Why must I always be contrarian? How can I not be when in the cyber company of the silent macsnority asleep at the wheel of the vehicle of reason? The comments of Rand Paul drew much less reaction than their provocative nature would have prophesized. It lends weight to my contention that many of the blogger class focus on defending the labels by which they identify, and allow ludicrous renditions of their creed to by-pass rudimentary inspection for reasonableness or validity. Many Libertarians defend Mr. Paul’s revisionist view on the raison d’être and necessity of Civil Rights legislation, because as a Libertarian he is entitled to free speech and his opinions on the uses and role of government. They convert the argument to a debate over his right to his views and deemphasize the thesis that emerged from his befuddled Libertarian mind.
I am as Libertarian as the next person, preferring government to enter my sphere of life when invited and otherwise remaining distant and remote. But I also recognize that government in some form or another is as inseparable from human society as marriage, speech, writing, and economy. Even the most aggressive Libertarian wouldn’t advocate for the total absence of government, over the benefits of mutuality inherent in some level of government; especially government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The very inclusion of diverse opinion should impose necessary restrictions on over-reaching government, if the political process is assiduously embraced by the governed. And I believe Libertarianism is a welcome and legitimate voice. But Mr. Paul’s logic was all wrong.
He opined that in his ideal world private businesses should not have been required, by government mandate, to serve or contract with anyone they chose not to enjoin with. If they chose to make race the demarcation place, then they should have been free to do so. If you want to factor Libertarianism to the last decimal point this may be a valid argument, but taken to that degree you are faced with an extremity that merges with impractical idiocy.
If black people paid taxes that allowed roads to be built so that customers could travel to stores, if they were complicit in sidewalks being laid, if their contribution to the public utilities that allowed businesses to be lighted and heated and caused telephones to ring is considered, and if they paid sales tax on items purchased using universally accepted government- issued legal tender, and if none of these obligations were exempted, reduced, or mediated due to race, then it is hard to understand how, because of race, they could be denied the benefits of the commerce and convenience their dollars helped make available to others. There was nothing Libertarian about Jim Crow. It was wicked, evil, ignorant exploitation that totally avoided concepts of citizenship and fairness, and was based exclusively on racism.
At this point I feel no need to elaborate further or be more in-depth than was Senatorial-candidate Paul, but I do have another question. Why now? Why in this era of fiscal crisis, two budget busting permanent wars, environmental catastrophe, international turmoil and economic threat, and Big Brother masquerading as OnStar, did Mr. Paul choose to re-open forty year old settled law concerning Civil Rights, absent a precipitating racial incident that caused societal attention to wander in that direction? Are there no other areas of discomfort that could be expected to be more in the forefront of a Libertarian’s mind? Or is a sitting black President an affront to Libertarianism? Stealthy racial incitement is a First Amendment entitlement, but doesn’t assuage a cursory consideration of Mr. Paul’s ruminations which seem only to reveal, not positive or well-meaning philosophical or social insight, but cynical political pandering to the sick, reactionary troglodytes who always surface when the rock of change is upended?
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Et tu. Thomas
Thomas Sowell wrote an article yesterday entitled, “Enough Money”, where he took issue with a statement made by the President to the effect that there is a point where people should feel they have “enough money”. Mr. Sowell chose to interpret this as the President proposing an official cap on income. I think reasonable people realize the President was talking about a psychological state of being rather than an economic circumstance. In my opinion Mr. Obama was drawing on a lesson learned from one of Aesop’s fables more so than Marxism 101. Mr. Sowell strained his considerable abilities trying to lay bricks in this particularly foolish conservative façade. He sought by rhetorical stealth, followed by shock and awe, to assault common sense with unrefined antinomies and inapt associations to the French Revolution; attempting to paint the President’s statement as an ultra vires call to class warfare rather than as the colloquialism it was. Mr. Sowell hadn’t always been prone to such Procrustean artifices. I suppose it is just another harbinger of the miasma of our ultra-partisan political environment.
(Mr. Sowell’s articles can be accessed from The Drudge Report, Town Hall, and other sites.)
(Mr. Sowell’s articles can be accessed from The Drudge Report, Town Hall, and other sites.)
