Powers Reserved to the States

Thirty-three States can soon be counted as having similar resolutions about their Tenth Amendment rights

Last month I wrote that some States are finally beginning to stand up for their Tenth Amendment rights. The Tenth Amendment Newly Ascending

"In the first five weeks of his presidency, Barack Obama has acted so rashly that at least 11 states have decided that his brand of 'hope' equates to an intolerable expansion of the federal government’s authority over the states," wrote A.W.R. Hawkins in HumanRights.Com

"When the Constitution was being ratified during the 1780s, the 10th Amendment was understood to be the linchpin that held the entire Bill of Rights together," Hawkins pointed out. This is one of the primary history lessons learned by all American elementary students when they are taught that each state was considered to be its own "country" before the ratification of the Constitution.

The amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

"Sometimes thought of as an afterthought, to 'sweep up' anything the Founders may have forgotten, the 10th Amendment today is taking on monumental importance as increasing federal intrusion into state affairs threatens to completely destroy the balance between state and federal power," says State Rep. Samuel E Rohrer, PA-128th District. 10th Amendment Center

The Founding Fathers "took pains to outline how the Constitutional structure of the government would prohibit the federal government from becoming big enough to overwhelm the powers of both the states and the democratic process," he said.

"Republicans and Democrats alike have been guilty of trampling states' rights for generations," said Constitution Party National Committee Chairman Jim Clymer. "Finally, elected officials in state legislatures across the country are pushing back."

The website MRStep makes the claim that thirty-three States can soon be counted as having similar resolutions about their Tenth Amendment rights.

As of this date, there seems to be little media attention paid to what the States are doing. I have seen no major online publications such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, etc., with articles on this movement; but there are dozens of independent online sites trying to keep it in front of the public.

At present, it seems the only purpose to which any State may be using their resolutions is to refuse to accept certain public funding that the Obama administration would like to force upon them, one case in point being the much publicized refusal of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin refusing Federal funding for special needs education, despite the fact that she and her husband have a special needs chile themselves.

Alaska is not the only State to consider refusing "line item" funding. Some States have said they would refuse certain funding because to do so with the expectation that they would pay back the Federal Treasury means they would have to raise taxes to do it!

Europe does not like Obama's nationalistic economic policies either. "The United States' decision to pump ever-larger sums into its economy is the 'road to hell,'" Mirek Topolanek, the President of the European Union, said Wednesday, just a week before he was set to meet the US president in London.

If the States face down the Obama administration, there will be a Constitutional upheaval such as we have not seen since the secession of the southern States during the Civil War.

Let us hope so. It may be the only saving grace left for individual sovereignty in this nation. The Ninth Amendment states that "the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, [meaning the 1st through the 8th Amendments] shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

And that means that just because some of our rights are guaranteed in writing does not mean we do not also retain "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States," because what is not delegated to Washington D.C. and not prohibited to the States "are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." [10th Amendment]

They are absolutely not reserved to the Federal government.

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Catholic Insistince on Altruism to 'Spread the Wealth'

The 'Common Good' is Coerced Altruism

I have a list of twenty two blogs I try to scan daily, but the demands of writing my own blog, of trying to get a distance-based academy organized, working a daily job, and attending AA meetings and doing AA service work does not give me much time for the other blogs. I have to pick and choose. Some days I find nothing worthwhile; other days, like today, I found something I like--the blog that teaches me something.

It was on the Acton Institute Power Blog, named after Lord Acton who "made the history of liberty his life's work; indeed, he considered political liberty the essential condition and guardian of religious liberty."

http://www.acton.org/research/acton/index.php

What was it I learned? That Catholics have used the common good "as an excuse for more government involvement in peoples’ lives and the installing of socialistic, 'spread the wealth' programs." Dr. William Luckey

I dashed off a comment at the end of his blog. In the "Academy Blogger" I have debated the issue of "altruism" as being (originally) the Catholic version of the "eradication of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love and devotion to Society. In brief, it involved the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity redirected towards Humanity conceived as an ideal unity." [emphasis added] see "altruism" http://www.ditext.com/runes/a.html

The common good is therefor altruistic, requiring a lowest common denominator of the ego, common from one man to the next, a place where one must relegate his/her ego in order to eradicate self-interest, rational though it may be, or not; and where the common good is attained by devoting one's self selflessly--as if that is not an incomprehensible contradiction--in an act of totally "eradicating" the self.

