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Rigorous Red or Bogus Blue? Part I

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By Mike Cronin

In the 1999 movie “The Matrix,” the future is presented as a dystopia where the vast majority of human beings are caged in pods that capture their body heat to energize a vast, governing machine intelligence.  In order to keep people in such a state, the machines created a virtual reality and plugged the brains of the human “batteries” directly into it – this constructed reality is the eponymous Matrix.

There are a few human rebels who escaped the machines, fighting an almost hopeless battle against them. These rebels are able to plug themselves back into the Matrix with full awareness of its virtual nature, and work to free the rare human “battery” who has begun to suspect the Matrix is not reality.  In the process of freeing such a mind, the leader of the extraction team confronts the skeptical person within the Matrix, hints at the truth, then offers the candidate two pills, one red, the other blue.  If the candidate takes the blue pill, he will remain trapped in the Matrix.  If he takes the red, he will be unplugged, rescued from his pod, and shown the true nature of reality.

There are some people today who believe we are living in a Matrix.  I don’t subscribe to that at all, but I do believe nearly all of our society’s ills can be attributed to a conflict between two philosophical meta-traditions, with schools of thought that promote collectivism & altruism on one side; and the philosophies of  individualism & reason on the other.  The traditions of collectivism & altruism have some Matrix-like qualities.

“Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.” ― John Dewy, hero of progressive education.

Like the machines in the Matrix, the elite of these traditions would prefer their subjects remain ignorant of the true nature of things, i.e. to take the metaphorical blue pill.  Creating critical thinkers is not a goal for the education of the masses in systems dependent on these models; nor is it a priority for the media to expose truths that contradict the narratives of the anointed elite.  But unlike the “batteries” of the Matrix, We the People are not trapped in energy-sucking pods. Metaphorical red pills can be found.

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” ― Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States

Promoters and adherents of philosophies of individualism and reason are, like the rebels in the Matrix movies, very much a minority who see things much closer to the way they truly are. A thinking, reasoning mind is valued among such rebels, skeptics, and extremists, but represents a threat to the purveyors of the blue pill.

“To fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence… Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim… is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States… and that is its aim everywhere else.” – H.L. Mencken, journalist and author

The conflict between “blue” and “red” thinking has been with us since humans first started using tools to make tools – probably as far back as the invention of the wheel.  Blue thinking started with superstitions and pagan religions.  It has always had the advantage of being easier to sell and easier to believe in, so it has always flourished in some form or fashion, while red thinking has always required intellectual rigor, which meant it was not preferred by people looking for the path of least resistance. In fact, ours was the first nation to be founded on the principles of individual liberty and capitalism – i.e. The United States of America is the original red state!

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5 Ways to Fight Hobgoblins

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By Mike Cronin

I often refer to H.L. Mencken’s “hobgoblins” quote: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” We see this every day, often with the enthusiastic pot-stirring of the main stream media.

Take today’s headlines, for example.  Rising tensions with Russia over the imbroglio in Syria. Hurricane Matthew. Gold prices. Stock prices. Jobs growth. Giving up control of the internet.  Hillary’s scandals. Trump’s crudities.  Duterte’s bombast. NFL ratings. Crazy clown sightings.

How is all of that really important? How can we ignore the hobgoblins and glean the “ground truth?”

A few rules of thumb can be useful:

