All posts by Jim Daniel

Why Conservatives think they are loosing

Philosophy, Politics
Happy looser

For a good time now I have been listening to Conservatives talk about how they are loosing and I think I’ve come up with an idea why.  I can’t say it is a theory, I haven’t come up with a way to test it, so lets just call it a working hypothesis.  Let’s just shake it out and get it some rigor into its thinking for now.

The first postulate is the growing acceptance of the idea of “No Comprise” that has really taken hold in some areas of the right and conservative movement.  The second postulate is that “because of what their goals are even when they win they loose”.  As this second postulate is the more complex, lets start with it.

When I say that the Conservative Movement & the Right (from this point on I will just be using ‘the right’ for shorthand for all forms os Conservativitiesum) loose when the win and that their goals insure this all I mean is that their goals, by their very nature are not achievable in the real world.  For the most part the Right wants to do two types of things.  They want to keep things the way they are or they want to go back to the ‘good old days’ to the way things were.  Both of these types of goals have serous fundimital characteristics that doom their achievement.

Lets start with looking at “keeping things the way they are, the same”. This is a quite natural desire of anyone.  Even people like myself, who like new things, changes, sometimes have trouble with what changes the univers throughs at us.  The problem is the univers is nothing but change.  All things change and even when it looks like no change is happening, it is, none the less changing.  More often than not it is our failure to detect the change that is at fault, not that the change is not occupied. Physical science has long excepted this idea and has even given it a name “entropy”.

So lets look at things logically, after all that is what this blog is supposed to be about.  Lets try a thought experiment: lets say you do not want some cultural value to change, lets choose something none controversial, the preference of what pet people prefer.  Lets say N people have pets in America.  That means C people have cats and D people have dogs and O people have other pets.  That means N=C+D+O and the relationship between C,D, and O can not change.  What does this mean.

First off you have to keep the total population steady or when the population changes you have to take action to insure that the size of C:D:O stay in exact relationship with each other as the population changes and you must take steps to insure that the number of Cats, Dogs, and others stays in step.  In worst case this means that if the total population shrinks you would have to get ride of the the excess Cats, Dog and others.  An lets say the people who left the population did not own any pets at all, that means someone(s) will have to loose their pet(s).  I think you see the problem.  Another, more basic problem with no change in human activity is that change itself is a cherished human social norm.  We all want to better for our children, we all want progress in our jobs, etc.

Finally, on staying the same, what most who are attracted to the right want is not “No Change” but rather “No Change that I don’t like or Want”.  The problem here is that change that I like and want just might be change others may not like or want.  An as the Bard said, “Ah there’s the rub”.

Now lets turn to the goal of turning back the clock to the “Way Things Were”.  There are, at lest, two basic problems here.  First what most people say when they say the ‘way things were’ is an idealized past.  Most humans don’t remember all of the details of their earlier life.  Even people with eiditic memory are quite capable of editing things out that the just don’t want to remember.  So what people want to do is live in the perfect way things were and not in the real way they were.

The second problem with turning back the clock is that you can;t just change the social/political/economic environment, you will need to change the people too.  This is because the people who are alive now have different background than the people who lived then.  Time for another thought experiment….Some people idealize the 1950’s so say we find away to change everything back to the 1950’s we would, at the least give everyone over the age 15 the expreanses of living thru World War Two. Many of the men in their 30’s or older the expeance of fighting in the war.  Not only that you would have to remove from people my age the Vet Nam War and Watergate.  An these are just the big issues that affected lots of people.  What about the small events that only affected a few people?  See the problems?

So once more what we end up with is the same problem as before.  What is being sought is not what is really wanted.  What is being asked for is not “Lets go back to a better past” but “Lets go back to an idealized Past”.

An now were are at the crux of the problem of the Right Loosing, even when they win.  When they get what they are asking for it turns out, more often than not, not what they were really asking for.

