price than a safe abortion would command without legalization. I’m willing to grant all of that, but I must observe that the same case can be made for legalizing murder. That is, a person with murderous intent could more readily afford to hire a professional who to do the job successfully and, at the same time, avoid putting himself at risk by trying to do the job himself. “Safety” is a rationalization for abortion that blinks at the nature of the act.

I am unable to avoid the conclusion that abortion is an anti-libertarian act of unjustified aggression against an innocent human being, an act that is usually undertaken for convenience and almost never for the sake of defending a mother’s life. Murder, too, is an act of convenience that is seldom justified by self-defense. Abortion, therefore, cannot be validated by mistaken appeals to self-defense, privacy, viability, and safety. Nor can abortion be validated (except legalistically) by a series of wrongly decided Supreme Court cases.

A hard-core “libertarian” will take refuge in the dogma that governmental interference in matters of personal choice is simply wrong. By that “logic,” it is wrong for government to interfere in or prosecute robbery, assault, rape, murder and other overtly harmful acts, which — after all — are merely the consequences of personal choices made by their perpetrators.

If the state has any legitimate function, it is to defend the lives, liberty, and property of those subject to its jurisdiction. State sponsorship of abortion is antithetical to that legitimate function. It suborns the killing of innocent human beings whose lives the state ought to protect.

“Liberal” support for abortion is just one more piece of evidence that “liberalism” is the enemy of liberty.

“Libertarian” support for abortion is one more piece of evidence that libertarianism — the dogma — is corrupt and anti-libertarian. (See what happened to Nat Hentoff when he demurred from “libertarian” orthodoxy in the matter of abortion.)

(It would make an already very long article excruciatingly long if I were to elaborate on the preceding point. If you are interested in understanding the anti-libertarian origins of libertarian dogma, go here.)

EXCERPTS OF SHERWIN B. NULAND’S “THE DEATH OF HIPPOCRATES” (THE NEW REPUBLIC, SEPTEMBER 12, 2004)

The exhibition [on eugenics at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington] details the influence of eugenics on determining Nazi policy from the time of the party’s assumption of power in 1933 until the end of World War II….Though some have thought of it as an applied science, eugenics is in fact more a philosophy than a science. Its proponents based their notions on genetics, having as their purpose the improvement of the breed. The word was defined exactly that way in 1911 in a book by the eminent American biometrician and zoologist Charles Davenport, director of the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, New York (elected to the National Academy of Sciences in the following year), who called it “the science of the improvement of the human race by better breeding.”

Eugenicists believed that it is possible, and even a good idea, to attempt to enhance the quality of our species by regulating the reproduction of traits considered to be inheritable….

When Gregor Mendel’s forgotten experiments on inheritable characteristics were rediscovered in 1900, a certain biological legitimacy was conferred on these notions, as unknown factors (later shown to be genes) were identified as the source of traits immutably passed on to offspring, and it was perceived that some are dominant and others recessive….

Once the Mendelian laws of heredity were widely known, eugenics movements were founded in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Russia, several of the nations of Europe, and even Latin America and Asia. Eugenics research institutes were established in more than a few of these countries, most prominently the United States, England, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden….

Not unexpectedly, eugenics was a creed that appealed to social conservatives, who were pleased to blame poverty and crime on heredity. Liberals–or progressives, as they were then usually called–were among its most vigorous opponents, considering the inequities of society to be due to circumstantial factors amenable to social and economic reform. And yet some progressive thinkers agreed with the eugenicists that the lot of every citizen would be improved by actions that benefited the entire group. Thus were the intellectual battle lines drawn.

It is hardly surprising that National Socialism in Germany would embrace the concept of eugenics. But from the beginning, there was more to Nazi support than the movement’s political appeal or the promise of its social consequences. As is clear from the exquisitely structured and thoroughly reliable accounting of “Deadly Medicine,” the stage was set for the emergence of a drive toward a uniquely German form of eugenics long before the average citizen had ever heard of Adolf Hitler….

The earliest hint of the coming storm had appeared around the turn of the twentieth century, when the German biologist August Weismann definitively showed that changes acquired by an organism during its lifetime cannot be inherited. Weismann’s findings overthrew a theory promulgated a hundred years earlier by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, holding that such adaptations could be passed down to succeeding generations. So-called Lamarckianism had incited controversy since its inception, and its debunking added fuel to the fire of those who believed that human beings inherit not only fixed physical characteristics but also mental and moral ones….

[M]any [eugenics researchers] were serious scientists whose aim was to discover ways in which the very best of the inherited characteristics might be encouraged and the very worst eliminated, with the ultimate goal of curing the ills of society….”By the early 1900s, proponents of eugenics everywhere began to offer biological solutions to social problems common to urbanizing and industrial societies.”…

To large numbers of its host of well-meaning adherents, eugenics was a scientifically and even mathematically based discipline, and many of them actually thought of it as a measurable, verifiable branch of biology that held the promise of becoming an enormous force for good.

Though it must be admitted that the United States, Britain, and Germany became centers for eugenics in part because of each nation’s certainty of its own superiority over all peoples of the world, the fact is that these countries were hardly more chauvinistic than most others. The primary reason they led in eugenic studies is traceable to a far more significant factor: their leadership in science….

The German-speaking institutions were so far ahead of those of every other nation that leading clinicians, researchers, and educators in Europe, Asia, and the Americas considered their training incomplete unless they had spent a period of study at such centers of learning and innovation as Berlin, Würzburg, Vienna, and Bern, or one of the small academic gems among the many outstanding universities in Germany, such as Göttingen, Heidelberg, or Tübingen….

The Germanic medical establishment was heir to a grand tradition of accomplishment and international respect; when it took on eugenics as a worthy goal, it was convinced of the righteousness of its intent. Even when some of its own members began to voice concerns about the direction in which the research and its application were going, many authoritative voices drowned out the relatively few protests.

The process rolled on within a worldwide cultural milieu conditioned by the universally accepted belief that the earth’s population was divided into races, and further subdivided into ethnic groups within them….

The rising power of the international eugenics movement manifested itself in predictable ways, from anti-immigration laws to compulsory sterilization for those deemed unfit, enacted in such “progressive” countries as Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and parts of Canada and Switzerland — as well as the United States, where some two dozen states had enacted sterilization laws by the late 1920s. The most dramatic moment for Americans came on May 2, 1927, when the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the state of Virginia’s intention to carry out tubal ligation on a “feebleminded” young woman named Carrie Buck, who had given birth to an illegitimate daughter also judged to be retarded, as was Carrie’s mother. Writing the majority opinion in Buck v. Bell, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. stated

It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes…. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

To a twenty-first-century sensibility, the equation with vaccination is at the very least questionable, but at the height of eugenic thinking, the eight-to-one majority among the justices reflected the general mood of a nation fifteen of whose states (the only ones of the twenty-seven reporting) would by 1933 have sterilized 6,246 of the insane, 2,938 of the feebleminded, fifty-five epileptics, sixteen criminals, and five persons with “nervous disorders.” More than half of these procedures were carried out in four state mental hospitals in California. In almost every state, the law applied only to residents of public facilities, which meant that lower-income groups were affected far out of proportion to their numbers in the population. Some sixteen thousand Americans would eventually be sterilized.

At this time Germany had not yet enacted any sterilization laws, in spite of strong advocacy and much expression of admiration for the American system by the so-called racial hygienicists. All of this foot-dragging ended when Hitler came to power in 1933, and it ended with a vengeance….Between 1934 and 1945, some four hundred thousand people would be forcibly sterilized, most before the war began in 1939. These included, in 1937, about five hundred racially mixed children of German mothers and black colonial soldiers in the French army occupying the Rhineland.

The basis for sterilizing these children was the outgrowth of the notion that a hereditarily gifted nation can retain its greatness only if the heredity remains pure, a thesis that had been widely accepted in Germany (and by many citizens of other countries as well, including our own) for generations….By 1937, the principle of pure blood had manifested itself in many ways, most particularly in the persecution of Jews and the passage of the Nuremberg laws of 1935, officially called “the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor,” by which marriage and sexual relations were prohibited between Jews and people of “pure” German blood. Shortly thereafter the Reich Citizenship Law went into effect, declaring that only “Aryan” Germans were citizens and Jews were to be considered “subjects.” This law defined who was a Jew and who was a so-called Mischling, an individual of mixed parentage. From these beginnings as an outgrowth of eugenics — itself a misconceived attempt toward utopia — Nazi racial policy would culminate in the murder of millions and the near-annihilation of European Jewry….

The theorists and the scientists who had until 1933 been able, and sincerely so, to claim detached objectivity for their research, could no longer delude themselves about the purposes for which it was being used. With the ascent to power of the Nazis, they had become, willy-nilly, active participants in the beginnings of genocide….

The murder of children was only the beginning. In October, 1939, Hitler authorized euthanasia for adults housed in German asylums….Between January, 1940 and August, 1941, some seventy thousand adult patients were gassed, their only crime being that they were unproductive members of the Nazi state….

But far worse was to follow….On January 20, 1942, the Wannsee Conference established the policy that would lead to the Holocaust, and from then on the real question became not whether but how….

Looking back with the wisdom of hindsight, it seems so clear that eugenics had always been a dangerous notion, and that its adherents were either deluded or racist. But the fact is that such a realization was slow in coming, and appeared only after matters had gotten completely out of hand and the stage set on which horrendous events would take place. Among the several reasons that medically trained students of eugenics allowed matters to turn so ugly was their failure to recognize a basic fact about the scientific enterprise, which is well known to historians and philosophers of the subject but continues to elude even some of the most sophisticated men and women who actually do the work. Though this fact characterizes science in general, it is even more applicable to the art that uses science to guide it, namely medicine, which was, after all, the underlying source of the momentum that drove the application of eugenic principles.

The basic fact to which I refer is that neither medicine nor science itself derives its “truths” in the thoroughly detached atmosphere in which its practitioners would like to believe they work. Especially in medicine and medical research, the atmosphere not only is not detached, but it is in fact largely the product of the very influences from which its participants seek to free themselves in order to isolate observations and conclusions from external sources and subjectivity. For an early explication of this, we may with profit turn to the father of Justice Holmes, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., who was for some years the dean of Harvard Medical School and bid fair to be called the dean of American medicine in the mid-nineteenth century. Here is what the elder Holmes said in an oration delivered to the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1860, titled “Currents and Countercurrents in Medical Science”:

The truth is, that medicine, professedly founded on observation, is as sensitive to outside influences, political, religious, philosophical, imaginative, as is the barometer to the changes of atmospheric density. But look a moment while I clash a few facts together, and see if some sparks do not reveal by their light a closer relation between the Medical Sciences and the conditions of society and the general thought of the time, than would, at first, be suspected.

The medical theory of any era–and to a somewhat lesser extent the science on which it is based–arises in a setting that is political and social. Not only that, but its directions and even its conclusions are influenced by the personal motivations, needs, and strivings of those who practice it, some of which may not be apparent to these men and women themselves. Though we would have it otherwise, there is no such thing as a thoroughly detached scientific undertaking. The danger in this lies not so much in its truth, but in the inability of society and the community of scientists to recognize the pervading influence of such an unpalatable reality, which flies in the face of the claims that form the groundwork for our worship of the scientific enterprise….

By itself, each of the small steps taken by the eugenics movement in the early part of the twentieth century seemed not just innocuous but actually of real interest as a subject for consideration. Attached to the names of highly regarded scientific thinkers, the theories intended to improve the general level and functioning of a nation had a certain appeal to men and women concerned about social issues….

At what point would I have realized the direction in which all of this was hurtling? Perhaps not until it was too late. Looking back with unbridled condemnation on the beginnings of racial hygiene does not enlighten today’s thoughtful man or woman in regard to how he or she might have responded at the time….

This is not to say that there had not from the beginning been enough evil men lurking at the ready to push the notion of racial hygiene down the slope whose slipperiness they recognized long before men of goodwill awoke to the reality of what they had wrought. Nor is it to say that — even when the worst was becoming evident — many others did not continue to allow the slide to take place and to accelerate because, after all, those being sterilized and euthanized were so unlike themselves. But it is most certainly to say that there is good reason for so many wags and wise men down the centuries to have repeatedly observed that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Sometimes “anarchy is loosed upon the world” not because “the best lack all conviction,” but because they firmly and honestly believe they are doing the right thing.

Doing the right thing: there has never been a period in the modern era when our species has relaxed its fascination with the idea of improving itself….A century ago the buzzword was eugenics. Today it is enhancement. Eugenics is meant to improve the breed and enhancement is meant to improve the individual, but they are too similar in concept to allow us to rest easy with either one.

Today’s molecular biologists and geneticists have dipped a very powerful oar into the ongoing stream of debate about heredity versus environment. Every year — every month — we read about newly discovered genetic factors determining not only physical characteristics but those of morals and mind as well. Sometimes we are even told their precise locations on the DNA molecule. No one knows how much of this will hold up in the coming decades, but we can be sure that a significant proportion of it will be confirmed. Some authoritative scientific voices are telling us that we should take advantage of the new knowledge to fulfill our fantasies of improving ourselves and indeed our species.

These new findings — and the enthusiasm of some of our scientists — take us huge steps beyond the ultimately shaky theoretical platform on which the eugenics movement stood. The debate has for several years been raging between those who look to the lessons of the past and shout warnings and those who see only the utopia of an enhanced future and shout encouragement. In a powerful discourse against reproductive cloning — only one manifestation of the brave new world being foreseen — Leon R. Kass wrote in these pages of “a profound defilement of our given nature … and of the social relations built on this natural ground.” At the far other end of the spectrum is Gregory Stock, director of the Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society at UCLA and one of the new breed called “futurists,” whose enthusiasm for bio-psychoengineering (Kass’s cautionary term for such feats of creativity) and a post-human future is so unbounded that he has gone so far as to title his most recent book Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future. Inevitable! Even more frightening than the confidence of Stock’s vision for his fellow men and women is the title of the book’s first chapter, in which he outlines his image of how the laboratory will come to control evolution: he calls it “The Last Human,” meaning those few of us remaining whose bodies and minds have been formed by nature alone.

This is genuinely terrifying stuff. Not since the first half of the twentieth century have prominent thinkers been so starry-eyed at the thought of controlling the future of our species, or at least that privileged portion of it that will have the financial, cultural, and other wherewithal to take advantage of the offer being presented to us…. Though I admire Stock for his sincerity and the magnitude of his intellect, I am sure that I would have admired more than a few of the early German eugenicists for the very same reasons had I known them as well as I know him. What concerns me is not the progression of the technology, but the inherent creeping hazards in its philosophical underpinning, which is ultimately to improve the breed.

It all sounds very familiar. Looking backward, we can now see the danger in state-enforced policies of improvement, but too many of us have yet to awaken to the equally dangerous reality of improvement that is self-determined. We are once again standing on the slope, from the top of which the future we may be wreaking is already visible. Now is the time to recognize the nature of human motivation — and the permanence of human frailty.

Preposition Proliferation

Up with which I should not put.

I have a habit of speech — acquired long ago and hard to shake — which is the unnecessary use of prepositions in phrases like “hurry up” and “stand up”. I don’t write that way, but I still (too often) speak that way.

