Thursday, July 7, 2016

RISING UP FROM BENDED KNEE: OVERCOMING TUTELARY FASCISM

             

    Man is an enigmatic being. He is unlike the creatures of the forest, the desert, or the sea.
Those creatures move as automatons from one conquest to the next.   They never contemplate the misery or the death they impose on one another.  They never record their wisdom for future generations. They never struggle with the place which they occupy in the food chain.
  
    Man is quite different.  He is self aware.   He has the capacity to know himself and others.  He has the capacity to know whence he came and where he is going. Man has language and history.   The record which he has compiled stretches over five thousand years. For all of this time man has repeatedly insisted upon the existence of a Supreme Being who establishes a moral order.  The record has been laid down like layers of sedimentary rock.  It provides demonstrable proof of the past.

    The signers of the Declaration of Independence were mostly Christian and Theist.   They agreed on several notions of theology.   They agreed that there was a Supreme Being.  They agreed that He created the universe.  They agreed that he infused that universe with moral order.  They made three appeals to God in the Declaration of Independence.  They appealed to God as Creator and Supreme Legislator who is the author of the natures law.  They appealed to God as the Supreme Judge of the Universe for the rectitude of their intentions.   They appealed to God in His executive function of Providence upholding the laws of nature. 

    The founders saw in God three separate but equal functions:  God as Legislator, God as Judge, and God as Executive.  When these functions are combined in a transcendent Being they pose no threat to the life, liberty, or property of men.  When these functions are combined in any form of statism, the state acts in loco Deus, in place of God.    That any state should presume to act in place of God is more than troubling.   It is dangerous.  States which act in loco Deus are Punitive States.  They are ideological theocracies.

    In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Empire the world is no longer organized in a bi-polar way.   What has emerged in its place is the wide spread rise of the Punitive State.  The Punitive state is a tutelary fascist state.  It is characterized everywhere it has arisen by a rationalist epistemology and ignorance.   It is uniformly permeated with incompetence and stupidity.  The advocates of the Punitive tutelary fascist State bear a striking resemblance to Eric Hoffer’s description of the True Believer.  (See Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951).

    The nature of these belief systems is such that the fascists  reject in practice any true utilization of the scientific method.  When properly applied science advances from theory to knowledge by eliminating all alternative explanations. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. Fascists do not follow these procedures.  The failure to follow procedures of true science is demonstrable in the unreasoning adherence to theories of global warming.   The problems with this ideology are almost too numerous to mention.  Here are a few of the major identifiable problems which are studiously ignored.
 
     First, there is significant doubt that any global warming is taking place beyond the normal variation of climate of the earth over the past 4.567 billion years.  That climate has been variously so hot and cold that the surface has at different times been both molten and frozen.
 
    Secondly, there is significant doubt that any recent warming which might be established is in fact anthropogenic.

    Third, there is no accounting of the fact that the earth has regularly been sequestering massive quantities of carbon by natural processes.
 
  
    Fourth, the carbon sequestered by the earth in fossil fuels is a very small fraction of the total amount of carbon sequestered.  The majority of carbon has been sequestered by the earth in magma and solid rock.  Additional carbon has been sequestered for millennia in permafrost methane. Still more carbon has been sequestered on  the ocean floor in methane hydrates.
                              
    Fifth, while the amount of carbon released by man is easily calculated, no accounting has been taken of the common practices of man which naturally sequester carbon.
   
     Sixth, there is no accounting for solar cycles, cycles of precession, or cycles of the passage of the solar system through the plane of the galaxy.  There is no accounting for the ever increasing energy output of the sun as it ages.  There is no accounting for cycles of glaciation, volcanism, water vapor in the atmosphere, or oceanic currents.  There is no accounting for a host of anomalous data sets from places such as Antarctica.  Moreover,  there is clear evidence even in historic times of both significantly cooler and warmer climate than is currently the case. There is no explanation of previous periods of either cooling or warming.

