The Gas

http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/CT_clinker27_12-27-07_328BGDN_v8.2a70d43.html

Fairweather Libertarians

The insurgent campaign of Ron Paul is fascinating for several reasons, but the most intriguing aspect of Paul's candidacy is his unapologetic libertarianism. Previous would-be spoilers such as Jesse Jackson or Pat Robertson enjoyed genuine support, but neither of them espoused positions as fundamentally at odds with the status quo writ large as has Ron Paul.

Libertarianism is a stance the speaks directly to the holder's beliefs; libertarians believe in libertarianism. But what do Democrats believe in? Democracy? Don't most of us believe in democracy? What do Republicans believe in? The Republic? Don't most of us believe in the Republic? Isn't it, in fact, impossible to be an American without believing in both democracy and the Republic?

The vapid nature of our modern political discourse is betrayed in the very names of the parties: Republican and Democrat. It's just drivel, the sort of drivel reflected in talking points about "a comprehensive approach" or "protecting the American people".

Democracy in Great Britain is inferior to ours in some aspects, but at least their parties are unabashedly called "Conservative" and "Liberal/Labour". Such straightforwardness is rare in our "Democratic Republic".

It is clear that a third way is needed. Actually, since the two "ways" offered at present are so similar as to be indistinguishable, it would be more precise to say that a second way is needed.

To say that the Democrats and Republicans are substantially different is akin to saying that green and red apples are substantially different; they are, but only if nothing else if for sale. When shopping in the marketplace of ideas, how lazy do we have to be to focus on the apples and ignore all the other produce, never mind the grains and meat?

When assessing the major challenges facing the Republic today, some manifestation of libertarianism is clearly the best option. America's problems today are primarily financial, and they stem from two overreaches which libertarianism is uniquely equipped to remedy.

Global garrisons and insolvent entitlements are 90% of the financial problem. Put simply, America is promising to fulfill its promises to its own citizens with Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, and America is also promising to police the world. And America does not have the money for both of these delusions in the short term or either of them in the medium term.

Democrats occasionally propose cutting military expenditures, but not nearly often enough to betray actual conviction; they have been, are, and always will be without the courage to honestly critique American imperialism.

Republicans assail the social mandates rather than the military machine, and they do so far more aggressively than Democrats challenge the Pentagon. While the Republicans deserve credit for making a strong stand against one money pit, they deserve condemnation for choosing the wrong dragon to slay; how many Americans would rather pay to pacify Fallujah than be guaranteed to get their own money back via Social Security?

The only person to honestly critique both the empire and the mandates is Ron Paul. He does what is easy for Republicans; he rightly criticizes Social Security as harboring a suicide gene. As soon as retirees outnumber wage earners, which will be soon, Social Security will crash and millions of folks will lose their money for the sin of forcibly investing in the United States government.

Paul goes further, though; he dares to call the American empire what it is: a money and morality pit which strips us of material and moral might. He is the only person running for president who will dare assert the obvious: there are people on earth whom the United States has wronged.

The problem with Paul's supporters, however, is that many of them are fairweather libertarians. They want the government to step back when it suits their own agenda, but when it does not, they argue for an intrusive government.

For example, Paul's devastatingly logical critique of the Iraq War appeals to many liberals. They feign support for Paul, but they would never abide his ideology as applied to anything other than American militarism. They would use his logic to end the war, but they would not use his logic to abolish the IRS or the Department of Education.

In kind, many conservatives applaud Paul's rhetoric of government restriction in terms of education or taxation, but they will still hold that the government should legislate sexual morality or fund and train the police force in Baquba.

If you are not, on some level, frightened of following a new path, then that path is not new at all. Enlightenment and liberation requires sacrifice and faith. To follow libertarianism, everyone must let go of some of their concepts of the proper role of government.

Liberals must accept that people should be left with their own money rather than having the government hold it for them, with the implicit premise that the government is wiser than the citizens. Right now the government is run by George W. Bush. Is George W. Bush wiser than you?

Conservatives must accept that, if the government has no right to tell a man in Raleigh where to send his child to school, then the government has no right to tell a man in Ramadi when he can leave his house.