I hadn’t been conscious of the habit, probably acquired from my Midwestern parents, until about 30 years ago when a young computer whiz corrected me when I said “open up”. She said that “open” would suffice, and my eyes were (figuratively) opened; that is, for the first time in my life I understood that I had long been been guilty of preposition proliferation.

In addition to “open up”, “hurry up”, and “stand up”, there are “fill up”, “lift up”, and possibly dozens of others that feature unnecessary prepositions. I leave it to you to list your favorites.

There are also phrases involving prepositions that aren’t quite wrong, but which are unnecessarily long. Consider, for example, one that is used often: “come in”. It’s really a shorthand way of saying “come into the room/office/house to which you are seeking entry”. So the “in” isn’t superfluous, but it is unnecessary.

“Come” will suffice, as will “enter”. Why aren’t those expressions used as commonly as “come in”? I suspect that it’s because “come in” sounds less abrupt and more cordial than the peremptory “come” and “enter”. That is to say, “come in” is more welcoming.

Which brings me back to “hurry up”, “stand up”, and similar phrases. Perhaps the prepositions were added long ago to suggest that the speaker was making a request, not issuing a command. That is, they were added out of politeness.

Perhaps it is politeness that prevents me from ~~giving up~~ abandoning the practice of preposition proliferation.

A Blast from the Past

Just follow the link.

Link. (No, it doesn’t lead to malware. I just want to warn you, before you click the link, that it’s ribald humor from an old blog of mine.)

How Not to Be an Effective Altruist

First, stop believing in altruism.

I was reminded of effective altruism by the notoriety of Samuel Bankman-~~Fried~~ Fraud. According to the Wikipedia article about effective altruism, Fried/Fraud

became associated with the effective altruism movement [in 2019], announcing that his goal was to “donate as much as [he] can”. After [FTX’s] collapse in late 2022, [his] relationship with effective altruism has been called into question as a public relations strategy.

This comes as no surprise to me, inasmuch as effective altruism is founded on two mistaken ideas.

The first mistaken idea is that altruism is an unselfish psychological urge. I’ll say no more here about that mistake. Just see my post “Egoism and Altruism”.

The second mistaken idea is that charity (a more accurate word than altruism) is more effective if (in the words of the Wikipedia article) those who give money to help others

“us[e] evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and tak[e] action on that basis”….
Popular cause priorities within effective altruism include global health and development, social inequality, animal welfare, and risks to the survival of humanity over the long-term future. Effective altruism emphasizes impartiality and the global equal consideration of interests when choosing beneficiaries [e.g., distant Africans are the same as one’s countrymen and kinsmen].

So much for “evidence” and “reason”, given that combating “climate change” — the ultimate pseudo-scientific fraud — is a favored use of effective altruists’ money (e.g., Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos).

Everything else (global health, social inequality, animal welfare, etc.) is the stuff that mass-marketed charities are made of. Emotion rules decisions to give to such charities, not “evidence” and “reason”. How do I know? Because there’s no way to equate such causes. They’re of a piece with the mythical “social welfare function”.

If ever there was an effective altruist, it was Andrew Carnegie, the “robber baron” who made a huge fortune by pioneering the mass-production of steel. That was his most effectively altruistic accomplishment because he made his fortune by making things that bettered the lives of countless persons in America and overseas.

On top of that, he endowed 3,000 public libraries (I remember one of them well), museums, art galleries, Carnegie Hall, a university, and various scientific endeavors. He also funded some institutions and efforts in the name of “world peace”, which just goes to show that anyone can be foolish in one way or another. But the bulk of his philanthropy was practical and actually uplifting (the libraries, galleries, museums, Carnegie Hall, and the university).

What about people in distant lands? Well, if you feel sorry for them and can find a charity that won’t divert most of your donation to bloated salaries, grandiose buildings, and costly marketing campaigns go for it. But even then don’t expect great or even small miracles — there haven’t been any in my lifetime.

The conditions that cause poverty and oppression in distant lands are rooted in the geography, politics, and culture of such places. Those conditions can’t be altered by charity or magical thinking. But magical thinking is precisely what animates the loony leftists who are the main proponents of effective altruism.

How to Create and Protect Strong Passwords

Without using a cumbersome and vulnerable password manager.

Tech sites like PCMag have been touting password managers for years. I’ve tried some of them, and even the ones that are supposedly easy to use are cumbersome. Not only that, but the vendors’ servers are natural targets for password thieves.

Today’s PCMag newsletter brings these sad tidings:

Well, it’s bad. LastPass has lost a copy of customers’ encrypted password data to a hacker, who recently breached the company’s systems.
The hacker looted the password data by copying a “backup of customer vault data” from an encrypted storage container during the intrusion, LastPass said on Thursday.
The company supplied the update three weeks after LastPass announced it had suffered a breach that led to the hacker stealing customer information….
The stolen vault data contained “fully-encrypted sensitive fields such as website usernames and passwords, secure notes, and form-filled data,” along with unencrypted website URLs.
LastPass is emphasizing that the stolen vault data remains protected because it’s been secured with 256-bit AES encryption. To decrypt the data, the hacker would need the vault’s master password — something only the customer should know….
The problem is that the hacker could exploit various ways to obtain a customer’s master password. This could involve trying to guess it by using brute-force attacks. However, LastPass says this would be incredibly hard to pull off if the customer had used a complex password. As a security measure, LastPass also requires a master password to be at least 12 characters long.
Still, the other way a hacker could steal a master password is by phishing customers. This could involve sending fake emails or text messages pretending to be LastPass in an effort to dupe unsuspecting users into giving up the login credential.
During the breach, the hacker also obtained “basic customer account information,” including email addresses, telephone numbers, billing address and IP addresses —making it easy for the culprit to target individual users.
So to guard against such phishing, LastPass is telling users: “It is important to know that LastPass will never call, email, or text you and ask you to click on a link to verify your personal information. Other than when signing into your vault from a LastPass client, LastPass will never ask you for your master password.”

Hah! Good luck with that.

Here’s what I do: Generate random passwords myself. Store them in a password-protected file on my PC. Allow my web browsers to save passwords (for ease of access to online accounts and websites that store personal data and payment information), but password-protect my PC. Print a paper copy of all the passwords (including the passwords for the file and the PC). Keep the paper copy in a secure place in my home (which is protected by a monitored alarm system), and allow only my wife to know the location of the copy. (There’s a secure process by which our children can access the copy, but they won’t know how to do it unless both of us have died or are incapacitated.)

How does one generate random passwords? PCMag, in an article that touts password managers, explains how to do it. My method is somewhat different, but it comes down to the same thing: Use Excel to randomly generate unique and extremely strong passwords.

The rest — setting up an Excel routine, generating passwords, and securing what you’ve generated — is up to you.

A Product Endorsement: Hearing Aids

Don’t waste your money on brick-and-mortar hearing-aid providers.

I have used hearing aids for 16 years. My first pair (Siemens) cost $3,900 in 2006. My second pair (Oticon) cost $6,700 in 2013. My third pair (Oticon) cost $7,500 (including recharger and TV audio-streaming device) in 2019. I bought all three pairs from brick-and-mortar audiologists.

The first Oticons were the best of the three pairs. I especially liked them because they were good at focusing on the person sitting across from me in a noisy restaurant. Also, the sound quality was good. I went to a new pair of Oticons only because my hearing had deteriorated. But the newer Oticons, despite many adjustments (at $50 a pop), were never as good as the first ones in noisy settings. Then, after only three years of use, the right hearing aid died.

I had been reading about how good over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids have become, and was persuaded by this well-researched article to try Jabra Enhance Select 200 devices. The alternative was driving to a brick-and-mortar audiologist (during the holidays!) and getting stuck with an expensive repair bill for a hearing aid that wasn’t delivering the goods when it was working.

Wow! I took an online hearing test, got the results immediately, ordered the Jabras, and received them in three days (via FedEX). I charged them (charger included), popped them into my ears (a perfect fit), and was introduced to a new and better — and much less expensive — world of hearing. I paid $1,845 for the pair (after an online discount of $150). That’s right, for about 25 percent of the cost of my highly rated Oticons, the Jabras deliver better sound and a lot of other things:

more precise volume control
equalization of treble, bass, and mid-range sounds
filtering out background sounds
delivering “crisper” speech to my ears (there’s a setting for that)
adjusting for the ambiance (normal, restaurant, music, outdoors)
three years of Zoom and telephone consultations with audiologists to answer questions, resolve problems, and make adjustments.

All I had to do (aside from paying for the hearing aids) was to take the simple online hearing test (for which bluetooth headphones are needed). The hearing aids arrived already programmed, based on the results of the test. Perhaps they’ll need some adjustments — I’ll find out in my first Zoom consultation next week — but they’re already far superior to the defunct Oticons.

A final note. The article linked above recommends the Jabra Enhance Select 200 devices (and other OTC hearing aids) for persons with mild to moderate hearing loss. Well, my hearing loss is severe, but the Jabras are more than adequate to the task of restoring my hearing to normal.

What's the Use?

More about the shape of things to come.

Government censorship via private entities gets a big ho-hum in the mainstream media.

Mounting evidence about the destructiveness of COVID lockdowns gets the same big ho-hum.

Gas prices drop (probably because of a looming recession) so American voters view Biden more favorably despite his damaging extremism on wokeness, “climate change”, and immigration.

Democrats in Congress (and some RINOs) applaud such things while continuing to fixate on the “sins” of Donald Trump, who never was what he was alleged to be and never again will become president.

There are similar and identical goings-on throughout the Western world, from Australia and New Zealand through the United States and Canada and across the Atlantic to the British Isles and continental Europe. To take just one chilling example, there is the Dutch government’s plan to shut down 3,000 farms in the name of combating “climate change”.

The pseudo-science of “climate change” is just the most glaring instance of the destruction of objective science in the name of “equity” (and other such claptrap). Government agencies and government-run institutions of “higher learning” are integral members of the wrecking crew (e.g., see this).

For those and many other reasons, there should be blood in the streets of national capitals — the blood of tyrants like Biden and Trudeau — and masses of legislators, bureaucrats, and judges should have been taken out and shot. To put it in more politely, there should be an electoral equivalent of a revolution against today’s tyranny in the form of mass rejections of the left-wing governments that are impoverishing their citizens and destroying the moral, social fabric, and scientific fabric of their nations.

But what do I see on TV? Joe Average indulging himself in mindless game shows, talentless “talent” shows, biased news programs, and absolutely tasteless “entertainment”. It’s “I’m all right, Jack” on steroids.

What will it take to move people to reclaim their liberty? Will there big (electoral) uprisings (if not armed ones), or will we all go down the drain with a whimper? At the moment, my money’s on the latter.

State Action As Private Action

Ever the twain shall meet.

Anarchists and defenders of non-governmental censorship to the contrary notwithstanding, there is no dividing line between private and state action. I address this point in “Is Anarchy a Viable Concept?“. I elaborate the point here.

Anarchists like to draw a bright line between the state and the private sphere so that they can argue, foolishly, for the replacement of the state by private actors. Defenders of non-governmental censorship (e.g., suppression of tweets by Twitter and deplatforming by Facebook) are simply political theorists in thrall the mistaken belief that the “marketplace of ideas” is self-correcting and eventually yields truth. (Even if it were self-correcting, devastating harm would result before truth emerges.)

I will begin with the futility of drawing a bright line — or any line — between state and private action. Before going any further I should be clear about what I mean by “state”.

A state is defined as “the supreme public power within a sovereign political entity” (4.a.). This definition suggests that a state is some kind of disembodied essence. But a state does not exist unless it is embodied in institutions that are operated by human beings. And the power exercised by those human beings is meant to serve specific (if inchoate) aims that are personal to them or to persons to whom they are beholden; for example, higher-ranking government officials, major campaign contributors, influential voting blocs, or a person or group with whom one wishes to curry favor.

Government power is exercised through agencies that are usually characterized as legislative, executive, and judicial. But there is a fourth type of agency that operates, much of the time, independently of the other three types. It is the “administrative state”, a conglomeration of executive agencies that usurps legislative and judicial functions. The “deep state” includes members of the administrative state who strive (often successfully) to impose their own agendas through their control of the minutiae of government operations. This phenomenon underscores the essentially private nature of state action.

The power of the four types of agency is exercised through a combination of force, fear on the part of the governed, and submission by those among the governed who naively view the state and its edicts as something akin to divinity and divine writ.

The power of government is augmented by its ability to control information and perceptions about governmental activities. Such control, nowadays, is abetted by (most) members of the media when government is controlled by Democrats and undermined by (most) members of the media when government is controlled by Republicans.

The state, thus properly understood, is merely an outlet for private action. In so-called democracies (democratic republics) elections and appointments determine which private interests control the power of the state.

Democracies differ from oligarchies only in that voters in democracies go through the exercise of choosing the oligarchies — the collection of interest groups — that will rule them.

The difference between democracies and dictatorships is one of degree, not of kind. The ruling interests in a democracy are simply somewhat more changeable than the ruling interests in a dictatorship. But in both cases the ruling interests pursue private agendas. Dictatorships are more blatantly oppressive. Democracies hide their fascism behind a friendly face.

The bottom line: The state embodies and implements private action.

Given that the state, in the service of many (and sometimes competing) private agendas, must trample on the lives, liberty, or property of most of its subjects it would seem obviously desirable to devolve political power. And, logically, devolution ought to proceed to the lowest level: the person or a group of persons who choose to be treated as a unit (e.g., the nuclear family).

This solution is superficially appealing. But it omits crucial realities, which are reflected in the state of the world throughout recorded history (and probably for eons before that). Human beings band together in order to accomplish certain ends (e.g., defense against marauders, hunting and gathering), and the banding together almost always creates leaders and subjects. Thus is a primitive state established. And once it is established, it exerts control over a geographic area or a roving band, and everyone who lives in that area or joins that band becomes a subject of the state. Primitive states then band together — either for self-defense or because of conquest — forming larger and larger states, each of which holds its subjects in thrall. An occasional revolution or schism sometimes leads to the dissolution of a particular state, but the subjects of that state simply become subjects of a successor state or of neighboring states avid to control the territory and subjects of the defunct state.

So it has gone for millennia, and so it will go for millennia to come.

That would be the last word … but the duped defenders of corporate censorship cannot go unanswered. As I once observed, power is power. If government censorship is wrong, why is it right for powerful corporations to censor speech and effectively nullify the First Amendment? To put a point on it, why is it right for powerful corporations whose leaders share the ideologies and interests of a particular political party to act as surrogates for that party, and to suppress and distort opposing views?

The revised bottom line: The state embodies and implements private action, and private actors who do the bidding of state actors are merely minions of partisan private interests.

The Principles of Actionable Harm

Where state action is justified.

As a conservative by disposition who is a radical-right-minarchist in his politics, I recognize the need for a state — but a state that is strictly constrained. Its sole justification for being is to protect negative rights (including property rights) and civil society.

Specifically:

1. An actionable harm — a harm against which the state may properly act — is one that deprives a person of negative rights or undermines the voluntarily evolved institutions and norms of civil society.

2. The state should not act — or abet action by private entities — except as it seeks to deter, prevent, or remedy an actionable harm to its citizens.

