The Inescapable Necessity of Choice

The inescapable necessity of choice is the hand that nature dealt to mankind.

"Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice." *

That sounds like determinism. Is it?

Determinism is a form of reductionism, "a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents.[1] This can be said of objects, phenomena, explanations, theories, and meanings." [see [1]]

"Reductionists are those who take one theory or phenomenon to be reducible to some other theory or phenomenon. [ ] The type of reductionism that is currently of most interest in metaphysics and philosophy of mind involves the claim that all sciences are reducible to physics. This is usually taken to entail that all phenomena (including mental phenomena like consciousness) are identical to physical phenomena." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Our bodies and minds are shaped in their entirety by conditions that precede us and surround us," writes Tom Clark, using those reductionist metaphysics.

While I would say that "conditions that preced us and surround us" do indeed eliminate our "power to escape the necessity of choice," I would disagree with Clark's following conclusion that because of that necessity of having to choose, "we can no longer take or assign ultimate credit or blame for what we do."

Men and women used to take that credit or blame, in other times, when the morals of humans seemed to be greater in personal importance. People were never heard to whine, "It wasn't my fault," except for those who were subsequently sneered at or even ostracized by society for such remarks.

The idea that man has no power to escape the necessity of choice creates the responsibility for any decisions he then chooses to make, and there is nowhere for them to be placed except squarely on the moral shoulders of the decision-maker. Certainly the blame cannot be placed on the inescapable necessity of choice.

It is the inescapable necessity of choice that gives meaning to life. Without choice, life--if it could exist--would exist as a stagnant, unthinking, unknowing blob of protoplasm that could not even act with biological necessity; after all, even biological necessity is created by inescapable evolutionary ends. Evolutionary ends are the "choices" nature makes in the life-and-death attempt to keep a species adaptably alive.

The inescapable necessity of choice is the hand that nature dealt to mankind. That makes the inescapability of moral choice metaphysically natural. It also draws the line between being human animals and a non-human animals. The inescapablility of moral choice is a metaphorical shining crown on man's head when he chooses to take "ultimate responsibility and blame" for his actions.

It defines the desire to mitigate blame and to diminish credit for proper choices as the epistemology of whining.

* from John Galt's Speech; Atlas Shrugged; Ayn Rand

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Determinism is a Python in the Jungle

...because the brain is specifically an animal organ, a determinist would think that his thoughts are actions caused by specific psychical or physical conditions.

Determinism is the doctrine that every fact in the universe is guided entirely by law. As doctrine, it allows only for mechanical causation of all things that have existence, once existed, or will exist. It was contained as a theory in the atomism of Democritus of Abdera, “who reflected upon the impenetrability, translation and impact of matter.” [Dict. Of Phil; Runes; 1942]

In human history it is the doctrine that “all the facts in the physical universe are absolutely dependent upon and conditioned by their causes.” [ibid]

In psychology it is the doctrine that the will is not free but is “determined by psychical or physical conditions.” [ibid]

I find it surprising that psychology, the science that combines epistemology with metaphysics as causes of human action, would conclude that free thought is not free, but rather is ruled by the same laws as those that rule gravity and vacuums and animal organs. Of course, it is only deterministic psychology that comes to this conclusion.

The field of psychology itself is so fragmented on the subject of free will vs. determinism that we rarely read about them.

“Incompatibilists maintain that our conceptions of free will and moral responsibility are at odds with determinism. Compatibilists deny this and insist that our notions of free will and moral responsibility are consistent with determinism. [ ] Libertarians maintain that we do have indeterminist free will (e.g. Kane 1996, O’Connor 1995, Campbell 1957). Eliminativists about free will maintain that free will doesn’t exist. [ ] However, many free will eliminativists maintain that even if determinism is false, we still lack the kind of indeterminist choice that is required by the folk notion (e.g. Pereboom 2001, Sommers 2005, Strawson 1986). On this view, our notion of free choice is incompatible with the facts, regardless of whether determinism is true or false.” Shaun Nichols; Department of Philosophy; University of Arizona How can psychology contribute to the free will debate?

But because the brain is specifically an animal organ, I suppose it not hard to see why a determinist would think that his thoughts are nothing but actions (or reactions) caused by specific elements of existence acting directly on his brain.
This would give him the concept that all the reactions of his brain of which his brain can be conscious are reactions fully caused by those specific elements. He might even be led to believe that he is fully caused by all the things of which he is not aware.

Perhaps the python that swallowed the man in Africa had an effect on the full causation of some other man's employer, since his employer was there at the time the python ate the man. But since the employee himself was not there, he is only indirectly caused by the knowledge that pythons do eat men, that his employer was witness to such an event, and that he himself could be eaten by a gator if he visits Florida and gets too close to a pond in which a gator is hiding.

The man who was eaten by the python, unbeknownst to the employee, was going to invest a large sum of money into the employer's company. Since he was, instead, eaten before he could invest, the employee remained working for a small company he wished was larger—which it would have become—so that he could get paid more, so that he could buy a new car, so that he could take a vacation across the country.
The employee is “fully caused” by the python's action, “caused” to work for a small company, “caused” into wishing for more pay, “caused” into desiring a car he does not have in order to see the Grand Canyon. The python caused all that by eating the man in the jungle of Africa before he could invest his money with the employee's employer.

No, it is not hard to see why a determinist would be “caused” to conclude these things.

But if free will begins with the freedom to think or not to think, to find a solution to something or to evade that solution, then free will exists. Call it by any name you wish, but a man who decides to evade reality “just because,” or “because he is tired of living,” or “because he is tired of being the one who must always find the solution,” or because, like John Galt, he has an ego which refuses to be destroyed by all the things that would otherwise “cause” him to be destroyed if he did not make the free choice to stop evading the truth and let the world go to hell—such actions by men prove that they can overcome all those things which determinsts say “full causes” them.

