Didn't Speak Up

On March 7th, I sent the following questions to Georgia Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson.
I didn't really expect a response since specific questions can not easily be answered by form letters, and these two poltroons were born without spines or had them surgically removed.

"He has also been a tireless advocate for improving the quality of life for troops and their families." - Saxby Chambliss

Sir:

1. In view of the above claim from your profile, what are you doing to end the torture of Bradley Manning?
2. Do you approve of forced nudity, solitary confinement, sleep deprivation and exercise deprivation?
3. Do you support the prosecution of the perpetrators of these acts?
4. Do you support an investigation of Manning's treatment?
5. Do you think that Barack Obama should be held accountable as Commander in chief of the Armed Forces?
6. Do you think that persons charged, but not tried or convicted should be maltreated?

What brought this to mind was the story of the troops in Afghanistan killing civilians and cutting off their ears and being so stupid and reckless as to photograph themselves committing the crimes. Several of those charged have admitted guilt, but I have heard no stories about any of them being deprived of sleep, forced to sleep nude, held for long periods in solitary confinement, deprived of exercise etc.

Bradley Manning performed a public service by informing the populace of the secret actions and policies of the government - that is, assuming he leaked the information to WikiLeaks. The Pentagon has admitted that no harm has come to any U.S. troops because of the public release of the secret information.

What the renegade death squad boys have done in Afghanistan is a crime under any moral code and shows a high degree of depravity. All Manning is alleged to have done is to make manifest what shouldn't have been concealed from the public to begin with. Why the disparity in treatment? Manning hasn't even been convicted and they're treating him like he's Carlos the Jackal or Osama bin Ladin.

I'm not going to hold my breath until Chambliss and Isakson call for Manning to be treated humanely. These two guys are such milquetoasts that they would make Vidkun Quisling look like evil's implacable foe.

Politicians love to hear from people who are having trouble with the V.A. or Social Security or some other agency that they can have a staffer call and solve the problem. They have a vote from then on. They usually don't mind letters about legislation because if it's popular they can say they support it and might even be a co-sponsor, but if it's unpopular or risky, they can drone on about what's in the bill (which you already know) and assure you that they're going to consider your views at the time of the vote.

I think it would be helpful if people started asking questions in their letters to politicians that have to be answered individually. It puts them on the spot. It is said somewhere that an honest man can speak for himself when the fool and the knave cannot. I think that's why I have received no response to my query.
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As if to confirm what I wrote about politicians prattling on with irrelevancies, I received this response from Saxby Chambliss after posting the above.  Notice than none of my questions are answered and note also that I did not mention WikiLeaks in my questions.

Dear Mr. Sullivan:

Thank you for contacting me with your concerns about the WikiLeaks incident. It is good to hear from you.

As you may know, on July 25th 2010, WikiLeaks released more than 91,000 classified military documents regarding the war in Afghanistan.  The documents are largely field-level military reports and do not have the sophistication of national-level finished intelligence. Nonetheless, the leaked documents do include information including times, dates, unit designations, geographic identifiers, and the names of some Afghan personnel working with the U.S. Military which could put those personnel at risk of retaliation.  

Again, in November 2010, the website WikiLeaks.org began publishing a reported 250,000 confidential American diplomatic cables, largely from the last three years. Several news organizations have subsequently reported on the cables and their contents.  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, has said that these documents describe sensitive information that could potentially endanger the lives of those who are operating in Afghanistan.

Private First Class Bradley E. Manning, 23, is the chief suspect in leaking the military documents to the Wikileaks website.  PFC Manning, a former intelligence analyst, was arrested in Iraq at the end of May 2010 on suspicion of passing classified information.  Originally, he was charged with communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source.  In March 2011 an additional 22 charges were preferred, including "aiding the enemy," a capital offense.  PFC Manning is currently being held in solitary confinement awaiting court martial for these offenses at the United States Marine Corps base in Quantico, VA.

As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I believe that our military units should operate with the best intelligence available, and we need to ensure that classified information is handled and secured appropriately.  Effective diplomacy requires candid conversations with America's friends and adversaries alike.  It is essential that any communications within our own government about such conversations take place within a confidential and often-classified setting.  Leaks of this magnitude undermine the trust and confidentiality that are critical to diplomatic efforts, and should command the highest form of punishment. I will work to ensure persons guilty of leaking classified information are held accountable. 

If you would like to receive timely email alerts regarding the latest congressional actions and my weekly e-newsletter, please sign up via my web site at: www.chambliss.senate.gov.   Please let me know whenever I may be of assistance.

