Jonathan Hoenig Calls for Individual Sovereignty

TOS Blog: Daily Commentary from an Objectivist Perspective

Jonathan Hoenig Calls for Return to Americanism

 I had to point out that I am not the only one who uses the phrase "individual sovereignty" in today's world. 

© Curtis Edward Clark 2013

On the 20 Year Anniversary of Ruby Ridge

Ruby Ridge energized the radical militarized part of the right wing in a way it had not been energized for years. Ruby Ridge was the event in which the U.S. government set out to determine whether a man who had bought land and moved his family there to get away from what he called a corrupt world, was "connected to" white supremacist or anti-government groups.

What libertarian--and even we Objectivists--are not opposed to the government? It seems that some of our 21st century objections come right from this wrongful use of government power that then turned to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, where it killed 76 people, after a 51-day standoff, by accidentally starting their building on fire. These two events were cited by Timothy McVeigh as one reason for his part in the Oklahoma City bombing.

But no right wing sentiment is justification for taking the lives of other innocent people, as McVeigh did. Whether it is justification for killing certain guilty officers of the government in an act of revolution is yet another question. During the American Revolution there were patriotic Americans who detested the acts of the British government, but rationally set forth their reasons to say it wasn't enough for a revolution.

Yet, short of killing specific government officers guilty of acting with disregard toward the Constitution, what other means do the American people actually have for unseating an evil government? How can America have its own 'Arab Spring'?        

Sara Weaver, one of the survivors of Ruby Ridge, said she is devastated each time someone commits a violent act in the name of Ruby Ridge. "It killed me inside," she said of the Oklahoma City bombing. "I knew what it was like to lose a family member in violence. I wouldn't wish that on anyone."

Ms. Weaver, who's older brother was killed by officers in an ambush, and who's mother was killed as she opened her front door while holding one of her babies, by a bullet to the head by one of the government snipers, did not say it was wrong to kill innocent people, as McVeigh had done. Weaver only talked about losing family members in violence. One is not the same as the other. McVeigh was clearly wrong; but was the government? A wrongful death settlement left Ms. Weaver and her sister each $1million. Today the survivors would ask for more, much more.

The Whiskey Rebellion was the first instance of the government using its force against Americans opposed to its use of power. During President Washington's first term Alexander Hamilton needed to raise money to pay federal debts, and persuaded Congress to pass an excise tax on the manufacture of whiskey. The tax was resisted, as it appeared that the eastern "big business" whiskey producers were being favored. When a taxman went to one area of western Pennsylvania, more than 500 armed men resisted. This should have been a wake up call to the new government that it was doing something wrong, but it didn't work. President Washington told the States to call out their militia to quell the resistance, and then he rode at the head of those forces, 15,000 strong. What better demonstration of government force than to have the President lead the army against you?

This use of federal armed power against Americans was one of the reasons for the formation of Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, which later repealed the tax. And now we have the spectacle of President Obama's National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed into law Dec. 31, 2011. "President Obama [ ] will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director. The President can put you or I into jail indefinitely, without a cause presented to us and without an attorney--if he alone says so.

There is currently a preliminary federal injunction blocking its enforcement. Truth-Out.org said, "US District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York Katherine B. Forrest agreed [that a part of the NDAA would prevent journalists from talking to the enemy]. In a 68-page opinion, she wrote [that journalist Chris] Hedges' and his co-plaintiffs fears that section 1021 could impact their First Amendment rights are 'chilling,' 'reasonable' and 'real'."

But it could be used against you, me, our neighbors, our family members as well, if the President--and the President alone has the authority--decides that an American citizen, anywhere in the world including in our own home, was:

"a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces,"

These fears are 'chilling,' 'reasonable' and 'real' because neither Congress nor the president defined the terms 'substantial support,' 'associated forces' or 'directly supported', not to mention that neither al-Qaeda nor the Taliban can always be easily identified, and that a 'belligerent act' could be anything, including spitting on the sidewalk in a display of your disdain.

President Obama is energizing most of the right wing, both of the sort that has religious sensibilities, and the sort that says their guns will have to be taken from their cold, dead fingers. But he's not where the trouble began; he's only the trouble we elected.

We must stand for our state's sovereignty, our unalienable rights, above all for our individualism against the behemoth that is flying drones in our skies above us, and that is listening to our every phone and internet conversation for the secret words that trigger an investigation to determine whether we are 'connected to' this, that, or the other thing, or whatever it wants to call a 'belligerent act'.