  1. Always keep Mencken’s quote in mind, together with Thomas Sowell’s observation:1931497_10156430011180515_9052930332313088412_n
  2. Get your news from a variety of sources. Journalism has evolved, or more precisely, de-volved, in the face of 24/7 cable news cycles, citizen-chroniclers, and the web.  According to the authors of Blur, the old media’s apex occurred at about the time of the Three Mile Island incident in 1979. CNN came online shortly after in 1980, and the 24/7 news cycle was born. The term spin as euphemism for truth-shaping entered the lexicon at about the same time. Consumers have had to contend with an ever more clamorous, ratings-driven media ever since. Every outlet is biased, but some do a better job of admitting what their bias is (my own, for example, is for individualism, reason, and laissez-faire capitalism) and/or mitigating for it (this reporter, for example, does a commendable job on reporting from Washington D.C. without interjecting his ideology). Alternately, check out the US news from a foreign source, such as BBC, Al Jazeera, or Xinhua.  They are biased as well, but perhaps not about the same things we are. It can be enlightening.
  3. Once the main-stream media have added unique theme music to a particular story, it’s not breaking news anymore. They are trying to turn it into a cash-cow and milk it for ratings.
  4. Most mainstream media operations lean left/liberal/progressive/Democrat, while Drudge, Breitbart, and Fox News (at least until the recent departure of Roger Ailes) tilt right/conservative/Republican – but what if both of those factions are two sides of the same coin? In order to see liberals and conservatives as opposites, you are supposed to accept a left-right political spectrum model with socialism on one end and fascism on the other. To the subjugated souls living under either, there is no practical difference. As the saying goes: All models are wrong, some models are useful.  A left-right / liberal-conservative model keeps you scared of the hobgoblins.  What if we look through a different lens? What if we put individual liberty on one end, and absolute tyranny on the other?  I contend that on such a model, “liberal” and “conservative” establishment politicians are continuously dragging us closer to the tyranny cliff, with only the flavor of tyranny at issue. Using a better model might get us closer to “ground truth.”  Who will lead us to liberty or drag us to tyranny?
  5. One kind of real hobgoblins we must watch for: luminaries with enough wattage to force the public eye to “look away.” Such wattage could come in the form of personal charm or charisma, whereby the figure is judged by their reputation instead of earning a reputation based on considered judgement (e.g. President Obama’s anticipatory Nobel Peace Prize), or via “wagging the dog” (e.g. President Johnson’s incandescent “Gulf of Tonkin” lie).

 

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The Philosophy of Invincible Ignorance

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By Mike Cronin

I once heard an anecdote about a female engineering student who spoke up in the classroom and opined that 50% of engineers should be women.  The professor requested that the student take a look at the class make up. (It was overwhelmingly male.) The professor then observed that before 50% of engineers could be women, 50% of engineering students would have to be women.

A quick web search indicates science, engineering, technology, and math (STEM) are still largely male-dominated fields of work…and college study, with engineering being extremely so – to the tune of roughly 80% male to 20% female. (There was no accounting for any “alternately gendered” engineers/students.)

I don’t know how to get more females into STEM programs, or even if gender parity in STEM is a must-do, but I do know that destroying scientific rigor is not the answer.

Apparently, that is a misogynist attitude on my part.  According to a study by Laura Parson of the University of North Dakota, STEM course syllabi (and by extension all of STEM) alienate women because of the way they are worded. Her study was undertaken through the lens of “poststructuralist feminist thought.” For those of us uninitiated in the arcana of ivory-tower academician-speak,   “Poststructuralism ‘rejects objectivity and the notions of an absolute truth and single reality.’” Ahh, now that explains a few things.

Under such a system of thought, you can do or say anything you want, because in your subjective reality you’ve decided it’s OK.  That kind of junk philosophy may be the foundation (or the excuse) for the pervasiveness of what the late William F. Buckley, Jr. called “invincible ignorance.”  Imagine a world underpinned by such mental guidance: People could do whatever they felt like and get away with it…as long as they were of the anointed class approved by the elite, who could do or say whatever they felt like in their own little realities.

I mean, under such a regime you could have a central bank pump funny money into the big investment banks and the stock market even as the rest of the government taxes the bejesus out of the people’s real earnings and accumulated wealth, and call it “economic stimulus” or “quantitative easing.” Or you could have members of the elite who think the laws don’t apply to them, or that when they are caught breaking the laws, claim they made a “mistake” and not even get charged with a crime, let alone tried or convicted. Or you could wage endless wars against conditions and actions like obesity, poverty, drugs, and terrorism instead of naming your enemies and destroying them.  Or wealth could be distributed and redistributed, instead of earned and taken. Or the Supreme Court could call the Constitution a “living document” and interpret it to mean anything they liked, vice what it actually says.

I wonder how soon it will be before travelers will have to fly in an airplane designed by an engineer who went to the “Laura Parson School of Subjective Sciences and Mathematics,” who “felt” her math was correct under her own alternative understanding of the laws of physics?