The truth is, men can choose. What they have before them to choose from may be fully determined by circumstances, but whenever there is more than the choice to “do or die,” so to speak, free will exists.

Even in a “do or die” situation, a man is free to die—if he so chooses.

Read this important report: majicJack rips off consumers; leaves behind spywar...

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Objectivism v. Determinism is Romanticism v. Naturalism

The Metaphysics of Determinism

Determinism is the doctrine that every fact in the universe is guided entirely by law. As such, it is a metaphysical proposition that denies or invalidates or ignores the laws of the workings of human thought. It does so by categorizing the laws of deduction and induction as "fully caused" by genetics, environment, memes, and other cancelations of free thought, i.e., free will.

Determinism, then, is the denial of free will on the grounds that life exists! Psychologically it means that the will is not free but determined by mental states and at the same time by physical conditions, since the former cannot exist without the latter.

Daniel Dennett would have us believe that free will exists, even when he himself believes it does not. He says is necessary for men to believe in the belief of free will so that determinism will not cause them to think they have no will at all! [1]

Such belief in the belief of free will is "designed to prevent any plunge into pessimism that determinism might engender among those who suppose we must have free will for life to be worth living." 3 Strikes Against Fatalism

This is not something men must be taught overtly or learned as knowledge through empirical experiences.

"You can much more easily believe that it is proper, that it is good and virtuous and beneficial, to believe that the Ultimate Cosmic Sky is both perfectly blue and perfectly green. Dennett calls this 'belief in belief'." Eliezer Yudkowsky; http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/07/belief-in-belie.html

Yudkowdky was not making of fun of Dennett's theory of "belief in belief." "I think even Dennett oversimplifies how this psychology works in practice," he writes.

"Many religious 'believers,' Dennett argues -- and he doesn't mean just politicians at Sunday morning services -- don't so much believe in the metaphysical claims of their chosen religion as commit to a 'belief in belief.' Most Christian believers in God couldn't articulate the Ontological or Cosmological proofs for God that are advanced in Christian tradition." http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/2007/03/daniel-c-dennetts-breaking-spell.html

Deterministic adherents of scientific naturalism (SN) do not believe man has free will; they believe in "determinism," the idea that men are "fully caused", i.e., "entirely the product of genetics and upbringing..." [Tom Clark; Naturalism.Org]

I have been making the case for months in this blog that Clark, Dennett, Susan Blackwell and dozens of others are wrong. I have given many arguments as to why they are wrong. I have not said before today that they are wrong metaphysically, but they are correct in one respect so far as epistemology is concerned.

Let's begin with this quote, the same quote Tom Clark uses to defend this deterministic theory of the causes of man:

"The [belief in the] lack of free will, sometimes called determinism, maintains that peoples' decisions are the result of an unbroken chain of prior occurrences; each action is caused by the previous one; individuals don't really have choices." – news story from The Vancouver Province, 2/28/08.

Clark is no where near being an anomaly within the large and influential brotherhood of SN. As a matter of fact, besides the many well-known names listed on his website, Clark told me, "There are several contemporary philosophers that also take this view, among them Derk Pereboom, Tamler Sommers, Joshua Greene and Bruce Waller."

The reason that the determinism found in SN is wrong--and you must understand that determinism is the entire basis for their system of beliefs, that their castle is built on this acre of sand--is because it isn't metaphysically of any consequence.

To paraphrase Ayn Rand (whose Objectivism scientific naturalists abhor), it is a nightmare view of existence to believe the unbroken chain of prior occurrences must be "the constant and primary concern of their lives." The Ethics of Emergencies; "The Virtue of Selfishness"; Rand

Why do I say it is the constant and primary concern of their lives? Because of what Clark says in many other places in his various web pages. To quote:

A) "When hearing about determinism, or the idea that we are fully caused to be who we are, people often jump to the conclusion that if this were true they would lose power and control. This is demoralizing. [ ] This conclusion, of course, is mistaken. People and their wills aren’t disempowered when we explain them in terms of antecedent causes." [Not their "wills"; merely their "free" wills.]

B) "Getting clear about this is crucial, since science is in the process of dismantling the myth of the ultimately self-made self." [italics added]

C) "But it’s important to see what’s demoralizing isn’t the empirically and logically well-supported conclusion that we don’t have contra-causal, libertarian free will..."

D) [Determinism's critics] "cannot articulate a clear, scientifically defensible account of how contra-causal, libertarian free will might work."

E) "Human beings act the way they do because of the various influences that shape them, whether these be biological or social, genetic or environmental."

Clark doesn't mean in E) that we incapable of thinking and making decisions about those influences; his point is, we can't escape those influences. Well, duh!

There is much more, on almost every page. I think, however, that a defensible account, as Clark calls for, does not rely on science. The right answer does not require science. Why? Because the science that Clark and others use has nothing to do with the metaphysical value of having and using whatever will they admit we do have.

What they do with their empirical science, which by the way seems to be acceptable truth, is apply it to the subject of our wills as non-contra-causal. Basically, contra-causal means that we can overcome whatever it is that causes us to make a decision, such as answering a ringing phone, taking a sick child to the doctor, eating when we are hungry, sleeping when we can no longer keep our eyes open, etc.

Clark, Dennett and the other determinists are epistemologically correct in this proposition. Mean are not free to escape the fact of existence and of everything that happens in existence. But to make it the essential fact of a doctrine is to give metaphysical equality to both the choices we freely choose to make when we choose to make them, and to the non-contra-causal causes that force us to choose to make a choice or not. The freedom which the determinists admit we do have is a metaphysical positive force, and the things that are prior to choice, things which we cannot change, can only be explained as causes when they are prior to being.