3. An actionable harm may be immediate (as in the case of murder) or credibly threatened (as in the case of a conspiracy to commit murder). But actionable harms extend beyond those that are immediate or credibly threatened. They also result from actions by the state that strain and sunder the bonds of trust that make it possible for a people to coexist civilly, through the mutual self-restraint that arises from voluntarily evolved social norms. The use of state power has deeply eroded such norms. The result has been to undermine the trust and self-restraint that enable a people to enjoy liberty and its fruits; for example:

Affirmative action and other forms of forced racial integration deny property rights and freedom of association, prolong racial animosity, and impose unwarranted economic harm on those who are guilty of nothing but the paleness of their skin.

The legalization of abortion, in addition to allowing murder, invites infanticide and euthanasia.

The granting of special “rights” to “protected groups” leads inevitably to the suppression of the freedoms of expression and association.

State recognition of gay marriage undermines heterosexual marriage — an essential civilizing institution.

The encouragement of illegal immigration imposes heavy economic costs on Americans and enlarge the constituency for big government.

4. An expression of thought cannot be an actionable harm unless it

is defamatory
would directly obstruct governmental efforts to deter, prevent, or remedy an actionable harm (e.g., divulging classified defense information, committing perjury)
intentionally causes or would directly cause an actionable harm (e.g., plotting to commit an act of terrorism, forming a lynch mob)
purposely — through a lie or the withholding of pertinent facts — causes a person to act against self-interest
purposely — through its intended influence on government — results in what would be an actionable harm if committed by a private entity (e.g., the taking of income from persons who earn it, simply to assuage the envy of those who earn less). (In this case, the remedy for such harms should not be the suppression or punishment of the harmful expressions; the remedy should be the enforcement of constitutional restrictions on the powers exercised by government.)

With those exceptions, a mere statement of fact, belief, opinion, or attitude cannot be an actionable harm. Otherwise, those persons who do not care for the facts, beliefs, opinions, or attitudes expressed by other persons would be able to stifle speech they find offensive merely by claiming to be harmed by it. And those persons who claim to be offended by the superior income or wealth of other persons would be entitled to recompense from those other persons. (It takes little imagination to see the ramifications of such thinking; rich heterosexuals, for example, could claim to be offended by the existence of persons who are poor or homosexual, and could demand their extermination as a remedy.)

5. Except where there is a moral obligation to act (e.g., to save one’s child from drowning) it cannot be an actionable harm to commit a private, voluntary act of omission (e.g., the refusal of social or economic relations for reasons of personal preference), other than a breach of contract or fiduciary responsibility. Nor can it be an actionable harm to commit a private, voluntary act which does nothing more than arouse resentment, envy, or anger in others. A legitimate state does not judge, punish, or attempt to influence private, voluntary acts that are not otherwise actionable harms.

6. By the same token, a legitimate state does not judge, punish, or attempt to influence private, voluntary acts of commission which have undesirable but avoidable consequences. For example:

Government prohibition of smoking on private property is illegitimate because non-smokers could choose not to frequent or work at establishments that allow smoking.

Other government restrictions on the use of private property (e.g., laws that bar restrictive covenants or mandate public accommodation) are illegitimate because they (1) diminish property rights and (2) discourage ameliorating activities (e.g., the evolution away from cultural behaviors that play into racial prejudice, investments in black communities and black-run public accommodations).

Tax-funded subsidies for retirement and health care are illegitimate because they discourage private charity, hard work, saving, and other prudent habits — habits that would lead to less dependence on government, were those habits encouraged.

7. It is also wrong for the state to make and enforce distinctions among individuals that have the effect of advantaging some persons because of their age, gender, sexual orientation, skin color, ethnicity, religion, or economic status.

8. Except in the case of punishment for an actionable harm, it is an actionable harm to bar a competent adult from expressing his views, as long as they are not defamatory or meant to incite harm and oppression.

9. The proper role of the state is to enforce the preceding principles in several ways:

Remain neutral with respect to evolved social norms, except where those norms violate negative rights, as with the systematic disenfranchisement or enslavement of particular classes of persons.
Foster economic freedom (and therefore social freedom) by ensuring open trade within the nation and (to the extent compatible with national security) open trade with (but selective immigration from) other nations.
Ensure free expression of thought, except where such expression is tantamount to an actionable harm (as in a conspiracy to commit murder or mount a campaign of harassment).
See that just laws — those enacted in accordance with the principles of actionable harm — are enforced swiftly and surely, with favoritism toward no person or class of persons.
Defend citizens against predators, foreign and domestic.

**********

The foregoing principles are not rules for making everyone happy. They are rules for ensuring that each citizen is able to pursue happiness without impinging on the negative rights of others or subverting civil society.

The state should apply the principles of actionable harm only to citizens and legitimate residents of the United States. Sovereignty is otherwise meaningless; the United States exists for the protection of citizens and persons legitimately in residence; it is not an eleemosynary institution.

By the same token, those who harm (or clearly intend to harm) citizens and legitimate residents of the United States must be dealt with swiftly — and harshly, as necessary.

Related post: On Liberty

The Shape of Things to Come

The LGBT fad sweeps college campuses.

According to a report by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology:

A quarter of [college] students are LGBT, and there are roughly equal shares of Christian and nonreligious students. LGBT, Nonreligious, and Christians are set to become more important political groups among America’s future leaders.
Liberal arts colleges are the least politically diverse. Many have almost no conservatives, and thus very low viewpoint diversity. But they have high sexual diversity, at nearly 40 percent LGBT.

Commenting on the report, Legal Insurrection notes that

23 percent of American college students identify as LGBTQ. That percentage is close to the results of a Gallup poll, in which 21% of Generation Z identified as LGBT ten months ago.
Far fewer older people identify as LGBT. The overall percentage of Americans identifying as LGBT was only 7% in the Gallup poll.

What do all the numbers mean? They mean that young persons — even (or especially) the most intelligent among them — are impressionable and easily swayed by their peers. The LGBT fad on college campuses exemplifies the bandwagon effect.

It’s another good reason to slash the funding of colleges and universities, especially the funding of illiberal arts departments and programs. Unfortunately, it’s too late to prevent the next generation of adults from becoming even more radical, irrational, and destructive than the generation that was spawned by the “flower children” of the 1960s and 1970s.

Fasten your seat belts.

Related posts:

Colleges and Universities Are Overrated (follow the links at the end of the post)

The Transgender Fad and Its Consequences

A More Perfect Constitution

Such stuff as dreams are made of.

Not that it will ever happen, unless there’s a national divorce, but it would be a good thing to rewrite the Constitution with the history of its corruption in mind. (See “The Constitution: Myths and Realities”, especially Part IV.) This is my version of a Constitution that would undo the damage done to the original Constitution by Congress, the executive branch, and the courts. To that end, the entire document is necessarily much longer and more detailed than the present Constitution (as amended). Among many things, Article II is new and establishes strict standards for citizenship and voting. Articles VI through X are essentially new, and are designed to keep the central government under control, which is the main purpose of the whole document. I earnestly solicit your comments and suggestions.

I. PURPOSES AND PRINCIPLES

A. Purposes

We, the citizens of the States giving effect to this Constitution, do hereby reaffirm the union of States known as the United States of America. The purposes of this Constitution are

• to establish a government of and for the United States of America (hereinafter government of the United States);

• to delineate the powers, duties, and rights of that government, of the States and their respective governments, and of the citizens of the States, who are thereby citizens of the United States; and

• to dedicate the United States, its government, the States, and their governments to their paramount objective, which is to protect the lives, liberty, and property of citizens.

B. Sovereignty of the Citizens of the United States

The premise of this Constitution is that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. The citizens of the United States retain ultimate sovereignty, and through this Constitution give their consent to the States and the government of the United States to exercise those powers — and only those powers — that are delegated to them in this Constitution. The citizens of the United States and each State reserve to themselves all rights — enumerated and unenumerated — that are not subsumed in those delegated powers. Among the enumerated rights are the rights of initiative and recall, as defined in Article IX of this Constitution.

C. Primacy, Scope, and Interpretation of the Constitution

1. This Constitution is the supreme law of the land. The governments of the United States and every State are bound by this supreme law.

2. The language of this Constitution shall be understood and applied according to its meaning at the time of its original submission to the States for ratification, except that additions and revisions pursuant to an amendment shall be understood and applied according to the meaning of that language at the time the amendment was submitted to the States for ratification.

3. Throughout this Constitution, any reference to a State or States shall be understood to encompass all components and agents of any State government, all governmental units within any State, any corporate or educational entity that is operated or funded primarily by any State or governmental unit within a state, and any intergovernmental entity created for any purpose by two or more States.

4. Except as expressly provided herein, the powers of the governments of the States are proscribed to the same extent as the powers of the government of the United States.

5. The titles of the Articles and sections of this Constitution have no authority. All of the authority of this Constitution is expressed in the text of its Articles and their subordinate parts, except that its statement of Purposes (Article I, Section A) shall not be construed to grant or deny any powers or rights to the government of the United States or the States or the people thereof.

D. Recognition of Governmental Debt

1. All debt of the government of the United States authorized by law in accordance with this Constitution is valid.

2. Neither the government of the United States nor of any State may assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of treason, rebellion, insurrection, or terrorism against the United States or any State. All such debts, obligations, and claims are illegal and void.

E. Oath of Office Required

All elected and appointed officials, employees, and agents of the governments of the United States and its constituent States shall be bound by oath or affirmation to uphold this Constitution. A failure by an official, employee, or agent of any such government to uphold this Constitution is grounds for removal from office, by impeachment or other process prescribed by law, whether or not the failure is deliberate or criminal in nature.

II. CITIZENSHIP, VOTING, AND RELIGIOUS TESTS FOR OFFICE

A. Citizenship upon Adoption of This Constitution

Every person shall be a citizen of the United States who was a citizen in accordance with the law of the United States as it stood at the time of the ratification of this Constitution.

B. Citizenship by Birth

A person who is born after the ratification of this Constitution becomes a citizen of the United States, regardless of that person’s place of birth, if at the time of birth that person has a least one parent who is a citizen of the United States (including a parent who was a citizen of the United States but who died before the birth). Birth within the territory of the United States, within any of its States, or within a territory, possession, or foreign installation of the United States does not, in itself, convey citizenship.

C. Citizenship by Naturalization

The government of the United States shall provide by law for the naturalization of persons who are not born citizens of the United States.

D. Voting

1. Only citizens of the United States may cast ballots in elections, referenda, recalls, or other matters pertaining to the governance of the United States or any State.

2. The minimum attained age of a voter shall be at least twenty-one, although a State may by law set a higher minimum age. The minimum age established by a State shall apply to voting within that State, including voting in elections for offices of the government of the United States.

3. The right to vote may not otherwise be denied or abridged by the government of the United States or any State, except on the basis a person’s criminal record or certified mental incompetence, as the governments of the United States and each State provide by law regarding persons under their respective jurisdictions.

4. The right of eligible persons to vote in elections of the United States or the States many not otherwise be denied or abridged for failure to pay any kind of tax, fee, penalty, or other monetary imposition of government.

5. The ballots for all elections, referenda, recalls, or other matters pertaining to the governance of the United States shall be cast on a consecutive Saturday and Sunday on dates established by Congress for the election of the president, vice president, and members of the Congress of the United States. The legislatures of the respective States shall establish by law the dates for voting on all matters pertaining to the governance of the States, except that the dates for each election, referendum, recall, or other matters pertaining to the governance of a State must span two consecutive days, the first being a Saturday.

6. All ballots shall be cast in person at polling places designated in accordance with the laws of each State, except that a State legislature may by law allow the casting of absentee ballots by persons who are disabled (as provided by State law), over the age of sixty-five, or who will at the time of an election be absent from the districts in which they are registered to vote. Persons casting absentee ballots shall deliver them or cause them to be delivered to locations designated by State law. Absentee ballots may not be made available to an eligible voter except upon written request by that voter or his legally authorized agent; may not be made available to an eligible voter more than thirty days before the date of the pertinent election, referendum, recall or other matter pertaining to governance; and may not be counted until the beginning of the first day of voting in an eligible voter’s State.

7. All ballots cast in each State shall be counted no less than seventy-two hours after the close of in-person voting in the State. The results of each election, referendum, recall, etc., shall be certified by the official designated by State law to make such certification no later than ninety-six hours after the close of in-person voting in the State, unless there is a recount of ballots conducted in accordance with State law, in which case the results shall be certified no less than one hundred and forty-four hours after the close of in-person voting in the State.

8. All ballots for all elections in the United States shall be printed on paper. Each ballot must be marked by the eligible voter who is casting the ballot, except where a voter’s physical handicap requires the marking of a ballot by another person, who shall sign, under penalty of perjury, attesting to his identity, the identity of the person for whom he is marking a ballot, and the conformity of the completed ballot with the instructions of the voter.

9. No person or organization may collect more than five absentee ballots for delivery to a place designated by a State legislature for the collection of absentee ballots.

10. No non-governmental organization may plan, oversee, or administer any aspect of any election, referendum, recall, or other matter pertaining to the governance of the United States or any State. This provision includes but is not limited to the creation or maintenance of registries of eligible voters, the review of eligibility to cast absentee ballots, the preparation and transmission of such ballots, and the collection and delivery of such ballots to such places as may be designated by State law.

11. With respect to the District of Columbia and other places that are under the direct jurisdiction of the government of the United States, all of the proceeding provisions of this Section C of Article II shall be construed as if Congress were a State legislature and the executive branch of the United States government were an executive branch of a State government.

D. Religious Tests for Office

No religious test may be required as a qualification for a government office or position of public trust under the government of the United States or any State.

III. RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES OF CITIZENS

Rights and privileges conferred by and reserved under this Constitution apply equally to citizens of the United States but not to persons who are not citizens, except as provided herein. Neither the government of the United States nor any State may abridge any rights conferred by or reserved under this Constitution.

A. Equality and Guarantee of Rights and Privileges

Neither the government of the United States nor that of any State may do any of the following things:

1. Deprive any person, corporation, or other private entity living or operating lawfully within the jurisdiction of the government of the United States or any State of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Due process, for this purpose, shall be understood as the disposition of a civil suit or criminal charge by verdict or settlement, and not any other act of government.

2. Prohibit the free exercise of religion, except where a particular religious activity would result in the commission of an act that otherwise is criminal, irrespective of its religious connotations or provenance (Article III, Section A, Clause 6 pertains). The free exercise of religion includes but is not limited to the use of government-owned, -operated, or -funded property — including institutions of learning — for brief periods of meditation and for teaching about religion, as long as such teaching is comparative. Such property, when not in use by a governmental unit, may be used for religious activities or observances of any lawful kind, as long as such functions are not endorsed or sponsored by a governmental unit, and as long as the same property is made available under the same terms and conditions to other users. It is a denial of the free exercise of religion for any governmental unit to bar the invocation or mention of a deity or other religious figure by any person at any time or place.

3. Establish religion, either directly or by funding or giving material aid to any religion, religious activity, or any activity conducted by or on behalf of a religion or religious institution. Allowing the free exercise of religion in accordance with the preceding clause is not an establishment of religion. Further, this clause shall not be construed to prohibit the giving of funds or material support directly to individual persons, even though such funding or support might be used by those persons to underwrite a religious purpose — including but not limited to religious education — as long as such funding or support is given for a non-religious purpose, including but not limited to education, and is made generally available to all eligible persons without regard for their religious affiliations or lack thereof.