This is most certainly not the same as what our Founders meant by the "general Welfare," when they wrote that phrase in the Constitution; it is the opposite. The "general Welfare" is the protection of the sovereignty of the individual, sovereignty composed of all the powers not delegated to nor prohibited to the Federal government or the governments of the "several States." Whatever is left over, (and almost everything was "left over" until the administration of FDR's "New Deal",) is necessary for the operation of a free individual.

We no longer retain the right to our individual sovereignty. But I have covered that a dozen times in this Blogger. The Choir Sings the Hymn "Individual Sovereignty" Power Reserved to the People, Respectively Laissez-Fairre: the Economics of Individual Sovere... Tocqueville and Individualism et al.

The "general Welfare" is justice in the political arena, which includes economics. The "common good" has become the language used to hide the injustice of imposed altruism.

Anything imposed against what is just, is coercion; anything imposed to insure justice, is not coerced. Each of these ideas is what it is by definition. You could turn each statement around and make the same arguments: Coercion is that which is unjustly imposed; coercion is not that which is justly imposed.

What is justly imposed must, by the same definition, take only as little from an individual's sovereignty as is needed for the "common sovereignty," i.e., government instituted of, by, and for the governed themselves.

It is true that there must be coerced "common good" among people who are not willing to abnegate their egos to society. The best of the recent examples of an uncoerced person was Mother Theresa, who we now know abnegated her ego to the will of a God who she thought, for twelve years, had deserted her. That, aside from the willingness of Jesus to be crucified for all others in the human race, is as altruistic as one can be and not be coerced.

But going that distance is much more than Dr. Luckey is talking about. "This [coerced] version of the common good is the foundation for some people’s idea of distributive justice, but actually it is based on the 'Robin Hood fallacy' of robbing from the rich and giving to the poor." [emphasis added]

What is distributive justice? "[T]he first relatively simple principle of distributive justice examined is strict egalitarianism, which advocates the allocation of equal material goods to all members of society." [emphasis added] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [see also No Justice in "Luck Egalitarianism" ]

How does Dr. Luckey know it is the Robin Hood syndrome? Merely "by reading Aristotle and St. Thomas. Both of those great thinkers say that government must rule for the common good, but both of them oppose 'common good' to the 'particular' or 'private' good. . . nowhere in Aristotle or St. Thomas does it say that the common good is the exclusive or even main province of the government. They merely give a negative prohibition that the state cannot make laws which are good for only one segment of society." [emphasis added]

One segment of society is exactly what distributive justice is about: the use of coercion to force altruism on those who have, for the benefit of those who have not.

Ayn Rand made an unwitting error in her Playboy interview of 1964. But her error was in not being able to see the future, and the rise of a popular Marxist like Barak Obama.

"Collectivism," she said, "as an intellectual power and a moral ideal, is dead."

But in the very next breath she was absolutely correct, and she is still correct to this day; "But freedom and individualism, and their political expression, capitalism," she continued, "have not yet been discovered."

Forty-eight years later, her second statement is still correct, and that is why collectivism was allowed to remain alive: the world has still not "discovered" the nature and the source of capital.

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Power Reserved to the People, Respectively

Eliminate Constitutional Clause and Give Power back to the People, Respectively

"The best way to limit the federal Leviathan is to have Congress and the presidency controlled by different parties," said Ilya Shapiro of the blog of the Cato Institute. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/10/24/a-plea-for-divided-government/

Wrong. That statement of Shapiro's demonstrates the similarities between the so-called conservatives and the out-and-out liberals.