    Seventh, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere  has been at times both significantly higher and significantly lower than it is currently. Moreover, many have asserted that rises in temperature appear at times to precede rather than follow rises in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

A number of works debunking global warming are available.
(See Michaels, Patrick J. and Balling Jr., Robert C., Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know, Cato Institute, Washington D.C.,  2009).

    It is clear that the devotion of the advocates of the Punitive State is such that demonstrable facts cannot be cited in opposition to their ideology.     The Punitive State arises out of a rationalist epistemology and is focused on alleging authority rather than observing it.  In this manner it is composed of a lethal combination of ignorance, incompetence, and stupidity.


    The advocates of the Punitive State further demonstrate their lack of education by elevating diversity to the level of a moral value.   Diversity is an ideological value not a moral value. It is only when one accepts the dubious notion of moral relativism or moral equivalence that diversity becomes a moral value.  The absurdity of moral equivalence is apparent by simply considering a few examples.  The society of head hunting cannibals is not morally equivalent to any modern western society.  In Tribalistic society the murder of non-believers or non-members is an act of piety (such as is the case with Islam).  Such societies are not morally equivalent to any society which embraces universal human rights.  This is an indisputable fact which render Islamic and all other non-Islamic societies entirely incompatible.

    For both the scientist and the religious believer faith is a satisfaction in the sufficiency of the evidence.   The main difference is that the scientist demands an elimination of alternative explanations.  Authority resides in the observable facts of the universe.   The true scientist is a sceptic waiting to be shown that all of the imagined alternatives have been eliminated.  This level of patience and humility is not present in any fascist.  The authoritarian of the Punitive Tutelary Fascist State is interested in the unfolding of history.  The scientist is interested in the unfolding of the universe.  The difference between these two approaches could not be more stark.

   What has been described here as ‘tutelary fascism’ is identified elsewhere as ‘moral narcissism’.   See, Simon, Roger L., I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already, 2016.

    The Punitive Tutelary Fascist State represents an emergence of the administrative state along the lines of the racist Woodrow Wilson’s favorite novel, Philip Dru, Administrator.  In the book Philip Dru is a benevolent dictator who imposes  corporate income taxes and abolishes tariffs!  The Administrative State embraces the end of due process, and the end of the rule of law.  The importance of the rule of law in human governance is most succinctly explained in Thomas Paine’s Common Sense:   either the law is King or the King is law.  One must select which of these two types of societies in which one wishes to live.

    The Enlightenment and Reformation which took place in Europe centuries ago were two sides of a single coin.   They represented a repudiation of alleged authority, and placed confidence in observed authority. Authority in science resided in the observable facts.   Authority in faith and practice resided in the text of the Bible (sola scriptura).  This was one of the central propositions of the Protestant Reformation.


    There are two distinct views of man.    In the paradigm of natural law which is described in the Declaration of Independence man is a creature of nature.  All are created equal.  None is endowed with a right to dominion and none are endowed with an obligation of servitude.  In the paradigm of tribalism (as in Islam) man is a creature of his tribe.  His tribe is endowed with a right to dominion and all others are endowed with an obligation of servitude.   Non-members are not even regarded as fully human, just as was the case with slavery in the new world and subsequently in the antebellum United States.



    The historic importance of John Locke cannot be overemphasized.  In his First Treatise on Civil Government he repudiated conventional European thought.  It was commonly believed that kings owed their right to dominion by virtue of descent from Adam (as in the work of Filmer).  (See Robert Filmer, Patriarcha, or The Natural Power of Kings, 1680).
Locke showed that this idea was absurd.  In The Second Treatise on Civil Government  he showed that none are endowed with a right to dominion and none are endowed with an obligation of servitude.   He showed that the only foundation for the just powers of government is the consent of the governed.  It is on this point that Jefferson virtually plagiarizes Locke.

    The natural question arises for Locke:  if all are created equal what are the duties which all men owe to each other?  On this point Locke quotes Hooker, that great Anglican theologian of the Enlightenment.  It reads like a philosophical presentation of a New Testament text.  All men according to Hooker are required by natural law to love others no less than themselves.