4. Abridge, influence, shape, restrict, or give preference to the expression of ideas or information for any purpose by any citizen of the United States or on behalf of a business or other private organization operating lawfully within the United States. Congress may nevertheless enact laws prohibiting and punishing the release of information by any person, whether or not affiliated with the press, that would endanger the security of the United States or any State or citizen (including their businesses wherever located), or that would jeopardize the ability of the armed forces of the government of the United States to perform their missions. Congress may also enact laws prohibiting and punishing the utterance or publication of ideas that would circumscribe the economic or social liberties of citizens of the United States, as they are recognized in this Constitution.

5. Abridge the right of citizens to assemble peaceably and to petition government for the redress of grievances. This right does not include acts that threaten or harm persons or their property or which impede or obstruct the access of any person to any place, public or private. Neither the government of the United States nor any State shall incur or reimburse any expense related to or arising from acts of assembly and petition, except to indemnify or rectify damage that may have arisen pursuant to such acts.

6. Establish or delineate special classes of citizens or special rights or privileges for classes of citizens within its jurisdiction, for any purpose. Prohibited delineations include but are not limited to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation or preference, and status as a veteran of the armed forces of the government of the United States or any State. But this clause does not limit the ability of Congress to provide by law for the treatment by employers of members of the armed forces when they are called to active duty, or to compensate or provide material support to veterans of the armed forces. Veterans of the armed forces otherwise may not by law be granted special rights or privileges, such as preferential treatment in hiring or promotion based on their status as veterans.

7. Abridge the right of any citizen, business, or other private entity operating lawfully within the United States to choose freely the persons or organizations they will associate with, employ, or do business with, notwithstanding any contractual or funding relationship with the government of the United States or any State. This clause specifically, though not exclusively, bars any form of governmental interference in the decisions of private employers to hire, promote, transfer, or terminate employees. Also barred specifically, though not exclusively, is any governmental act that requires, enables, or recognizes the formation of any organization of employees for the purpose of bargaining with employers about the terms or conditions of employment.

8. As an employer, discriminate or authorize discrimination, in any explicit or implicit way, for any reason, with respect to gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, language, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status, except that a governmental unit may by law be authorized to practice such discrimination for the sole purpose of ensuring the effective performance of that unit. This clause may not be construed to prohibit the establishment of mental and physical standards of performance, as long as those standards are job-related and applied impartially to all classes of employees and persons eligible for employment.

9. Nullify, alter, or otherwise affect any contract, either expressed or implied, that does not contravene this Constitution or otherwise constitute or suborn a crime against any third party. This clause applies to any voluntary transaction of any kind, where the parties to such a transaction are adult persons, corporations, or other private entities authorized by law, or any combination of these. This clause does not apply to marriage, civil unions, or similar arrangements, which shall be regulated by the States, individually.

10. Grant any rights, benefits, or privileges to non-citizens, except that non-citizens, including persons and corporations or other private entities operated by non-citizens, shall be entitled to due process of law for civil and criminal proceedings of the government of the United States or any State to which they may be subject. This clause does not apply to enemy combatants, the definition and treatment of which are prescribed elsewhere in this Constitution.

B. Security of Persons and Property

1. Neither the government of the United States or any State may authorize, enable, encourage, or condone these things:

a. Abortion, except where it is determined by a panel of three court-appointed physicians to be necessary because the mother’s life would, with certainty, be forfeit during the course of pregnancy or as a direct result of delivery by any means.

b. Medically assisted death, except where a person has expressly authorized the cessation of efforts to sustain his or her life under conditions that are certain to lead to death or a persistent unresponsive state, in a medical opinion attested to by impartial witnesses.

c. Slavery or involuntary servitude, except as the latter may be imposed by law as a punishment for crime.

2. The governments of the United States and every State make the following guarantees:

a. The right of citizens to keep and bear arms shall not be denied or abridged on any basis other than a citizen’s criminal record or certified mental incompetence.

b. In peacetime, members of the armed forces of the government of the United States or the militia of the States may not be quartered in any private building without the consent of its owner or lawful occupant. When the armed forces of the government of the United States or the militia of the States are engaged in war, suppression of insurrection or rebellion, or anti-terrorist actions they may be quartered only as Congress prescribes by law.

c. Persons and their private buildings and land, houses, papers, effects, and communications may not be unreasonably searched, seized, intercepted, or placed under surveillance by the government of the United States or that of any State. Congress shall enact uniform procedures for searches, seizures, interceptions, and surveillance by agents of the governments of the United States and the States. Such uniform procedures shall include provisions for searches, seizures, interceptions, and surveillance for the purpose of gathering intelligence about acts or potential acts of war, insurrection, rebellion, or terrorism against the United States, the States, their citizens, and their property, including the property of businesses owned by citizens of the United States, wherever that property may be located. Warrants for intelligence-gathering activities shall be required only as Congress directs by law. Warrants are required for the gathering of evidence and for arrests in criminal cases, and shall describe the suspected conspiracy to commit crime(s) or the actual crime(s) under investigation; the persons, places, or things to be arrested, searched, seized, intercepted, or placed under surveillance; and the period of time in which such arrests, searches, seizures, interceptions, or surveillances are to take place. No warrant pertaining to a criminal case, except an arrest warrant, may be valid for more than twelve months, but any warrant may be renewed for successive periods if at each renewal it complies with this clause.

d. Private property may be taken only for the exclusive use of a specified governmental unit of the United States or a State. Private property may not be taken nor may its value be materially diminished by a governmental act without fair compensation. For purposes of this clause, a governmental act of that applies incidentally but not specifically to a taken property shall not be construed as a taking.

e. Private property may not otherwise be taken except pursuant to the lawful verdict of a court in a criminal or civil proceeding. But no law shall allow the taking of property because of its use in a criminal act unless the owner of the property has been duly charged with and found guilty of the same criminal act or acts.

C. Justice

1. Where two or more States claim jurisdiction in a civil or criminal proceeding, the cause of which is the same act or acts, precedence shall be determined by the order in which proceedings were initiated in a court of law, unless the involved States, by mutual agreement, determine a different order of precedence.

2. Where there is a dispute involving persons or entities from different States, jurisdiction shall be granted to the State in which proceedings were first initiated in a court of law.

3. A resident of one State who is brought before a civil or criminal court of a second State shall be accorded the same rights, privileges, and immunities as residents of that second State.

4. Where a State and the government of the United States both claim jurisdiction in a criminal case, the State shall take precedence over the government of the United States. Where the same act gives rise to both criminal and civil charges, the criminal charges shall take precedence over the civil charges.

5. All felony charges shall be tried by an impartial jury unless the accused knowingly and before the appropriate court of law waives this right. A trial shall be held in the State in which the crime was committed or, when not committed within a State, where Congress directs by law.

6. Only a grand jury may bring charges against a person for a felony, except in cases arising in the armed forces of the government of the United States or in the militia when it has been activated.

7. In cases under common law, the right of a jury trial is assured where the value at issue is greater than an amount which Congress determines by law, and appellate rulings in the courts of the government of the United States and every State shall be based on common law.

8. A citizen of the United States may not be:

a. detained, arrested, or charged by a law-enforcement officer or any other person except on reasonable suspicion or probable cause, or pursuant to a lawful warrant;

b. brought before a criminal or civil court to answer for the same act or acts that had been judged previously, under any rubric of law, by any criminal or civil court of any State or the United States;

c. charged with or tried for an act that was not unlawful when it was committed;

d. charged with or convicted of a criminal act on the basis of information or evidence not obtained in accordance with this Article III;

e. compelled to testify against himself or herself when detained or arrested, charged with, or tried for a crime, except that a person may be compelled by law or lawful warrant to submit to a thorough search of his or her person and/or to provide physical evidence about his or her relevant biological characteristics (including but not limited to fingerprints, hair samples, fingernail cuttings, DNA samples, or semen samples); or

f. otherwise deprived of life, liberty, or property in contravention of this Constitution or without due process of law.

9. In all criminal prosecutions, an accused person has the right:

a. to be tried promptly and publicly in the State and district (previously determined by law) in which the crime was committed (Congress determines by law where to try crimes not committed within the jurisdiction of the government of the United States but not within the geographic boundaries of one of the States.);

b. to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation;

c. to be confronted with the witnesses against himself or herself, unless in the determination of the cognizant court of law such confrontation would compromise national security or the integrity of a current criminal investigation, in which case the court, acting for the prosecution and defense, shall confront the relevant witnesses in camera (Congress may by law determine the circumstances in which this clause applies and specify detailed procedures for such instances, including the screening of persons who may participate in closed hearings.);

d. to subpoena witnesses in his or her favor; and

e. to have counsel of his or her choosing, except that a court shall appoint counsel for an indigent person.

10. Excessive bail may not be required, excessive fines may not be imposed, and cruel and unusual punishments may not be inflicted. Congress shall by law establish and from time to time revise a uniform code regarding bail, fines, and punishments, which code shall apply to the governments of the United States and every State.

11. The death penalty is not a cruel or unusual punishment, and the uniform code established by the authority of the preceding clause shall provide for punishment by death in cases of murder in the first degree and such other cases as Congress may in its sole discretion designate. Where a State has jurisdiction in a criminal case, no sentence of death may be appealed to a court of the government of the United States.

12. The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus may not be suspended for citizens, except to protect the public safety in the case of insurrection, rebellion, terrorism, or war, as Congress may provide by law.

13. Treason by a citizen of the United States consists of:

a. the commission of acts of war, rebellion, or terrorism against persons or property within the jurisdiction of the government of the United States or any State; or

b. a conspiracy to commit any such act; or

c. providing, conspiring to provide, or asking others to provide any money, material, or information to any person or entity (domestic or foreign) who has committed, is committing, or is endeavoring to commit an act of war, rebellion, or terrorism against the United States, any State, any citizen of the United States, or the property of any citizen of the United States, including the property of a business owned by a citizen of the United States, wherever such property may be located.

14. A person may be convicted of treason only on the testimony of two witnesses to the same act, or on confession in open court. Punishment for treason may not extend to persons other than those found guilty of it.

15. Notwithstanding any other provision of this Constitution, any person, whether or not a citizen of the United States, shall be considered an enemy combatant who is apprehended by the armed forces or agents of the government of the United States or the militia or agents of any State while engaged in or materially aiding war, rebellion, insurrection, or terrorism against the United States or any State, or the citizens or property thereof, including the property of businesses owned by citizens of the United States, either within or without the geographical boundaries of the United States. Enemy combatants shall be subject to detention, judgment, and punishment — and shall be entitled to appeal the same — only according (a) an applicable treaty or treaties to which the government of the United States is a signatory (but not otherwise to international law), (b) an applicable act or acts of Congress where there is no applicable treaty, or (c) an applicable act or acts of Congress in abrogation or supersession of a treaty or treaties.

16. A person who engages in a public demonstration for or against and act or proposed act of government shall not be considered an enemy combatant, rebel, insurrectionist, or terrorist solely because of participation in a public demonstration. But such a persons may otherwise be arrested and prosecuted for crimes he or she commits against persons or property in the course of the public demonstration. A public demonstration includes but is not limited to any speech, writing, or physical act performed on public property or transmitted by a medium which is accessible to the public.

D. Unenumerated Rights, Benefits, and Privileges

1. Unenumerated rights, benefits, and privileges are those which (a) are not expressly recognized or denied in this Constitution and which (b) may be recognized by the government of the United States or any State without contravening any provision of this Constitution.

2. To be recognized by the government of the United States or any State, an unenumerated right, benefit, or privilege must be one that has a history of general acceptance by law or custom at the time of the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the former Constitution that is superseded by this Constitution.

IV. THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES

A. Congress

The legislative power of the government of the United States resides in the Congress of the United States, which consists of a Senate and a House of Representatives.

1. The House of Representatives

a. Each Representative has one vote and represents one congressional district.

b. The number of seats in the House of Representatives is divided among the States in proportion to the populations of their citizens, as those populations are determined by a decennial census, which shall be carried out as Congress provides by law, but only for the purpose of enumeration.

c. The legislature of each State apportions that State’s seats in the House of Representatives by designating congressional districts that are approximately equally populated, as determined by the most recent decennial census. Specifically, the population of the most populous district may not exceed the population of the least populous district by more than 50,000 citizens. The designation of congressional districts by a State’s legislature may not be challenged in any place for any reason, other than an alleged failure to comply with the preceding sentence. A State’s legislature may re-apportion that State’s seats in the House of Representatives at any time between each decennial census, but no more often than every three years.

d. The total number of seats in the House of Representatives shall be five hundred, initially. The number of seats shall then change following each decennial census, in proportion to the change in the total number of citizens of all States.

e. Each Representative shall be elected for a term of four years.

f. The executive authority of each State orders elections to fill any vacancies in its delegation of Representatives, but a State may by law empower the executive to make temporary appointments until an election.

g. A Representative shall be at least thirty-five years old upon taking office, have been a citizen of the United States for at least ten years in total and, when elected, be an inhabitant of the State and district that he or she represents.

h. A person may not be elected a Representative or appointed to fill a vacancy in the House of Representatives if that person would have been a Representative for more than twelve years at the end of the elective or appointive term.

i. A person may not serve as a Representative who engages in or has engaged in an act of treason, rebellion, insurrection, or terrorism against the United States or any State.

j. The House of Representatives chooses its Speaker and other officers.

k. The House of Representatives has the sole power to impeach the President, Vice President, and other civil officers and judges of the government of the United States. The House of Representatives may exercise its impeachment power by a majority vote of the number of Representatives then holding office.

2. The Senate

a. Each Senator has one vote and represents his or her State at large.

b. The Senate is composed of three senators from each State, chosen for six years by the legislatures of their respective States, as each State prescribes by law. Each Senator has one vote.

c. Senators are divided into three classes, so that the terms of one-third of the Senators expire every two years. The first Senators who are elected pursuant to this clause shall be assigned to classes by lottery.

d. Vacancies in the Senate are filled as each State prescribes by law.

e. A Senator shall be at least forty years old upon taking office, have been a citizen of the United States for at least ten years in total and, when elected, be a resident of the State he or she represents.

f. A person may not be chosen for a full term in the Senate or appointed for a partial term to fill a vacancy in the Senate if that person would have been a Senator for more than twelve years at the end of the elective or appointive term.

g. A person may not serve as a Senator who engages in or has engaged in an act of treason, rebellion, insurrection, or terrorism against the United States or any State.

h. The Senate chooses a President and its other officers, including a president pro tempore who acts in the absence of the President of the Senate.

i. The Senate has the sole power to try all impeachments. When sitting for that purpose, Senators are on oath or affirmation to do impartial justice and to refrain from commenting publicly, by any direct or indirect means, on a pending or current impeachment trial. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice presides under rules adopted by the Senate. Conviction of any person requires the concurrence of two-thirds of the number of Senators then holding office, and results in the convicted person’s immediate removal from office and disqualification from holding any office of the government of the United States or any State.

3. Election, Terms, and Sessions of Congress

a. Congress, by law, sets the times for holding elections for Senators and Representatives. The States, individually, determine the places and manner of the elections for their legislatures.

b. The full terms of Senators and Representatives begin at noon on the third day of January following a general election, and end at noon on the third day of January six and four years later, respectively.

c. Congress assembles at least once a year, beginning at noon on the third day of January, unless it sets a different day by law.

d. Each house of Congress, including its committees and sub-committees meeting officially or unofficially, may be in session no longer than ninety days in a calendar year, excluding extraordinary sessions convened by the President of the United States.