No More Laws

Is there an infinite need for legislation? Will there ever come a time when it can be said that we have enough "laws" and congress can cease meeting except to perhaps vote on the budget?

Laws impinge on man's free will, so with the passage of every so-called law - whether it compels or forbids - freedom of action is diminished. A fraction of the population - fairly large, I think - seems to think that "progress" is not being made unless the government is constantly churning out new laws. Every time a crime is committed, somebody will propose drafting a law specifically tailored to that situation or propose a remedy for the act even though the act is unlikely to recur.

Several years ago, a man held up traffic on I 75 by threatening to jump off a bridge onto the expressway below. Instead of lamenting the inconvenience, the state (or city) spent millions of dollars erecting fences along all the overpasses to prevent a similar incident. The remedy is totally ineffective since anybody wishing to jump from the bridge can either climb the fence or bring a pair of wire cutters with them and cut the wire.

The shooting in Arizona is likely to produce idiotic reactions from "lawmakers" - otherwise known as politicians or legislators - even though we already have laws against assault, murder, threats, discharging firearms in the city and so on. If superfluous laws must be passed, I would propose that no law can be named after anybody.

Little Johnny Doe is robbed of his allowance, abducted, tortured and murdered by his Uncle Sam. His uncle is found to be the perpetrator. Congressman Richard Roe proposes "Johnny's Law" that states that no relative shall rob, abduct, torture and/or murder his nephew. No politician is going to vote against Johnny's Law unless he wants to be pilloried in the press and denounced as someone who "doesn't care" about his constituents. Congressman Roe can then run for reelection and claim that he's tough on crime and is the author of Johnny's Law even though everything done to Johnny was already illegal.

God revealed to Moses only ten laws to regulate moral behavior: eight negative and two positive. There are corollaries to these laws, but so far the number has not been increased. How is it that the entire moral code can be summed up so succinctly, but something like a "free trade agreement" takes thousands of pages?
If government were drafting commandments you can be assured there would be many more than ten.

As long as I'm violating my own thesis, I would propose that only those laws that are based on the natural or moral law, such as laws against stealing, murder assault. etc, shall be permanent; all others expire automatically in three years or five years or so. All legislation not based on the moral law would have to be re- passed as though it were a new proposal. It is almost impossible to repeal even a bad law, but this would put the burden on politicians to vote for them over and over again and would have the added benefit of lessening the amount of new legislation. This would be a sort of anti-legislation.

Many people think that laws don't concern them if they don't directly restrict their freedom. I can't count the times that some ostrich has said something like, "This is the freest country in the world, blah, blah , blah."
This is sort of like a person who owns 100 acres, and every year the government seizes 5 acres, but it doesn't matter because they've got plenty of land. After 10 years they start complaining, but the neighbors tell them that they still have more land than anybody in the neighborhood. In 10 more years they have nothing.

Since laws diminish freedom they should be passed very sparingly if at all. There are already laws against all the real crimes that can be committed. There is an apocryphal story that says the head of the patent office wanted to shut it down because everything that could be invented already was. The capacity for invention is limitless, the need for legislation is very small. Perhaps we should shut down congress and sell the building or give it to the Indians.

Josephus & The Robbers

In his autobiography, The Life of Flavius Josephus, Josephus provides a concrete example of the criminality of the state. St. Augustine's comment in The City of God regarding states without justice being great robber bands might have been prompted by reading Josephus.


Josephus describes an incident where he was trying to disarm a band of robbers that were too powerful to be disarmed, so he devised an expedient that sounds quite a bit like a government or protection racket:
"... and when I had sent for the most hardy among the robbers, I saw that it was not in my power to take their arms from them; but I persuaded the multitude to allow them money as pay, and told them it was better for them to give them a little willingly rather than to [be forced to] overlook them when they plundered their goods from them. And when I had obliged them to take an oath not to come into that country, unless they were invited to come, or else when they had not their pay given them, I dismissed them, and charged them neither to make an expedition against the Romans, nor against their neighbors that lay round about them; for my first care was to keep Galilee in peace....Accordingly, I made them my friends and companions as I journeyed, and set them to judge causes; and with their approbation it was that I gave my sentences, while I endeavored not to mistake what justice required, and to keep my hands clear of all bribery in those determinations."

This sounds a lot like an early example of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" or at least make it appear that you have forced them to join you. It doesn't look like he had many or any options, but it also illustrates how the difference between extortion and government is in the name.

It isn't clear why the oath of a robber would be of much value, but oaths are used in government all the time without any effect. Politicians swear an oath to uphold the constitution when most of them have probably never read it and have no intention of allowing words to interfere with their reelection. Perjury is the American way among public officials. The group called Oath Keepers is viewed with alarm among many - the Southern Poverty Law Center, for example - because they actually place a higher value on their oaths than orders from their superiors. The conclusion to be drawn here would be that integrity is an obstacle to good government.