The best way to limit the federal Leviathian is to stick to the origins of the Constitution. That is called "originalism," or sometimes "original intent". Wikipedia explains it this way:

"In the context of United States constitutional interpretation, originalism is a family of theories central to all of which is the proposition that the Constitution has a fixed and knowable meaning, which was established at the time of its drafting."

This does not in any way prevent it from being applied to American law in any decade or any century. The original intent can--and ought--to be applied because that was the intent of those who wrote it. They provided us with the means to change their intentions, and that means was not to ignore their intentions. That means was not to place any meaning on their words that fit our purposes. That means was to either nullify by Amendment where necessary, or alter by legislation where allowed, the intention of their words.

The answer to the question of why we, in the 21st Century ought to follow the spirit of their words is because that spirit is the spirit of Americanism. We can keep the spirit but change the words that transfigure what they saw in the 18th C. into what we see in the 21st. To ignore their intent is "rule by men", not rule by law.

Original intent theory is interpretation of the Constitution consistent with what was meant by those who drafted and ratified it.

The original meaning theory, which is closely related to textualism, is the view that reasonable persons living at the time of its adoption would have declared the ordinary meaning of the text to be. It is with this view that most originalists, such as Justices Scalia and Thomas, are associated.

Just this year the Supreme Court proved that originalism could be used effectively, when it ruled on the Second Amendment right to bear arms. The Court effectively nullified the first clause which made the Amendment appear to require a "well maintained militia" to enable the right to bear arms. The Court, after reviewing hundreds of documents from the Colonial period, decided that it was never the intention of the drafters and signers of the Constitution to limit arms to the maintanance of a militia.

By ruling in this way, the Court proved that originalism will sometimes benefit the America of the 21st Century. Had it declared that it was indeed the intent of the Colonialists to limit the right to bear arms to the militia, it still would have made the correct decision if the historical facts supported the decision. But at that point it would have been up to Congress to write a new amendment that would override the "militia clause" of the Second Amendment.

Originalism is the way the Constitution is supposed to work. If history does not support the facts of life as they exist today, as the Constitution was written, then it is within the right of the people to amend the Constitution.

Originalism, besides limiting the size and scope of the federal government, will return to the States that which is not "prohibited to" them, and which "are reserved to the States respectively"; which will subsequently return to We, the People, what is not prohibited to us and is reserved to each of us respectively. [Tenth Amendment]

What is reserved to each of us respectively is sovereignty of self, otherwise called individual sovereignty. Laissez-Fairre: the Economics of Individual Sovereignty

No one on the right or the left is going to convince me to believe that being a "citizen of the United States" is better than being a "Citizen of the Several States" of the united States. It is not better to be part of a government Leviathian than to be part of a semi-autonomous region.

This does not mean an Afghani or Iraqi style autonomous tribalism--it never did, and it will not--not so long as all the people of all the "several States" remembers that there are limits to what is achievable when home rule is brought closer to "home."

The "citizens of the United States" clause of the 14th Amendment should be struck down. That would eliminate most of the Federal power over the States. We were never intended to be citizens of the "United States". The Continental Congress did not set it up that way. They deliberately limited the size and scope of the Federal government. Since Senator John McCain wants to cut funding for all but what he or Congress or someone deems is "necessary," this is the route he should take.

Of course it would take a Libertarian who is strong as Ronald Reagan to do such a thing.

I don't think McCain is even a libertarian. But he should return as much power to the States as he can without mandating, as Reagan did, that the States pick up the Federal slack.

Picking up that slack is not downsizing--it is passing it off on the States.

Give the power back to the States, don't mandate anything except to follow the remaining and existing Federal statutes (or sue the Federal government over it, the legal way of resolving disputes,) and when we all see power returning to the People, we will not only be empowered again politically as we once were; but we will be empowered psychologically as we have not been since before the Civil War.