 

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Trolling by Polling

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By Mike Cronin

Now that the presidential campaign season is in full swing, we are being treated to the usual inundation of “demographic” polling results (i.e. how are “soccer moms,” Hispanics, gays, white men, etc. going to vote?)  Taken individually, as they are usually reported, the vast majority of these polls tell us nothing useful.  Piolls that tell us how a state will vote are getting closer to valuable.

Consider: This page at Real Clear Politics lists numerous polls with entries similar to this one:

Race/Topic: State X:         Poll : Qunipiac                Results  Trump 44, Clinton 38                            Spread: Trump +6

Trump is up by six points over Clinton in State X.  Sounds dire for Clinton, right?

You still might be getting “trolled.”

Regardless of how you’d like the race to go, we need to remember how presidents get elected: by winning the Electoral College vote.  The popular vote heavily influences the Electoral College, but the nature of that influence is determined by state laws. As we’ve seen as recently as 2000, it is possible to win the popular vote but lose the electoral vote and the election. In terms of polls: It means that generic surveys of this or that demographic, such as the one cited above, are almost useless by themselves for telling us how an election might go, especially in “solid” red or blue states. It makes no difference if a candidate’s poll numbers go up in a state that was already going to vote for them.  It makes a great deal of difference if a candidate’s numbers change in a battleground state with a lot of electoral votes, such as Florida or Ohio – such a shift could move electoral votes from one column to the other, perhaps enough to get to 270.

Thus, even taken in aggregate, “demographic” polls aren’t much of a barometer.  A much more instructive product would tell us how every state is currently trending, with caveats for the states (Nebraska and Maine) that are not “winner take all.”  Such a tool would give us a much better predictive assessment of the electoral college votes likely to go to each candidate.

Such a beast exists: http://www.270towin.com/. They have broken down the race several ways.  If we look at their map that “kluges” current polling data with expert forecasters’ opinions, Mrs. Clinton already has 272 votes in her camp, two more than are needed to win.  But  if we look at their chart that displays the accumulation of polling data only and omits “expert opinion,” then Clinton has about 200 electoral college votes in her camp (out of 270 needed to win), while Mr. Trump has 163.  Either situation sounds much more troublesome for him than “Trump up by six” sounds for Clinton, doesn’t it?

If “demographic” polls vice “electoral vote” polls do little to predict the outcome of the Electoral College race, why publish them? At least two possibilities come to mind:

  1. There’s nothing like stirring the pot in order to keep you tuned in and watching advertisements.
  2. To shape voters’ behavior in some way favorable to whomever commissioned the poll. Example one: Clinton’s current lead only translates to victory on Election Day if enough voters actually go to polling places and pull levers.  If you want Clinton to win, maybe you paint her as losing ground in the polls in order to generate a hint of doubt. Maybe that will motivate folks to go vote that might have stayed home if they felt comfortable she was going to win. Example two: If you want Trump to win, you might commission such a poll in order to generate enthusiasm by painting him as an underdog coming from behind and pulling ahead – a narrative that always does well in America.

Manifestly, Donald Trump still has an uphill battle.  In his best case scenario, he has to take 107 more votes and keep Clinton from gaining, while in his worst case he needs to take at least three of Clinton’s existing votes away!

Despite being much more instructive than run-of-the-mill poll reporting, even such tools as the “270towin” charts are not infallible, nor is the sentiment recorded today going to be the same on election day.  Clinton’s recent bout with “pneumonia,” clumsy messaging regarding her overall health, and “deplorable” commentary on Trump supporters certainly helped Trump’s polling tick up a bit, but did it affect the electoral vote trend?  Time will tell – and we still have to get through the “October Surprise.”

While such and event or revelation may yet upend the race, there is sure to be a battle over the next few weeks for the remaining available electoral votes. Poll results that don’t tell you how that aspect of the election is going are probably not worth your consideration.