4. General Rules for the House of Representatives and Senate

a. Each house is the sole judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members. Each house punishes its members for disorderly behavior, and may expel a member with the concurrence of two-thirds of the other members then holding office.

b. A majority of each house constitutes a quorum to do business, but a smaller number may adjourn a daily meeting. When there is not a quorum, those present in each house may compel the attendance of absent members, in the manner and under penalties provided for by each house.

c. Approval of legislation, resolutions, rules, and other actions shall require the concurrence of no less than a majority of the members present in each house, or no less than a super-majority where required by this Constitution. Each house may, in its sole discretion, determine other circumstances in which a super-majority is required.

d. Each house shall keep and publish a journal of its proceedings, except those parts that may require secrecy because they bear on the ability of the United States to defend itself from, to wage war against, or to gather intelligence about other nations or potential enemies (foreign or domestic). Upon the request of one-fifth of the members present, the individual votes on any question are entered on the journal.

e. When Congress is in session, neither house may adjourn for more than three days or meet in a different place without the consent of the other.

f. Each house determines the other rules of its proceedings.

5. Compensation, Immunity, and Other Offices of Senators and Representatives

a. Senators and Representatives are compensated for their services, as determined by law, from the Treasury of the government of the United States. Any law varying their compensation will not take effect until after the next general election.

b. Except for treason, rebellion, insurrection, or terrorism against the United States or any State, or breach of the peace, Senators and Representatives are immune from arrest when they are attending a session of their respective houses, and in going to and returning from such sessions. They may not be questioned outside their respective houses for any speech or debate on the floor of either house, when a quorum is present, or in scheduled meetings of its committees and sub-committees.

c. No person who is serving as a Senator or Representative may at the same time hold a civil office in the government of the United States or any State or serve on active duty in the armed forces of the government of the United States. Six years shall elapse between service as a Senator or Representative and the holding of a civil office in the government of the United States.

6. General Rules of Legislation

a. Each house of Congress shall adopt rules that limit the length of debate allowed on any bill, resolution, nomination, treaty, or other matter.

b. A quorum shall be presumed for the purpose of voting on a bill if, when the House or Senate is in session, at least twenty-four hours have elapsed since the same bill could not be voted upon because of the absence of a quorum.

c. As a matter of order, all bills for raising revenue and appropriating funds shall originate in the House of Representatives. Further, all bills for raising revenue and appropriating funds shall require the concurrence of no less than two-thirds of the members then holding office in each house of Congress.

d. If, because of the limit in this Article IV on the length of congressional sessions, appropriations have not been made for any branch, department, office, or other activity of the government of the United States when its fiscal year begins, each such entity may continue to incur obligations at a rate that is the least of (1) its last annual appropriation, (2) the amount requested in the last budget submitted to Congress, or (3) any lesser amount Congress may determine by law. Such continuing obligational authority expires at the end of the fiscal year for which it is effective or, if there is an appropriation before the end of that fiscal year, on the day the appropriation is enacted into law. Such an appropriation may be greater than, less than, or the same as the continuing obligational authority.

e. Before becoming law, every bill passed by the House of Representatives and Senate shall be presented to the President of the United States, who shall approve or disapprove each bill in its entirety. The President signs the bill if he or she approves it. If not, the President returns it with his or her objections to the house in which it originated. That house enters the objections on its journal and reconsiders the bill. If two-thirds of the members of that house approve the bill, it is sent, with the objections, to the other house, which also reconsiders it. If two-thirds of the members of that house approve the bill, it becomes law. In all such cases, the votes of both houses are determined by recorded votes. If a bill is not returned by the President within fourteen days after being presented to the President, the bill becomes law, whether or not Congress is in session.

f. Except for adjournments, all other matters requiring the concurrence of both houses shall be presented to the President of the United States, who shall approve them before they take effect. If disapproved by the President, Congress shall follow the above procedures for reconsideration of bills.

B. The Presidency

1. The executive power of the government of the United States is vested in the President of the United States, who, with the Vice President, is elected for a six-year term, as follows:

a. The election for President and Vice President is held on the same day as the general election for Representatives and Senators. The executive of each State and the District of Columbia certifies the number of popular votes cast for each candidate for President and Vice President. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives opens all the certificates and counts the votes. The person with the most votes for President will become President if the number of votes for that person is at least half of the total number of popular votes cast for President in all States and the District of Columbia. If no one has such a majority, the House of Representatives immediately chooses, by recorded vote, among the three persons who received the highest number of popular votes. Voting is by Representative. A majority of the Representatives then holding office is required to elect a President.

b. The person with the most votes for Vice President will become Vice President if the number of votes for that person is at least half of the total number of popular votes cast for Vice President in all States and the District of Columbia. If no one has such a majority, the Senate immediately chooses, by recorded vote, between the three persons who received the highest number of popular votes. There must be a quorum of at least two-thirds of the total number of Senators. A majority of the Senators then holding office is required to elect a Vice President.

c. No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President is eligible to be Vice President.

d. Congress shall provide by law for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives or Senate may choose a President or Vice President.

e. If the President-elect dies before taking office, the Vice President-elect becomes President.

f. If a President has not been chosen by the time the President’s term is to begin, or if the President-elect is not qualified for office, the Vice President-elect acts as President until a President qualifies. Congress may provide by law for the selection of an acting President if neither a President-elect nor a Vice President-elect qualifies. The person thus chosen acts until a President or Vice President qualifies.

2. Qualifications for Office

a. The President shall be at least fifty years of age upon taking office and have been a citizen of the United States for twenty-five years.

b. A person may not serve as President who previously took an oath to support this Constitution and then engaged in an act of treason, rebellion, insurrection, or terrorism against the United States or any State.

c. No person may be elected President more than once, and no person may serve as President or acting President for a total of more than ten years. If this clause requires the resignation or removal of a President, a successor shall be chosen as provided in the next section of this Constitution.

3. Succession to the Presidency

a. If the President is removed from office, dies, or resigns, the Vice President becomes President.

b. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of Vice President, the President nominates a Vice President who will take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

c. Whenever the President states in writing to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives that he or she is unable to serve, and until he or she sends them a written statement to the contrary, the Vice President serves as acting President.

d. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of the heads of the executive departments, or other body designated by law, states in writing to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives that the President is unable to serve, the Vice President immediately becomes acting President. But if the President then states in writing to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives that he or she is able to serve, The President resumes office unless the Vice President and a majority of the heads of the executive departments, or other body designated by law, within four days state in writing to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives that the President is unable to serve. Congress then decides the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours to do so if it is not in session. The Vice President continues as acting President if Congress determines by a vote of two-thirds of the number of members then holding office in each house that the President is unable to resume office; the vote shall come within twenty-one days after receipt of the written declaration of the President’s continued inability or within twenty-one days after Congress assembles if it was not in session. Otherwise, the President resumes office.

4. Compensation and Emoluments of the President

a. The President’s compensation cannot be increased or decreased during his or her term of office.

b. The President may not receive any other compensation from the government of the United States or any State while in office.

c. All contemporaneous records, in any form, of the acts of the President and his or her administration are the property of the government of the United States and may not be used for any purpose except as authorized by law, but no law may authorize the use of such records for any purpose that yields income to a private person or entity.

5. The President-elect or other person succeeding to the presidency shall take the following oath or affirmation before assuming the office of President: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will obey, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

6. The full terms of the President and Vice President begin at noon on the third day of January in the year following their election, and end at noon on the third day of January six years later.

C. The Courts

1. The judicial power of the government of the United States resides in the Supreme Court of the United States and in subordinate courts established by law.

2. The judges of the Supreme Court of the United States and subordinate courts are appointed by the President of the United States, subject to confirmation by a three-fifths of the members of the Senate then holding office. The rules of the Senate to the contrary notwithstanding, no Senator or group of them may prevent the Senate from voting on a judicial nomination by any means.

3. Judges of the United States may hold their offices for life, unless removed by impeachment and conviction.

4. The compensation of judges of the United States may not be reduced during their tenure.

D. Removal of the President, Other Civil Officers, and Judges

1. As specified in this Article IV, upon impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate, the President, Vice President, or any civil officer or judge of the government of the United States is punished by removal from office and disqualification from holding any office in the government of the United States.

2. The grounds for impeachment and conviction are in the sole discretion of the House of Representatives and Senate, respectively.

3. The party convicted may be held accountable for the same act(s) in a criminal or civil court.

V. OBLIGATIONS AND POWERS OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES

A. General Obligations and Powers

1. The government of the United States:

a. guarantees to every State a republican form of government, which shall include at least one legislative chamber that is apportioned by population, but need not include two legislative chambers so apportioned;

b. shall protect States from invasion, insurrection, and rebellion; and

c. shall protect a State from domestic violence when asked by the legislature of a State, or by its executive if the legislature cannot be convened.

2. The government of the United States holds only those powers that are specifically delegated to it by this Constitution.

B. Specific Powers of Congress

1. Congress may, by a majority of three-fifths of the members of each House present, when there is a quorum consisting of three-fourths of the number of persons then holding office in each House:

a. provide for the collection of revenues in order to pay the debts and expenses of the government of the United States, so long as (1) the debts and expenses are incurred through constitutional actions; (2) the revenues are not collected through taxes or levies on income or assets; (3) all taxes and levies are uniform throughout the United States; and (4) there is published a regular statement and account of the receipts and expenditures of all public money;

b. borrow money on the credit of the government of the United States in order to pay its legitimate debts, in accordance with these conditions:

(1) The indebtedness of the government of the United States may not increase over any ten-year period, as determined by comparing the amount of indebtedness at the end of the preceding fiscal year with the amount of indebtedness at the end of the tenth preceding fiscal year.

(2) For the purpose of determining the change in indebtedness over any ten-year period. the amount of indebtedness at the end of the preceding fiscal year shall not include the sums spent during the ten-year period for any purpose contemplated in this Constitution, if said expenditures were made pursuant to appropriations approved by at least three-fourths of the members of each House present when there is a quorum of at least three-fourths of the number of persons then holding office in each House.

(3) If the indebtedness of the government of the United States does increase, as determined in accordance with the two preceding clauses, then no person who served as a member of Congress or as President or Vice President of the United States during the ten-year period in which the amount of indebtedness increased shall thereafter be eligible for election or appointment to Congress or an executive or judicial office of the government of the United States.

(4) Further, if indebtedness shall have increased, as determined in accordance with clauses (1) and (2) above, outlays by the government of the United States for all purposes except national defense shall be reduced pro-rata — and without recourse to legislative, executive, or judicial action — in the amounts required to offset the increase in indebtedness within two fiscal years.

(5) Determinations of indebtedness for purposes of the preceding four clauses shall be made by a special master appointed by a majority of the current members of the Supreme Court of the United States.

c. regulate trade with foreign nations, but only to the extent necessary to prevent the sale or disclosure of materials and techniques involved in national defense;

d. ensure free trade among States, but not otherwise regulate transactions or transportation involving parties within a State or in different States (see clauses 4.c and 4.d of this Article V, Section B);

e. establish a uniform rule of naturalization and uniform bankruptcy laws throughout the United States;

f. issue money, but not to the exclusion of other forms of money that private parties may agree to use among themselves;

g. declare certain forms of money legal tender for the payment of debts, but not to the exclusion of other forms of money that private parties may accept willingly;

h. provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current money of the United States;

i. fix a standard of weights and measures, but not to the exclusion of standards that private parties may agree to use among themselves;

j. issue patents, copyrights, and other forms of protection for intellectual property for limited times, but not to exceed a total of 50 years in any instance (This provision shall be made retroactive by law.);

k. establish courts subordinate to the Supreme Court of the United States;

l. define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against international law;

m. authorize war and the use of armed force against invaders, foreign enemies, insurrectionists, rebels, and terrorists; grant authority to seize and destroy the property of invaders, enemies, insurrectionists, rebels, and terrorists; and make rules about captures of their property;

n. establish and support from appropriations armed forces for the purpose of defending the territory and possessions of the United States; preventing entry by unauthorized persons into said territory and possessions; and protecting the persons, property, and interests of citizens of their businesses, wherever said persons, property, and interests may be situated;

o. make rules governing the armed forces, provided that such rules may not contravene other provisions of this Constitution;

p. make laws defining, prohibiting, and punishing espionage against the armed forces and defense plans of the government of the United States;

q. provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the United States, to suppress domestic violence or rebellion, and to engage in combat with invaders, foreign enemies, insurrectionists, rebels, and terrorists, either within or without the geographic boundaries of the United States;

r. provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing those units called to the service of the United States (But the States retain the power to appoint officers and to train the militia as prescribed by Congress.);

s. exercise exclusive jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, or any district that succeeds it as the seat of government, and exercise like authority over all installations of the government of the United States which are located in the States (The land for each such installation must be purchased with the consent of the legislature of the State where it will be located.);

t. provide by law for the simultaneous death or incapacitation of the President and Vice President, or more than ten members of Congress, or more than two justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, or any combination of the preceding, and further, provide by law for the operation of the government of the United States in the event of a breakdown in telecommunications and/or computing systems that would impair the ability of the President or his successor to execute the duties of his office; and

u. make all laws, and only those laws, required to execute the preceding powers and other powers that this Constitution vests specifically in the government of the United States.

2. Congress may dispose of and, as necessary, make rules and regulations affecting territory or other property belonging to the government of the United States, but nothing in this Constitution is meant to prejudice any claims of any State or citizen.

3. Congress determines the punishment for treason, but punishment may not extend to persons other than the guilty.

4. Congress may not:

a. admit new states to the Union, except as provided in Article X of this Constitution;

b. sustain or make laws that result in the imposition of costs on the government of any State or the governments of all of them;

c. either directly, through the empowerment of a regulatory agency, or as an incidental effect of legislation determine what goods and services are exchanged in intra-State, inter-State, or international commerce (except to regulate the international flow of weapons, military technology, or information that might compromise national security), or determine how such goods and services are produced or priced; or determine how businesses so engaged are operated;

d. levy taxes or duties on exports from or imports to any State, give any preference to one State over another in its regulation of commerce, or determine the routes of commerce between the States;

e. allow money to be spent without an appropriation, except as provided in Article IV of this Constitution;

f. except pursuant to an authorization of war, appropriate any monies for the use of foreign nations or peoples (This provision shall not be construed to prohibit appropriations for the purpose of supporting the participation of the government of the United States in an international organization or alliance to which it belongs pursuant to a duly ratified treaty.);

g. grant any honorific or title of nobility or allow anyone holding an office or position of trust of the government of the United States to accept any gift, compensation, office, or title from a foreign state or its officials or representatives;

h. make any law whose direct effect is to establish, support, favor, bestow financial benefits on, or restrict the privileges of a particular person or class of persons, business or class of businesses, or other private institution or class of private institutions;

i. make any law whose direct or indirect effect is to provide old-age, survivors’, disability, or medical benefits to any person, except that Congress may by law provide pension and medical benefits for members and former members of the armed forces of the United States, and pension benefits for civilian employees of the government of the United States;

j. sustain for more than ten years after the ratification of this Constitution any extant programs that provide old-age, survivors’, disability, or medical benefits not contemplated in the preceding clause;

j. authorize or allow any agency of the government of the United States effectively to exercise legislative or judicial power on its behalf;

k. authorize any agency to act independently of one of the three branches of government established by this Constitution; or

k. make any law or appropriation or take any other action that contravenes any part of this Constitution.