The beauty of letting go is the resultant liberation. Liberty is often scary, as it implicitly rejects the security of paternalism. But if we value "democracy" and the "republic" as much as our prior votes for president imply, then libertarianism is the only American way.

The Evolution of Revolution

The truly world-changing revolutions that have occurred in the history of civilization are far fewer than one might think. In terms of political revolutions, there are only a handful around which history actually pivots in a very real sense.

Scientific revolutions, broadly defined, have been inestimably important in the progress of civilization, of course, but scientific leaps are rare in societies that are not relatively freer than their contemporaries, despite of how their definitions of "freedom" may pale under our presentist Kleig lights. This is why it may be said that political revolutions lead to scientific revolutions.

Here are the five political revolutions which most define the present, in chronological order:

1. The adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire 312

2. The American Revolution 1776

3. The French Revolution 1789

4. The Russian Revolution 1917

5. The Iranian Revolution 1979

A cursory glance shows us that politics was overwhelmingly static, in terms of fundamental upheaval, from the early first millennium to the late second millennium.

While I am of the opinion that Christ was Romanized far more than Rome was Christianized, the adaptation of the most powerful political entity in world history to date of a nominally pacifistic and egalitarian religion was an earthquake by any measure. The remaining four revolutions of the handful are unthinkable without this shift, despite its legion and well-documented destructive aftershocks.

The American Revolution was quite simply the most important thing that has ever happened, if one deems freedom, in a palpable rather than a Hallmark sense, to have concrete meaning and value and manifestation. The American Revolution has been castigated by modern liberals as the pet project of a racist and oligarchic elite, but this is an absurd exercise in relativism.

The Declaration of Independence represented the first time in the history of the world that individuals with real political and military authority defined the purpose of the government as the protection of the equal rights of all citizens.

We take this for granted, just as we take for granted unlimited and affordable supplies of food and clean water, but there was a time, a long time, lest we forget, when there was no guarantee of food or clean water, never mind freedom of speech or free legal representation.

Put simply, the American Revolution took more power away from the few with the guns and the money than any other thing that had ever happened.

The Declaration was not followed, of course, for nearly two centuries; we all know the saga of slavery and segregation. But the very fact that the Declaration existed made it certain that it would be fulfilled, albeit far too late for millions. The Constitution of the United States is the practical, cumulative, and uniquely legitimate tool for turning the Declaration's ideological wind into concrete and federally-protected reality.

To say that the American Revolution was not the most radical manifestation of dignity and community that has occurred in modern history is like arguing that the pyramids are unimpressive because they are not as tall as the Sears Tower; it entirely misses the point.

The French Revolution, to many liberals, was the fulfilment of the promises of the American Revolution. People that adopt this view are more likely to be apologists for Stalin and Mao as well, since the French, Russian, and Chinese Revolutions all descended into pornographic scales of murder and terror that only a willfully-blinded ideologue could excuse with such pithy exercises in amoral ism as, "you need to break some eggs to make an omelet."

The French Revolution was the American Revolution on acid. And it was a bad trip. It was a precursor to the Russian, Cuban, and Iranian Revolutions, in which a progressive coalition overthrows a calcified despotism, only to have the fringe elements proceed to purge the less radical elements from the new power structure.

The French Revolution descended not only into a nihilistic orgy of beheading and bathhouse shankings, but to a truly psychotic scale of destruction in the name of progress. My favorite anecdote about the French Revolution is how the radicals in power attempted to restart the calender at year zero, with the new calendar to run on the metric system, with ten months to a year and so forth. Before the freedom of dissent was respected, the French revolutionaries attempted to redefine the mechanics of space and time itself, as if they could slow the moon or speed up the earth.

More important than these aberrations, however, the French Revolution led to monarchy and imperialism. While Napoleon is largely given a pass by modern historians as a relatively enlightened tyrant, and while anyone would take him over Hitler any day, the fact remains that he was a dictator and an aggressor who ascended due to the overreach of the French Revolution, which held so much promise in its genesis.