Monday, May 17, 2010
Constitutional Palladium
During the campaign and then from the day of election it has been advanced that this administration, and Democrats in general, have a peculiar animosity towards the Second Amendment. I am not aware of any initiatives launched by the current Federal administration to alter or redefine the Constitutional status quo. What I see are local, usually urban, attempts to stem the proliferation of guns in their environments, which lead to philosophical debates on the appropriateness of elements of 18th century thinking and its universal application in 21st century America. There hasn’t been an administration in my lifetime where this issue hasn’t come up for judicial review at least once. It is a reliably controversial issue for partisan firebrands to hang their hats on and invoke fear of the dastardly intentions of the latest elected tyrants. But are our attentions properly focused?
I understand the various arguments, from questions of original intent posed by differing drafts of the Constitution where the right of the People or people, and a well regulated Militia or militia, were alternately capitalized, or implications drawn from the wording of the Articles of Confederation, to the contention that the right to bear arms pre-exists the Constitution and the amendment does not grant or invent the “ natural” right, but directly prevents infringement of it by the government coming into being. Our demotic contemporary conflict of opinion seldom touches on such legalistic esoterica, but usually center around personal protection from criminals and the perils posed by any and all governments disposed by the opium of power to tyranny.
The latter fear, recently stoked by Mrs. Palin, among others, is to me especially intellectually provocative. The juxtaposition of the fear of repressive government, and a society that blithely accedes to that government military funding that exceeds that of all the other nations on earth combined, is seemingly tempting fate. The increasing erosion of the restraints of posse comitatus under the guise of homeland security, and the unchecked powers afforded government by The Patriot Act, makes me wonder if the Rubicon of the Second Amendment has become an insignificant obstacle, whose breach can’t be stopped by the handguns and rifles of the people.
I understand the various arguments, from questions of original intent posed by differing drafts of the Constitution where the right of the People or people, and a well regulated Militia or militia, were alternately capitalized, or implications drawn from the wording of the Articles of Confederation, to the contention that the right to bear arms pre-exists the Constitution and the amendment does not grant or invent the “ natural” right, but directly prevents infringement of it by the government coming into being. Our demotic contemporary conflict of opinion seldom touches on such legalistic esoterica, but usually center around personal protection from criminals and the perils posed by any and all governments disposed by the opium of power to tyranny.
The latter fear, recently stoked by Mrs. Palin, among others, is to me especially intellectually provocative. The juxtaposition of the fear of repressive government, and a society that blithely accedes to that government military funding that exceeds that of all the other nations on earth combined, is seemingly tempting fate. The increasing erosion of the restraints of posse comitatus under the guise of homeland security, and the unchecked powers afforded government by The Patriot Act, makes me wonder if the Rubicon of the Second Amendment has become an insignificant obstacle, whose breach can’t be stopped by the handguns and rifles of the people.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Scrutinize Wall Street
On one of the Sunday news shows a couple of reporters explained why they felt the civil and legal actions against Goldman Sachs were questionable. Apart from various perceived technical flaws in the charges, they felt the dire and largely misunderstood “financial meltdown” unreasonably sponsored this ill- conceived, knee-jerk finger pointing, and undeserved demonization of Wall Street titans.
The defense of Goldman Sachs commenced in the argument that they (Sachs) were only “making a market”; that is, simply bringing together a seller and a buyer. Under this scenario it was submitted that Goldman Sachs neither offered nor incurred any fiduciary responsibility to either party. And, after the market was “made”, as denoted by the completed sale between seller and buyer, any of the parties to the transaction could subsequently act in their own interests and make any speculations about the future disposition of the transacted financial instrument, by way of insurance or any other method, as they saw fit. This, it was inferred, is archetypal specialized knowledge and procedure that laypersons are unlikely to be familiar with and therefore their visceral reaction to the ugly appearance of the transaction is prejudiced by ignorance of sophisticated business practices. The modus operandi that resulted in the gross enrichment of one party and the bankruptcy of the other, it is asserted, is the normal verity of risk, and are simply one capitalist guessing right and the other guessing wrong, and do not signify any legal or ethical violation that should arouse any governmental or regulatory intervention. There is a circumscribed legitimate sphere for this attitude, but as regards this exemplar, I believe the government has a necessary and activist role to play.