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© Curtis Edward Clark 2012

'Network Society' Seems Anti-Individualistic

It would seem natural to think that a phrase like the 'network society', even capitalized, would merely refer to a world connected by the links of computerized networks. To some extent that is true. Ericcson, the Swedish technology company, says on its website that the network "will fundamentally change the way we innovate, collaborate, produce, govern and sustain." 

But something called the Centre for Personal Sovereignty claims that this network society "resembles laissez-faire capitalism combined with the better promise of Marxism."

First I would ask what the 'better promise' could possibly be if it is not the individual existing free of government interference in the market-workings of his enterprises. The term 'free market'...means free of government's aggressive force, said Reason Magazine. 'Regulation' of industry is often necessary, such as in labeling, where we don't want two products called 'aspirin', one of which is not acetylsalicylic acid; where we want to be assured that our meat is properly handled before packaging; where a Doctor has the necessary knowledge and competence to practice what we believe he says he can. But regulation of the market place, ala Marx, helps no one and hurts all.

This "network society" in general is not an economic system: "The impact of this revolutionary political system," the Centre says, "though today existing only in theory, can already be calculated."

Of course it can. I can calculate that because it is a political system that it will contain government interference, legal plunder and legally aggressive force. After all, it "maximizes market efficiencies" instead of letting the market finds its own way of doing that.

"Unlike capitalist systems," the Centre says, "in a Network Society the 'people' as individuals fully own their personal means of production. One's compensation is directly proportionate to one's value as we all become economic and political 'free agents'." 

They also say "it also represents control over your own means of production - that is, you will learn to reap the full economic value derived from what you do, rather than giving that value to your boss. A business owner that earns a profit from the efforts of her employees will be reaping the excess rewards derived from the synergistic efforts of the entire group (1 + 1 = 3). This excess value represents the value of the owner's ability to orchestrate the efforts of independent parts towards a productive end."

This gobbeldy-gook of twisted language leave me with questions:

• If you can still have a boss who "reaps the excess rewards", how is it different from capitalism?
• If you still have a boss, how do you "fully own your personal means of production", and if you do, why pay anything to a boss, let alone have a boss?
• How is the "synergistic" efforts of "the entire group" (what group?) any different from a normal workplace today?
• If an employer is the one who knows how to "orchestrate the efforts of independent parts towards a productive end," why is s/he reaping "excess rewards"? How can they be "excess" when s/he is doing essentially what the owner of his "personal means of production" will be doing; is that person not also reaping "excess rewards"? In excess of what? In excess of who's rewards? Why can't someone keep all his own rewards?

It all reminds me of Ayn Rand's criticism of Kant, when she said he "originated the technique required to sell irrational notions to the men of a skeptical, cynical age." We are living in such an age, and the technique keeps going and going.

After all, it would seem that my blogging and authoring a book to be sold only on line for E-readers would be the very thing Ericcson and the Centre and others are discussing. But it scares me to think that they want to include what I do in their crazy scheme of "the better promise of Marxism."

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© Curtis Edward Clark 2012

Individuals Are Not Sovereign, Obama Implies

Individualism is the recognition that sovereignty, meaning one's ownership of one's self, is inherent from birth. These are the so-designated "self-evident truths". The purpose and legitimacy of a government, then, resides in its protection of individualism's opposition to both restraint by government, and by assistance from from it. Restraint violates the sovereignty of the restrained; assistance violates a person's sovereignty indirectly by violating the sovereignty of others for his or her sake. In today's political climate that is called variously 'social justice' or 'social equality', or more honestly 'distributive justice.'

"What [Obama] means by his slogan, 'You’re not on your own, we’re in this together,'", wrote The Objectivist Standard, "is that individuals are not sovereign and that government must dictate the means and terms of their lives."

The first hint that most of America got in regard to the President's disregard of sovereignty, was his now-infamous talk with 'Joe the Plumber'. This was when Obama told the man, who had asked him a question about his business plans, that his taxes might go up if he reached the $250K mark. "It's not that I want to punish your success," Obama was telling America. "I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance at success, too." 

We ought to have taken that presciently. Many did, including myself, but the left said 'pooh pooh, that isn't what Obama meant'. Now we know it is precisely what he meant. If more Americans had had their eyes and ears open in 2008, we could have seen that he has no idea how how business works, how individualism works, or how the Tenth Amendment works, all of which which the last four years have borne out. 