 (Richard Hooker, Eight Books of Ecclesiastical Polity, published beginning in 1594 and some volumes published posthumously. See
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hooker-the-works-of-that-learned-and-judicious-divine-mr-richard-hooker).

    It is in this manner that it comes to be that self government requires a moral center.  This is not a deep theological or philosophical notion of no ultimate consequence.  It is at the very center of the notion of liberty.   If this moral center is absent, slavery is inevitable.  One is reminded of the New Testament text: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free”.
The modern abandonment of a moral center is at the collapse of the rule of law and a collapse of the separations of power.  How can so many surrender their liberties and so easily accept the dictates of a fascist?   It comes about when large numbers of persons are controlled by considerations of immediate self interest.  It comes about as a matter of expediency.

 (See  Etienne de la Boétie,  The Politics of Obedience: A Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, 1553.  https://mises.org/library/politics-obedience-discourse-voluntary-servitude).

    There are contradictions of individualism,  a strong executive, and an expansive administrative state in the west.    These contradictions are noted in the work of de Tocqueville, Democracy in America.  He concludes that such a state is unstable and must in the end either create freer institutions or ‘stretch itself at the feet of a single master’.

    The hubris of empire arises in the death throes of the Punitive Tutelary Fascist State.  The single greatest observer of this was Rudyard Kipling.   He was considered the ‘Prophet of Empire’ by no less than George Orwell of 1984 fame.   His powerful critique of the United States involvement in the Phillippines entitled The White Man’s Burden contains burning sarcasm.  It is one of the early critiques of nation building, and it was well within the intellectual reach of the common man. It must be remembered that empire is the penultimate state of fascism.  What comes next is total dissolution.

    What are our probable futures in the twenty first century?  It is the nature of these things that liberty yields as statism expands.   The immediate self interest of large numbers of persons is that ever more barbarians be accepted in the bosom of western civilization. The values of those barbarians will be imposed and traditional western values will be scorned and repudiated. After all, it will be said, all of these value systems are morally equivalent.   Government will increasingly punish its enemies and reward its friends as it seeks to impose an ever heavier burden of conformity, silence, and submission.  

    The future of the west may be seen in the portrayal of the Borg in televised science fiction.  ‘You must submit, you must comply, resistence is futile’.    The instability of this state of affairs requires scapegoats to explain its multitude of failures.   Jews, Christians, Roman Catholics, Evangelicals, heterosexuals, insurance companies, the self employed, small business owners, white men....all will have a turn at the Tutelary Fascist whipping post.  There is no telling exactly who will have the flesh cut from their bodies by their brown shirted and goose stepping betters.

    It is not clear that this trajectory into hell on earth can be avoided, but it can be resisted. One of the reasons that Tutelary Fascists inevitably destroy an economy is because dollars are more powerful than votes.  For power to be concentrated it is imperative that upward mobility must be destroyed.  As this process proceeds it is important that those who wish to be free spend their ever scarcer resources on everything that offends the forces of tutelary fascism.    Buy a sport utility vehicle. Drink whatever soft drinks you desire.  Question anthropogenic global warming.   Refuse to participate in government health care. Use up your remaining incandescent light bulbs. Create a new holiday: The Government Day of Shame.  Attend a local city council meeting or county commission meeting at least once so as to express your views of their most recent deep disgrace.   Celebrate with pork and beer festivals.  Don’t wear a seat belt in your vehicle unless you wish it.  Require your sons and daughters to learn self defense techniques.  Home school all of your children or send them to private schools.   Attend politically incorrect events such as beauty pageants and women’s sporting events. Read a Koran. Carry it in your left hand. Throw it away when you are finished. Carry a concealed weapon and learn how to use it efficiently.   Avoid invasive body searches at airports.  Call for the expulsion of all invaders.  Do not enter gun free zones.  Use the internet to study the Bible and the classics of western civilization which have largely been purged from all formal educational programs.

  The maladroit tutelary fascists believe they are the betters of ordinary people.  For this reason they cannot tolerate being ignored, ridiculed or criticized.  Identify them as you would Barak Obama, as a petulant ignoramus.
   

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