The conventional political antagonism in our society is between those who would like the government to exercise its discretion either more conservatively, or liberally. But what is often forgotten is that government is not constructed as either conservative or liberal; it is just ‘government’, and gets its direction and instruction from the political process. An examination of the Constitution will not find any mention of the words capitalism, socialism, conservative, or liberal. If the contemporaneous culture wants to conduct its economic affairs capitalistically, socialistically, any hybrid of the two, or employ some opportune future system not yet devised, it will find no mandate codified in our founding document restricting the preference to any particular system of economic arrangement. And neither will any special dispensation for practitioners of any particular economic philosophy currently be found. So, even if the transaction(s) of Goldman Sachs are in compliance with the normal rules and shenanigans accepted among and between capitalists themselves, this doesn’t place them beyond review of a government charged to promote (and presumably protect) the general welfare. There is no binding ecumenical conclusion requiring that activities which grossly enrich a few, while simultaneously being the etiology of a wide and growing swath of social destruction, must be tacitly accepted as sacrosanct components of some catholic economic format. If it is accepted that government can regulate particular activities of capitalists based on “environmental impact”, it would seem to suggest that dubious gadgets such as Derivatives and Credit Default Swaps wouldn’t be entitled to immunity from review or regulation simply because they represent creativity and intellectual invention; especially when the invention’s ultimate value and utility to the general welfare becomes empirically debatable. And, I think it is appropriate and warranted for government to scrutinize methodologies and attached implications, where the conceptualization and marketing of failure is incentivized. The raison d’être of our government is not to validate capitalism, but to be the referee in the various affairs and interests of the public.
So, let the investigations in Congress and/ or the courts go on. I am not saying this to provocatively take a side in the petty differences of political parties, or because of some fascination with the fraternal bickering of lawyers. But my concern is for the fate of popular democratic government if it loses the power to underwrite the only real ‘currency’ of social order, namely the predictability of human behavior, if by way of these increasingly fanciful and exotic abstractions, it is revealed that the already fragile illusion of ‘money’ has clearly and harmfully devolved into unintelligible mathematical formulations fabricated primarily to enrich self-interested Plutocrats? Elements of capitalism are incompatible with decent democracy, and consequently, our government of the people, by the people, and for the people, is obligated to address these issues.
The defense of Goldman Sachs commenced in the argument that they (Sachs) were only “making a market”; that is, simply bringing together a seller and a buyer. Under this scenario it was submitted that Goldman Sachs neither offered nor incurred any fiduciary responsibility to either party. And, after the market was “made”, as denoted by the completed sale between seller and buyer, any of the parties to the transaction could subsequently act in their own interests and make any speculations about the future disposition of the transacted financial instrument, by way of insurance or any other method, as they saw fit. This, it was inferred, is archetypal specialized knowledge and procedure that laypersons are unlikely to be familiar with and therefore their visceral reaction to the ugly appearance of the transaction is prejudiced by ignorance of sophisticated business practices. The modus operandi that resulted in the gross enrichment of one party and the bankruptcy of the other, it is asserted, is the normal verity of risk, and are simply one capitalist guessing right and the other guessing wrong, and do not signify any legal or ethical violation that should arouse any governmental or regulatory intervention. There is a circumscribed legitimate sphere for this attitude, but as regards this exemplar, I believe the government has a necessary and activist role to play.
The conventional political antagonism in our society is between those who would like the government to exercise its discretion either more conservatively, or liberally. But what is often forgotten is that government is not constructed as either conservative or liberal; it is just ‘government’, and gets its direction and instruction from the political process. An examination of the Constitution will not find any mention of the words capitalism, socialism, conservative, or liberal. If the contemporaneous culture wants to conduct its economic affairs capitalistically, socialistically, any hybrid of the two, or employ some opportune future system not yet devised, it will find no mandate codified in our founding document restricting the preference to any particular system of economic arrangement. And neither will any special dispensation for practitioners of any particular economic philosophy currently be found. So, even if the transaction(s) of Goldman Sachs are in compliance with the normal rules and shenanigans accepted among and between capitalists themselves, this doesn’t place them beyond review of a government charged to promote (and presumably protect) the general welfare. There is no binding ecumenical conclusion requiring that activities which grossly enrich a few, while simultaneously being the etiology of a wide and growing swath of social destruction, must be tacitly accepted as sacrosanct components of some catholic economic format. If it is accepted that government can regulate particular activities of capitalists based on “environmental impact”, it would seem to suggest that dubious gadgets such as Derivatives and Credit Default Swaps wouldn’t be entitled to immunity from review or regulation simply because they represent creativity and intellectual invention; especially when the invention’s ultimate value and utility to the general welfare becomes empirically debatable. And, I think it is appropriate and warranted for government to scrutinize methodologies and attached implications, where the conceptualization and marketing of failure is incentivized. The raison d’être of our government is not to validate capitalism, but to be the referee in the various affairs and interests of the public.
