Tying some things together

another article from FEE:

"Liberty in Perfection": Freedom in Native American Thought
Published in The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty - September 1999
by Amy H. Sturgis

Amy Sturgis holds a Ph.D. in intellectual history and specializes in Cherokee studies. She is the director of the Vanderbilt Oral History Project at Vanderbilt University.

Preacher Samuel Peters's encounter with a free society was a memorable one. In 1781, he wrote in awe: "The conscious independence of each individual warms his thoughts and guides his actions. . . . Here is liberty in perfection!"[1]

Though he wrote in the shadow of the War for Independence, Peters was not praising the American colonists-turned-rebels. Instead, he had found life in the American Indian villages of New England to be the true experiment in liberty. He even went so far as to credit Amerindian rights theory as the catalyst for the colonial break with England, saying that the colonists "discovered that they themselves were men, and entitled to the rights of that race of beings; and they proceeded upon the same maxims which they found among the Indians."[2]

Samuel Peters's words exhort us to remember that we have inherited the language of liberty in many tongues. From the Greek Sophists and Roman orators to the Islamic economists and Patristic theorists, ancient and medieval thinkers led the inquiry into the nature of freedom. In the modern era much of what we recognize as classical-liberal thought flowed through nationalistic European streams: the realistic English tradition of law, the rationalistic French tradition of humanism, and the organic German tradition of individualism. Few scholars and students of liberty today, however, turn their eyes to North America to investigate the Amerindian contribution to the philosophy of freedom. Far from primitive or forgotten, the New World’s indigenous legacy of individual liberty, limited government, and legitimate law offer insights as fresh and relevant as the new millennium.

My Cherokee (Tsa La Gi - which looks very much like GWY in their syllabary, or syllabic alphabet) blood was much comforted by this article. The indian ways aren't lost in America - they suffuse it.

Say a prayer

This guy is asking for help.

This is the guy who needs it.

I am really grumpy that HaloScan seems to have lost

all the comments in my archives. I know it takes a lot of bandwidth to store all that stuff, but doggonit...!

Anyway, living in the present, more or less, the FEElosophers* over at the Foundation for Economic Education have seen fit to pair these two articles: Israel's kibbutzim swap socialist ideals for personal profit in struggle to survive

In the past 20 years the population of Israel's 270 kibbutzim has fallen by about a quarter to 116,000. Three times as many people are leaving as joining.

Most of those who go are young, leaving behind a population with an average age approaching 55 years. As a result, most of the communities can no longer afford the cradle-to-grave support for their members, with potentially tragic results for many older people who put in a lifetime of work in the belief that they would spend a secure retirement in the bosom of the kibbutz.

Along with Individualism, by Ludwig von Mises, which, as much as I agree with it, appears to have been written in a hurry (unlike my posts), but at least it's a quick read.

*An article for my left-leaning friends - page one is blank, it's the damnedest thing - scroll down.
Here's a book for you too: Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution : Lessons for the Computer Age (A Left-wing history of early 19th century England - turnabout's fair play)
by Kirkpatrick Sale, a very compelling writer - I read it and I hated every word - though he has a problem with anachronism.

Libertarian, Green party candidates

to debate in New York on Tuesday

NEW YORK -- Americans who are interested in a real political debate
instead of a canned political convention will get it on Tuesday when the
Libertarian and Green candidates for president square off in New York,
right down the street from the Republican national convention.

"Anyone who's not interested in the Republicans' weeklong yawn-a-thon is
invited to attend a real, no-holds-barred political debate between two
candidates with starkly different political views," said Fred Collins,
manager of the Badnarik for President campaign. "The Libertarians and the
Greens will have the kind of robust political debate that the American
people deserve, but won't get, from the two older parties."

Libertarian Michael Badnarik and Green Party candidate David Cobb have
confirmed that they will attend the event, which will be held at 7pm
Tuesday at Sts. Cyril and Methodius Church in Manhattan. The debate will
be moderated by Walt Kane of News 12 New Jersey and Robert Richie of the
Center for Voting and Democracy.


The third-party debate will be dramatically different from the upcoming
Bush-Kerry debates in several respects, Collins said.


* All viable candidates have been invited.


"Because we believe all legitimate, third-party candidates who will be on
the ballot in a significant number of states should be included, we've
invited independent Ralph Nader and Constitution Party candidate Michael
Peroutka as well as George Bush and John Kerry," Collins said. "The fact
is that third-party candidates often air views that the Democratic and
Republican parties don't want the American people to hear, which is why
it's so important to include them."