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Testing our Constitution

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By Mike Cronin

Today ought to be a national holiday.  229 years ago today, the Constitution was created.  It was ratified and became the highest law of the land two years later in March of 1789.  Contrary to popular opinion, or even popular “fact” taught in many of our schools, the Constitution didn’t give us a democracy, even though it specified certain democratic processes for electing the president and members of Congress and for proposing and enacting legislation.  It gave us a republic – a form of government where the people’s rights were protected by law and could not be voted away at the whim of the majority.  It gave us the first country in the history of mankind founded on the ideal of individual liberty and personal freedom.

The Constitution, and our republic, has been under attack, either literally or rhetorically, ever since.  Some, like Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, would have us believe the Constitution is a “living document,” i.e. open to re-interpretation through whatever cultural lens exists at a given time.  The Framers knew better than that.  They knew America would not be the same in 1887 or 1987 as it was in 1787, so they crafted a mechanism into the Constitution that would allow for it to be changed: via amendments. They deliberately made the amendment process challenging, but not impossible.  It has worked just fine at least 17 times over the last 229 years.  The most recent, the 27th Amendment, was ratified in 1992.  (Yes, there are 27 amendments, but the first ten were enacted simultaneously as the Bill of Rights, hence 17 instances the amendment process has been carried out.)

One of those amendments, the first in fact, is being tested right before our eyes today. There is a public controversy over several NFL players who are refusing to stand during the playing of the National Anthem.  As a veteran, I am in the curious position of both feeling pained and proud.  It pains me to see people disdain the anthem, because so many have fought and died to protect the freedom and liberty the flag stands for. And yet, the very first freedom protected by the Bill of Rights is the freedom of expression.  As much as it galls me to admit it, our country has not always acted in accord with its own highest law.  As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, for nearly a century after the Constitution was ratified, men could own other men in this country…if they were black. Our history has other examples of its failure to abide by the Constitution and the principles of individual freedom it protects: Confiscatory income taxes. The draft. Excessive bureaucracy and scandalous deficits and debt. Spying on citizens. Obamacare. Failures to hold officials accountable for their transgressions in office. The list is not short.

So when an NFL player refuses to stand for the National Anthem, and no government sanction ensues, I can be proud to witness an instance where the Constitution itself is being honored by the government, even if those who have given everything in its defense are being dishonored.

Of course that works both ways.  Just as those few players have the right not to stand, the fans, the teams, and the league have the right to express their displeasure at the offending players.  It would not pain me at all to see the league fine, or the teams discharge, the players in question!

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Nuclear Power, Shaving Cream, and Magnets

By Mike Cronin

Q: How is the nuclear power industry like shaving cream?

A: We’ll get to the answer in a moment, but a little background is in order. According to the video above, the “energy density” from nuclear fission (splitting atoms of heavy radioactive elements, like uranium and plutonium) is a million times greater than from chemical reactions, such as occur with conventional explosives or burning fossil fuels.  A nuclear reactor perhaps the size of your thumb could power your car. Yet there is a huge fear factor with nuclear power because nuclear fission is also the same energy source in atomic weapons, and because of incidents like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.

We needn’t be so fearful.  Check out these facts:

The nuclear energy industry is safer than the coal industry. As of Februray 2013, no one had died due to radiation poisoning from Fukushima.  In fact, despite the deaths that occurred at Chernobyl, the nuclear power industry is the safest of all of the major power generating industries in terms of deaths per terawatt hour generated.  Here’s the breakdown (retrieved from http://www.theenergycollective.com/willem-post/191326/deaths-nuclear-energy-compared-other-causes ):

Energy Source Mortality Rates; Deaths/yr/TWh

Coal – world average, 161

Coal – China, 278

Coal – USA, 15

Oil – 36

Natural Gas – 4

Biofuel/Biomass – 12

Peat – 12

Solar/rooftop – 0.44-0.83

Wind – 0.15

Hydro – world, 0.10

Hydro – world*, 1.4

Nuclear – 0.04

That’s right: even solar and wind energy are more hazardous to workers than nuclear power.

So if nuclear power is safer and more energy-dense than any of these other forms of power, why aren’t we using more of it, and burning less fossil fuels? Cost, mainly.  Because nuclear power scares people, and because a reactor safety failure can lead to radioactive contamination, the industry is heavily regulated and plants are very expensive to build. (By the way, the coal industry releases far more radioactivity into the atmosphere than the nuclear industry!)