So, let the investigations in Congress and/ or the courts go on. I am not saying this to provocatively take a side in the petty differences of political parties, or because of some fascination with the fraternal bickering of lawyers. But my concern is for the fate of popular democratic government if it loses the power to underwrite the only real ‘currency’ of social order, namely the predictability of human behavior, if by way of these increasingly fanciful and exotic abstractions, it is revealed that the already fragile illusion of ‘money’ has clearly and harmfully devolved into unintelligible mathematical formulations fabricated primarily to enrich self-interested Plutocrats? Elements of capitalism are incompatible with decent democracy, and consequently, our government of the people, by the people, and for the people, is obligated to address these issues.
News and Views
On one of the Sunday news shows a couple of reporters explained why they felt the civil and legal actions against Goldman Sachs were questionable. Apart from various perceived technical flaws in the charges, they felt the dire and largely misunderstood “financial meltdown” unreasonably sponsored this ill- conceived, knee-jerk finger pointing, and demonization of Wall Street titans.
The defense of Goldman Sachs commenced in the argument that they (Sachs) were only “making a market”; that is, simply bringing together a seller and a buyer. Under this scenario it was submitted that Goldman Sachs neither offered nor incurred any fiduciary responsibility to either party. And, after the market was “made”, as denoted by the completed sale between seller and buyer, any of the parties to the transaction could subsequently act in their own interests and make any speculations about the future disposition of the transacted financial instrument, by way of insurance or any other method, as they saw fit. This, it was inferred, is archetypal specialized knowledge and procedure that laypersons are unlikely to be familiar with and therefore their visceral reaction to the ugly appearance of the transaction is prejudiced by ignorance of sophisticated business practices. The modus operandi that resulted in the gross enrichment of one party and the bankruptcy of the other, it is asserted, is the normal verity of risk, and are simply one capitalist guessing right and the other guessing wrong, and do not signify any legal or ethical violation that should arouse any governmental or regulatory intervention. There is a circumscribed legitimate sphere for this attitude, but as regards this exemplar, I believe the government has a necessary and activist role to play.
The conventional political antagonism in our society is between those who would like the government to exercise its discretion either more conservatively, or liberally. But what is often forgotten is that government is not constructed as either conservative or liberal; it is just ‘government’, and gets its direction and instruction from the political process. An examination of the Constitution will not find any mention of the words capitalism, socialism, conservative, or liberal. If the contemporaneous culture wants to conduct its economic affairs capitalistically, socialistically, any hybrid of the two, or employ some opportune future system not yet devised, it will find no mandate codified in our founding document restricting the preference to any particular system of economic arrangement. And neither will any special dispensation for practitioners of any particular economic philosophy currently be found. So, even if the transaction(s) of Goldman Sachs are in compliance with the normal rules and shenanigans accepted among and between capitalists themselves, this doesn’t place them beyond review of a government charged to promote (and presumably protect) the general welfare. There is no binding ecumenical conclusion requiring that activities which grossly enrich a few, while simultaneously being the etiology of a wide and growing swath of social destruction, must be tacitly accepted as sacrosanct components of some catholic economic format. If it is accepted that government can regulate particular activities of capitalists based on “environmental impact”, it would seem to suggest that dubious gadgets such as Derivatives and Credit Default Swaps wouldn’t be entitled to immunity from review or regulation simply because they represent creativity and intellectual invention; especially when the invention’s ultimate value and utility to the general welfare becomes empirically debatable. And, I think it is appropriate and warranted for government to scrutinize methodologies and attached implications, where the conceptualization and marketing of failure is incentivized. The raison d’être of our government is not to validate capitalism, but to be the referee in the various affairs and interests of the public.