* Questions from the audience will be permitted.

"Unlike the staged, scripted Bush-Kerry debates, members of the audience
will be allowed to grill the candidates without interference from
screeners or party flacks," Collins said. "Shouldn't anyone who aspires to
be president be able to handle questions from ordinary Americans?"

* The audience will see a clear choice between the candidates.

"Bush and Kerry march in lock-step on so many issues that their so-called
'debate' will be like listening to an echo chamber," Collins said. "Both
favor dramatically expanding the size, power and cost of government,
continuing the war in Iraq and using the September 11 attacks as an excuse
to subvert freedom.

"Badnarik and Cobb, however, will lay out starkly different visions of the
proper role of the federal government, with the Green favoring a mix of
expanded civil liberties and expanded government, and the Libertarian
taking a principled stand in favor of less government across the board.

"That's the debate that the two major parties don't want voters to hear,
and it's why Bush and Kerry will be missing in action on Tuesday."

Now that's a debate!

This is really an update to my last Rose Wilder Lane post

Steven den Beste has a great post on the limits of the "Left-Right" terminology:

The reason that Michael finds similarities at opposite ends of his single scale and vast differences among those at the same end is that his scale is fallacious. What he's actually doing with these observations is to cite evidence that the scale itself fails as a predictive model.

If you know den Beste, you know that's not all he has to say. May he live forever.
He links a post by Clayton Jones, adding another dimension:

Steven Den Beste on political axes. One of the axes he identifies is:

realism----idealism
I think, based on the use he makes of it later, that he has misidentified it.

My first thought was, he should split it into two axes:

pessimist----optimist
chaotic----systematic

--ending with: "Thanks, Steven. I'm looking forward to watching this discussion percolate through the blogosphere."
This is my steam-bubble.

BTW I've talked about this before in a comment linked to this post (Damn! HaloScan seems to be having server troubles.) and linked this extensive discussion of same at Friesian.com.

I got to the computer late tonight

because I was teaching my daughter to play poker.

My wife was cleaning the closets and rediscovered a set of chips and cards in one of them and my daughter wanted to learn to play. Last night she whupped me good, so I thought she at least understood the cards and hands, but tonight, when I introduced the concept of bluffing (and running up the pot and getting the other guy to fold) I found that she had no idea what she was doing. Of course, that didn't keep me from taking all her chips. Then, when I realized the depth of her ignorance, I went back to basics and taught her about two-of-kind, three-of-a-kind, straights, flushes, what to do when you catch someone dealing off the bottom of the deck and such-like. She took it very seriously when I said, "If someone comes up with a pair in a flush, you pull out your derringer and plug 'im in the forehead." Hopefully, the serious look just meant she had no idea what I was saying.

Tomorrow we break out the cigars.

Oh, the other day I said this was funny. Sorry to mislead you. I was short on sleep and punchy. This is much funnier (though not absolutely so, just relative to my capabilities). The eagle-eyed will notice that my judgment was so impaired that I continued to blog for several hours afterwards.

Has there been a firestorm of complaints

about HaloScan's comment ads? I notice there aren't any today and HaloScan is running slow. I feel responsible, though I'd like to think my gripe was stated pretty mildly. It was [someone at] Amazon putting that rotten tagline on it that set me off. Or, I should say, ill-intended tagline- conservatives aren't offended by it, as much as lefties wish they were. (Yup, it's still there.) We libertarians don't like it because it ignores much of what we stand for. Rose Wilder Lane is like a mother to us and we're quite likely to get upset when people attack her.

I wonder if Amazon got complaints and blasted HaloScan. Hmm. I love you both! Don't fight!

The Moderates get it.

Joe Gandelman, covering for Dean Esmay at Dean's World, posted an extended exerpt from the New York Times on the Population Dud: Why You Should Take A Deep Breath When Reading Breathless Doom And Gloom Articles. Read the post, comments and the article they're based on.

If the world ends, it will be due to divine intervention. Level-headed people are on the case. Emulate them: enjoy life and try to make yourself useful.

Interesting to find myself figuring prominently

in this search: doin it. I didn't check to see what the others had to say, but they weren't obviously porn sites.

I'm a big fan of Rose Wilder Lane

And I'm rather offended by the entry for her book at Amazon.

The discovery of freedom;: Man's struggle against authority (The Right wing individualist tradition in America)
by Rose Wilder Lane

Here's a comment (actually, two, and I've reversed them) I left on this post at Catholic Packer Fan:

What hacker imposed the phrase "right wing" as if it were part of the title of The Discovery of Freedom in your comment ad?