“What? Me Worry”

Philosophy, Politics

 

Alfred E. Newman, Mad Magazine

We are very luck that the Trump Administration and the current GOP leadership is a government made up of a wonderful collection of  Kakistocracy and Kleptocracy.  The current administration, not yet two years old, is already in the running for being the most corrupt and the most incompetent in the history of the republic.  This is truely historic and I hear many many people, both talking heads and private conversations worry just how we will  survive it.  An they think I’m a Pollyanna for not worrying.  The truth is I do worry, I’m just not in doom and gloom worry.  The reason is basically simple but somewhat hard to explain, but here goes.

The first and most important reason is I am a patriot who believes in this country.  Not the seas to shining seas country, no, in the country of ideals and law.  The country of our constitution since 1788 (date of R.I. Ratification).  This country has been thru allot.  We’ve been thru six major (actually declared) and many many small war.  We’ve been thru many economic crisis’ and even more natural disasters and thru it all we have come out a better and stronger nation.  We’ve even been thru political (Constitutional and others) crises’ and only once did it come to force of arms.  Even then we got back up on our feet and kept moving forward.  So first off, I have faith.

Next is I personally have lived thru a Constituional Crises brought on by electing a crook to the Presidency.  In Nov 1972, I was 21 and able to vote for the first time for President.  I voted for Richard Nixon.  I new he was a crook, I thought he was a smart crook.  He wasn’t.  Or rather he may have been one once but he  succumbed to traditional foe of all leaders, Hubris. I was fortunate enough to be able to watch most of the Senate Watergate hearings and all of the House impeachment hearings.  It was quite an eye opener for a newly minted Political Scientists (I graduated June 1973 with a B.A. in PoliSci) to see our system working as it was intended.

I also watch in 1998-99 the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and watched our system work as it should.  Like the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868, while the House can vote impeachment it is much harder to get the Senate to convict.  Once more we showed that impeachement is not some political tool but a last resort to deal with those who are patently criminal. ( I shan’t get into the debate on weather lying in a deposition is an impeachable office, the Senate said NO, case closed)  But we got thru it.

We will get thru this crises.  We will have some very spectacular bruises and maybe a broken bone or two but we will come out on the other side.  An we will be a better and stronger country.  Why?  Because of the American people and our American Constitution.  No man, no group of men can stop us for long.  This crises is a great opportunity to build a better, greater, country.  It doesn’t look like right now, we are seeing all the things that need fixing shown to us in the most brutal way.  But we Americans have never before refused to look at our warts and fix them.  At lest when they are shoved in our face like now.

So stop worrying, roll up your sleeves and get to work fixing it.  We have a Midterm election in November, the time is now, lets show those people who think we are too weak or too lazy to get up and do anything.  That we will believe anything we read on the Internet. That we can’t or won’t think for ourselves that they are dead wrong.

Who’s with me?

 

Why the Left can’t talk to the Right, a hypothesis

Philosophy, Politics, , , ,

For the past week I have been reading Battle Cry of Freedom by James M McPherson and I was struck by what he has to say about the politics of the 1840’s and 50’s.  I think what went on then can give us some insight into what is happening now in the early 21st century.

What struck me was how much the southrons felt that they were being attacked by the abolitionist.  Not just the institution of slavery was attacked, but the individual people of the south felt they were being attacked.  Also the reasoning of the south was locked into feeling that if they gave so much as an inch to the Abolitionist they, the supporters of slavery, would soon loose everything.  Not only that, they felt that slavery needed to be allowed in the north.  Here is one of the earliest examples in American political history of the one sidedness of ‘States Rights’.

Conservatives have often be the most ardent users of ‘States Rights’ to defined what currently is in a state or states, such as Slavery.  But the are equally aghast at the use of ‘States Rights’ to change things.  That is, a state has the right to keep slavery legal but a state does not have the right to make it illegal.  We see this same problem now.  In the modern age we now see this same class of argument with some saying a state has the right to enforce federal immigration law, but other states can not decline to co-operate with the federal government in inforceing that same law.  We see the same thing with the Gun debate.