"For the president of the United States to say that you didn’t do that, [that] you didn’t build your business, was a ‘Joe the Plumber’ moment of 2012," said Rep. Greg Walden, deputy chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee and former small business owner.

"Those persons and groups who oppose the devolution of authority from the central government to the states in the United States," wrote James Buchanan, "[place] other values above those of the liberty and sovereignty of individuals." Does Obama not do everything to show that he appreciates the evolution of authority from the individual to the central government? "[In] a large economy, characterized by liberty of resource flows and trade throughout the territory," Mr. Buchanan continued, the problem becomes how "to maximize the protected sphere of individual sovereignty."

Individual sovereignty involves every sphere of human activity, even such things as trade policy with other nations:
"US trade policy is almost always debated in terms of economic utility: Does free trade raise or lower incomes? Does it help or hurt U.S. industry? Does it create or destroy jobs? But behind the statistics and anecdotes lie moral assumptions about human nature, [and] the sovereignty of the individual." source

'Protecting the sphere of individual sovereignty' is certainly not what our President is about.

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© Curtis Edward Clark 2012

The Extension and Intension of the Constitution

We must begin this discussion with the definition of the words in the title:
"The intension of a concept consists of the qualities or properties which go to make up the concept. The extension of a concept consists of the things which fall under the concept; or, according to another definition, the extension of a concept consists of the concepts which are subsumed under it (determine subclasses)" source 

The intension of the Constitution is, therefore, the qualities or properties which go to make up the concept. What is the concept? It is supremely simple, and in two parts: the first quality is that of a government more able to deal with national problems than the Articles of Confederation allowed for; and the second property was to make a government less able to violate the rights of minorities. The second quality was the biggest intensional concern of James Madison, Patrick Henry and others, and it is the one that has seen its extensions go awry, since the era of the New Deal.

The extensional parts are the subclasses of the intensions; they are the things which 'fall under' the concept(s). Article 1, Section 2 explaining the composition of the Congress, is therefore an extension of Section 1, explaining that there shall be a Senate and a House.

"The Constitution does not give you rights," explains the Constitutionality Crisis. "The founders considered your rights to be 'God-given' or 'natural rights' — you are born with all your rights. The constitution does, however, protect your rights by:

• Limiting the powers of government by granting to it only those specific powers that are listed in the Constitution; (This has not proven to be effective of late.)
• Enumerating certain, specific rights which you retain. These are listed in the Bill of Rights." [emphasis in original]

The Constitution, in turn, is an extension of John Locke's famous intensional statement about the state of nature specifically, that it "has a Law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one: And Reason, which is that Law, teaches all Mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions. [John Locke, The Second Treatise of Civil Government, §6] [emphasis in original]

But more than that, our coveted Bill of Rights are the extensions of the entire concept for the limitation of the powers of government, and the empowerment of the individual. "The whole of the Bill is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals…It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has the right to deprive them of." –Albert Gallatin, 1789, New York Historical Society

The original statements of the Founders give us their intent for ratifying the words they used. Why did they say this, and say it that way instead of the other way or another way? But epistemological intension is like a definition of a genus, whereas extension is like the definition of a species. The genus of the Constitution is that of a document never seen before then, one that had two part, the way 'man' is defined as 'rational animal'. The two parts are to be an enabler of individualism, and a limiter of government.

Madison warned us of wrongful extensions of the limited powers given to government, and named many that we see today. Congress might, he said, "establish teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of the public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the union, they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post roads; in short, every thing from the highest object of state legislation, down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress [ ] and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare."

These things are so commonplace that we do not even think about some of them as being usurpations by the nation upon the powers of the States; or worse, usurpations on your individual sovereignty, which was a commonly held extension of the purpose of the limitation on government.

Next Friday I will examine some others in detail.

© Curtis Edward Clark 2012

Obama's Economic Collective

President Obama's recent remarks about how people didn't do things on their own is not the first time he has slammed individualism, and raised the specter of a collectivist-thinking mind. "If you’ve got a business," he said, "you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen," he said, in his now famous remarks on interdependency.

In December of 2011, at a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, Obama said that a free market "speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government." But he followed that by saying, "It doesn’t work. It has never worked."