Albert Jay Nock believed that when society was ruled by a strictly negative entity - one that prevented injustice - you had "government", but when the entity engaged in wealth transfer and coercion, you had the "State." The history of the world seems to be The State if Nock's definition is accurate.

Violence And The State

Every time some kook shoots somebody or blows up a building for political reasons we are admonished to avoid violence at all costs, avoid divisive speech and in general just be nice. We hear all sorts of talk about violence is never the answer or nothing can be achieved by violence, etc. But is this really true?

The United States would not be an independent country unless it had used violence to secede from England.
Most countries that declare their independence end up having to secure it by means of violence or its threat.
Violence is the system of nature. Lions, sharks, bees, cobras, bulls, hawks, ants, crocodiles, bears, tigers, ad infinitum, protect themselves and enforce their will by violence. Non-violence is a human invention or discovery.

Most of the condemnation of violence always seems to come from those for which violence is their primary tool. The ones who are always wanting to help people by the agency of government - the planners or do-gooders - rely on violence to accomplish their ends. It is private violence that they object to, not violence in principle. Private violence is bad - or maybe even morally wrong - because it obstructs or thwarts their benevolent intentions.

Every time there is an instance of private, i.e. "unauthorized" violence, such as the Arizona Massacre, the left swings into action to try to disarm or restrict the citizen's access to firearms. There is never a similar effort to disarm the police when they kill an innocent person. Government is the greatest practitioner of violence in history, but its actions are explained away by those who wish to justify or support its objectives.

The left needs a violent component to enforce its programs that cannot be implemented by persuasion. Nancy Pelosi, Diane Feinstein or Barack Obama would probably never dream of personally robbing or threatening somebody to support their programs, but they don't mind using the agency of government to do it for them.
A person who thinks this way can coerce the populace to comply with his whim and still pat himself on the back about all that "he's done for the people." It's inconsistent to denounce violence when you routinely employ it to achieve your ends. A man running a protection racket might admire himself for the service he provides his customers - with extorted money - in the same way that a politician admires himself for the health insurance he has forced his constituents to purchase - for their own good. Both of these men are engaged in criminal activity even if the second instance happens to be legal, and both rely on violence to achieve their ends.

The recent trouble in Egypt illustrates how many in the U.S., on both sides of the political spectrum favored using violence against the protesters because Mubarak was "our man" even though the will of the people seemed to favor his removal.

No politician would ever seek the endorsement of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue even though he makes all the politician's benevolent programs possible. Having the Commissioner's endorsement would make it obvious that the programs spring not from an eleemosynary entity, but an extortion racket.

In Book IV of The City of God, St. Augustine asks the question; "Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?" He goes on to explain that when a robber band becomes sufficiently large to hold territory and and take on all the attributes of a kingdom, its nature is not changed, but to its covetousness is added impunity - this is the nature of government.

 Lord Acton's statement that power tends to corrupt is undoubtedly true, but it is probably the case that power tends to attract those who are already corrupt. Politicians don't become liars and thieves in office, they were mostly liars and thieves before seeking office and their skill at deception facilitates their election. Stealing and lying go together since the thief has to lie to conceal his crime, and stealing is lying in a material form. When you habitually lie and steal, it's handy to have violence as an option, should lies not be sufficient suppress outrage.

The essence of the state is violence, but it is best if this fact can be concealed from the citizens. Occasionally the state bares its teeth and breaks out the fire hoses and police dogs, shoots a few college students or burns down a compound of religious misfits, but it's best if the people continue to believe that government is their servant and they are the masters; not the other way around.

Paranoia From The Left

Jared Loughner, the alleged murderer of several people in Arizona is being marketed by the disinformation organizations as the latest example of the menace posed by "right-wing" people and organizations. The large "news" organizations always seem to see bogeymen on the right, but never on the left.
 