5. Treaties

a. The Senate must ratify all treaties and agreements with foreign nations and international organizations, except those agreements that the President is by law empowered to execute pursuant to a ratified treaty.

b. The Senate may not ratify any treaty that directly or indirectly places the United States, its territories or possessions, its property, its citizens, or its armed forces under the jurisdiction or control of any foreign power or international organization.

c. The Senate may not ratify any treaty that contravenes any provision of this Constitution or any constitutional law previously enacted by Congress.

7. Acts of Congress may be revised or revoked as provided in Articles VII, VIII, and IX of this Constitution.

C. Specific Responsibilities and Powers of the President of the United States

1. The President, as chief executive of the government of the United States,

a. sees to the faithful execution of the laws and treaties of the government of the United States;

b. may recommend legislation to Congress;

c. commissions the officers of the uniformed services of the government of the United States; and

d. receives ambassadors and ministers of other nations.

2. The President is commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the government of the United States, and of the State militia when they are called into the service of the United States.

3. The President, as commander-in-chief, may order, without enabling legislation, the armed forces of the government of the United States and the militia of any State into combat against invaders, insurrectionists, rebels, terrorists, or foreign enemies upon learning of an attack or imminent threat by any of them, provided that he or she promptly informs Congress of such action and ceases such action if Congress does not authorize it within thirty days after it has begun. Congress, if it is not in session when notified of such an action by the President, shall assemble promptly for the purpose of considering that action.

4. As commander-in-chief, the President may, as provided by law, order the detention and punishment of non-citizens when the armed forces of the government of the United States are engaged in lawful combat.

5. The President may require the written opinions of the heads of the executive departments on any matter related to their duties, and may dismiss any of them at any time and for any reason.

6. The President has the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment or treason, subject to approval by majorities of both houses of Congress.

7. With the consent of a majority of the Senators then holding office, the President may make treaties; appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls; appoint judges of the Supreme Court and subordinate courts of the government of the United States; and, as required by law, appoint other officers of the government of the United States. The Senate shall, in all such cases, vote up or down on a treaty or appointment in the same year in which such a matter comes before it.

8. Congress may by law give the President and the heads of departments under him the power to appoint certain subordinate officers, either with without the consent of the Senate, as specified by law, except that the President may not fill vacancies occurring during the recess of the Senate.

9. In any event, no one may be appointed to an office of the government of the United States who has engaged in an act of treason, rebellion, insurrection, or terrorism against the United States or any State.

10. If the houses of Congress disagree about the time of adjournment, the President may adjourn them to a time he or she determines, and may, on occasions of national emergency, convene either or both houses.

11. Acts of the executive branch may be revised or revoked as provided in Articles VII, VIII, and IX of this Constitution.

D. Powers of the Courts of the Government of the United States

1. Except as Congress may by law provide, the judicial power of the government of the United States extends to all cases arising under this Constitution, whether brought on behalf of or against said government; to the laws and treaties of that government; to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls; to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; to controversies to which the government may be a party; and to controversies between two or more States.

2. The judicial power of the government of the United States does not extend to any suit against one of the States by its own citizens, the citizens of another State, or citizens or subjects of a foreign state; between citizens of different States; between citizens of the same State claiming lands under grants of different States; or between a State or its citizens and foreign states or their citizens or subjects.

3. In those cases to which the judicial power of the government of the United States extends, the Supreme Court of the United States has original jurisdiction in cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a State is a party. In all other cases, the Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, except as Congress determines by law.

4. All judgments of the courts of the governments of the United States and every State must comply with the text of this Constitution and with the constitutional laws and treaties of the government of the United States.

5. All subordinate courts shall be bound by the precedents of the Supreme Court of the United States, but the Supreme Court shall not be bound by its own precedents.

6. A judgment of any court of the government of the United States may be revised or revoked by an act of Congress, provided that such any revision or revocation is approved by two-thirds of the members of each house and leads to a result that conforms to this Constitution.

7. Judgments of the courts of the government of the United States may be revised or revoked as provided in Articles VII, VIII, and IX of this Constitution.

VI. OBLIGATIONS AND POWERS OF THE STATES

A. Obligations of the States to Each Other

1. Each State shall give full credence to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other State. Congress may enforce this provision through the enactment of laws.

2. A person who flees from justice in one State and is found in another State shall be returned to the State in which he or she was charged on the demand of the executive authority of that State.

B. Powers Ceded by the States to the Government of the United States

1. States may not exercise any of the powers specifically delegated to or denied the government of the United States in Article V of this Constitution, except that Congress may by law empower States to:

a. levy taxes or duties on imports or exports, when necessary for executing inspection laws (The net revenue from all taxes and duties on imports and exports shall go to the Treasury of the government of the United States, and laws imposing such taxes and duties are subject to review and control by Congress.);

b. levy duties on the capacity of carriers;

c. enter into agreements or compacts with foreign powers, but only where such agreements neither contravene the treaties of the government of the United States nor directly or indirectly place any State, its property, its citizens, or its militia under the jurisdiction or control of any foreign power or international organization.

2. The defense of the United States and its territorial possessions, its property (wherever situated), and its citizens and their property (wherever situated) is primarily the responsibility of the government of the United States. However, whenever the government of the United States fails to discharge its responsibility, a State may deploy its militia for the purpose of repelling invaders, combating foreign enemies, or suppressing insurrections, rebellions, and terrorism. Such deployment shall not be questioned or challenged in any governmental body or court of law except in the State that deploys its militia for the aforementioned purposes.

C. General Powers and Rights of the States

1. The States retain all powers that are not delegated to the government of the United States in this Constitution. But none of the States may assert or exercise any power by a legislative, executive, or judicial act if that power contravenes the rights or privileges of citizens that are provided for by this Constitution.

2. Each State retains the right to secede from this Union, but secession shall in each case be approved by three-fourths of the members of each house of a State’s legislature. The executive of a State may not veto or otherwise interfere with or encourage, enable, or condone interference with the execution of an act of secession that is duly approved by the State’s legislature.

3. Each State may by law limit the length of service of elected or appointed officers or legislators of the State and of legislators who represent the State in the Congress of the United States. Such limits may not be negated by acts of Congress or challenged in any court of law of the United States or any State.

4. Whether or not a State is a party at interest in a particular matter, its legislature or executive, as provided by State law, may at any time petition the Supreme Court of the United States for a review of the constitutionality of any act of Congress. In each such case, the Supreme Court of the United States, or any subordinate court directed to do so by the Supreme Court, shall make a prompt judgment, which shall be final and binding on the governments of the United States and every State.

VII. KEEPER OF THE CONSTITUTION

A. Responsibility and Authority

1. The responsibility for ensuring that the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the government of the United States adhere to this Constitution in the exercise of their respective powers shall be vested in a Keeper of the Constitution. The Keeper may review acts of Congress, the executive branch, and judicial branch that have the effect of making law and appropriating monies. The term “making law” includes but is not limited to a legislative, executive, or judicial interpretation of an existing law or laws. Covered acts of the judicial branch include but are not limited to denials of appeals or writs of certiorari. The Keeper’s purview does not extend to the ratification of or amendments to this Constitution; the admission of States to the Union or the secession of States from it; declarations of war; statutes, appropriations, regulations, or orders pertaining directly to the armed forces or intelligence services of the government of the United States; or the employment of the armed forces or intelligence services of the government of the United States. Nor does the Keeper’s purview extend to appointments made by or with the consent of the legislative, executive, or judicial branches.

2. The Keeper may revoke any act that lies within his purview, as defined in section A.1 of this Article VII, provided that the act occurred no more than one year before the date on which he nullifies it. The Keeper shall signify each revocation by informing the Speaker of the House of Representatives, President pro tempore of the Senate, President of the United States, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of his decision and the reason(s) therefor. The Keeper shall, at the same time, issue a public notice of his decision and the reason(s) therefor.

3. The affected branch(es) of government shall, in each case, act promptly to implement the Keeper’s decision. Each implementing act shall be subject to review, as specified in sections A.1 and A.2 of this Article VII.

B. Selection

1. The Speaker of the House of Representatives and President of the United States, acting jointly, shall nominate a Keeper of the Constitution to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court must vote on a nominee no later than thirty days after receipt of a nomination. A nominee shall become Keeper upon the approval by at least three-fourths of the sitting justices of the Supreme Court.

2. If a nominee is rejected by the Supreme Court, the Speaker and President, acting jointly, shall nominate a different person as Keeper, and shall send this second nomination to the House of Representatives and Senate. The House of Representatives and Senate must, within thirty days of receipt of the nomination, meet as a single body and vote on the nominee. The nominee shall become Keeper upon approval by two-thirds of the total number of Representatives and Senators present and voting, in the presence of a quorum of each house of Congress.

3. If a nominee is rejected by both the Supreme Court and combined membership of the House of Representatives and Senate, the Speaker and President, acting jointly, shall nominate a different person as Keeper, and shall send this third nomination to the Senate. The Senate must, within thirty days of receipt of the nomination, vote on the nominee. The nominee shall become Keeper upon approval by a majority of Senators present and voting, in the presence of a quorum of the Senate.

C. Tenure, Removal, and Replacement

1. The Keeper shall hold office during good behavior for a term of seven years. The same person may not hold the office of Keeper more than once.

2. The Keeper may be removed from office only as follows: The Speaker of the House of Representatives and President of the United States must jointly apply to the Supreme Court of the United States for removal of the Keeper, specifying the instance(s) of official misfeasance or malfeasance prompting their application. The Supreme Court, upon the receipt of such an application, and with due deliberation, shall vote on its merits. If three-fourths of the justices of the Supreme Court approve the application, the Keeper shall thereupon forfeit his office; otherwise, the Keeper shall retain his position until a proper application for his removal is approved by three fourths of the sitting justices of the Supreme Court, or his term of office expires.

3. Upon removal of the Keeper from office by the foregoing procedure, a new Keeper shall be appointed, in accordance with section B of this Article VII. Upon the appointment of a new Keeper, he shall enter upon a three-year term of office, which he may hold during good behavior.

4. If the Keeper resigns, dies in office, or becomes unable to hold office because of a physical or mental condition attested to in writing by a unanimous panel of three doctors of medicine appointed jointly by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the President pro tempore of the Senate, the President of the United States, and at least three-fourths of the sitting justices of the Supreme Court, a successor shall be appointed in accordance with section B of this Article VII.

D. The Keeper’s Compensation and Budget

The Keeper shall be paid a salary of $1 per annum, but may be reimbursed for reasonable personal expenses related to the execution of his or her duties. Congress shall appropriate monies for the reimbursement of the Keeper’s reasonable, personal expenses; for the reasonable compensation of the Keeper’s staff; and for the procurement, operation, and maintenance of facilities, equipment, and services that the Keeper and his staff may require for the execution of the Keeper’s responsibilities. The total cost of the foregoing must not exceed $100 million per annum, plus annual increases, on the anniversary of the date on which this Constitution takes effect, in the same percentage as the most recent increase (if any) in cost-of-living adjustments to the pensions of veterans of the armed forces of the government of the United States.

VIII. CONVENTIONS OF THE STATES

A. Frequency, Purpose, Assembly, and Voting

1. Delegations of the States shall convene every five years for the purpose of considering revisions to and revocations of acts of the government established by this Constitution. Such conventions (hereinafter “Convention [or Conventions] of the States”) may revise and/or revoke any act or acts and/or any holding or holdings, in the sole discretion of a majority of State delegations present and voting. However, no Convention may revoke or revise a ratification of or amendment to this Constitution; the admission of States to the Union, or the secession of States from it; declarations of war; statutes, appropriations, regulations, or orders pertaining directly to the armed forces or intelligence services of the government of the United States; or the employment of the armed forces or intelligence services of the government of the United States. Nor shall a Convention’s purview extend to appointments made by or with the consent of the legislative, executive, or judicial branches.

2. The first Convention of the States shall be held in the second odd-numbered year following the year in which this Constitution takes effect. Each Convention of the States shall assemble on the first Monday of July following the 4th of July. A Convention shall stay in session for as long as there is a quorum of at least one delegate from each of three-fourths of the States when a convention is in general session, and until a Convention is dissolved by a majority vote of the delegations present and attending, but not later than December 31 of the same year.

3. The first Convention of the States shall be held in a place in Kansas to be determined by the most numerous house of the legislature thereof. The manner of determining the site of subsequent Conventions of the States shall be decided at the first Convention. The expenses of each Convention of the States shall be defrayed by the States. Each State shall be responsible for the expenses of its delegation to each Convention, and all of the attending States shall share equally in the cost of providing facilities and support for each Convention.

4. The most numerous (or sole) house of the legislature of each State shall select that State’s delegation for each convention of the States. Each State’s delegation shall vote as a unit on all matters coming before a Convention, as directed by the most numerous house of that State’s legislature. The officers of each Convention shall be elected by a majority of the delegations appointed and attending, which delegations may also by majority vote appoint committees and establish procedures for setting the rules of the Convention.

B. Revocation or Revision of Acts of Congress or Holdings of the Supreme Court

1. A majority of the delegations present and voting shall be sufficient to revise and/or revoke a specific act (or acts) of Congress or a specific holding (or holdings) of the Supreme Court of the United States, provided that the instrument of revision and/or revocation must specifically identify the act (or acts) of Congress and/or the holding (or holdings) of the Supreme Court of the United States that are being revised and/or revoked, and then specifically revise and/or revoke such act, acts, holding, and/or holdings.

2. The revision and/or revocation of an act (or acts) of Congress and/or a holding (or holdings) of the Supreme Court of the United States shall be effective upon the publication of same by the presiding officer of the Convention, whereupon the government of the United States and all other governmental units in the every State which may be affected by any such revised and/or revoked act, acts, holding, and/or holdings shall be duty-bound to honor such revisions and/or revocations as the supreme law of the land.

3. A revised or revoked act of Congress or holding of the Supreme Court of the United States may not be further revised and/or reinstated by Congress, the Supreme Court of the United States, or Convention of the States until at least eight years have passed since the publication of the last revision or revocation of the same act or holding. This prohibition applies to any new or amended act or holding that would effectively revise or reinstate any act(s) or holding(s) originally revised or revoked by a Convention of the States.

C. Non-Interference

1. The government of the United States may not, directly or indirectly, or overtly or covertly, attempt by any manner of means to influence the assembly of, proceedings of, or decisions of any Convention of the States. No State which chooses not to send a delegation to a particular Convention may directly or indirectly, or overtly or covertly, attempt by any manner of means to influence the proceedings of or decisions of said Convention.

2. Neither the government of the United States nor that of any State shall presume to certify or challenge, by any manner or means, the decisions of any Convention of the States.