He went on with other remarks: 

• "We simply cannot return to this brand of 'you’re on your own' economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country." 
• 'It results in an economy that invests too little in its people and in its future."
• " I’m here in Kansas to reaffirm my deep conviction that we’re greater together than we are on our own."
• "Factories where people thought they would retire suddenly picked up and went overseas, where workers were cheaper."

These remarks are the message of 'social justice' that the President has worked for his entire political life. But if you're not "on your own", where are you? Are you in a work environment made impossible for management by government regulations?

How does an economy "invest in its people"? I worked in a profit-sharing company where the idea was that we were greater together. But the slackers always lowered my shares and sometimes left me with nothing. If I had owned my own shop and my own welder I would have made more money, so how was standing in that factory part of being something "greater"?

And the only reason for a factory to go where wages are cheaper, is because something is preventing them from paying lower wages here, thereby keeping the jobs here. You can't have that fact both ways. It's either-or.

The President wants an America in which everyone plays by the same rules, as he said in his 2012 State of the Union Address, which was--over and over again--about 'economic fairness'. Yet, he injects tax-payer's money into companies he likes, in order to change the competition in the supply-and-demand market.

Like all good progressives Mr. Obama wants to see the playing field change. So is must be asked, what does he think is happening when an upstart company makes big inroads into someone else's industry? The only true 'economic justice' to be had is when the distribution of capital moves from what the buyers wanted to what they want now. That is not something that can be forced by government. E-85 was mandated by the Alternative Motor Fuels Act of 1988, 24 years ago. Yet in most parts of the nation, you have to go online to look for stations that sell it.

What if government could force a market to rise from little—or from nothing? "We are all painfully aware of the Soviet style mandate that requires 10% of petroleum to be comprised of ethanol.  This unconstitutional mandate has killed jobs, driven up the cost of fuel and food, lowered gas mileage, and damaged car engines," said RS RedState.

Power Industry News wrote that "The Environmental Protection Agency has slapped a $6.8 million penalty on oil refiners for not blending cellulosic ethanol into gasoline, jet fuel and other products. [C]ellulosic ethanol does not exist. It remains a fantasy fuel. EPA might as well mandate that Exxon hire leprechauns. So far this year, just as in 2011, the supply of cellulosic bio fuel in gallons totals zero." [Emphasis added]

Is it fair for a President--or anyone who controls the tax purse--to determine what should be forced on the unconsuming public? Do you not think that $6.8M penalty doesn't mean jobs are lost? What about a safe pipeline not allowed from Canada, and wells not drilled in the Gulf, and ore mines not mined in Alaska? Why are those concepts of 'economic justice' the very sort this President destroys?

If the rules of the market do not "speak" to rugged individualism, why destroy individualism? Why not destroy the rules that prevent individualism in the market? Why not create rules that allow competition?

© Curtis Edward Clark 2012

Arab Revolutions and Popular Sovereignty

     As for the point of calling the government the "popular sovereign", Locke is relevant in today's world of Arabic/Islamic revolutions. It is unlikely that in today's world any nation, let alone an Islamic nation, is capable of going the distance as America's Founders did, by making the sovereign the individual.

     Jefferson and the other founders conceived that if the people (individuals taken as a single body politic) had the right to turn over to the government some of their rights, then the individuals were the actual sovereigns, because they cannot turn over what they do not already have. In other words, you can't give away what you don't have.

     "Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..." http://www.friesian.com/ellis.htm

     This was carried through to the 20th century by Ayn Rand, who used many of the same phrases as the Founders:
"Individualism regards man—every man—as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights—and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members."
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/indivi…

     However, this kind of thinking was rejected in the 12th century by the Muslims when they rejected the philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes) who fled to Spain to save his own life. Ibn Rusd didn't advocate individual sovereignty--it would take Americans to do that, by adapting to what Locke taught them. Locke learned from Aquinas who learned from Ibn Rushd and worked from many of the man's translations of Aristotle.

     And so, in today's world it probably isn't possible to see another America rise from the ashes of any nation whether Western, Eastern, or Middle Eastern because the idea of individual sovereignty cannot return in the U.S. until the States take back their 10th Amendment rights, after which the people can then take back their 9th Amendment rights (notwithstanding the recent controversy that the 9th is also tied directly to States' rights).