A study of assassins would probably conclude that most were not right-wing, but just plain nuts.
Richard Lawrence, the failed assassin of Andrew Jackson was found not guilty by reason of insanity and died in the nut house in 1861. John Wilkes Booth is called a "Confederate sympathizer", but from his shouting sic semper tyrannis as he jumped from the box at Ford's Theater, it would seem that Lincoln's tyrannical measures were his motivation. Charles Guiteau shot James Garfield for personal reasons, not politics. Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated William McKinley is usually classified as a Socialist or Anarchist, but in either case is almost universally admitted to being insane. Lee Harvey Oswald was a left-winger and member of the Fair Play For Cuba Committee. Whether Oswald was the actual assassin of Kennedy, he is the "officially
recognized" one and was not a right-winger. John Hinckley Jr. was another nut, who was trying to impress Jodie Foster and did not shoot Ronald Reagan for political reasons. Arthur Bremer shot George Wallace for the purpose of gaining fame, not for ideological reasons. Lynette Fromm tried to shoot Gerald Ford, thinking that it was somehow going to benefit Charles Manson. Sara Jane Moore was if anything other than crazy, a left-winger. Giuseppe Zangara, the assassin of Anton Cermak and the attempted assassin of Franklin Roosevelt said in the Dade County Courthouse jail, "I have the gun in my hand. I kill kings and presidents first and next all capitalists." Oscar Collazo and Griselio Terresola, who attempted to kill Harry Truman were Puerto Rican independence activists, not right-wing activists. Leo Ryan, the only congressman to ever be killed in the line of duty, was murdered by communist/left-wing lunatic members of Jim Jones' People's Temple.

It seems that the purpose of always seeing right-wingers under every bed is to suppress criticism of government. To those on the left, most of what government is doing is A-OK; the only objection being that it is never doing enough. This is a criticism that the mainstream can tolerate.

Free speech was fine when it was possible to maintain control of who could be heard, but with the rapid dissemination of ideas by electronic means, the left has lost its near-monopoly over speech control. This has made it possible for "sinister forces" - a Nixonian term - to propagate ideas out of the "mainstream".
The first rule in the left-wing playbook seems to be to impute evil, insanity or bad will of some kind - usually hate - to your critic. If your opponent is a stark raving lunatic or has evil intent there is no need to refute his position; his lack of coherence refutes itself. It's what might be called a modified argumentum ad hitlerum; if Hitler said it, it must be wrong.

The second rule seems to be that whatever oppressions the government authorizes are legitimate. The fault is always with the Minutemen, never with the British government. If you don't want your powder seized, you're a radical. If you object to the Stamp Act, you're unpatriotic. If you object to the Quartering Act, you've got something to hide. Many examples from the present could be offered, but you get the idea.

The Arizona massacre not only does not demonstrate the principle that the left wants it to, it positively refutes it. If the NRA ran a dramatization of a left-wing malcontent attacking a relatively conservative woman congressman, but being foiled by an armed citizen, it would be dismissed as "right-wing propaganda."

Air Tax

January 23, 2011

Mendax News Service

The recent congressional backlash about Obamacare has emboldened the Republicans to pass a repeal of the act in the House, but it is expected to fail in the Senate. One of the biggest complaints is funding the program in a time of austerity for most of the country.

Senator Justin Morrill (R- VT) has proposed funding the program by imposing a tax on air. Morrill says that his proposal is a common sense approach to funding the program and will yield health benefits as well. All the details have not been hammered out, but the initial proposal is to weigh everybody in the country and determine their probable lung capacity. After determining how much air each person is using a tax would be calculated based on usage with an additional fee for the carbon dioxide exhaled. Morrill claims that it only makes sense for people to pay a carbon tax on all the carbon dioxide they exhale, thus contributing to climate change.

Several of Morrill's allies argue that everyone should pay his fair share for the air he uses and the carbon dioxide he dumps into the environment. As presently envisioned, the tax would be based on how much air - measured in standard cubic feet at one atmosphere - each person actually uses, not a one-size-fits-all approach. Athletes would obviously have to pay more than a sedentary person since they use more air.

One trial balloon being floated - real balloons would be exempt since most are filled with helium, not air - is a proposal that every child would have to present a doctor's certificate at the beginning of each school year, estimating the air usage by said child for a year. Adults would fall under a similar requirement for work. Those who don't work would have to present a tax certificate to obtain any benefits. Another proposal being explored is requiring everyone to show a tax stamp every time a purchase of drugs, groceries, gasoline or medical services is made. Supporters of the idea admit that there will be some who slip through the cracks, such as people living under bridges that live off the land, transients and other potential tax-cheats.

Opponents of the idea fret that once enacted, the tax will be increased and therefore seek guarantees that the tax can not be increased for five years. Congressman Neville Milquetoast, chairman of the group Conservative Republicans Against Paternalism, says that the plan is unworkable and won't raise enough revenue to justify the costs of implementation. Supporters counter that too many people have gotten a free ride for too long, using up the country's air and not contributing anything.

Some have raised what many are calling a "Naderite" objection - that being that the tax should be lower in places having poor air quality - but people are highly mobile and it just makes sense for the tax to be uniform, but also variable based on use. Others have tried to claim that it is similar to a capitation tax, forbidden by the constitution, but supporters have pointed out that it is a tax on the air used by the person; not the person himself and have not allowed themselves to be drawn into a debate over constitutional trivia.