The Russian Revolution is seen by conservatives in the West as on a moral level with Nazi ism and by their liberal counterparts as misguided idealism. The truth, as always, is in between.

The revolutionary Russian government was the first government to end a war at the behest of its citizens. This, like the American Revolution, was an earthquake. After the Bolsheviks purged their more moderate comrades, things got darker, but American historians are well-practiced in totally ignoring the American invasion of Russia in a failed attempt at regime change in 1918, which gave a rationale for their paranoia which was never acknowledged as legitimate by the United States.

The Russian Revolution forced things. It forced governments and industries in the West to cede far more security and prosperity to their citizens and workers than they had prior, despite the real progress of the American Revolution. The rhetoric of the Russian Revolution was infinitely more important for human history than the reality of it.

The ultimate gift of the Russian Revolution, however, was the defeat of Nazi Germany. The Russians beat Hitler, not the Americans. We were not even the Scottie Pippen to Russia's Michael Jordan in World War II; we were barely the Ringo Starr to Russia's John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison combined.

The Russian Revolution forced a quickening and broadening of the American Revolution, which in turn raised the standard for freedom worldwide. The Russian Revolution was the Declaration of Independence to the American Revolution's Constitution; it lit a fire under our ass.

The Iranian Revolution shattered a simplistic and lazy paradigm espoused by diplomats and eggheads everywhere. This paradigm held that the world was divided into capitalist and communist camps and that political history would "end" when one of the two camps achieved critical mass.

Iranian intellectual Ali al-Shariati described the Persian mindset, however, when he rejected communism and capitalism as "two sides of the same coin." And he was right, of course; to accept the capitalist/communist duality is to accept the premise that all of human existence is driven primarily, if not solely, by economics, by material and money. That is by no means a settled debate.

The Iranian Revolution, in a menacing way, embodied a third way. This revolution, as much like its Russian, Cuban, and Chinese counterparts, was immediately attacked with American money and guns, if not American soldiers; Saddam Hussein supplied the soldiers this time. It is fortunate for the United States that Iran is neither Sunni nor Arab, because if it were, 9/11 would have happened fifty times by now.

When Chinese Revolutionary Deng Xiaoping was asked about his thoughts on the ramifications of the French Revolution, he replied, "it's too early to tell." There's a lot to be said for this perspective. But, then again, history moves a lot faster now.

It is clear to me that the American Revolution is the most essential revolution ever undertaken. It is equally clear that, after our 75-year battle with the Russian Revolution, we will spend our next 75-year battle with the Sunni imitators of the Iranian Revolution.

The Believer

The conventional wisdom, which is heavy on convention and most decidedly light on wisdom, holds that Mitt Romney gave some sort of landmark address on the proper role of religion in politics last week. The address was held to be significant because Mr. Romney belongs to a religion that many Americans consider a heresy, much like John Kennedy in 1960.

Mr. Romney's address was significant in that it highlighted the depraved cynicism that distinguishes Romney from Kennedy. Kennedy was morally weak in many regards, but this did not extend to his religion; Romney may never cheat on his wife, but he will pimp out his faith without pause.

The beauty of Kennedy's speech was that he declared that his religious beliefs were nobody's business unless or until it affected the execution of his office, which he pledged would never happen, and which I have heard nobody argue did happen while he was president.

Essentially, Kennedy had the spine to say, "back off." Romney feigns to take a similarly principled stand, but he lacks Kennedy's conviction; he can not simply say, "back off." Instead, Romney says, "back off...but, while backing off, keep in mind that I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the savior of mankind."

Romney insists on his right to have it both ways, which is really "having" it no way at all. "There shall be no religious test..." That is one of the most important phrases in the most important document ever written, the United States Constitution. Romney has every right to assert it, but he cannot assert it and then proceed to ignore it. He seems to be saying, "There shall be no religious test, since my religion is even more provably ridiculous than most, but I would like you all to know I believe in Jesus as much as you do. If you ask me any specific questions about my dogma, however, I will play a martyr." How palpably disingenuous.