Note: originalintent.org is one of several organizations dedicated to "Restoring the Republic...One Citizen at a Time."

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Laissez-Fairre: the Economics of Individual Sovereignty

Laissez-Fairre: the Economics of Individual Sovereignty

The political accommodation of majority opinion is called democracy. The Constitution was established as a federal democratic republic form of government. This is fundamentally different from a democracy: it is removed from the tyranny of populist majority votes that cause injustices, incurred when a simple majority of votes determine the welfare and status of the losing side.

Federal means "A union of states under a central government distinct from the individual governments of the separate states;" [the antonym is "nationalism," where the government is centralized]

Democratic means "Characterized by the principle of political or social equality for all;" [but it cannot mean creating economic equalization, because those from whom capital is taken to be given to others in an attempt to balance the economics scales will be politically violated; those who recieve the alms will learn it can be expected to continue]

Republic means "A state or nation in which the supreme power rests in all the citizens entitled to vote but is exercised by representatives elected, directly or indirectly, by them and who are responsible to them." [definitions found at http://bensguide.gpo.gov/9-12/glossary.html#Republic]

What that definition of republic leaves out is that democratic republicanism counters the tyranny found in "democracy by simple majority." Democracy that is direct, that is not filtered through the elected representatives of republicanism, would quickly become a totalitarianism by populism; in other words, which ever side, right or wrong, moral or immoral, had the most votes would determine the course of law. We would become a nation of despots.

This direct democracy is derived from the Greek "popular government" existing in the middle of the 5th-4th century BC, notably Athens. "In this form, there were no defined human rights or legal restraints upon the actions of assembly, making it the first instance of 'illiberal democracy.' An illiberal democracy is a governing system in which although fairly free elections take place, citizens are cut off from real power due to the lack of civil liberties." Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

"Civil liberties" is a misnomer, when "unlaienable liberties" is the literal description. The phrase "civil liberties" as used in the United States has always had the hollow ring for me of describing something other than "human rights." The rest of the world does not use "civil rights." The United Nations adopted the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights," in 1948. http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html "Human Rights Watch" is the name of an organization dedicated to "defending human rights nationwide." http://www.hrw.org/ "European Convention on Human Rights (4 Nov 1950) and all Protocols" is obviously older than the American concept of "civil rights," as instituted in the attempts to gain for black Americans the unalienable and equal liberties not denied to white Americans.

Of course, the American phrase "civil liberties" absolutely means the same thing as "human rights," but I say it is a misnomer because it deflects the idea that all "human" rights are "individual" rights as determined by "individual sovereignty."

This concept of individual sovereignty is very often challeged by those who don't understand that it is derived from the Enlightenment idea of "common sovereignty."

John Locke and others made the case that "The government has no sovereignty of its own--it exists to serve the people." http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/locke/summary.html

go to Laissez-faire and Individual Sovereignty cont.

Obama is Jimmy Carter Redux

condensed from Rick Richman American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/the_second_coming_of_jimmy_car.html

Barack Obama is taking America down a path modeled by Jimmy Carter, and threatens to be as bad a president as his trailblazer. A unlikely guide unwittingly will help make the case.

On November 3, 1976, the day after Jimmy Carter's election, the New York Times ran a profile explaining his remarkable political victory -- how a one-term governor from Georgia, with no significant record, began planning his presidential campaign in the second year of his one-and-only four-year term, and then went on to secure the nomination from more experienced rivals and defeat a sitting president:

"He believed passionately that if he could talk to enough voters about a "Government as good as the American people," he could win. . .
"Words, skillfully used, could play dual roles for him. Liberals came to conceive of him as one of their own. Conservatives responded to him sympathetically as well. Blacks in Harlem voiced their support. Whites in Mississippi got behind him. . . .
[T]he theme was always visible: a government as good as the people. It was voiced a hundred different ways, but the impact on his listeners was constant.
Americans, he said, were entitled to decent, compassionate, honest, competent government because Americans are decent, compassionate, honest and competent."