Some, on what might be called the "Lunatic Fringe" dismiss the whole idea as unconstitutional, not recognizing the new paradigm we operate under nor that the constitution is a living document with no fixed meaning.

Scottish Jihad

What if the United States imposed a blockade on Scotland, occupied Edinburgh; bombed Glasgow and sold England weapons with which to fight the Scots and take their land?  In addition to this; what if the U.S. set up a military base in Geneva, Switzerland and quartered troops in John Calvin's house?

If, after a few years of this routine the U.S. starting experiencing terrorist attacks perpetrated by Presbyterians, would it be reasonable to conclude that all Presbyterians or Calvinists hated us because we are good, or hate us for our freedom? If someone were to inquire as to why we suddenly had lots of fanatical Presbyterians bent on jihad, would it be sensible to conclude that they were trying to justify the attacks?

A reasonable person might think it had something to do with our policy - not religion. An apologist for continuing the policy might argue that the Scots have always been a belligerent bunch and that this was just further evidence of their savagery and militancy and that Presbyterians have always been an intolerant lot. The naysayer might counter that all the militant Presbyterians seem to be from Scotland and the occupied territories; not Appalachia or other Scottish strongholds. Someone applying Occam's Razor to the problem might point out that the Presbyterian Problem started after we occupied Scotland and Geneva, particularly after Ian Paisley came out and said that was the reason for the attacks. Why would it be necessary to concoct all sorts of unlikely motives when the simplest one suffices?

Fortunately, we don't have any problems with Presbyterians perpetrating terrorist attacks against us, but there are some lessons that might be learned from the above hypothesis.

We have a similar problem with Muslims displaying ill will towards us. This is a really perplexing problem, but it might be noted that most of the perpetrators are not just of the Islamic faith, but mostly come from a certain area. If the primary or exclusively motivating factor is Islam, it would seem that lots of the terrorists would be coming from Indonesia, since it has the largest number of adherents to Islam. India also has a large number of Muslims as does Pakistan. The three countries combined have about one-third of the world's Muslims, but most of the World Trade Center attackers carried passports from Saudi Arabia, which only has two percent of the world's Muslims. Why this should be is a real mystery. Bin Laden says he objects to the U.S. having troops in Saudi Arabia because of the city of Mecca - holy to Muslims - being located there and he doesn't want "infidels" there defiling it. In his appearance immediately after the destruction of the WTC, he claimed that he had nothing to do with it, but that he applauded it and "swore to God" that it was going to keep happening if we kept aiding Israel and occupying holy lands. This is supposedly what he said, but since it was translated into English from Arabic or whatever language he was speaking, I don't know for sure.

If Bin Laden is lying about his reasons, what could be the real cause of hostility to the U.S. from Middle-Eastern Muslims?  He did not mention hating us for our freedom or because we are good or wealthy or anything like that.

Maybe it's the schools there or the water that causes Muslims in a certain geographical area to harbor ill will toward the U.S. It seems that if it's the water, the Israelis would suffer the same affliction, but they don't.

It might be preposterous to suggest that maybe they don't like the way Israel is the neighborhood bully and they perceive her to be supported by our government. It could also be that they think the U.S. government installs oppressive, puppet regimes in the oil producing countries, but what would give them such ideas?

Some might pore over the Koran for clues to the hostility and find calls to kill the infidel or other admonitions to violence, but these don't explain why the zeal to kill is so recently directed toward Americans or why Muslims outside the middle-east don't seem similarly motivated. The Muslim critic might retort that the New Testament is full of violent language such as "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." "I have come to cast fire upon the earth." "The violent bear it away...." "..they will be divided, father against son and son against father..." etc. These could be used to explain our above-mentioned Presbyterian terrorists.

Islam does have a history up until 1683 of proselytizing by conquest, but the purpose of the attacks on the U.S. does not have a religious purpose, but a political purpose. As far as I've read, none of the attackers has made any demands that the U.S. embrace Islam or else; they have repeatedly demanded that we - our government - get out of their countries and stop aiding Israel.

People don't like being ruled by foreigners - English in India or Ireland; Moors in Spain; Spain in Mexico; United States in the Philippines, etc. - and usually prefer their own rule even if it is worse having a home-grown ruler.

Americans might not understand why foreigners don't want them intruding in their countries and forcing our ways on them. It can be explained succinctly by a Confederate soldier that replied when asked by a Union invader why "You rebels are fighting?"; "Because you are down here" was the response.