State’s Rights were much more important before 1868 and the ratification of 14th amendment and the supremisy of Federal law was clearly established.  What is emportant here is the two kinds of illogic being demonstrated.  The first is that Conservatives, because they see themselves under attack, have taken on the mantel of ‘victim hood’ they decry in others.  Next is the illogic of decrying the use of the same reasoning or principle, like States Rights, used by their opponents.  This is not to say that ‘Liberals’ and/or moderates don do the same thing .

It’s just that the Left has a much hard time defending the illogic.  This is fundimintally because the Left is well and truely based in the Rationalism of the ‘Enlightenment’.  For those of you who really don’t know anything much about the ideals of the ‘Enlightenment’ one of its more fundamental principles is the rational debate to resolve issues/conflicts.  The Left accepts as a given that use of debate where both sides use the same rules and that logic trumps rhetoric. The right , not so much.  The those who believe winning is not just everything but the only thing have currently found a home in the political right.

”But there are people on the Left who believe the same thing”. True, but if you ever follow the internal and lower level debates of the Left you will see that often as not the people who say ‘wining is all’ often get slapped down by those listening.  It doesn’t go far now, “or play well in Preoria’.  Not so with the Right.  Because of the long standing tradition of victim hood, the ‘lost cause’, and/or no compromise rhetoric is much more emportant in their debates.  Right now, this day winning is what counts, not winning the right way.

So what now?  How does the Left deal with a Right that enters the debat with the preconceived  notion that the Left is attacking them, by the simple act of disagreeing.  How does the Left deal with the Right who holds that left is fundamentally evil and therefor can not be compromised with?  How do you have a calm discussion with someone who can not consive of the possibility of their being wrong?

“Fake News”

Philosophy, Politics

Since Donald Trump first came down the escalator some two years ago to announce his running for the Presidecy we have been hearing a lot about “Fake News”.  This comes mostly from the Right and is usually applied to anything they hold to be an attack on them.  The use of the label “Fake News” has gotten so prevalent we rarely, if ever, hear “Liberal Biase” of the press.  What is interesting to me is that This epithet, while new in words, is not new.  All ‘Fake News’ is, is “agitation & propaganda” (aka Agi-Prop).  And it has been around for a very very long time.

The problem with using this new label by the Right is that they have been so successful in the use of agi-prop since the late 1940’s in this country is that few people in the the middle and even few on the left take them seriously.  For far too long the Right has told the country about the 57 ‘communist’ agents (which were never shown to exist) to eminent threat to white women if we let N…. live in ‘our’  neighborhood to all the elections that had hundreds of illegal aliens voting.  The Right has had it too easy for too long.

It is time for everyone right, Left, Middle of the Bird need to say ‘Enough’ to the Right’s Agi-Prop machine.  Get your act togeather and do a proper job.  You’ve become the Used Car Salesman of politics.  No one really beleaves you anymore.  No more can you say “I believe this, so it is a fact”, nor I have my facts and you have yours.  Facts, are Facts.

Let me be very very clear, even in politics, facts are simple things and you can not just pick an  choose what is and isn’t a fact.  To put it quite simply a fact has to be more than a belief or opinion.  It has to be objectively demonstratable.  A fact is not just something you read in on the internet, their must be hard, demostratable, data supporting it.  Just because report supports your beliefs or makes you feel good doesn’t make it factual.  Indeed, you need to be  suspicious the report because it does support your beliefs.

Finally, I want to say this to the GOP, if you don’t want go the way of your political predecessors you need to get a handle on the Rights Agi-Prop machine.  You need to have Facts, not Alt-Facts, not Beliefs, and not Opinion to salt your Agi-Prop and you need to stop over using ‘Fake News’.  The Right is the master of ‘Fake News’ and we all know it.

What Facebook, and Cambridge Anaytica tells us

Philosophy, Politics, Socioeconomic

The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings.’

– Lewis Carrol

Some may think it strange that I start what should be a very dry and serous post with a quote from one of Lewis Carrol’s more nonsensical poems, but bear with me for a bit and it shall be all made clear.

With the news that the Company that is self acknowledged as being a hard core political marketing (read Agitation/Propaganda) organization violated the terms of use of Facebook it has forced the body politic to face up to the facts.  An just what facts are these?  Simply, that what once started out as computer age equivalent of gathering at the local Pub/Saloon/Coffee Shop/back fence and talking, that is Social Media has reach full maturity and has been co-opted by the Con-men.