Since "fully caused" is the deterministic proposition that "being" is a "process", man cannot have "being" without the necessity of making choices. His "being" at this very moment has more metaphysical force in existence than the natural forces that brought him to make his choice. Those natural forces can only be explained in terms of his "being." It cannot be explained the other way around, since two or more men may arrive in the same place through different choices made against the backdrop of different natural forces.

In other words, the natural forces over which we have no control, which are deterministically said to "fully cause" us, can only be explained by the result achieved by our choice, which is to say that "being" is the definition of the causes. The causes are not the definition of the "being."

A woman from the roughest neighborhoods of Detroit, and the pampered son of a Houston oilman, can both end up in the same place, let's say Hollywood, and that will be the state of their being. That state cannot be attributed to the "non-contra-causal causes" because they would have gotten there anyway, if that was what they envisioned for their "being," i.e., for their existence.

But the correct response to being "non-contra-causal agents" is to say that without those things which we cannot contra-cause, there would be no such thing as life itself. Determinism seems to be a straw man argument that because we cannot contra-cause the factors of life that "fully cause us to be who we are," that we are somehow supposed to see ourselves in a different light--which is exactly the point of their entire base of philosophical literature. They want us to see ourselves in a different light, both epistemologically and metaphysically.

I'd like to know what the point of that is. I still cannot figure out why knowing that we rise because the cock crows and wakes us, or that we eat because we are hungry, or that we rob a store because we think we have no other choice in a desperate need for cash, is supposed to make us think differently about ourselves.

I think these are things we've always known. Victor Hugo proved it with his novel "Les Miserables", described this way in Wikipedia:

"The story starts in 1815, in Toulon. After five years of imprisonment in the bagne of Toulon for stealing bread for his starving sister and her family..."

So, in 1862 Hugo was telling a story--with overt moral lessons he wanted to demonstrate--that people do things because they need to (steal bread); because they stupidly steal (silver) from the Bishop of a church; that they accidently steal (a child's coin) when they don't know it; that they are forced to sleep on the street when innkeepers refuse to allow felons (the bread theft) at the inns; that people can turn their lives around and do good for others only to have it ripped away from them by petty officials and civil unrest and mistaken identies and by loved ones who mistake your actions for poor character rather than for a poor raft of choices that life forced one to make.

Dagny Taggart committed manlaughter with a gun at point-blank range against a poor slob of a military guard who had no idea of the mess he was in--because he didn't have the power to contra-cause the mess he was in. Neither did Dagny have the power to contra-cause the fact that she was forced to kill the young man. But, without such forces of life, there would be no "being." Rand and Hugo knew that when they wrote in the Romantic style. They used what will their characters possessed to create the beings that they were, and that they were to become.

The fictional writings and the art of the determinists is rightly called "Naturalism."

As Rand stated, "...that which you call 'free will' is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character." Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual

Without the forces of life itself which you cannot "contra-cause," there would be no choices at all to make. The poor guard had the power to think or not: Dagny gave him the choice twice, and when he refused "to think", she killed him without a second thought of her own. Dagny was acting Romantically; the guard was acting Naturalistically. See where it got him?

Who needs science to demonstrate that nothing can be contra-caused, that nothing should be contra-caused, and that determinism is metaphysically impotent precisely because nothing should be contra-causable?

Anything that is out of your control is non-contra-causable in its nature.

But just because each of us is "fully caused", as deterministic scientific naturalism would have us call ourselves, does not mean this: "It may strongly seem as if there is a self sitting behind experience, witnessing it, and behind behavior, controlling it, [but] this impression is strongly disconfirmed by a scientific understanding of human behavior." [ibid Clark]

So, now there is no "self", but there is experience; there is no "self" but there is behavior which has something "controlling it". What could it be if not "self"?

But I have to admit, never in my life did I ever think my will was divorced from existence; in other words, I never believed it was "free" will in the sense that determinists want to prove it is not free.

If Hugo, and Rand, and I and millions or billions of others already know our "free" will is not "free" of reality, what's the point of arguing it?

[1] Chapter Eight, "Belief in Belief" in "Breaking the Spell"; Daniel Dennett

If you think Obama

is definitely going to win,

you might want to read this:

Signs Pointing To A McCain Victory

Berg lawsuit over Obama citizenship dismissed; didn't have standing

Previously Federal Suit to Determine Obama's U.S. Citizenship; Obama Hires Terrorist Organization to Defend Him

The Philip Berg lawsuit against Barack Obama in which he claimed that BHO wasn't eligible to be president due to not being an American citizen has been tossed. According to judge Barclay Surrick, Berg didn't have standing, saying:
If, through the political process, Congress determines that citizens, voters, or party members should police the Constitution’s eligibility requirements for the Presidency, then it is free to pass laws conferring standing on individuals like Plaintiff. Until that time, voters do not have standing to bring the sort of challenge that Plaintiff attempts to bring in the Amended Complaint. MORE 24Ahead.com



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Obama, Character, and American Exceptionalism

Obama, Character, and American Exceptionalism

"This past week, Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign began doing what the [New York] Times failed to do: investigate the years-long association between Barack Obama and domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers. [ ] Instead of investigating, the Times’ writer hurls invective at the McCain campaign for having the nerve to bring up the unpleasant matter. Just minutes after the [2nd] debate ended [Tuesday] night, the New York Times projectile-vomited a load of anti-McCain-Palin vitriol disguised as an unsigned editorial. No wonder its author wished to remain anonymous: the editorial hurled unsubstantiated charges at the McCain-Palin campaign while purposely ignoring or covering up information that it finds unhelpful to its viewpoint." from DBKP http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2008/10/barack-obama-bill-ayers-ny-times-continues-to-whitewash-obama-ayers-connection/

The idea of Barak Obama as President bothers me. If he wins, the entire world will have to wait-and-see whether his socialistic proposals go as far--or further--than anyone imagines, and whether Congress and the Courts will let him get away with what he attempts to do.