So, let the investigations in Congress and/ or the courts go on. I am not saying this to provocatively take a side in the petty differences of political parties, or because of some fascination with the fraternal bickering of lawyers. But I fear the fate of popular democratic government if it loses the power to underwrite the only real ‘currency’ of social order, namely the predictability of human behavior, if by way of these increasingly fanciful and exotic abstractions, it is revealed that the already fragile illusion of ‘money’ has clearly and harmfully devolved into unintelligible mathematical formulations fabricated primarily to enrich self-interested Plutocrats? Elements of capitalism are incompatible with decent democracy, and consequently, our government of the people, by the people, and for the people, is obligated to address these issues.
The defense of Goldman Sachs commenced in the argument that they (Sachs) were only “making a market”; that is, simply bringing together a seller and a buyer. Under this scenario it was submitted that Goldman Sachs neither offered nor incurred any fiduciary responsibility to either party. And, after the market was “made”, as denoted by the completed sale between seller and buyer, any of the parties to the transaction could subsequently act in their own interests and make any speculations about the future disposition of the transacted financial instrument, by way of insurance or any other method, as they saw fit. This, it was inferred, is archetypal specialized knowledge and procedure that laypersons are unlikely to be familiar with and therefore their visceral reaction to the ugly appearance of the transaction is prejudiced by ignorance of sophisticated business practices. The modus operandi that resulted in the gross enrichment of one party and the bankruptcy of the other, it is asserted, is the normal verity of risk, and are simply one capitalist guessing right and the other guessing wrong, and do not signify any legal or ethical violation that should arouse any governmental or regulatory intervention. There is a circumscribed legitimate sphere for this attitude, but as regards this exemplar, I believe the government has a necessary and activist role to play.
The conventional political antagonism in our society is between those who would like the government to exercise its discretion either more conservatively, or liberally. But what is often forgotten is that government is not constructed as either conservative or liberal; it is just ‘government’, and gets its direction and instruction from the political process. An examination of the Constitution will not find any mention of the words capitalism, socialism, conservative, or liberal. If the contemporaneous culture wants to conduct its economic affairs capitalistically, socialistically, any hybrid of the two, or employ some opportune future system not yet devised, it will find no mandate codified in our founding document restricting the preference to any particular system of economic arrangement. And neither will any special dispensation for practitioners of any particular economic philosophy currently be found. So, even if the transaction(s) of Goldman Sachs are in compliance with the normal rules and shenanigans accepted among and between capitalists themselves, this doesn’t place them beyond review of a government charged to promote (and presumably protect) the general welfare. There is no binding ecumenical conclusion requiring that activities which grossly enrich a few, while simultaneously being the etiology of a wide and growing swath of social destruction, must be tacitly accepted as sacrosanct components of some catholic economic format. If it is accepted that government can regulate particular activities of capitalists based on “environmental impact”, it would seem to suggest that dubious gadgets such as Derivatives and Credit Default Swaps wouldn’t be entitled to immunity from review or regulation simply because they represent creativity and intellectual invention; especially when the invention’s ultimate value and utility to the general welfare becomes empirically debatable. And, I think it is appropriate and warranted for government to scrutinize methodologies and attached implications, where the conceptualization and marketing of failure is incentivized. The raison d’être of our government is not to validate capitalism, but to be the referee in the various affairs and interests of the public.
So, let the investigations in Congress and/ or the courts go on. I am not saying this to provocatively take a side in the petty differences of political parties, or because of some fascination with the fraternal bickering of lawyers. But I fear the fate of popular democratic government if it loses the power to underwrite the only real ‘currency’ of social order, namely the predictability of human behavior, if by way of these increasingly fanciful and exotic abstractions, it is revealed that the already fragile illusion of ‘money’ has clearly and harmfully devolved into unintelligible mathematical formulations fabricated primarily to enrich self-interested Plutocrats? Elements of capitalism are incompatible with decent democracy, and consequently, our government of the people, by the people, and for the people, is obligated to address these issues.
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