In other words: Jimmy Carter won by constantly telling Americans that he was the one they were waiting for.

Carter was certified as the One in the closing benediction at the 1976 Democratic convention, given by no less a figure than the father of Martin Luther King, Jr. Televised on all three networks (the entire visual media at the time), the benediction heralded Jimmy Carter as someone sent to redeem the country: "Surely the Lord sent Jimmy Carter to come on out and bring America back where she belongs."

Thirty-two years later, no one associates Jimmy Carter with Roosevelt or Kennedy, or with "governing." Few people believe the Lord sent him, or that he brought America back where she belonged.

What were we thinking when we elected him? The answer is: some of the same things we are thinking now."

Immortality Question Given Wrong Philosophical Answer

In Talking Philosophy - The Philosophers' Magazine Blog, (posted yesterday, October 21st, by Jeff Mason,) the question is asked about why humans search for the answer to immortality. Mason goes through the various civilization's searches, from the Egyptians to the Greeks to Christians.

But when all is said and done, he answers very little about the spiritual connection men have inside them to what is commonly called our souls. The soul is called into question and denied by scientific naturalists. It does not sound as if Mason fits that bill.

But his final answer is this: "The question of the existence or non-existence of an immortal soul is a practical metaphysical question. We cannot know the answer, but we have to take a stand. How we answer it says something about our ultimate values, our conception of the good life for human beings, the art of living well and the meaning of death."

Where Mason is wrong is that it becomes a metaphysical question only after the epistemological questions have been answered. For the majority of people this is done informally, as they question what and why the soul might be, and how and why it might be transcendental, surviving past physical death, or how it might have been "implanted" at the moment of conception.

People who go through the crisis of questioning their faith in God and the afterlife do have a serious metaphysical problem to contend with. But the problem will not be solved by answering a question of metaphysics. Metaphysics is the answer; the questions and the validations come from epistemology. Theology is epistemology applied to the spiritual side of metaphysics. Theology is supposed to answer those questions and lay a groundwork of metaphysics for the faithful and the believers.

Epistemology is the road traveled by Pilgrim in his "Progress"; metaphysics is the destination at which he arrived. Mason gets a "D" for his answer.


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Identify Natural Law with Capitalism

Learn to Identify Natural Law and Ethics:

Begin with Capitalism

Naturalist ethics could not have devised such a convoluted law as that "fathers' rights" law in one state that makes a man claim responsibility for a pregnancy before the pregnancy is known about, let alone confirmed--if he wants any rights. [see Natural Law continued ]

But before we understand why, we must understand why Capitalism is the foundation for a natural rights philosophy, given that capital does indeed exist. Capital did not always exist. Capitalism is a fairly recent development in the economic underpinnings of man's affairs.

Under primitive bartering civilizations, property used for barter must be given the same consideration as Capital in our world. In our world, Capital is the barterable chicken, the service of shoeing a horse, the dozen eggs, or the handmade implement that would be the subject of barter. Capital is property just like a cow.

Underlying all other rights is the right to property: first, to the property of one's own being; secondly to the values that may be produced by one's own being. The property of one's own being involves and includes individual sovereignty, where sovereignty is defined as "indigenous" http://folklife.si.edu/resources/center/cultural_policy/pdf/RobAlbrofellow.pdf ; "substantive ("inherent and inalienable") [Locke] http://patriotpost.us/histdocs/naturallaw.htm ; or as "that state in which an individual would find him/herself if he/she was the only individual in existence."

That "state" is as natural as it gets. But in such a state, as a matter of fact until only a few short hundreds of years ago, capital was not even a consideration. But once its existence became a fact, became known, and its holders knew its value as intangible assets, its ownership had to be accepted as indigenous and substantive, inherent, and inalienable as the ownership of one's own being. The reason for this is because capital is the creation of the being of individual humans.