Being a Constitutional lawyer and law professor as he is, he will probably get away with as much as he wants to, in the Courts. This is because the Courts won't hear any cases based on Obama's socialist programs until they have been signed into law and libertarians and others bring suits. And Obama knows what the Supreme Court Justices would think of the various ideas he may try to implement.

Not that more socialism is going to matter. Socialism is now unstoppable. The conservatives are merely conserving that which has been a fact since the New Deal, conserving the idea that government can do some things that are socialistic for the public good, but for the time being it is not to the public good to do more; "Wait a while," they seem to imply, "then we'll see how much more we can go along with."

The obvious and very large recent departure from the conservatism of the Republicans came when they helped craft and then pass in both Houses the bank and mortgage bail out bill.

Socialism is a fact of politics in almost the entire world, and some nations have less socialism than America, the land of the free. It's coming, and it may be only a short matter of time, now, before John Galt begins to shrug. But he isn't shrugging yet, because everyone believes there may be a way back from the brink of European-type entitlements. But it is this very lack of our socialism not being on par with most of the rest of the world, that contributes to the new definitions of "American Exceptionalism." Alexis de Tocqueville defined it as our greatness. To many in this new century it means our apartness from the rest of the world; we are not "in tune" with it.

But what worries me deeply is Obama's apparent bad judgment about the company he keeps, and the company he once said he would make. His connection with Bill Ayer's may be severed now, but no self-respecting libertarian (with a small "l", which is most of America) would have had anything more to do with Ayers than accidentally winding up on one board or commission with him. That Obama served with Ayers, had to have been friendly with Ayers since they lived in the same neighborhood, and allowed Ayers, in his own living room, to throw him an election send-off event at the start of his Illinois Senate run, is not what I would have done. What would I have done? Keep reading.

"William Ayers, in the age of terrorism, will be Barack Obama's Willie Horton," said former counterterrorism official Larry C. Johnson. The Huffington Post Feb. 16, 2008.

So far that has not happened, and I will admit that maybe there is less to Obama's connection with the former member of the radical Weather Underground Organization that claimed responsibility for a dozen bombings between 1970 and 1974, and who said to the New York Times in September 2001, "I don't regret setting bombs...I feel we didn't do enough."

"President" Obama would not be the first President to have connections, tenuous but palpable, with members of the Weather Underground. President Clinton " commuted the sentences of a couple of convicted Weather Underground members, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans, shortly before leaving office in January 2001." Washingtonpost.com http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/obamas_weatherman_connection.html

But Ayers is Not the Only Questionable Connection Obama Has

There is, besides Ayers, Obama's "intimate and long-term association with the 'Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now,'" (Acorn.) [see "Inside Obama's Acorn" http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/2008/09/god-belieforiginal-intent.html "Obama's ties to Acorn - arguably the most politically radical large-scale activist group in the country - are wide, deep, and longstanding. If Acorn is adept at creating a non-partisan, inside-game veneer for what is in fact an intensely radical, leftist, and politically partisan reality, so is Obama himself. This is hardly a coincidence: Obama helped train Acorn's leaders in how to play this game." Stanley Kurtz; nationalreviewonline http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI=

Acorn is the successor to the 1960’s agenda of anti-capitalism, writes Kurtz. Acorn, he says, quoting Sol Stern’s 2003 City Journal article, “ACORN’s Nutty Regime for Cities," grew out of “'one of the New Left’s silliest and most destructive groups, the National Welfare Rights Organization.' In the 1960’s, NWRO launched a campaign of sit-ins and disruptions at welfare offices. The goal was to remove eligibility restrictions, and thus effectively flood welfare rolls with so many clients that the system would burst. The theory, explains Stern, was that an impossibly overburdened welfare system would force “a radical reconstruction of America’s unjust capitalist economy.” Instead of a socialist utopia, however, we got the culture of dependency and family breakdown that ate away at America’s inner cities — until welfare reform began to turn the tide."

"Acorn" is, as of today, under investigation in ten states for voter fraud.

continuation including sub-heading "American Exceptionalism" Obama, Character, and Exceptionalism

Bankers Want World Economic Government To Solve Financial Crisis They Created

"It is time for a Bretton Woods for this century," reports the Telegraph, noting that "'Opinion is now hardening around the case for a new global architecture to enforce rules that ensure lessons are learnt.'

"Influential media giants like the Wall Street Journal are pushing a "new world order" to solve the crisis, while British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for a "a new global financial order" to supersede the institutions created after World War II.

"The elite are up to their old tricks again, after all, a leopard never changes its spots.
They created the problem of wildly irresponsible fractional reserve banking, the debt bubble and the credit crunch by ceaselessly inflating the money supply and now they are going to offer their solution to the crisis - the further centralization of global economic power into fewer hands.

Alex Jones' Prison Planet .Com

Obama to Deploy Troops to America’s Health-Care Sector
"From last night’s presidential debate:
"Barack Obama: So one of the things that I have said from the start of this campaign is that we have a moral commitment as well as an economic imperative to do something about the health care crisis that so many families are facing…
"Tom Brokaw: What is the Obama doctrine for use of force that the United States would send when we don’t have national security issues at stake?
"Barack Obama: Well, we may not always have national security issues at stake, but we have moral issues at stake.
You’ve been warned." The blog of the Cato Institute.