The discovery of freedom;: Mans struggle against authority (The Right wing individualist tradition in America)

American Individualism doesn't equate to, nor support, reactionary Royalism. Though Americans need to be careful about supporting imperialism.
Old Whig | Email | Homepage | 08.29.04 - 4:22 pm | #

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't like to see "self-centered" conflated with "individualist". A wise individualist realizes that his interests lie with the success of the team, and directs his personal gifts toward that end.
Old Whig | Email | Homepage | 08.29.04 - 2:44 am | #

It's been much too long

since I bothered my beloved readers with an exerpt from the Surangama Sutra.

Then the Lord Buddha said:--Ananda, I want to question you: please lesten carefully. You have just said that at the time your faith in me was awakened, that it was due to seeing the thirty-two marks of excellence. Let me ask you: What was it that gave you the sensation of seeing? what was it that experienced the sensation? And who was it that experienced the feeling of being pleased?

Ananda replied:--My Lord! At the time I experienced the sensation of being pleased, it was both through my eyes end my mind. When my eyes saw my Lord's excellencies, my mind immediately experienced a feeling of being pleased. It was then that I made up my mind to become thy disciple so that I might be delivered fro the cycle of deaths and rebirths.

The Lord said:--From what you have just said, Ananda, your feeling of being pleased originated in your eyes and mind. But if you do not know where lies the perception of sight and where the activities of the mind originate, you will never be able to subjugate your worldly attachments and contaminations. It is like a king whose fcity was pestered by robbers and who tried to put an end to the thieving but was unsuccessful because he could not locate the secret hiding place of the robbers. So it is in the lives of human beings who are always being troubled by worldly attachments and contaminations, causing their perception of sight to become invertewd and unreliable and seducing their thoughts and causing them to wander about ignorantly and uncontrolled. Ananda, let me ask you? Referring to your eyes and mind, do you know their secret hiding place?

Ananda replied:--Noble Lord! In all the ten different orders of life, the eyes are in the front of the face, as are my Lord's clear lotus eyes, and mine also. The same is true of the other sense organs, they are on the surface of the body, but the mind is hidden within the body.

The Lord Buddha interrupted:--Ananda, you are now sitting in the lecture hall, are you not? And when you are looking out to the Jetavana Grove, can you tell me where the hall and the grove are situated?

Bedtime, kids!

Well, that tears it! I won't be voting for Kerry

when the last minute jitters force me to vote for a candidate with a realistic chance of winning. [Badnarik is the only good anti-war, isolationist candidate.]

The man slandered our beloved Packers by calling Lambeau Field "Lambert Field" (which is the U of Minnesota's baseball field).

I found a post of exceeding genius

worthy of a true Superior Being, via Lance Burri's link list.

From Boots & Sabers:

Justice Holmes' "crowded theater" test is actually a good test, but it has been twisted from its real meaning. The right to free speech, like all rights, is bounded only by the rights of others. As such, I may stand on a soap box and say whatever I wish, as long as I am not violating anyone else’s rights. In the crowded theater test, if a person shouts "fire" in a crowded theater, he is violating the rights of other people. He is violating the right of private property of the theater owner by harming his business. He could violate the right to life of the people in the theater if they become trampled to death in the panic. By Holmes' test, the person may not unnecessarily shout "fire" in a crowded theater precisely because to do so would violate the rights of others.

This has been twisted to mean something quite different. People have started to use the "crowded theater" test to mean that people’s right to free speech may be regulated if it causes disorder. No one has a right to live in constant order, so the state of disorder does not actually violate anyone's rights. How many times to we hear of people being arrested or detained because they caused disorder? I'm not supporting those who would disrupt people's movement or damage property, for those actions violate the rights of the people being disrupted. No one is harmed, however, if a protestor stands within sight of a politician with a sign and shouts. This effort by the government to maintain order has lead to cordoning off protestors, denying permits to assemble, and generally suppressing free speech.

Emphasis mine. Disorder is natural, order requires help from your neighbors, which may not be conscripted by force.

[I am a strong believer in Natural Order, which we'd have if we quit jackin' around with our neighbors, but many of government's actions interfere with the natural human desire to get along with our neighbors. Primarily by subsidizing ingratitude and other social gaffs.]

I think this gentleman may soon be getting a link from here.

By the way, you've got to read Lance's examinations of government incentives from the inside. Start here.

Wizbang reminded me

in two separate posts, that I had promised to put up pics of sexy babes if I happened to be online around midnight on Saturday. (This is, indeed, a sample of how I intend to aquire them. You can do this at home. I sure as heck ain't doin' it at work!)