Capital as wealth is created, in the same manner that art is created, as a meal is created, as a home is created--by the mind and hands of men.

Ownership of one's own being is designated as 'individual sovereignty," and "was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..." Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.; http://www.friesian.com/ellis.htm Today, people scoff at the notion, presuming what modern education teaches, lacking as it is in its original "liberal" roots: that only nations can have sovereignty. Even the sovereignty of each American State is being whittled away by national sovereignty. "Liberal" education in its original roots led Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau and others to consider and endorse at least the concept of "common sovereignty," derived from the "consent of the governed." It took the Americans to understand that what becomes "common" must have its roots in individualism first. No individual can contribute to what becomes "common" unless he or she first owns it in order to relinquish it up to the "common sovereignty."

Individual sovereignty is still is the common assumption today, among naturalists. Kelly Ross goes on to say, "If 'to secure these Rights, governments are instituted among men,' this can only mean that something, from which people must be protected, threatens the exercise of rights to 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.'" Governments instituted through the consent of the governed get their powers only from those powers the citizens are willing to give to it. They cannot give to it what they, themselves, do not posses.

"The relationships between federalist political structure and the sovereignty of the individual," writes James M. Buchanan, "must be carefully examined, particularly in terms of the implications for current discussions in Europe, Mexico, and the United States." http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj15n2-3-8.html

"The explicit claim is that the individual is the sovereign unit in society; his natural state is freedom from and equality with all other individuals; this is the natural order of things." Joseph J. Ellis; "American Sphinx,The Character of Thomas Jefferson"

An extremely radical but acceptable view for millions, especially for Americans, runs in the Objectivist line of thinking, as with these quotes from "Objectivism and Thomas Jefferson; 6. The Non-Initiation of Force" : http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7842/otj60.htm

"As a corollary to an individualist society, it is necessary that a nation not have the right or power to compel actions [such as conscription], even for its own survival. Were that right allowed, a nation of people would be permitted collectively to identify duties and responsibilities that individuals owed to the common good and then could compel with force if necessary unwilling citizens. To permit that would be inconsistent with the form of individualism in which individual rights actually mean that no human authority can compel an individual to do anything other than to desist from initiating force against another individual. Therefore, the 'non-initiation of force' is a necessary part of the philosophy of individualism." [ibid]

"Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson;" thus:

see Natural Law: Begin with Capitalism for continuation

Join the Financial Bailout Debate

What if you could sit side by side with a Cato scholar at a debate forum and offer suggestions on topics like the financial bailout plan, health care, national security and education?
The Cato Institute is participating in a debate series hosted by a new interactive site, Google Knol. The debates on Knol are meant to offer a variety of in-depth opinions from experts, and afford visitors the opportunity to engage scholars on the ideas that are posted. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/10/07/join-the-financial-bailout-debate/

Gmail Goggles: Joke or brilliant self-censorship tool?

The folks at Gmail have developed a number of optional add-ons for their flagship e-mail program. Some let you improve your productivity. Others give you new ways to organize message. And now there's one designed to prevent you from sending inappropriate e-mails when you're drunk. http://techblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/10/gmail-goggles-joke-or-brillian.html

If our wildest dreams became reality

"It is not just those who built the QE2 who look on the ship with a special fondness. In an odd way, it is as though the boat manages to unite the classes, even though it represents what divides them. One reason it can do this is that the cruise ship has for a long time been the ultimate symbol of luxury, but at the same time it is something that most people could aspire to enjoy as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. People started work or got married with dreams of setting sail on a cruise for their retirement or ruby wedding anniversary, and often that's just what they did." http://julianbaggini.blogspot.com/2008/10/if-our-wildest-dreams-became-reality.html

Note: I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC

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Natural Law

Naturalist Ethics, Natural Law

by Curtis Edward Clark

The Academy's accepted general description of ethics is: "that study (also referred to as moral philosophy) or discipline which concerns itself with judgments of approval and disapproval, judgments as to the rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, virtue or vice, desirability or wisdom of actions, dispositions, ends, objects, or states of affairs."