Rep. Brad Sherman: Congress Threatened with Martial Law if Bailout Not Passed

"A Democrat, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), makes a claim that was televised on C-SPAN that some congressmen were told that if the bailout bill wasn’t passed, there would be “martial law in America”–and the Mainstream Media is silent.

"Lobbyists and House aides were gossiping this week that House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) angrily told the more diminutive Sherman in front of his colleagues at a Democratic caucus meeting last week to “shut up and sit down.”

"On the martial law theme, there were a few articles mentioning “a little-noticed story…a couple of weeks ago in the Army Times newspaper about the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team.”

A little-noticed story surfaced a couple of weeks ago in the Army Times newspaper about the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team. “Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months,” reported Army Times staff writer Gina Cavallaro, “the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” Disturbingly, she writes that “they may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control” as well. DBKP http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2008/10/rep-brad-sherman-congress-threatened-with-martial-law-if-bailout-not-passed/

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Musings and Quotes for Saturday

Condensed from About.Com
"John McCain did the right thing and tapped Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running-mate.
".Palin showed a commitment to her pro-life conservative principles by not bowing to the pressure to abort her mentally-challenged child.
".Palin will be keenly aware of how her military decisions and the decisions she influences as vice-president will affect the men and women serving in the armed forces. Her oldest son, Trig, (sic) is headed to Iraq next month.
".At 44, Palin nullifies any advantage Barack Obama might have with his youth...brings a refreshing female voice to the debates and the campaign... has a likeable style and toughness .
"...earned a staggering 90-percent approval rating from her Alaskan constituents, not the easiest people to please. Her commitment to her principles and her willingness to follow through on promises makes her the toast of Alaska, the darling of the GOP and, now, the apple of the nation's eye."
Justin Quinn http://usconservatives.about.com/b/2008/08/29/alaska-gov-sarah-palin-the-right-partner-the-right-running-mate.htm

Condensed from CATO Institute for Media
"She has been a crusader against pork-barrel spending and has taken on the corrupt Alaska Republican establishment. Certainly this pick carries a great deal of risk, but it has a high upside as well." Michael D. Tanner
"Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's selection as John McCain's running mate is a political masterstroke. Always an electorally attractive choice, Palin is an even stronger selection following Barack Obama's political punt on Joe Biden. Palin checks a lot of boxes for the McCain campaign: a maverick, anti-establishment profile; a youthful, telegenic, professional woman and devoted mother; and a non-Beltway politician popular among grassroots conservatives." Patrick Basham
http://www.cato.org/pressroom.php?display=ncomments&id=137
"Palin supported and signed into law a $1.5 billion tax increase on oil companies in the form of higher severance taxes. One rule of thumb is that higher taxes cause less investment. Sure enough, State Tax Notes reported (January 7): “After ACES was passed, ConocoPhillips, Alaska’s most active oil exploration company and one of the top three producers, announced it was canceling plans to build a diesel fuel refinery at the Kuparuk oil field. ConocoPhillips blamed the cancellation on passage of ACES [the new tax]. The refinery would have allowed the company to produce low-sulfur diesel fuel onsite for its vehicles and other uses on the North Slope, rather than haul the fuel there from existing refineries.” "Chris Edwards http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/08/29/palin-uninspiring-tax-policy-record/

Condensed from Fox News.Com
" Women are not fungible.
"I don’t know if anyone sitting around with John McCain in the last few days has explained that to him; frankly, I don’t know if there even were any women sitting around with John McCain in the last few days. But, I think I understand a few things about Hillary’s base in the Democratic party, and why so many women have been so loyal to her, and if John McCain thinks that simply picking another person with similar anatomy is going to win their votes, he’s about to learn a very important lesson in gender politics." Susan Estrich http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,413525,00.html

"I appointed both Democrats and independents to serve in my administration. And I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress — I told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks,” on that bridge to nowhere.
If our state wanted a bridge, I said we’d build it ourselves. Well, it’s always, though, safer in politics to avoid risk, to just kind of go along with the status quo. But I didn’t get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not why the ship is built.
Politics isn’t just a game of competing interests and clashing parties. The people of America expect us to seek public office and to serve for the right reasons.
And the right reason is to challenge the status quo and to serve the common good. Now, no one expects us to agree on everything, whether in Juneau or in Washington. But we are expected to govern with integrity, and goodwill, and clear convictions, and a servant’s heart."
Sarah Palin http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/08/29/raw-data-sarah-palins-remarks-after-being-named-gop-vice-presidential-candidate/

Now, my own opinions are these:
I hate Obama's far left politics, and if elected he will cost this nation a lot, in terms of money, in terms of irreversible social policies such as came from the FDR's New Deal (like Social Security,) to LBJ's Great Society, whose "War on Poverty" still has young people asking by what means can we eliminate poverty, as if that is ever going to happen. You can't legislate equal pay to all persons; you can't take from the rich to give to the poor; and if you give a college education to everyone, there are still those who will make so much more than others, percentage-wise, that they will cause those who among the college educated will fail at life, to fall under the "poverty line."

But Obama is the person America needs to heal us from decades of wounds done to the self-esteem of black Americans, and to the esteem of white American's who were ashamed of what their neighbors had perpetrated on blacks. His election would give MLK's "Dream" a reality that others before Obama could never have brought. He acts like a politician, not like a black politician, such as Jesse Jackson. Oh, I admire Jackson for many things, including the teaching of
blacks in the 60's to stand up and shout, "Say it loud--I'm black and I'm proud!"