The most egregious line of Romney's speech, which at times was admittedly well-written and well-reasoned, was the following paroxysm of historical and moral ignorance: "Freedom requires religion." Really? Some case studies, perhaps?

Let's take Europe, which is largely post-religious except for Muslim minorities in western Europe, Catholic Ireland and Poland, and Muslim Albania. Could anyone rationally argue that Europe is not free? Regardless of how freedom is defined, if Europeans are not free, then nobody is free. So, clearly, freedom does not require religion, or else Europeans would have converted their now-empty cathedrals into torture chambers. Actually, has anybody noticed that the most enduring peace in European history coincided precisely with the abandonment of religious identity. Probably just a coincidence.

And what about the places where religion thrives? Here's a list: Saudi Arabia. That's a long enough list to make my point. In fact, I would argue that, looking at the earth as a whole, religion is more closely aligned with oppression than with freedom, both in the present and in the past.

The history of the spread of democracy, of freedom, on earth is the history of the restriction of religious power. Period. If freedom required religion, why wasn't first century Palestine a "free" country? People there and then were religious, to say the least. And where was the freedom under the Taliban?

The further sin in Mr. Romney's assertion is its logical inference; if freedom requires religion, then it follows that one can not be free without religion. Now, even if Mr. Romney held every recognized religion to be equally legitimate in bestowing "freedom" upon its practitioners, which I humbly doubt, that leaves a great many people, such as myself, who under Mr. Romney's definition can not be "free".

Mr. Romney did not say freedom requires faith. That is an assertion that I would be inclined to agree with. Faith is not, despite what many may claim, a willingness to believe provably absurd things; it is a willingness to believe things that could never be proven to be either right or wrong. Faith requires us not to believe that a virgin could have a child, but to believe that every child has equal dignity simply by the virtue of being alive, that every human being is equal in the eyes of the Creator God. That is a leap of faith; it is a forever unprovable contention.

Mr. Romney, instead, said that freedom requires religion. Faith is liberating; religion is restrictive. Faith opens our minds; religion closes it. Faith inspires the best elements of human nature; religion inspires the worst, even if they are not manifested as such by every practitioner.

Mr. Romney knew exactly what he was saying. He was saying that there should be no religious test, but that religion was the test. That his religion was nobody's business, but if that someone else had no religion at all, they could fairly be excluded from the club. The club of the "free".

I am not religious. But I am free. In fact, I am freer than Mr. Romney, since, unlike him, I am free to say in public that the idea that Jesus Christ came to Missouri is ridiculous. I, unlike Mr. Romney, can say in public that Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, was a charlatan, a pedophile, and a traitor. I, unlike Mr. Romney, can say that blacks were equal to whites before 1978, when Mr. Romney's God sent a prophecy to Mr. Romney's church informing them of as much.

Not only am I free, I am also..............a good person. See, I would never kill or rob. Not because Moses told me so, but because my parents and my God-given intuitive morality told me so. To Mr. Romney, I would say, "freedom does not require religion; it requires faith. And leadership requires that you have faith in the American people, rather than faith in their religions."

On Consciousness

"Your skin cells are not aware that they are part of a human being. Skin cells are not equipped for that knowledge. They are equipped to do what they do and nothing more. Likewise, if we humans--and all the plants and animals and dirt and rocks--were components of God, would we have the capacity to know it?"

"They'll Follow Us Home" or, The Fallacy

Like so much else with the Iraq War, the question of the most likely effects of an American withdrawal are colored by Vietnam. It's about time for the United States to get over the Vietnam War, since the Vietnamese seem to be over the American War, as they call it, but until we can do the same, let's study the logic employed by those who insist upon staying in Iraq.

"They'll follow us home", they say. This sentiment is extremely widespread, including among many who criticize the war with varying degrees of passion. It is taken by most as an article of faith that the Arabs are especially bloodthirsty, vengeful, and given to an emotional lust for revenge that stretches across generations. There is no small amount of truth to this, which is why we should not have invaded Iraq in the first place.