But some of that problem is due to the business model followed by the industry.  Power plant reactors are designed to use radioactive uranium or plutonium isotopes in their cores. Very little of the uranium that occurs naturally in the earth is of the required isotope.  The necessary isotope can be made by “enriching” regular uranium through various processes, all of which lead to a very expensive (on par with gold or platinum in price per ounce) final product.  Plutonium doesn’t even occur in nature, but it can be man-made, or “bred,” in nuclear reactors using enriched uranium…for about the same price per ounce.  Both enriched uranium and plutonium can be made “weapons grade” and used to make the cores of atomic bombs. In fact, the weapon industry, inaugurated by the Manhattan Project, gave rise to the power industry as we know it today.

So how is the nuclear power industry like the shaving industry?  Some time ago, Gillette came upon the idea of selling razor handles cheaply, at or below cost, or even giving them away, and charging prices with high profit margins for shaving consumables (disposable blades, creams, and gels).  A perpetual profit engine was born.

Nuclear power companies often work the same way.  They might build a power plant for a utility for little or no profit, but then reap a profit stream via the consumables (enriched uranium and plutonium) end of the business.

There is another business model that might make nuclear power much more palatable to the average customer, if the corporations in the industry could be convinced it would be as profitable.  It involves using a much more widely available radioactive material to generate the fission reaction: thorium. In this model, the thorium would be mixed with fluoride and circulated in the reactor as a molten salt.  The acronym the industry uses for such a system is LFTR (“lifter”). The benefits are worth considering:

Thorium is far more plentiful and far cheaper to obtain than uranium or plutonium

The reactor can’t “runaway” and “melt down” through its own containment – the fuel is already molten, but it’s at ~700 degrees, not the thousands of degrees needed to melt through steel and concrete

The fuel can be used much more efficiently (there would be far less radioactive waste)

A power plant that used it would not be cheap, but it wouldn’t need to cost any more than a standard nuclear plant

The reactor operates at ambient pressures, which means the plant doesn’t need expensive pressure containment “vessels,” such as the ones that failed at Fukushima

There is increasing debate about using the LFTR model in the nuclear power generation industry.  It may or may not be a better system, but to have a chance at replacing the current standard, proponents will have to convince the industry that they can make as much or more profit from LFTR than they can with traditional reactors.  They may get two boosts from unexpected quarters: magnets and China.

Not just any magnets, but strong, rare-earth magnets made from a metal element called neodymium. Neodymium magnets are used in such applications as microphones, speakers, and computer hard drives.  Where thorium may be plentiful and cheap (compared to the desired uranium isotope), neodymium is relatively scarce and expensive…but it is often found in the same geological areas (in other words, a thorium mine might produce some significant quantities of neodymium as well, according to an extended version of the video above). China currently has a corner on the world market for neodymium, and China, and a few other countries, are looking into building LFTR nuclear plants.   Switching the US nuclear power generating paradigm from uranium to thorium might not generate the same kind of profitable consumables stream, but obtaining the neodymium might make up for the loss – and break China’s near-monopoly on neodymium to boot.

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Comfortable Lies and Painful Truths

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By Mike Cronin

Comfortable lie: The one-percenters have too much money. They should have to pay their fair share of taxes so the rest of us can have more government benefits.

Painful truth(s): 1.The 99-percenters in the developed world (especially in the US) are the one-percenters compared to the rest of the world. If you have food, (even if it wasn’t prepared by a private chef) a car (even if it’s a used beater), a roof (even if it’s a crappy apartment or trailer), multiple changes of clothes (even if you got them second hand), air conditioning, a microwave, and a flat screen TV (or could have those things if you didn’t blow your money on tattoos, booze, drugs, or lotto tickets) then YOU ARE NOT POOR, even if you are living “below the poverty line.” 2. Regardless of how much money a rich person has, it is their money.  If you elect politicians to take money from the rich via taxation, you are no different than a gangster who hires thugs to rob people at gunpoint (unless it can be proved that a given rich person obtained their wealth via theft, exploitation, or other criminal means – and even in such circumstances, the only people who deserve their “fair share” of that wealth are the direct victims, not the rest of us).