Jackson even has international foreign policy credentials which I admire: "In addition to Slobodan Milosevic, Jackson has also persuaded Hafez al-Assad, Fidel Castro, and Saddam Hussein to set American captives free." http://www.slate.com/id/1002723/

But Jackson's personality often appears to polarize America. It is an historic fact that most black American politicians are polarizing. After all, they came of age in the violent era of the Civil Rights Movement. Obama is not polarizing and doesn't come from that generation. He does not even have any American ancestors who were slaves. That has caused some of those polarizing black leaders to question Obama's "blackness."

I like Obama. I really think he thinks that left-wing policies are moral, and good for people. But how he can square up those socialistic policies with the Constitution he has taught at the college level, can only be explained by the socialistic policies that our left wing courts have allowed to pass unchecked. He comes from a generation that believes because legislation and policies within the New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society were not struck down as unConstitutional, that more of the same will be more than "ok," it will be cathartic for the younger generations who have demanded "social justice" and not gotten it.

With Obama they will get it, but they will push this nation further than it has ever gone, in the direction of Marx's proclamation that "From each [we shal steal] according to his ability [to be stolen from;] to each [we will give the stolen money] according to his needs [and according to how much we can afford to steal from those with ability.]"

That is not the kind of social justice that comes from the Constitutional dream of individual sovereignty. "Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..." Joseph J. Ellis http://www.friesian.com/ellis.htm

On the other hand, the Republicans have gone along with much of it, and when they protested against leftist socialistic legislation, they protested too quietly and rarely about the socialism that such legislation represented. It was usually about the costs, or a side issue, or it was just partisan bickering.

For the cathartic effects, and because it would, in a John-Galt fashion, hasten the failures of socialistic leaders and thinkers in this country, I seriously considered voting for Obama. As I said, he's likable, and the fact that we would have elected a likable black man, rather than having this nation ripped apart more by seeing a contentious black man in the Oval Office, would heal many wounds.

But John McCain's pick of a young female who is as likable as Obama and who has the credentials of political integrity, if not of political background, changed the race. (She is a Republican who fought against corrupt Republicans in Alaskan government--and won.)

McCain will not be "four more years of Bush" because McCain pushed Bush to change much of the policy Bush was hell-bent on following. Those two have been political enemies far longer than they have appeared to be friendly. So he voted 90% with Bush? Well, sometimes voting against a bill is worse than voting for it. I suspect that if voting against Bush would not have given ammunition to the leftists in America, McCain would have voted far less than 90% with Bush.

And now, in one brilliant stroke, he has given us the same power of catharsis, for women if not for blacks; and since Obama is not a woman, we are forced to take "catharsis" one step at a time--either in the step toward black, or toward female.

See what I mean about voting against something? In this case voting against a likable woman V.P. along with a maverick Republican Presidential candidate would be worse than voting for a likable socialistic black male candidate with a contentious white male V.P.

Have a happy and safe Labor Day Weekend.

Quotes to Get You Through the Weekend

"Money won't buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem." Bill Vaughan.

"If you want to be happy, be." Leo Tolstoy

"I am at two with nature." Woody Allen.

"Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up." Chinese Proverb

"The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the amount of money that you earn. It is the kind of person that you have to become to become a millionaire in the first place." Jim Rohn

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." Mark Twain

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence." Daniel Hudson Burnham

"Operator! Give me the number for 911!" Homer J Simpson.

"First there are those who are winners, and know they are winners. Then there are the losers who know they are losers. Then there are those who are not winners, but don't know it. They're the ones for me. They never quit trying. They're the soul of our game." Paul William "Bear" Bryant

"When we got into office, the one thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were." John F. Kennedy

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt

"One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing. When that desire is completely quenched in anyone, I think he has become something less than human.” – God in the Dock; C.S. Lewis

"Congratulations. I knew the record would stand until it was broken." Yogi Berra

"Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men — the other 999 follow women." Groucho Marx

"Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises."
Samuel Butler (1612-1680)

"I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong."Benjamin Franklin

"The price of greatness is responsibility." Winston Churchill

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream." Mark Twain

"For two people in a marriage to live together day after day is unquestionably the one miracle the Vatican has overlooked." Bill Cosby

"If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." Anatole France

"In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary."Kathleen Norris

"We can laugh at those who think spirituality the way of weakness. Paradoxically, it is the way of strength." Bill W. from the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous

"I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." Michael Jordan

Please send all comments to 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.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

Who is John Galt? A Naturalist's Letter to a Critic

Who is John Galt?

"Okay," someone wrote, "I already know who John Galt is. I read the book 'Atlas Shrugged' and want to know if anyone agrees with Galt's god-awful long speech about how people's intellectual properties should only belong to the intellectuals..."

Dear Critic: Galt spoke these words in that speech:

"We're on strike against your creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. If you want to know how I made [the strikers] quit, I told them exactly what I'm telling you tonight. I taught them the morality of Reason -- that it was right to pursue one's own happiness as one's principal goal in life. I don't consider the pleasure of others my goal in life, nor do I consider my pleasure the goal of anyone else's life.

"I am a trader. I earn what I get in trade for what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing less than what I earn. That is justice. I don't force anyone to trade with me; I only trade for mutual benefit. Force is the great evil that has no place in a rational world. One may never force another human to act against his/her judgment. If you deny a man's right to Reason, you must also deny your right to your own judgment. Yet you have allowed your world to be run by means of force, by men who claim that fear and joy are equal incentives, but that fear and force are more practical. " http://www.working-minds.com/galtmini.htm


These are the tenets of a man who recognized the natural, unalienable rights of every individual human to own what is his or hers, not just of "intellectuals." Through out the book Dagny Taggart and Hank Reardon are driving through the countryside looking at the dilapidated houses and the starving people, and wondering how America and the entire world could have been brought to this situation by their leaders, whom the people trusted. When they are not driving, they see in their minds the poor, the starving, the destitute of soul. In a world governed by the recognition of naturalistic philosphy, such as the Unites States once was, such poor, starving, and destitute people were being lifted out of the mud, not put back into it.