It is my favorite description because it covers--in general--everything ethics is concerned with. The "Dictionary of Philosophy," (Runes; Ed.) goes on, in much longer detail as to what all those sub-descriptions mean, and how different philosophers have dealt with it, etc.

Ethics is a "study" or a "discipline," as it says above, but before it ever came to be studied in any academy in Ancient Greece, it was an informal idea for tens of thousands of years, as primitive men tried to live side by side with rules that had value for the tribe or community. But as a branch of philosophy, it could not be formalized until philosophy itself was discovered and formalized.

"[M]etaethics [is] a removed, or bird's eye view of the entire project of ethics [,] as the study of the origin and meaning of ethical concepts...Two issues, though, are prominent: (1) metaphysical issues concerning whether morality exists independently of humans, and (2) psychological issues concerning the underlying mental basis of our moral judgments and conduct." "The Internet Enclyclopedia of Philosophy"; http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/ethics.htm

Formalized ethics is what we find in the fields of professions such as medicine and law:

"Most professions have highly detailed and enforceable codes for their respective memberships. In some cases these are spoken of as 'professional ethics.'

"Though law often embodies ethical principals, law and ethics are far from co-extensive. Many acts that would be widely condemned as unethical are not prohibited by law -- lying or betraying the confidence of a friend, for example. And the contrary is true as well. In much that the law does it is not simply codifying ethical norms." Cornell University Law School http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wex/ethics
Natural Law continued including:
How Do We Learn to Identify Natural Law and Ethics?

Financial Crisis and Recession

"The severe financial crisis and resulting worldwide economic recession we have been forecasting for years are finally unleashing their fury. In fact, the reckless policy of artificial credit expansion that central banks (led by the American Federal Reserve) have permitted and orchestrated over the last fifteen years could not have ended in any other way."

Daily Article by Jesus Huerta de Soto Ludwig von Mises Institute http://mises.org/story/3138

False or Misleading in Every Particular

"Barack Obama currently has the following health-care ad in the field. [for the vid and complete article: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/10/06/false-or-misleading-in-every-particular/ It’s an effort to make Obama’s health plan appear moderate. That’s quite a trick, considering the plan might give Washington more control over the health-care sector than the Clinton health plan. So pretty much the only way they could create the appearance of moderation was to write a script that is false or misleading in every particular.
The ad begins:

"Health care reform. Two extremes. On one end, government-run health care, higher taxes. On the other, insurance companies, without rules, denying coverage. Barack Obama says both extremes are wrong.

"Those are not opposing extremes. In fact, Obama pursues government-run health care, higher taxes, and insurance companies denying coverage, all at once." Cato-at-liberty

$700 billion bailout bill apparently includes $7,500 tax credit

for buyers of certain electric cars, including Chevy Volt

"As Congress rushed to throw every conceivable bribe"sweetener" into the second version of the bailout bill in order to drum up enough votes to get it passed, apparently one of the goodies to make it in was a $7,500 tax credit for buyers of some plug-in cars, including the upcoming Chevy Volt.

But in order to qualify for even a smaller credit, the electric vehicles must have at least a 4 kWh battery, and that eliminates the Toyota Prius, which led Toyota to oppose the credit:

Technology Blog http://techblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/10/700-billion-bailout-bill-appar.html

You Can't Violate the Law in the Name of Jesus

"In Brookville, Pennsylvania, there is a conflict between the First Apostles Doctrine Church and the municipal government because the church wants to provide shelter for the homeless but the government wants the church to abide by local zoning regulations. No one disputes the value in helping the homeless, but government officials do insist that acting in the name of Jesus isn't a sufficient justification for simply ignoring the law."