What the debate must revolve around, however, is not the wishes of the enemy, but the intentions and capabilities of the enemy. In last week's Republican Debate, John McCain stood tall with a rare blend of moral authority and direct language on the issue of torture. Then he started talking about Vietnam.

First, he told Ron Paul that failing to invade Iraq would have been the equivalent of ignoring Hitler. Actually, failing to invade Iraq would have been the equivalent of ignoring Gunther Weisbadden. Who is Gunther Weisbadden? Exactly. Next, he informed Mr. Paul, who due to being the only sane man on the stage inevitably comes across as a lunatic, that the Americans "never lost a battle in Vietnam".

Aside from the fact that it is very hard to lose battles to an enemy with no airplanes, what was McCain getting at? In spite of himself, he was making the case that that war should never have been fought. If you win every battle and still lose the war, that means the battles were irrelevant, does it not? Of course it does.

It was public opinion that lost the Vietnam War, McCain informed us. The audience largely cheered this tired old herring, which used to be red but is now just a pathetic, faded pink. Yes, the audience cheered, as if to say, "you're right John, it was our fault! that fucking 1st amendment! if only the hippies had given you guys another ten years, another 2 million dead Asians, we would have had that thing won!"

To put it bluntly: if you want to live in a country where the government is not constrained by its citizens when it wages a decade-long illegal war on their behalf and sacrifices their children by the tens of thousands on the altar of proven lies and moral bankruptcy, then fuck you. Move to North Korea.

At the end of McCain's "free speech fucked us" rant, he told us of the difference between the enemy in Vietnam and the enemy in Iraq: "The Vietnamese didn't want to follow us home". Okay. Well, since the Vietnamese never harbored any intention of harming the United States, doesn't that mean the Vietnam War was unnecessary? Careful, Senator.

Anyhow, to parse this proposition: first of all, it seems safe to say that countless of thousands of Vietnamese harbored a blood grudge against the United States, and there is no reason to think that, if they could have, a great many of them would not have sought to exercise revenge for their dead countrymen and family members. But there was more important work to do. Like rebuild their incinerated country. Iraq will be much the same.

When people say "They'll follow us home", who is they? They is al-Qaeda and assorted Salafist wackjobs would actually would come here aiming to kill indiscriminately. Thankfully, "they" is not the Iraqi people at large; it is a small and shrinking element of the insurgency. That being said, let's look at this logically.

To say that the hardcore terrorists would "follow us home" implies that they are not coming here right now because American soldiers are in Iraq. That, in turn, implies that terrorists would rather try to kill the best-armed and best-trained Americans on earth, taking a good many Muslims with them, than try to kill defenseless civilians in the belly of the Great Satan itself.

The implication is that thousands of hardened, competent, and motivated terrorists have decided to go to Iraq instead of America, but that if Americans weren't in Iraq, they would come to America. That makes no sense. Why would a jihadi opt to face an American tank if he had the capability of blowing up an Ameircan high-rise? They're suicidal, yes, but they are also motivated to kill thousands of Americans. In Iraq, that takes 5 years. In America, that takes 5 mintues.

Let me put it this way: how is having Americans in Baghdad preventing a terrorist from flying from Karachi to New York? From Casablance to Los Angeles? From Dubai to Chicago?

We are not fighting in Iraq because we have realistically assessed the premise that "they'll follow us home"; it seems clear to me that American armies in Baghdad are totally inconsequential to the logistical feasibility of terrorists coming to America. All American armies in Baghdad are doing is to swell the ranks of those who would come to America if they could.

So why are we still there? We're there because there is resistance there. And herein lies the second fallacy. This fallacy holds that anyone who would resist the American military overseas is an enemy of America who must be crushed where he lives so that he can not "follow us home". This is the bull refusing to leave the China shop until there is no glass on the floor.

"The notion that wars are fought not to protect real national interests but to avenge the suffering of soldiers is another of those problematic syllogistic formulas that politicians have used for decades to snow the public into military action. Just because we can find enemies overseas who are willing to deal harshly with our soldiers doesn't mean we should have been looking for them in the first place, or that it's right to keep letting them have that pleasure."