Comfortable lie: Your employer owes you a “living wage” and medical benefits.  People who don’t get those things are being exploited.

Painful truth(s): 1. Your employer owes you what you agreed to work for when you signed on and not a dime more.  2. The idea that your employer OWES you medical coverage is fallacious – unless such coverage was part of the compensation you agreed to before you started working there.  The practice of offering medical insurance became popular as a way to increase compensation to deserving employees during World War II without violating the government-imposed wage freezes of the time.  3. You OWE IT TO YOURSELF to increase your knowledge, skills, and abilities in order to increase your worth to your current employer (in order to merit raises and promotions) or to progress up the career ladder at subsequent employment – if you want to increase your income, increase your value.   4. You OWE IT TO YOURSELF not to start, or increase the size of, your family while you are working low-wage/low-benefit jobs. 5. If the pay in your chosen field is generally lower than you might like, it’s probably because there is no shortage of people waiting in line that can take your place. If people with similar skills sets to your own aren’t scarce, there is no need for employers to offer higher compensation. Again – if you want to increase your income, increase your value.

Comfortable lie: We have a right to life, liberty, and happiness. The government must take care of all of our needs from birth to death.

Painful truth: You have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The government is supposed to protect those rights by not allowing others to interfere with you, so long as you don’t interfere with others.  The government cannot “take care of” everyone without violating those very same rights.  Consider: if the government MUST provide your health care, then it MUST force doctors and other medical professionals to deliver that care. In so doing it has violated the medico’s right to life and liberty and pursuit of happiness (because the government has directed, under threat of penalties, how some portion of the medic’s life is to be spent).

Comfortable lie: We must nurture every kid’s sense of self-esteem by awarding participation trophies, de-emphasizing grades, and eliminating every objectionable word or insensitive influence, etc…

Uncomfortable truths: “If you look like food, you will be eaten.” (Clint Smith) 1. All life is competitive. Predators have to catch prey; prey has to outrun predator. Even plants compete for sunlight.  If you try to protect your kids from competition instead of teaching them how to function in a competitive environment, you are doing them a disservice. (Oh, and by the way, sports are an excellent place to do that…but they are not the only arena!) 2. A kid who has never felt the sting of losing or the “thrill of victory” isn’t going to have healthy self-esteem; he or she is going to have a dysfunctional sense of being entitled to things he or she didn’t earn.

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Random Matter

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by Mike Cronin

Five items of interest this week.  In no particular order:

There was bit of brouhaha this week over a Tallahassee, Florida school sending a waiver home with kids that would allow them, with parental consent, to opt out of saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Conservatives painted the move as a sacrilegious, PC attempt to erode patriotism. The same kind of outrage is evident when protesters burn or otherwise desecrate the flag.  When I see people doing that it makes me mad. But those of us who love freedom and liberty have to be consistent in our defense of them. All of our freedoms are under attack, including freedom of speech. Even though we may hate the idea that there are people out there who do not love America, even though we may be angered by their actions, we have to respect that they are free to voice their displeasure just as we can voice ours.  Regardless, a loyalty oath that is made into a compulsory ritual to be performed by those who have not yet attained the age of reason can be no more reliable an indicator of patriotism than a confession extracted by torture can be relied on as evidence at a trial.

If we ban law-abiding citizens from owning or possessing firearms because they might misuse them to commit or attempt to commit mass murder, then by the same logic we should also ban law-abiding citizens from owning or possessing propane tanks for gas grills (Columbine, 1999), fertilizer and diesel fuel (Oklahoma City, 1994), light aircraft (Austin, TX, 2010), passenger cars (Reno, 1980), gasoline (Happy Land nightclub arson fire, NY, 1990), envelopes (Anthrax episode, 2001).  Oh, and let’s not forget commercial aircraft (9/11). In fact: “Guns aren’t even the most lethal mass murder weapon. According to data compiled by Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, guns killed an average of 4.92 victims per mass murder in the United States during the 20th century, just edging out knives, blunt objects, and bare hands, which killed 4.52 people per incident. Fire killed 6.82 people per mass murder, while explosives far outpaced the other options at 20.82. Of the 25 deadliest mass murders in the 20th century, only 52 percent involved guns.” Note the source. This isn’t from the NRA or some other pro-gun organization, but the liberal Slate magazine just after the 2012 Aurora school shooting!