About.Com http://atheism.about.com/b/2008/10/06/you-cant-violate-the-law-in-the-name-of-jesus-2.htm

Ideas for Life

"Advertising can be philosophically annoying. I don’t just mean ads which contain obvious lies (Carlsburg — probably the best beer in the world), trivial truths (There’s only one Coca-Cola), irrelevancies (Waaassuuuuup!), or fallacious thinking (If I can lose weight, you can too). I mean adverts which wander into philosophical territory before jumping up and down. Happiness is not a cigar called Hamlet. The pharmacy Boots has finally stopped using the slogan ‘Boots — ideas for life’. Boots does not provide one with ideas for life.

"These sorts of adverts can be mildly irritating, but I lost my composure when I read Starbuck’s claim that it offers ‘100% ethically traded coffee’. Really? A bit of unscientific googling reveals a lot, but doesn’t an ethical trade require all sorts of things Starbucks probably doesn’t (maybe cannot) provide."

by James Garvey blog.talkingphilosophy.com http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=404

Note: I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC

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© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

Natural Rights and Capitalism; CFI & Scientific Integrity

A Short Treatise on Natural Rights and Economic Capital

"Naturalism in economics requires capitalism," I wrote, back in September. Natural Capitalism; Determinism, Compatibalism, Free Will; Wm.Penn

Naturalism in ethics requires the non-initiation of force in order to make individual sovereignty work, and individual sovereignty is the natural state of every distinct human. It is what he/she would have if he/she existed as the only human on the face of the earth.

In order to "secure the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity," the American Founders relied on the concept of common sovereignty. " Popular [or common] sovereignty is the notion that no law or rule is legitimate unless it rests directly or indirectly on the consent of the individuals concerned. [John] Locke in his...'Second Treatise of Government,' published 1690, claimed as Hobbes before him, that the social contract was permanent and irrevocable, but the legis­lative was only empowered to legislate for the public good." http://www.basiclaw.net/Principles/Popular%20sovereignty.htm

The public good was described in the Constitution as the "general Welfare." But in "securing the Blessings of Liberty upon ourselves and our Posterity," we are forced to recognize that "ourselves" are selves which belong to individuals.

There is no general, public self except as defined as being those democratic decisions of the people and/or their representatives when such decisions do not violate the individual sovereignty left to each individual after he/she has given up a tiny portion of it to the "popular" sovereignty, from which it must be derived. MORE

CFI Input Helps Craft Legislation

Protecting Scientific Integrity

H.R. 5687, Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) Amendments of 2008 was passed by both Houses of Congress. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c101:H.R.5687.ENR Center for Inquiry staff plus a volunteer helped both to craft the language of the bill and shape its substance.

What does that mean to us and what are FACA Amendments? The bill increases the transparency and accountability of Federal advisory committees. It is intended to counter the tendency of the present administration to put on advisory committees—especially on scientific and health-related topics—people who are politically connected rather than qualified by expertise. CFI staff made recommendations to ensure that advisory committee members are impartial and have no material or political interest in the topics on which they are giving expert opinion.

Ideas and language in the FACA Amendments were supplied by Ronald Lindsay, CFI’s chief executive officer; Derek Araujo, executive director, CFI New York City; and Daniel Horowitz, lawyer and CFI volunteer. They jointly authored a CFI position paper titled, “Protecting Scientific Integrity: An Update and Additional Legislative Proposals,” published on CFI’s Web site in October 2007. Lindsay, Araujo, and Horowitz provided language in the sections on political affiliation, committee membership, and establishment of advisory committees. In the conflict of interest section, the bill’s language differs, but the meaning is the same. In addition, each of CFI’s recommendations was adopted in some form.

Click these links to visit the Washington, D.C. branch of the Center for Inquiry, to learn more about the CFI Office of Public Policy, or to visit the CFI-OPP blog.

To view the 29-page position paper in .pdf format, follow the related link provided at the bottom of
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/news/cfi_input_helps_craft_legislation_protecting_scientific_integrity/

Note: I will be the featured speaker at the CFI meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC

mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com

http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm of the

Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, the educational arm of the Assemblage.

© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®