Courtesy of him, or them, or whatever, check out Elizebeth Hasselbeck:

[My personal collection would get me in trouble with the wife. How do you think I became an "expert" on SideFind? (Of course, my solution is simple and drastic: amputate the offending appendage)]

I had never heard of Rousas J. Rushdoony

Is this article representative of his thinking?

An exerpt:

CM: Why do you think so little is said of the ethnic purging of the Armenians under the Turks? We hear so much of genocide in the 20th century but very rarely is the case of the Armenians mentioned. Is there a reason for that?

Rushdoony: Yes. The figures are constantly revised downward, from two million to a million to a few thousand. There is a reason for that. A great deal of history is being rewritten. It is my belief that a man teaching in a smaller school is more likely to be a good historian and a superior historian than a man teaching in a major university. Increasingly the chairs of history in major universities are endowed by various foreign governments. This is to control history-writing in a particular area. One of the most bitter controversies in southern California in recent years was when certain Arab states were going to create a Middle Eastern Studies Center - at the University of Southern California, I think it was. Immediately there was a massive Jewish protest. The whole project was cancelled. This doesn't mean that Arabs aren't funding things - just as Jews are funding things. The Turks are funding a great deal, on the condition that certain subjects are avoided or are twisted as they are dealt with. Recently, one scholar found in the National Archives material that showed how extensive the Armenian massacres were in one out-of-the-way province where it was not normally believed that much had taken place. Her book, published under the title Slaughterhouse Province, was quite revelatory and a surprise to many reviewers. The interesting thing she reported was that even while she was working on this project she found that the Turks were allowed access to the National Archives and were destroying material derogatory to them regarding the massacres. This is the pattern. One major scholar who was an authority on Medieval Armenian architecture was forbidden to give a lecture in which he was going to discuss the architecture and the destruction of some of the great monuments by the Turks. So, the censorship is extreme, the destruction of original source documents is extreme. That is why some of the most stimulating work of late in general history have come out of schools that many people have never heard of. It is because independent scholarship can function in the smaller colleges in a way it can not in the major universities.

I ask because this is a pretty "softball" interview with a lot of accusations about matters I've never considered.

Another one of those quizzes

This one brutally pilfered from Domestic Excellence and Specialty Housekeeping II

#1 How many icons do you keep on your desktop?
#2 How old are you?
#3 What's the name of the book you are reading and its author?
#4 Who is your favourite saint?
#5 What type of laundry detergent do you currently use?

My answers:

1. 17. I like to look at my wallpaper.
2. 41.
3. Um... the book I'm most likely to finish is The Lysander Spooner Reader.
4. St. Urho. No, he didn't really exist.... Aquinas!
5. I'm a man ["but I can change..."] so I like to use Whisk to clean oil spills on the driveway. Hey! It works like a charm if you let the sun bake it for a couple hours.

I know I talk like a gay man half the time, but I'm really quite handy. [Of course, so is my gay friend, J******. He's an - drumroll please - interior decorator, on the side. (Ah, but can he handle a head-gasket? ...Urk! Never mind! Bad example.)]

I believe I may have said

the funniest thing I'm capable of [all right, now you're going beyond self-deprecating and moving into some sort of inverted form of bragging] saying in response to this post at, of all things, Domestic Excellence and Specialty Housekeeping.

Must Read

Thomas Sowell interview on The American Enterprise Online: "Live" with Thomas Sowell

Russky wins Modern Pentathlon

Americans shut out of medals. What a sucky sport!

No, I still want to do it.

Links one and two.

Word of the Day: Cloaca

Courtesy of The Free Dictionary:

In zoological anatomy, a cloaca is the posterior opening that serves as the only such opening for the intestinal, urinary, and genital tracts of certain animal species.

Knowing this word will help you understand what Fred on Everything is saying in his opening sentence in this article:

August 24, 2004

From time to time I write about the cloacal morality of the media as they go about wrecking civilization and annoying hell out of me. For rhetorical convenience I use "New York" and "Hollywood" as a sort of abbreviation for the news racket and the screen trades.

This column gets a lot email. Some of it assumes that "New York" and "Hollywood" are code words for "Jews," and excoriates me mightily for not saying what I am assumed to mean. Let me give you a typical example, the subject line being "Fred Sees No Jews in New York and Hollywood."

Two illustratory letters follow, then Fred goes on to attack the thesis of the Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy. Read the whole thing.

I was directed to Fred today by the Rational Review News Digest.