Make no mistake about it, we are no longer just talking about people being creative in their sales pitch.  We are talking about people using social media to look deep into our pyche’s and use are deepest fears to manipulate and control us.  An just like the oysters in the poem, will will be betrayed and consumed if we do not do something now!

It is time  for all governments of the Free World to take action.  Here in the USA it is time for the GOP to stop viewing the Russian actions in the 2016 election thru the distorting glasses of partisan politics.  It does not mater who won the election in 2016, it is done and over.  What maters is that hidden agencies used improperly  gleaned personal information to craft fallacious activities in our body politic.  Do not say “This is just an Internet issue.”, it is not.

Rather think how you would feel if someone was able to observe all of your reading/shopping/casual  conversations and then sent in undetectable agents into your favorite local Bar/Coffeeshop, where every you gather with friends to talk, to use what they know of you to feed you lies.  I don’t know about others but I would feel violated, betrayed and badly misused and I’d want to both put a stop to it  and to  wreak just revenge on the perps.

So the time has come to talk of many things:

Of Social Media – and accountability – and visibility

Of freedom – and politics

Of why our rage is boiling hot

and if Politicos have courage.

 

Acceptable Casulty Rate

General, Philosophy, Politics, , ,
AR-15

Strangely  enough this is not going to be a rant.  It will be logical so it will be brutal.  You have been warned.

Ever since Mc Donald v. City of Chicago  where the right of an individual to ‘keep and bear arms’ became an individual right this country has been faced with an issue it refuses to deal with.  This is what is know as Civilian Acceptable Casutly Rate by students of military action.  Traditionally this issue only needed to be dealt with during times of war and usually dealt with the number of non-combatants killed or injured.  Since 2010, in the United States, this is no longer the case.

Once owning any kind of arms (be it small hand ax or a WMD) became an individual right any and all laws seeking to restrict the ownership, much less the use, must pass what is known as the Strict Scutiny test. Basically this means the State has to show why an individual should not be allowed to possess a particular kind of arms.  Usually, but not always this test must be applied very narrowly so you could have a law dealing with the possession of 9mm pistols with barrel length of x mm and 11 round clips but not a law dealing with all arms of 9 mm caliber.  One of the more challenging legal questions we face is just how we draw depictions between unique types of arms.  To my knowledge there is now test yet for this in law.

Next we have the postulate that anything can be misused, or used in a manner not acceptable.  Example a car:  I can use a car to go from one place to another or I can use it to run people over.  The former is acceptable and  the later is not.  Therefor we can say any arms an individual has a right to possess can be used or misused.  Another fundamental postulate is that all individual rights end where they come into conflict with other individual rights.  The classic law class example of the is “My right to swing my fist ends at your nose.”

In the case we are dealing with here an individuals right to bear arms, to live, and/or to happiness. When a law restricts, any anyway, an individuals possession of an gun (arm) it comes into conflict with his/her right to keep and bear arms and, possibly happyness.  When a gun is misused, like shooting up a school, the right of the people in the school to life and/or happiness has come into conflict with the right of someone(s) else to keep and bear arms.  This is where exceptable Civilain casually rate come in.

We need to decide just how many innocent bystanders being casualties is too many.  Right now we seem to accept the NRA’s position, any number is acceptable.  That the 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms trumps all other individul rights the people of America have.  That the right of an individual to have any kind of gun, be it pistol, rifle, or what ever, is so important that another’s right to life must be sacrificed.

I, for one, do not accept the NRA’s position.  Ever since I started studying Constitutional Law I have excepted the fundamental postulate that now individual right is superior in any way to any other individual right.  They are all equal.  So I say to you, what is your Acceptable Casualty Rate so that you can exercise your 2nd amendment right(s)?