     Locke referred to "popular sovereignty". Thus, Madison wrote that "Individual rights and governmental powers were understood to be reciprocal—two sides of the same coin. As Madison wrote in a letter to Washington: 'If a line can be drawn between the powers granted and the rights retained, it would seem to be the same thing, whether the latter be secured[] by declaring that they shall not be abridged, or that the former
shall not be extended.'” http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/se… page 14

     It seems however that they have been abridged, and that "the former" has been extended. Locke's "popular sovereignty" may be composed in any way the individuals of the nation wish to compose it. Turkey has had "popular sovereignty" since the Second world war and Iraq is now trying to follow in Turkey's tracks, both nations operating in the manner of the Arabs, not the way of Europeans; and of the Islamic nations now undergoing revolutions and convulsions, some may turn to Arab popular sovereignty.

     It is unlikely, however, that any of them will turn to natural rights as fully as America did. They don't understand natural rights because that is what Ibn Rushd would have led to--an Islamic Locke (or Hobbes or Rousseau). Muhammad and Allah cannot allow western individualism which "regards man—every man—as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life."

© Curtis Edward Clark 2011

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A Brief, Brief Exam of the Modern Counter-Enlightenment

    Someone recently asked if we have passed through the postmodern era into a new period of cultural and social history.

    No.

    "Marxism and postmodernism: people often seem to find this combination peculiar or paradoxical..."[1] They are neither. It was the 'modernists' who led us from Lockean/Jeffersonian individualism into the 'Beat Generation' of artists who came, post-WWII, from the indoctrination of the socialist elements of the unionist movements of their parents' and grandparents' generation.

    The tenets of the movement, its belief in progress, freedom, and equality, had been sustained from the outset by artists and intellectuals, and embraced by those who reaped the material benefits it brought.[2]

   Those were the individualists like Alexis de Tocqueville, whose historic first-hand description of Americans showed us to believe that "all values are human-centered, the individual is of supreme importance, and all individuals are morally equal. Individualism places great value on self-reliance, on privacy, and on mutual respect. Negatively, it embraces opposition to authority and to all manner of controls over the individual, especially when exercised by the state."[3] And so it included writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and Washington Irving.

    But envy of men like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, A. A. Talmadge, and others led to a form of anti-industrialism where the forerunner of today's lobbyists were the so-called competitors of those men. 

    "Intense lobbying began between 1869 and 1877, during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant. The most influential lobbies wanted railroad subsidies and a tariff on wool. At the same time in the Reconstruction South, lobbying was a high intensity activity near the state legislatures, especially regarding railroad subsidies. The term itself came from Britain to describe approaches made to Members of Parliament in the lobbies of the House of Commons..."[4]

    Lobbying as it was practiced then does not 'embrace opposition to authority', it used authority; nor did it despise 'all manner of controls over the individual, especially when exercised by the state'. It wanted the intervention of the State, because then the lobbyists gained power over those who could manage quite nicely without any government assistance.

    In other cases it was quite the opposite: those who could do quite nicely without government interference or 'assistance', were forced to pay-off men in high places who could create interference with tariffs and subsidies to their competitors who were seen as being unable to 'compete' without running interference on their behalf.

    'Modernists' were therefore anti-industrialist anti-individualists. The violence of the unionist movement is rampant with people more interested in wresting power from the industries, than with the plight of the poor working class who needed someone to speak for them, to help them raise their wages and gain benefits. "The Russian Revolution had seemed at the time, and for a long time after, to be the answer to the progressive modernist's dream."[2]

  We are--and have been since the age of Rousseau and Kant--in the age of the counter-Enlightenment. To think of 'modernism' or 'post-modernism' while stuck in one era (in which we are going backward toward Plato's Cave) is ridiculous. Until we overthrow the counter-Enlightenment that spawned Napoleon and Trotsky, Eugene V. Debs, the Industrial Workers of the World,  and "the anti-modern, ideological religious right"[5]--until we do this and get back to thinking in terms of negative rights rather than positive rights, (not to be confused with 'negative liberty' and 'positive liberty') will we actually be in the 'modern era'. Only then, someday far in the future, can we ever look to a 'post-modern' era---and I hope it's rational.

[1] New Left Review
[2] Modernism and Politics
[3] Britannica Precise Encyclopedia
[4] Lobbying in the United States: History
[5] American conservatism as Counter Enlightenment

© Curtis Edward Clark 2011

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