It is against the elite leaders, who believe they know what's best for the people, that Galt deplores. Under author Ayn Rand's system of laissez faire capitalism, every man and woman would be enabled of their birthright, as opposed to "being allowed by government," to do whatever--repeat whatever--he/she wanted to do with their lives, their minds, their property, so long as they did not use the initiation of force to overwhelm the same birth-given rights of another person. "Unalienable" does not mean the government cannot, with enough power and coercion, prevent you from using your rights; it can, illegally and with tyranny. "Unalienable" means birth-given.


Equality comes from the freedom from that force and coercion of government, but government ideas come from the elite who gain power and twist the Constitution to mean what they want it to mean. Did you ever stop to wonder why our government has such power over us, when the Founders clearly meant to limit such power? The elite at one time were our saviors; now they are the ones who would betray us for a handful of gold, or for that power to decide "the common good."

There is a difference between "the common good," which on its face sounds like equality, and "the common defence and general Welfare" used in the Constitution as the purposes of that document. The "common good" is a concept to either run from, or better yet, to destroy, because there is no "common good" but what is good for each individual as individuals. The "general Welfare" means the protection of the rights of individuals, not the collection of power to be used over individuals to provide for some undefined "higher value" than the rights of single human being to exist in the state that nature provided for him, the state of being a rational animal so that he would know how to provide for his own good.


In the Fourteenth Amendment was created the new concept of "citizens of the United States," a class of citizen which until then did not exist. That class of citizen is directly under the control of the Federal Government, which was the intended purpose of that clause of the Amendment, but not for the purposes of a more powerful government in general. The newly-minted power of the Federal Government that came with control of this new class of citizen was intended by the Radical Republicans to be used to immediately stop the abuses of the "Freedmen" that were not stopped by the Thirteenth Amendment. But since then, it has been used for every thing under the sun, by the newly-minted class of elites created by that clause. Anyone who dares use that clause for anything but the protection of individuals is an elitist who would take your birth-given rights because they don't see individuals; they see "classes." The Freedmen were seen as a class of men, not as individuals who merely fit the profile of those whose protection the Fourteenth was intended to protect.


That is what Rand's book is about--the loss of reason and sanity to be found in the tyrannical control of classes of people. It is universally recognized in our nation that laws may not be written to target any individual, nor to be used against only one individual; but it is as equally recognized that laws may be targeted against classes of citizens. No, today's America is hardly a "tyranny" in the classical sense. But then, today's political situation would be a very intolerable "classical" tyranny to the Founders and they would decry the creation of such a political entity as a "citizen of the United States," controlled by the Federal Government. Their intended plan for freedom was exactly the opposite, that the "control" was in the consent of those being controlled, and that could only come from the rights of the States to protect its citizens from the tyranny of a Federal Government out of control with power.


"Your acceptance of the code of selflessness," Galt spoke, referring to this fictional time in the world when the morality of absolute altrusim, "has made you fear the man who has a dollar less than you because it makes you feel that that dollar is rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar more than you because the dollar he's keeping is rightfully yours. Your code has made it impossible to know when to give and when to grab."

Such altruism comes from the propaganda of a thing the elites call the "common good." What they define as "good" is less individual power over one's own life, so that the masses have the power over individuals. This is nothing less than the mentality of gangs.


But Galt is also speaking to the altruist in all of us right now, because the world in "Atlas Shrugged" is Rand's vision of the logical-extremist ends of the domestic and international policies our government has been following for 60 decades or more. Both of our current Presidential candidates have admitted that the $700,000,000,000 a year we pay for foreign oil and foreign aid is often spent in nations that hate us and who would use that capital to do us harm. That is the altruism of a nation only wishes in good faith to help spread the good fortune of America's wealth. Both candidates agree this altruism must stop. But only one of them says the intellectual rights of oil producers in this country should be given back, and then only to alleviate a problem for consumers (the common good), not because it is the right thing to do for the producers.

Galt is also giving confirmation to the rational humans who understand the purpose of the strikers in the novel, and to the common man both in the novel and in the reality of today who understands why the leaders of industry have disappeared, gone on strike, to leave the economy to distintigrate further and faster, like a train out of control.


The common man who understands the purpose of the strikers cheers for them, he does not condemn them. He wishes he could go on strike and join them. Those common people understand, and part of the purpose of Galt's speech is to vindicate them. In parts of the speech he speaks directly to them, telling them they are not morally wrong, that they are right, and that when the elites get their heads out of their as*es, the leaders of industry will return.


You need to read the book, not just take the speech out of context without seeing the miserable way in which the common people are living, and the compassion the book's heros have for those people. The character of Eddie Willers was purposefully meant to represent them--you, me us, and anyone who is not a Bill Gates, Suze Orman, Warren Buffet, Martha Stewart, or a T. Boone Pickens, the very people who would go on strike in a real "Atlas Shrugged" world--with dignity and grace.


Let's hope you get some common sense of your own and wake up to the freedoms Rand was trying to instill in you. She was Jefferson, she was Thomas Paine, she was Madison, she was the Federalist Papers, she was the Constitution, as they were intended to be remembered and used.


"Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals—that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government—that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens’ protection against the government.


"A complex legal system, based on objectively valid principles, is required to make a society free and to keep it free—a system that does not depend on the motives, the moral character or the intentions of any given official, a system that leaves no opportunity, no legal loophole for the development of tyranny.