The Great Memo

General, Politics, ,

 

The Great Seal of the United States (Reverse)

 

For the last few days I have been following all of the talk about the House Memo alleging that there is a ‘secret society’ in the FBI, JD, Federal Government that is out to destroy the Trump Administration.  For over 50 years now I have been hearing about ‘Secret Societies’ that are controlling or seeking to control our government.

 

If my memory doesn’t fail me my first exposure to this mind set was when a member of the John Birch Society gave me a copy of “None Dare Call it Treason” back in 1964.  Over the years I have made it a bit of a hobby to keep track of all of the stories, myths, and legends of ‘Secret Societies’.  Right here let me  reveal  that I was/am a member of DeMolay, a boys club of the Masons.  Some of the stories have a basis  in fact in that the societies like Massons or the Illuminati do and did exits.  Beyond that I have never found anything to support any of the wilder plots that any of these societies are accused of.

Most of the things you will hear about Secret Societies is pure fiction, some are written as entertainment (like the Da Vinci Code) and others are written with a darker purpose (like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion).  I can, with some confidence, state that the Davin Nunes Memo does not fall in the first category and I hope and pray it doesn’t fall in second.

The Davin Nunes memo could just be a very poorly thought out political maneuver to protect both the Congressional GOP and the Trump Administration.  I hope it is.  If taken too far it has the potential to cause extreme damage to the FBI, the Justice Department, and strangely enough, the Republican Party.  There may be something with the name Republican Party after this is all plaid out but it will not be the political party anyone alive now will recognize. It will be the “Party” that does all for power and will see nothing wrong with using slogans like “War is Peace”.  An this nation will be the less for it.

When I was born, 1951, this nation was just ending the nightmare now known as the McCarthy Era and I had hoped that I would not see the likes of it again but that was not to be.  We are facing the start of a new era of terror, the Trump Era.  What this new Era will be like I can not tell but I still have hope.  There is still time for the people to stand up and say “NO!  I will not let you get away with it!”  If you want to see just how we, the people, can stop the Trump Era before it gets started the watch  A Report on Sen. Joe McCarthy  and Point of Order  to see what can be done.

 

 

My Thoughts on the Second Amendment

Law, Philosophy, Politics, , ,

2nd Amendment on a scroll

Let’s be clear here, I am a student of Constitutional  Law, I am not a scholar nor a jurist (practicing or otherwise).  I have studied and followed Constitutional Law since I was first introduced to my first Supreme Court decision in the 12th grade (way back in 1968).  I graduated collage with a degree in Political Science, specializing in Jurisprudence (Law) with the hope of become a Constitutional  lawyer .  It didn’t happen, I became a programmer.  So that said, I love talking about the Constitution, no I’m not an expert but I do understand it just a bit better than most.

To move on, please read the image above.  It is an accurate rendering of what is in the Constitution (feel free to check).  Next I’d like to share with one of the first things my first Professor of Constitutional Law beat into my head.  “There is NOTHING in the Constitution just for show.  Everything is important and has bearing on what is being said.” For me this means that while the Constitution is a beautiful work of rhetoric nothing in it simply rhetorical.  More on this later.

Next, like all American Citizens, I reserve the right to my own interpretation of the Constitution.  BUT, the Supreme Court of the United States has the last word in how the Constitution is applied in law.  I can disagree with SCOTUS, but in court they win.

To start, here is a list of SCOTUS cases dealing with the 2nd Amendment .  All the cases are important but some are more important than others.  I have read both the brief given with the list and the cases themselves and the briefs seem good to me but feel free to send me you views.  As you can see that while the debate over the 2nd Amendment has been going on for sometime, it really wasn’t under debate before 1875.  I think that is significant, for 88 years there was little dispute on just what it meant. Just a few of the questions now being discussed:  What does “Malitia” mean?  What did it mean in 1786 and what does it mean now?  What does  “well regulated” mean, again 1n 1786 and new.  What does the word “Arms” mean?  What does it encompasses, all weapons and weapons systems or just some?

So, you can see the problem we are facing just with the words.  I shan’t go into the problems with all of the different legal philosophies on how to interpret the constitution, other than to say there are more than just “originalizem, Texturalizm, Intentualizm, Pragmatizium, and Natural Law. (Please see this link for details.)  First because they are all complex and secondly I know of know one who ever follows them completely.