We are so pre-occupied trying to achieve “diversity” that we have neglected the concept of unity.  Do we live in the United States of America or the Diverse States of America?  Corporations, institutions, and other sizable employers are now hiring C-level “Diversity and Inclusion” executives.  They are the interior decorators of the company organization chart – their job is to color-coordinate the work force!

George Orwell’s 1984 showed us a dystopian future where everybody was under surveillance by Big Brother. What Orwell didn’t see coming was that the technology works both ways.  Citizens in the developed world can buy a smartphone or webcam or other recording gear and take video of the police and government, at least in most public areas.

Some day in the near future, artificial intelligence, or A.I., may render the concept of the nation-state and representational government obsolete.  Having humans connected to some form of A.I. is becoming a staple of science fiction. Neal Asher, Alastair Reynolds, and others have imagined futures where people are implanted with, or “augmented” with devices that allow them to connect and communicate via direct neural interface. John Scalzi dreamt up the colorful “BrainPal,” a kind of advanced Siri inside your head. Imagine if we could do away with almost all of the government and participate directly through our neural links while a wise, super-intelligent, ultra-rational A.I. provided guidance?  I don’t know if A.I. will bring us dystopia or utopia or something in between, but it is coming soon.

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Weasel Words: Ethics and Morality

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By Mike Cronin

I was raised and educated to believe that the basis  of moral conduct was dictated to man by God through the Ten Commandments, the teachings of Jesus, and the precepts of the Catholic Church.  I was also given to understand that “ethics” were more about the rules humans applied to themselves. Regardless of what religious or secular tradition you were raised under, chances are the distinction between morality and ethics has not always been made clear.

What if that is on purpose?  What if politicians, philosophers, spiritual leaders and other demagogues have twisted the meaning of these words?

Richard Maybury, author of 22 books and monographs and the Early Warning Report newsletter and website, focuses on economics, law and history. According to him:

“Ethics is from the Greek word ethos, which means the essential nature or character of something. Four legs, a head and a tail are part of the essential nature of a cat. The cat cannot change this.

Morals is from the Latin word mos, meaning mores, customs, habits. These can and do change. Rosie the Riveter in World War II made it okay for women to work outside the home in jobs that formerly went only to men.

Ethics refers to a higher law than any human law. To be ethical is to be in sync with the principles of right and wrong built in to human nature.

Morals are not built in. They are the result of opinion, which can change with the wind.

We are born with limits based on ethics. If we choose to be ethical, life gets better, and if we don’t, life gets worse; it’s automatic.

Morals, again, are just opinions.

Ethics is doing what is right even if every other person on earth is doing what is wrong.

To be moral, on the other hand, is to behave in ways that are popular, customary or in sync with the behavior of the majority. If most others do it, it’s okay.”

What insights can we glean by applying these original meanings to ethics and morals?  For a start, is it ethical for a lawmaker to ban conditions, possessions, or behavior just because some constituents find it immoral (e.g. mixed–race or same-sex marriage, drug use, pornography, prostitution)?

To borrow from an internet meme: Knowledge accepts that a cherry tomato is a red fruit similar in size, shape, and color to a cherry, but one demonstrates wisdom by not putting a cherry tomato on top of an ice-cream sundae.  Similarly, it is one thing to know the meaning of ethics and morality, it is another to apply those meanings wisely.

For example: if knowledge tells us it is unethical for the government to ban pornography merely because some sector of society finds it immoral, is it not also unethical for the government to ban child-pornography for the same reason? Don’t child pornographers have as much right under the First Amendment as adult pornographers?

No. We have to apply wisdom: children, especially young children, are not capable of providing informed consent, so they cannot reasonably permit themselves to be the subject of pornographic materials; ergo such materials are unethical to produce in addition to (or despite) being immoral to possess. The rights of the would-be child pornographer end where the rights of the child begins – he (or she) has no right to employ the child in such a manner, whether the child might have seemed to agree to it or not, because the child is not competent to make such a decision yet.