D. Perpetual Enforcement

Each Convention of the States shall create an office of legal counsel with authority to act in perpetuity for the Convention by which said counsel was appointed. Legal counsel shall bring suit against the government of the United States, the government of any State, or any succeeding Convention of the States if said entity, in counsel’s opinion, shall have violated any provision of this Article VIII. Actions against the courts of the government of the United States, including the Supreme Court thereof, shall be tried promptly in the Senate, and disposed of by a majority of the number of Senators then holding office. All other actions shall be heard and resolved promptly by the Supreme Court of the United States.

IX. CITIZEN INITIATIVES

A. Scope

The citizens of the United States have the right to initiate referenda for the purpose of revoking certain acts of the government of the United States; to expel from office any of the following principal officers of the government of the United States: members of Congress, President, Vice President, and justices of the Supreme Court; and to call for a new constitutional convention.

B. Referenda

1. Upon the valid application by citizens who have attained the age of twenty-on, in a number equal to or exceeding twenty-five percent of the number of persons who voted for candidates for President in the preceding general election, any act(s) of any branch of the government of the United States may be considered for revocation in a referendum, except that the act(s) to be voted upon may not include a ratification of or amendment to this Constitution; the admission of States to the Union or the secession of States from it; declarations of war; statutes, appropriations, regulations, or orders pertaining directly to the armed forces or intelligence services of the government of the United States; or the employment of the armed forces or intelligence services of the government of the United States. The application must specify, in detail, the act(s) proposed for revocation, and the constitutional reason(s) for proposing revocation. The application also must specify the precise language to be presented to voters at a referendum, where the language must indicate clearly that a “yes” vote is a vote for revocation and a “no” vote is a vote against revocation.

2. The Keeper of the Constitution shall promptly determine the validity of an application for a referendum. If an application is valid, he or she shall convey to the executive authority of each State the language to be placed on ballots, and shall designate the date of the referendum, which must be the same in every State. A referendum must occur no later than three months after the Keeper of the Constitution has validated an application therefor. The date of a referendum may coincide with the date of an election in some or all States.

3. When a referendum has taken place and the votes of every State have been counted, the tallies shall be sent by the States to the Keeper of the Constitution within one week of the referendum. The Keeper of the Constitution shall, within one day, announce the result publicly.

4. The act(s) being voted upon shall be revoked if the total number of “yes” votes exceeds the total number of “no” votes. If the total number of “no” votes exceeds the total number of “yes” votes, the act(s) being voted upon shall not be revoked.

5. Within three months of an announcement by the Keeper of the Constitution that an act or acts of government have been revoked, the cognizant branch of government shall completed the requisite legal, organizational, and monetary adjustments, including just compensation for acts that cannot be undone.

C. Expulsions

1. Upon the valid application by citizens who have attained the age of thirty, in a number equal to or exceeding twenty-five percent of the number of persons who voted for candidates for President in the preceding general election, there will be scheduled a recall election for the purpose of expelling from office a member or members of Congress, the President, the Vice President, and/or a justice or justices of the Supreme Court.

2. The Keeper of the Constitution shall promptly determine the validity of an application for a recall election. If an application is valid, he shall convey to the executive authority of each State the language to be placed on ballots, and shall designate the date of the recall election, which must be the same in every State. A recall election must occur no later than nine months after the Keeper of the Constitution has validated an application therefor. The date of a recall election may coincide with the date of an election in some or all States.

3. When a recall election has taken place and the votes of every State have been counted, the tallies shall be sent by the States to the Keeper of the Constitution within one week of the recall election. The Keeper of the Constitution shall, within one day, announce the result publicly.

4. In every case where a the result of a recall election is in favor of an expulsion or expulsions, the expulsion or expulsions take effect immediately upon the Keeper of the Constitutions’s announcement of the results of the recall election. Expelled officials shall be replaced as provided elsewhere in this Constitution.

D. Constitutional Conventions

1. Upon the valid application by citizens who have attained the age of twenty-one, in a number equal to or exceeding twenty-five percent of the number of persons who voted for candidates for President in the preceding general election, there will be scheduled a constitutional convention. The purpose of the convention, which must be specified in the application, may be to rewrite this Constitution in part or entirely. No part of this Constitution is exempt from revision or deletion by a duly-called constitutional convention.

2. The Keeper of the Constitution shall promptly determine the validity of an application for a constitutional convention. If an application is valid, he shall confirm its validity to the President of the Senate.

3. Upon notification by the Keeper of the Constitution of a valid application for a constitutional convention, the President of the Senate shall call a convention. The convention must begin within three months of the notification by the Keeper of the Constitution. Congress shall timely appropriate the funds required for convention facilities; each State shall provide for the transportation, lodging, and subsistence of its delegates.

4. Each State determines by law the composition of and rules governing its delegation. In convention, each State casts a single vote on each item of business set before the convention.

5. Any revisions to this Constitution or a new Constitution, if approved by a duly called convention, become effective immediately upon their approval.

6. Unless the revised or new constitution provides otherwise, within ten days after the revision of this Constitution or the adoption of a new one, the Keeper of the Constitution shall publish the revised or new Constitution.

7. The Keeper of the Constitution shall maintain and publish continuously, by electronic means, the official Constitution, incorporating any and all duly ratified amendments.

X. EFFECTING AND AMENDING THIS CONSTITUTION

A. Ratification

1. This Constitution, to take effect, must be ratified by at least three-fourths of the present States of the United States. Ratification by a State shall be by a majority vote of the sitting members of each house of the State’s legislature, the same having been elected by and acting on behalf of the citizens of that State.

2. The executive of a State whose legislature has ratified this Constitution shall promptly certify the ratification in writing to the Secretary of the Constitutional Convention at which this Constitution was drafted.

3. The Secretary of the Constitutional Convention shall maintain the official record of certifications. When this Constitution is given effect, the Secretary shall promptly announce that event; in the alternative, he shall announce that it has not been given effect.

4. If this Constitution is given effect, it shall become binding on every State of the United States.

5. Ratification shall be by a majority vote of the members of each house of the State’s legislature, the same having been elected by and acting on behalf of the citizens of the admitted State.

6. Any State, whether or not it ratifies this Constitution, may later secede from the Union, as provided in Article VI of this Constitution.

B. Transition

1. Each State which remains in the Union after the ratification of this Constitution must be in full compliance with this Constitution within three years after its ratification.

2. After the three years have elapsed, the compliance of a State may be challenged by the legislature of any other State by direct appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court shall make a prompt judgment in each case, which judgment shall be final and binding, except as it may be revised or revoked pursuant to Articles VII and VIII of this Constitution.

C. Construction

1. Each word, phrase, clause, sentence, section, and article of this Constitution, as amended, shall be construed in accordance with the meanings of the aforesaid at the time of their ratification.

2. Where there is ambiguity about the meaning of any portion of this Constitution listed in the foregoing section of this Article VIII, its meaning shall be determined by reference to the speeches and writings of the proponents of the language adopted through ratification.

3. The meaning of any portion of this Constitution may not be altered to include subjects or powers not specifically contemplated in the language of this Constitution, as determined in accordance with the foregoing sections of this Article VIII.

4. Despite exigencies, real or proclaimed, the subjects of this Constitution and the powers herein granted or denied may be changed only by amendment, in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.

D. Amendments and Official Version

1. An amendment to this Constitution may be considered for ratification when a Motion to Amend is approved by three-fourths of the number of Senators then holding office. Or, an amendment to this Constitution may be considered for ratification when a Motion to Amend is approved by the legislatures of three-fourths of the States, there being no limit on the amount of time that this method may take. (For this purpose, approval by a State legislature of a Motion to Amend requires the assent by a majority of the number of members of each house of that State’s legislature.) In the second event, the executive of each State whose legislature has approved a Motion to Amend shall communicate that approval to the President of the Senate. In either event, a Motion to Amend may consist of one or more proposed amendments to this Constitution.

2. Upon the approval of a Motion to Amend, the President of the Senate must call a convention to consider the Motion, which convention must begin within three months of the date on which the Motion was approved by a three-fourths vote of the Senate or State legislatures. Congress shall timely appropriate the funds required for convention facilities; each State shall provide for the transportation, lodging, and subsistence of its delegates.

3. Each State determines by law the composition of and rules governing its delegation. In convention, each State casts a single vote on each proposed amendment.

4. A proposed amendment becomes a part of this Constitution when it has been ratified by the votes of three-fourths of the States then belonging to the Union.

5. Within ten days after ratification of an amendment, the Keeper of the Constitution shall publish a revised Constitution that incorporates the ratified amendment. Each amendment shall be incorporated into the text of the Constitution by adding, deleting, or revising its text at the appropriate place(s). Amendments shall not be appended to this Constitution.

6. The Keeper of the Constitution shall maintain and publish continuously, by electronic means, the official version of this Constitution, incorporating any and all duly ratified amendments.

7. A State legislature (and only a State legislature) may challenge the validity of the revised text by petitioning the Supreme Court of the United States. Each such petition must be approved by a majority of the membership of each house of a legislature, and must be received by the Supreme Court within thirty days after the publication of the revised text being challenged. The Supreme Court of the United States shall make a prompt judgment in each case, which shall be final and binding unless and until it is revised or revoked by a later amendment to the Constitution.

8. The fulfillment of the preceding conditions is necessary but not sufficient to effect an amendment to this Constitution. No amendment to this Constitution may rescind, revoke, or alter the power of Congress to enact laws prohibiting and punished the utterance or publication of ideas that would circumscribe the economic or social liberties of citizens of the United States, a provided for in this Constitution.

E. Articles Not Subject to Amendment

Articles VII, VIII, IX, and X of this Constitution may not be amended, except as provided in Section D of Article IX.

F. Subordinate Laws, Orders, Regulations, and Judicial Decisions

1. Every bill introduced in Congress, every act of Congress that becomes law, every executive order issued by or on behalf of the President of the United States, every regulation issued by an agency of the government of the United States, and every judicial decision by a court of the government of the United States shall, in a preamble, (a) cite the specific Article(s), Section(s), Sub-sections(s), and (as necessary) paragraph(s) of this Constitution from which it draws its authority, and (b) explain precisely how it comports with the portions of the Constitution thus specified.

2. Except for a declaration of war or use of armed forces in accordance with this Constitution and constitutional laws, no law, executive order, or regulation shall have effect unless its complete text and preamble has been publicized for at least thirty (30) days on the Internet.

3. Every judicial decision, including its full text and preamble, shall be published promptly on the Internet.

ATTEST: _____________________, Secretary of the Convention of the States, by direction of the Convention, on this the __________ day of __________, in the year 20__.

Change

Proceed with caution.

If change is mutually agreed, the parties to it are more likely than not to have anticipated its effects and found them to be beneficial.

If change is imposed, the imposing parties will have only a dim view of its effects. The parties imposed upon will, in most cases, be made worse off because because the change upsets beneficial arrangements.

Opposition to change is a wise first-order response.

How (Not) to Combat Homelessness

Throw more money down a bottomless hole.

Fox News reports that Karen Bass, the new mayor of Los Angeles,

announced her first action in the role … will be to declare a state of emergency on homelessness….
According to Bass, far too many Angelinos do not have any other choice but to crowd multiple families into homes.
Many people are struggling to pay their bills and cover car repairs. Oftentimes, the mayor said, many people get pushed into a crisis that can include addiction, then lose their homes.
For the last three weeks, Bass has been working through the transition into office with Mayor Eric Garcetti.
Part of that transition has included calling on city council members, the city attorney, comptroller, and others to unify and react with urgency to solve the issue of homelessness.
“We have already started,” Bass said, throwing out the request for everyone to lock arms with her as she takes on this task. “You elected me to lead and lead I will do.”

What are her options? One is to crack down on camping, sleeping, and panhandling in public spaces and buildings. Another is to throw money at the “problem” and make it worse. Because Bass is a Democrat, I know that she’ll choose the second option.

It has long been my contention that homelessness is encouraged by programs to aid the homeless. Fact of life: If you offer people a chance to get something for doing nothing, some of them will take your offer. (The subsidization of unemployment with extended unemployment benefits, welfare payments, food stamps, etc., is among the reasons that the real unemployment rate is markedly higher than the official rate.)

Francis Menton, in his post “The More Public Money Spent to Solve ‘Homelessness,’ the More Homelessness There Is” (Manhattan Contrarian), observes that the budget for homeless services in San Francisco

has gone from about $155 million annually in the 2011-12 fiscal year, to $271 million annually in San Francisco’s most recent 2018-19 spending plan.…
[T]he $271 million per year would place San Francisco right near the top of the heap in per capita spending by a municipality to solve the homelessness problem. With a population of about 900,000, $271 million would come to about $300 per capita per year. By comparison, champion spender New York City, with a population close to ten times that of San Francisco, is up to spending some $3.2 billion annually on the homeless, which would be about $375 per capita….
So surely, with all this spending, homelessness in San Francisco must have at least begun its inevitable rapid decline? No, I’m sorry. Once again, it is the opposite. According to a piece in the City Journal by Erica Sandberg on October 10, the official count of homeless in San Francisco is now 9,780. That represents an increase of at least 30% just since 2017.

There’s more. It comes from The Economist, a magazine that was founded in the era of classical liberalism (a.k.a., conservatism) but which has gone over to the dark side: modern “liberalism”. In case you don’t know the difference, see “Political Ideologies“.

In “Homelessness Is Declining in America” (available with a limited-use free subscription), the real story is buried. The fake story is the nationwide decline of homelessness since 2009, which is unsurprising given that 2009 marked the nadir of the Great Recession.

The real story is that despite the nationwide decline of homelessness, its incidence has risen in major cities, where reigning Democrats are bent on solving the problem by throwing money at it; thus this graph, which is well down the page:

Further, The Economist acknowledges the phenomenon discussed by Menton:

Despite significant public efforts—such as a surcharge on sales tax directed entirely towards homeless services and a $1.2bn bond issue to pay for affordable housing—the problem of homelessness is worsening in Los Angeles. It has emerged as the greatest liability for Eric Garcetti, the mayor, and may have hindered his ambitions to run for president. After spending hundreds of millions, the city was surprised to learn in July that the number of homeless people had increased by 12% from the previous year (city officials point out that this was less than in many other parts of California). Though it can be found everywhere, homelessness, unlike other social pathologies, is not a growing national problem. Rather it is an acute and worsening condition in America’s biggest, most successful cities.
Every year in January, America’s Department of Housing and Urban Development mobilises thousands of volunteers to walk the streets and count the unsheltered homeless. Along with data provided by homeless shelters, these create an annual census of types of homeless residents. Advocates think that the methodology produces a significant undercount, but they are the best statistics available (and much higher quality than those of other developed countries). Since 2009 they show a 12% decline nationally, but increases of 18% in San Francisco, 35% in Seattle, 50% in Los Angeles and 59% in New York. [These figures seem to be drawn from HUD reports that can be found here and here.]

The Economist tries to minimize the scope of the problem by addressing “myths”:

The first is that the typical homeless person has lived on the street for years, while dealing with addiction, mental illness, or both. In fact, only 35% of the homeless have no shelter, and only one-third of those are classified as chronically homeless. The overwhelming majority of America’s homeless are in some sort of temporary shelter paid for by charities or government. This skews public perceptions of the problem. Most imagine the epicentre of the American homeless epidemic to be San Francisco—where there are 6,900 homeless people, of whom 4,400 live outdoors—instead of New York, where there are 79,000 homeless, of whom just 3,700 are unsheltered.