So what do we do?  All we can do is follow the decision(s) of SCOTUS.  We can also demand and motivate SCOTUS to make good Law.  That is law that is clear, concise, capable of being enforced, and, hopefully just to all.  To this I say that I hold that  District of Columbia vs Heller is not very good law.  While it clearly stats that the right of an individual to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right and any law has to pass the “strict construction” test it does not supply any kind of example of what this test should be.  An while SCOTUS has c learifed that in the case of the 2nd amendment Arms means Bearable Arms, it has yet to give a clear indication of what Arms fall under the title of Bearable Arms Arms.

Just think of what might have happened if in Las Vegas instead of modified simi-automatic rifles being used a RPG or just a basic 40mm  grenade launcher had been used?  Both are quite capable of being born by an single individual, are they considered Bearable Arms?  I don’t know and the court has yet to say?

 

 

Argumentum ad Hominem

General, Philosophy, Politics

Hand up stop sign

With the debate over Gun Control is heating up agian, I thought I’d take the time to talk about one of the reasons why it is going to be so difficult to get both sides to sit down at the table.  I submit for you consideration that one cause is the rash of the use of the logical fallacy “Argumentum ad Hominem“.

For those of you who want to read up on this fallacy, just follow the link, for all the rest here is a simple working definition: an attack on the person making the argument.  In the case of gun control, both sides are all too often falling into this logical fallacy.  Or rather, I should say, all to often they think they are being attacked by the other side.  Because of this both sides of the debate end up talking past each other even before anyone starts talking.  This is a basic offense against debating.  If you come into a discussion assuming the other side is not and will not listen to what you are saying the debate is over before it starts.

Anyone who knows me, knows I love to debate.  I was raised in a family where free an open debate (arguments some would say) was not only allowed but encourage.  While my Dad was a engineer, he loved logic, my Mom was a sometime speach couch.  When ever the debate got personal one or the other them, sometimes both, would step in an say it was getting personal and it was time to stop.  Well, with the debate on gun control it is time to stop, take a deep breath and calm down.

This will not be easy, for either side.  To the pro gun control side I say “don’t take the action of the NRA personally and don’t take their bait”. The NRA is a professional lobby and one of the favorite tactics of any Lobby is to get the other side upset.  To the pro gun side I say “don’t take any limitation to the 2nd amendment as a personal attack, it’s not.”  One of the first truisms of Constitutional Law I learned was this “Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.”  Simply put, all rights have limitations.  Period, Stop, Close Quotes.  Finally I say to everyone, assume the good intentions of the other side.

That’s it, just grant the other side what you demand for yourself.  That they are good people trying to find a workable solution.

A Challange to the Pro Gun folks

Philosophy, Politics, ,

Rattlesnake Flag

It has been over a week since Las Vegas so it is, in my opinion, time to start talking about how we can prevent an occurrence.  As has become habitual we basically have two sides, the pro gun control side and the pro gun side.  Today I am going to address just the pro gun side.  What I’m not going to do is say you are wrong, nor am I going to challenge any of your arguments favoring gun ownership.  What I am going to do is issue you a specific challenge and wait and see if you are willing to take it up.

What and/or How do you propose to take action to prevent the kind of mass murder that took place in Las Vegas?  There are some conditions

1) No changes to the laws in regards to guns.  None.

2) No change in how we inforce the current gun laws on the books.  Not Federal, not State, not Local.

That’s it.  Guns are off the table.  Ammunition is off the table.  Anything doing with pistols, or long arms is off the table.

I really do want to hear from you and see your ideas.  I’m sick and tired of people talking past each other on this issue.  Now is a great time for the pro gun lobby to step up and show what they are made of and put forth good solid ideas on what we are going to do mass murder that uses firearms.  Can you do it?

WARNING: If I don’t hear anything, if no suggestions or ideas are put forward I will take that as tacit agreement that the pro gun lobby holds that we just have to accept these casualties.  More on this later if I hear nothing.