How can we get this wisdom ourselves?  It helps to simplify, or reduce things to a principle, then apply it.  To my way of thinking, virtually every unethical act reduces, in principle, to some form of theft:

Murder (as opposed to killing in self-defense) is the unethical taking (i.e. theft) of someone else’s life.

Rape, assault, and enslavement are unethically taking a large portion, but perhaps not all, of someone else’s life.

So-called “white collar” crime, fraud, lying, and other unethical forms of misleading conduct are attempts to hide reality from those entitled to it.  They are the theft of the truth.

By the same token, many so-called immoral acts are ethically neutral: e.g. eating meat on Friday, not going to church on the Sabbath, using foul language, wearing provocative clothing, or having homosexual or premarital sex.

So: Is it ethical for a lawmaker to enact, obligate, or promote acts that take property from citizens without due process (e.g. confiscatory income taxation, eminent domain, or civil asset forfeiture)?

The Founders established that the only valid purpose of government is to protect citizens’ rights. Government cannot succeed in that purpose if it is routinely, systematically, and unethically violating the rights of those very citizens!

To paraphrase Maybury: Life continuously gets better in civilizations that make the correct distinction between ethics and morality and enforce ethical conduct; civilization itself fails in places where ethics and morality have been twisted into weasel-words.

Posted on by mikecronin2013

The Land of the Free* (*terms and conditions may apply)

essay

By Mike Cronin

When asked what kind of government our new country has, Benjamin Franklin is widely quoted as stating “a republic, if you can keep it.”  Apparently we could not.  It’s almost universally accepted these days, to the point of being taught as fact in schools, that we have a democracy. Yet our Constitution outlines a republican form of government with three branches (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial) that functions with some democratic processes. (You can check this for yourself – the word democracy does not appear anywhere in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence).

Unfortunately, we’ve accumulated three additional, unofficial branches of government, and devolved so far from our Founder’s vision that we may no longer have either a republic or a democracy, but an oligarchy (i.e. a form of government where power is held by small group).

What are the three “unofficial” branches that the oligarchs use to wield power?  The donor branch, the media branch, and the education branch; all run by the so-called “elites.”

I’ve written before about the “elites” that steer this country, and you’ve probably read or heard others speak of them without really explaining the composition of the group.

Who are the elites in the United States (international elites are another subject)? They are people at the head of the three legitimate branches and the three “shadow” branches of government. In influential order:

The President of the United States: Head of State. Head of Government. Chief Executive Officer of the Executive Branch and Commander in Chief of the military. The incumbent holds possibly the most influential position in the world; certainly whoever occupies the Oval Office wields the most diplomatic influence backed by the most extraordinary military.

The donor class – the folks who provide significant funds to politicians, PACs, and campaigns and are owed favors and quid pro quos. Think George Soros, the Koch brothers, corporate lobbyists, and the like. If we could dig deep enough, we might also find drug lords and other organized crime dons in this class.

The rest of the elected politicians at the Federal level: the 535 members of Congress (the House of Representatives and the Senate), plus the vice president.

Next come political appointees: ambassadors, cabinet secretaries and other cabinet-level executives, federal judges, and military combatant commanders and the Joint Chiefs of Staff – and the emeriti of these positons – e.g. Henry Kissinger.

There is some overlap between the politicians above and the influencers in their networks. These are their fellow Ivy-League and service-academy alumni, corporate and institutional boards, bank chairmen, media moguls, etc.

Perhaps at the bottom rung of the elites are the folks who try to influence us more directly. This group is largely composed of the academic and think-tank intelligentsia and “on-air talent” in the mainstream media.

Perhaps not really elite, but still somewhat culpable for the direction of our country: The entrenched bureaucrats just below the political appointee level. They provide institutional continuity across multiple administrations – and they are largely not accountable. Not because they don’t “report” to anyone, but because it’s so damn hard to fire someone in the Federal government, and because they can just outlast the appointed bosses that can fire them.

Altogether, I estimate that there are perhaps as many as 300,000 to as few as 30,000 people running our country of 300,000,000+ people.  What would you call a form of government where perhaps 1/1000th to 1/10,000th of the population holds almost all of the power?