The “mythical” perception about the “typical homeless person” is a straw man, which seems designed to distract attention from the fact that homelessness is on the rise in big cities. Further, there is the attempt to distinguish between sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons. But sheltering is part of the problem, in that the availability of shelters makes it easier to be homeless. (More about that, below.)

The second myth is that rising homelessness in cities is the result of migration, either in search of better weather or benefits. Homelessness is a home-grown problem. About 70% of the homeless in San Francisco previously lived in the city; 75% of those living on the streets of Los Angeles, in places like Skid Row, come from the surrounding area. Though comparable data do not exist for Hawaii—which has one of the highest homelessness rates in the country—a majority of the homeless are ethnic Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, suggesting that the problem is largely local.

The fact that homelessness is mainly a home-grown problem is consistent with the hypothesis that spending by big-city governments helps to promote it. The Economist doesn’t try to rebut that idea, but mentions in a sneering way a report by the Council of Economic Advisers “suggesting that spending on shelters would incentivise homelessness.” Well, I found the report (“The State of Homelessness in America“), and it cites evidence from actual research (as opposed to The Economist‘s hand-waving) to support what should be obvious to anyone who thinks about it: Sheltering incentivizes homelessness.

The Economist isn’t through, however:

All this obscures the chief culprit, however, which is the cost of housing. Even among the poor—of which there are officially 38m in America—homelessness is relatively rare, affecting roughly one in 70 people. What pushes some poor people into homelessness, and not others, remains obscure. So too are the reasons for the sharp racial disparities in homelessness; roughly 40% of the homeless are black, compared with 13% of the population. But remarkably tight correlations exist with rent increases.
An analysis by Chris Glynn and Emily Fox, two statisticians, predicts that a 10% increase in rents in a high-cost city like New York would result in an 8% increase in the number of homeless residents. Wherever homelessness appears out of control in America—whether in Honolulu, Seattle or Washington, DC—high housing costs almost surely lurk. Fixing this means dealing with a lack of supply, created by over-burdensome zoning regulations and an unwillingness among Democratic leaders to overcome entrenched local interests.

Ah, yes, “affordable housing” is always the answer if you’re a leftist. But it isn’t the answer in reality. “Affordable housing” means subsidization. Subsidization forces people who earn money to give it to people who don’t earn money (or very much money), thus blunting everyone’s incentive to earn more.

Nobody promised anybody a rose garden — at least not until the welfare state came along in the 1930s. And, despite that, my father and grandfathers held menial jobs during the Great Depression and paid for their own housing, such as it was. If people are different now, it’s because personal responsibility diminished as the welfare state grew.

Finally, homelessness is also encouraged by “enlightened” policies that allow (or don’t discourage) camping, sleeping, and panhandling in public spaces and buildings.

All of this underscores a fact that leftists won’t acknowledge: Government policies aimed at solving “problems” create more “problems” for government to “solve” — and on and on and on.

A Premature but Prescient Requiem for the Constitution

It’s on life support.

This popped up on my radar: “The Constitution Has Already Been Terminated”, by John and Nisha Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute. I don’t agree with all of the authors’ stark characterizations of the ways in which Americans have lost their fundamental rights. Nor do I agree with their view that the Constitution has been “terminated”. But they have captured the momentum of events, and the Constitution is in dire straits — no doubt about it.

But I firmly disagree with this:

Unfortunately, we have done this to ourselves.
We allowed ourselves to be seduced by the false siren song of politicians promising safety in exchange for relinquished freedom. We placed our trust in political saviors and failed to ask questions to hold our representatives accountable to abiding by the Constitution. We looked the other way and made excuses while the government amassed an amazing amount of power over us, and backed up that power-grab with a terrifying amount of military might and weaponry, and got the courts to sanction their actions every step of the way. We chose to let partisan politics divide us and turn us into easy targets for the government’s oppression.

What really happened is that majorities of voters — often slim majorities — elected power-hungry politicians to office. Those politicians, in turn, empowered power-hungry bureaucracies and appointed anti-constitutional judges. The bureaucracies lived on and arrogated more and power to themselves, regardless of who was in office. Anti-constitutional judges lived on and were joined and replaced by enough anti-constitutional judges to enforce and expand anti-constitutionalism.

Realistically, it would be almost impossible for voters to overcome such obstacles and overthrow of anti-constitutionalism. (And it must be admitted that a healthy fraction of voters don’t want to do it, and another healthy fraction of them is clueless.) What has been done by presidents, Congresses, and courts would be very hard to undo. Too many interests are vested in the regulatory-welfare state that has usurped the Framers’ noble vision. Vote-selling (promises of “free stuff”) and log-rolling are more powerful than words on paper. Even a Supreme Court majority of strict constitutionalists probably would decline to roll back the New Deal and most of what has come in its wake. In any event, the Supreme Court can’t initiate cases, and the pernicious doctrine of stare decisis hasn’t yet been put to the torch.

If you want to point fingers, point them at the Framers of the Constitution. The Articles of Confederation gave real veto power to individual States. In establishing a national government of “limited and enumerated powers” the Framers underestimated the will to power that animates office-holders — elected and non-elected.

The Constitution’s wonderful design — horizontal and vertical separation of powers — which worked rather well until the late 1800s, cracked under the strain of populism, as the central government began to impose national economic regulation at the behest of muckrakers and do-gooders. The Framers’ design then broke under the burden of the Great Depression, as the Supreme Court of the 1930s (and since) has enabled the national government to impose its will in matters far beyond its constitutional remit.

The Framers’ fundamental error can be found in Madison’s Federalist No. 51. Madison was correct in this:

It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.

But Madison then made the error of assuming that, under a central government, liberty is guarded by a diversity of interests:

[One method] of providing against this evil [is] … by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable…. [This] method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.
In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects; and this may be presumed to depend on the extent of country and number of people comprehended under the same government. This view of the subject must particularly recommend a proper federal system to all the sincere and considerate friends of republican government, since it shows that in exact proportion as the territory of the Union may be formed into more circumscribed Confederacies, or States oppressive combinations of a majority will be facilitated: the best security, under the republican forms, for the rights of every class of citizens, will be diminished: and consequently the stability and independence of some member of the government, the only other security, must be proportionately increased.

Madison then went on to contradict what he had said in Federalist No. 46 about the States being a bulwark of liberty:

It can be little doubted that if the State of Rhode Island was separated from the Confederacy and left to itself, the insecurity of rights under the popular form of government within such narrow limits would be displayed by such reiterated oppressions of factious majorities that some power altogether independent of the people would soon be called for by the voice of the very factions whose misrule had proved the necessity of it. In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and the general good; whilst there being thus less danger to a minor from the will of a major party, there must be less pretext, also, to provide for the security of the former, by introducing into the government a will not dependent on the latter, or, in other words, a will independent of the society itself. It is no less certain than it is important, notwithstanding the contrary opinions which have been entertained, that the larger the society, provided it lie within a practical sphere, the more duly capable it will be of self-government. And happily for the REPUBLICAN CAUSE, the practicable sphere may be carried to a very great extent, by a judicious modification and mixture of the FEDERAL PRINCIPLE.

Madison assumed (or asserted) that in creating a new national government with powers greatly exceeding those of the Confederation a majority of States would not tyrannize the minority and that a collection minorities with overlapping interests would not concert to tyrannize the majority. Madison was so anxious to see the Constitution ratified that he oversold himself and the States’ ratifying conventions on the ability of the national government to hold itself in check.

Thus the Constitution is lamentably silent on nullification and secession, which would be real checks on the power of the national government.

"Political Ideologies": A Codicil

Statism is authoritarianism.

My post “Political Ideologies” begins with this:

Political ideologies proceed in a circle. Beginning arbitrarily with conservatism and moving clockwise, there are roughly the following broad types of ideology: conservatism, anti-statism (libertarianism), and statism. Statism is roughly divided into left-statism and right-statism, which are distinguishable by their goals and constituencies.
By statism, I mean the idea that government should do more than merely defend the people from force and fraud. Conservatism and libertarianism are both anti-statist, but there is a subtle and crucial difference between them, which I will explain.

I later devoted a post to the subtle and crucial difference: “The Libertarian-Conservative Divide”.

What I aim to do here is expand on “statism”, for which a better word is “authoritarianism”.

Here’s what I say in “Political Ideologies” about left-statism:

Nothing is off the table for a left-statist. The state must bring everyone in line with whatever passes for “progressive” thinking at the moment: anti-religionism, same-sex marriage, gender fluidity, “women must be believed” (unless they challenge Democrats), untrammeled immigration, environmental extremism, the end of fossil fuels, socialized medicine, universal basic income, universal day-care, etc., etc., etc. Such things aren’t merely to be enacted, but transgressions against them must be punished by public shaming if not by criminal penalties. And nothing can stand in the way of the furtherance of the left-statist agenda — certainly not the Constitution. If Congress balks, use the courts, regulatory agencies, and left-dominated State and local governments. Above all, use public schools, universities, the media, and Big Tech to overwhelm the opposition by swaying public opinion and indoctrinating the next generation of voters.
If there is a distinction between “liberalism”, “progressivism”, and left-statism, it is one of attitude rather than aims. Many a “liberal” and “progressive” wants things that require oppressive state control, but is loath to admit the truth that oppressive state control is required to have such things. These naifs want to believe the impossible: that the accomplishment of the “progressive” agenda is compatible with the preservation of liberty. The left-statist simply doesn’t care about liberty; the accomplishment of the left-statist agenda is the end that justifies any and all means. Those “liberals” and “progressives” who aren’t left-statists by attitude are merely useful idiots to hard-core, Lenin-like left-statists.

Regarding the difference between left-statism and right-statism, I say:

Leftism is destructive of society and the economy, whether purposely or not. This is because the reigning disposition on the left is to hold and exercise power for the “greater good” — as the leftist sees it. The toll is heavy: the destruction of traditional social norms that bind and civilize society; the rejection of free markets because they “fail” to produce outcomes desired by the left; and on and on.
Rightism aims to preserve society and to ensure a robust economy.

I focus on what I call right-populism, about which I say:

A right-populist will not embrace conservative ideology because it implies smaller government, or because it fits his disposition. He will embrace conservative ideology as a protest against “progressivism”, while wanting government to do the things for him that government is perceived as doing for the left’s clients, and for the big corporations that are perceived as allied with the left and benefiting from government-granted privileges.
This isn’t to say, by any means, that right-populists are just as wrong-headed as the elitists they scorn. Right-populist instincts, if enacted, would result in much less costly and oppressive governance than elitist programs. There are vast and largely uncounted economic and social costs attached to the schemes hatched and enacted by elitists [examples follow]….
More than that, right-populist instincts include the preservation of the binding and civilizing social norms that “progressives” seek to subvert. That subversion has been so successful in wide swaths of government, business, the media, the academy, and public “education” that it can only be reversed by a state as powerful as the one that the left has erected.

I am too easy on right-statism, mainly because it currently represents no threat to liberty in America. But if it were somehow to arise as a threat (for the first time in America’s history) — and not a fear-fantasy promoted by the left — it would be a puritanically oppressive mirror-image of left-statism. To take one example: Religion might dominate the law, whereas, the law is now used to override religion.

In any event, both left-statism and right-statism are manifestations of authoritarianism. I can’t wholeheartedly endorse this article about the research of some psychologists at Emory University, but it offers some good insights about authoritarianism. Here are some of them:

[Right-wing and left-wing authoritarians] are almost like mirror images of one another that both share a common psychological core, the researchers conclude.
“Authoritarians have a predisposition for liking sameness and opposing differences among people in their environment,” [lead author Thomas] Costello says. “They are submissive to people they perceive as authority figures, they are dominant and aggressive towards people they disagree with, and they are careful to obey what they consider the norms for their respective groups.”…
“It’s a mistake to think of authoritarianism as a right-wing concept, as some researchers have in the past,” he says. “We found that ideology becomes secondary. Psychologically speaking, you’re an authoritarian first, and an ideologue only as it serves the power structure that you support.”

This is a refreshing change of tone from the decades-long proclivity of psychologists to label (wrongly) authoritarianism as a right-wing or conservative phenomenon.

The F Scale, Revisited

The Psychologist Who Played God

Leftism in America

It’s a necessary condition of a happy life.

Share this:

The apotheosis of irrational rationality.

Share this:

I have no quibble with Christopher DeMuth.

Share this:

Another infamous thinker to deride.

Share this:

Seek and you shall find.

America Disunited

Crime and Punishment

Deeply Divisive Subjects: Abortion, Immigration, Race, and More

Economics and Economists

Entertainments, Trivia, and Nostalgia

Famous and Infamous Thinkers

History

Intelligence and its Application

Language: Its Uses and Abuses

Liberty, Rights, and the Constitution

Metaphysical Matters

Politics, Politicians, and Government in Action

Science, Pseudoscience, and the Tools of Science

War, Peace, and Strategy

Share this:

Examining several facets of a moral, legal, and scientific issue.

WHY DO I OPPOSE ABORTION?

WHY DO I CALL ABORTION MURDER?

WHY DID THE “RIGHT” TO AN ABORTION BECOME A POLITICAL CAUSE?

WAS THE “RIGHT” TO AN ABORTION REALLY THE “LAW OF THE LAND”?

IS ABORTION A NATURAL RIGHT?

WAS THERE REALLY A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO AN ABORTION?

IS A FETUS A “PERSON”?

WHAT ABOUT THE VIABILITY ARGUMENT?

WHY SHOULDN’T A WOMAN CONTROL HER OWN BODY?

IF ABORTION WERE ILLEGAL, SHOULD A WOMAN WHO ABORTS A CHILD FACE LEGAL CONSEQUENCES?

IS ABORTION A STEP DOWN A SLIPPERY SLOPE?

INVOKING HITLER IS JUST A SCARE TACTIC ISN’T IT?

IS THERE A UTILITARIAN OR ETHICAL ARGUMENT FOR ABORTION?

ALL OF THAT ASIDE, DOESN’T ABORTION LEAD TO A LOWER RATE OF CRIME?

BUT IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS, ISN’T ABORTION CONSISTENT WITH LIBERTY?

Share this:

Up with which I should not put.

Share this:

Just follow the link.

Share this:

First, stop believing in altruism.

Share this:

Without using a cumbersome and vulnerable password manager.

Share this:

Don’t waste your money on brick-and-mortar hearing-aid providers.

Share this:

More about the shape of things to come.

Share this:

Ever the twain shall meet.

Share this:

Where state action is justified.

Share this:

The LGBT fad sweeps college campuses.

Share this:

Such stuff as dreams are made of.

I. PURPOSES AND PRINCIPLES

A. Purposes

B. Sovereignty of the Citizens of the United States

C. Primacy, Scope, and Interpretation of the Constitution

D. Recognition of Governmental Debt

E. Oath of Office Required

II. CITIZENSHIP, VOTING, AND RELIGIOUS TESTS FOR OFFICE

A. Citizenship upon Adoption of This Constitution

B. Citizenship by Birth

C. Citizenship by Naturalization

D. Voting

D. Religious Tests for Office

III. RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES OF CITIZENS

A. Equality and Guarantee of Rights and Privileges

B. Security of Persons and Property

C. Justice

D. Unenumerated Rights, Benefits, and Privileges

IV. THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES

A. Congress

B. The Presidency