"The American system of checks and balances was just such an achievement. And although certain contradictions in the Constitution did leave a loophole for the growth of statism, the incomparable achievement was the concept of a constitution as a means of limiting and restricting the power of the government." from “The Nature of Government,” in "The Virtue of Selfishness"; Rand.


"Ours was the first government based on and strictly limited by a written document—the Constitution—which specifically forbids it to violate individual rights or to act on whim. The history of the atrocities perpetrated by all the other kinds of governments—unrestricted governments acting on unprovable assumptions—demonstrates the value and validity of the original political theory on which this country was built.


"The clause giving Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce is one of the major errors in the Constitution. That clause, more than any other, was the crack in the Constitution’s foundation, the entering wedge of statism, which permitted the gradual establishment of the welfare state. But I would venture to say that the framers of the Constitution could not have conceived of what that clause has now become. If, in writing it, one of their goals was to facilitate the flow of trade and prevent the establishment of trade barriers among the states, that clause has reached the opposite destination." from“Censorship: Local and Express,” in "Philosophy: Who Needs It"; Rand


"This country," Galt said, "wasn't built by men who sought handouts. In its brilliant youth, this country showed the rest of the world what greatness was possible to Man and what happiness is possible on Earth."


Do you think it was the "intellectuals" who put their backs and brawn into building railroads, bridges, dams, and skyscrapers? Do you think it was "intellectuals" who were the first to be told they were valuable enough to earn $5 a day in Henry Ford's car factories? Ford was the "intellectual" in that situation, and he knew that their worth to him was to reward them by making them the best-paid employees on the planet in their day.


It was to those types of people that Galt was speaking when he said, "[T]hose of you who retain some remnant of dignity and the will to live your lives for yourselves" will quit living "with undeserved, irrational guilt," guilt born of accusations of "selfishness" that we use more resources per capita than other nations; in effect, what has come to be called "conspicuous consumption." If Americans quit consuming as much as they did, the rest of the world would go broke. As soon as other nations' peoples can afford to consume as much as we do, they will do so.


So long as what we consume is paid for, the people of the nations we buy the raw material or the finished goods from make out like bandits--as well they should. But in the world of "Atlas Shrugged," it is those other nations that fall first--because America has come to believe in its own guilt, and in an attempt to attone in the only way such guilt allows atonement, lets down the rest of the world. One by one, the destitute nations who accepted altruism much quicker and easier than America are taken over by the same tyrannical despots who have come to control the United States.


In a comparison of the Ten Planks of Marx's "Communist Manifesto" along with the American adopted counterpart of each of the planks, Marx stated in the "Manifesto" that these planks will test whether a country has become commmunist or not.


Plank #1 was: Abolition of private property and the application of all rent to public purpose. In the U.S. this is becoming implemented through the 14th Amendment, and various zoning, school & property taxes, as well as the Bureau of Land Management. (For a comparrison of all 10 Planks against America's implementation of them, see http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/10planks.htm . Some of them are arguable; some of them could contain many more breaches by the Government than are listed.)


Galt knew that we commoners needed the intellectuals, and it was intellectuals he talked into striking with him. How did he get these self-made, wealthy business and industry leaders walk away from their businesses to leave them to rot or to go to the "looters"?


He told them they did not deserve the way their government treated them. He told them that if they treated their own workers that way, the workers would strike against him. He told them they were the only thing, the only people, propping up the tyrrany of the government that made slaves of them by controlling their industries for their own purposes.

Today we have laws governing virtually every industry from automobiles to drugs to bread manufacture. At one time there was a law that prevented anything that resembed today's nutritious whole grain breads from being called "bread." Bread was defined by its ingredients and were bland, bleached, or robbed of all nutrition. There was a law that prevented 2% milk from being called "milk." The inventor of 2% is still alive (as far as I know), so that law was not so long ago. Neither was law against calling "nutritous baked wheat loaves" by name of "bread."

The right to control such things as new foods, new accessories on cars, new methods of fueling those cars, and especially drugs because they are so large in our culture and our news the right to much longer property rights on drugs that cost hundred of millions of dollars to invent, test and market--the rights of control are "intellectual" property rights, and they properly belong to those who invent them. The rights to control them do not belong to the people except under tightly defined parameters, such as the length of time a patent shall be held before its expiration.

But such things have been shortened for "the common good," to make generics available. "Generics" are the elites' code word for stolen property, because they had to shorten the patent rights in order to get "generics." Now is it any wonder that drug companies must charge exhoribant prices to get a return that will allow them to continue to operate?

So yes, Dear Critic, intellectual property rights do belong to the intellectuals, not to the "people." Patent rights on drugs are no different than those on toys. After a certain period of time, should every toy manufacturer have the "right" to produce their own Barbie Doll, or their own Madden Football, or their own competing Chicago Bears team or their own competing IPods? Those are products that belong to the intellectual who created them when "intellectual" is defined as a branded product created by a human mind.

It is one thing to start a competing football team; it is a completely different thing to steal a trademarked name, which is a branded product created by human minds, and give the right to manufacture it to every Dick and Mary who has enough money to do so. If Dick and Mary cannot create their own Prozac, Dick and Mary have no business, legal, moral, or otherwise to use the intellectual possessions of other individuals, any more than you or I should have the right to start a team and call them the Detroit Tigers.

Intellectual property is the property of an intellect; intellect belongs to individuals, not mobs, gangs, or elites who represent the common good. Naturalism is about the place of individuals in the society of men, in the conditions created by living on earth, and those conditions create not only birth-given rights to freedom from physical force and coercion, but intellectual birth-given rights, without which no mind would be free to conceive of new ideas, and without which all intellectuals should go on strike.

Please send all comments to mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.

This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®