A Conservative Against the Constitution

Commentator Daniel Greenfield is featured on PolitiChicks (https://politichicks.com). He provides readers with insights and outlook against (and for) the things they hate (and love): Transgender Historical Revisionism; They’re Redistributing Wealth not Fighting Inflation; The Wit and Wisdom of Kamala Harris. His column “The Coming Outlawing of the Republican Party” is datelined “2 weeks ago.” That piece included one very weak point which, to me, revealed that his purpose is to provide arguments, rather than to deliver analysis. Greenfield seemed to lack a fundamental understanding of the US Constitution. 

The column in question was about “insurrection lawsuits.”

Associated Press, March 10, 2022, at 2:53 p.m.: Wisconsin liberals on Thursday, March 10, 2022, filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Republican Sen. Johnson, U.S. Reps. Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald are insurrectionists in violation of the U.S. Constitution for their words and actions in support of Donald Trump leading up to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. -- US News & World Report. https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-03-10/wisconsin-lawsuit-accuses-3-gop-congressmen-of-insurrection (See also “Lawsuit seeks to block ‘insurrectionist’ Marjorie Taylor Greene from reelection bid” Reuters, March 24, 2022 3:02 PM CDT. You can find much more online with the key phase.)

Daniel Greenfield wrote: “After Biden took over, Democrat activist groups began a push to disqualify Republicans who had participated in the Jan 6 protests from elected office based on the 14th Amendment. Adopted after the Civil War, it’s mostly notable for abolishing slavery. But Section 3 also banned anyone from holding elected office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” Aimed at Confederates, most would have considered this a dead letter, but the Left excels at digging up obscure legal fossils and making use of them.”

 

To me, Greenfield’s argument denies a primary value within the American conservative ethos. Greenfield echoes liberal and progressive thinking that the Constitution must be reinterpreted often as our society changes, which is also (to me) a valid point. The demise of “separate but equal” is the classic case. That being as it may, and granted that the US Constitution has its weaknesses, I regard every word as important and consequential.

 

The War Between the States was not the first insurrection. Shays’ Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion long preceded it. The Hartford Convention came close to considering secession. On the other hand, even though state National Guard units were called out to quell violent labor protests and strikes of the late 19^th century and early 20^th centuries those were not insurrections because the strikers did not seek to seize control of the government.  That would also apply to the people in the long struggle of the late 1950s through early 1970s over Civil Rights, war, and the associated issues. In any case, the Constitution is quite clear: the debarrment applies to those who held public office. It also extends to anyone who gave aide and comfort to the enemies of the United States or any State.

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

I believe that anyone who claims to be an American conservative must apply a strict interpretation of the US Constitution and therefore must assert that anyone who has participated in an insurrection against the United States must be barred from holding public office.

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Contradictions in the Constitution 

Etruscans and Americans

Unlimited Constitutional Government 

An Objective Foundation for Government 

Furloughs for Freedom: Downsizing the Government 

You Have No Right ...

Following the logic of the U.S. Supreme Court in its recent “abortion” decision (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization), although you do have an explicit right to bear and keep arms, you have no implied right to a bulletproof vest. You have a First Amendment guarantee to publish whatever you want, but no implied right to read whatever you want. Because nothing in the Sixth or Seventh Amendments defines how many people are empaneled on a jury one person can be a jury. The list goes on.

 

These are among the many specious arguments put forward by the Court: 

The Constitution makes no express reference to a right to obtain an abortion, but several constitutional provisions have been offered as potential homes for an implicit constitutional right. Roe held that the abortion right is part of a right to privacy that springs from the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. See 410 U. S., at 152–153. The Casey Court grounded its decision solely on the theory that the right to obtain an abortion is part of the “liberty” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Others have suggested that support can be found in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, but that theory is squarely foreclosed by the Court’s precedents, which establish that a State’s regulation of abortion is not a sex-based classification and is thus not subject to the heightened scrutiny that applies to such classifications.

[...]

The Court finds that the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition. The underlying theory on which Casey rested—that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause provides substantive, as well as procedural, protection for “liberty”—has long been controversial.

The Court’s decisions have held that the Due Process Clause protects two categories of substantive rights—those rights guaranteed by the first eight Amendments to the Constitution and those rights deemed fundamental that are not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.

[...]

Finally, the Court considers whether a right to obtain an abortion is part of a broader entrenched right that is supported by other precedents. The Court concludes the right to obtain an abortion cannot be justified as a component of such a right. Attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy and to define one’s “concept of existence” prove too much. Casey, 505 U. S., at 851. Those criteria, at a high level of generality, could license fundamental rights to illicit drug use, prostitution, and the like.

Syllabus, DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION, No. 19–1392. Argued December 1, 2021—Decided June 24, 2022.

In the logic of the court, because extra-marital and non-marital relationships have no historic support in US law, they can be outlawed today (or tomorrow). By the last sentence above, the fact that a substance is ruled "illegal" by legislation closes your right to challenge that law. The justices of the Supreme Court may know prostitution when they see it. I am not sure how it is different from "dinner and a movie" -- or marriage. 

 

You have no right to leave the United States or to travel within them. 

 

Just as medical devices are regulated and their ownership, possession, and use are controlled by law, so, too can any instrument or tool be circumscribed: electrophoresis, polymerase chain reactions, spectroscopes, microscopes, telescopes, radios, televisions, … In fact, radios have almost 100 years of regulation around them and nothing in the Constitution or US history establishes your right to a radio (television, computer). 

Whether a computer is a “press” would be an argument before a Court that seems well disposed to limiting any claims not supported by explicit text in the original documents of 1789 or 1868. 

Can a state require the licensing of a musical instrument?  

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

 

AMENDMENT XIV

Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The 14th Amendment notwithstanding, states had laws against marriages across racial lines.  (Personally, I find no scientific evidence for the existence of "race" as a characteristic of human beings. Most of the rest of the world seems to disagree with me.)

“The first ever anti-miscegenation law was passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 1691, criminalizing interracial marriage. In a speech in Charleston, Illinois, in 1858, Abraham Lincoln stated, "I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people". By the late 1800s, 38 US states had anti-miscegenation statutes. By 1924, the ban on interracial marriage was still in force in 29 states. While interracial marriage had been legal in California since 1948, in 1957 actor Sammy Davis Jr. faced a backlash for his relationship with a white woman, actress Kim Novak. In 1958, Davis briefly married a black woman, actress and dancer Loray White, to protect himself from mob violence. 

“In 1958, officers in Virginia entered the home of Richard and Mildred Loving and dragged them out of bed for living together as an interracial couple, on the basis that "any white person intermarry with a colored person"— or vice versa—each party "shall be guilty of a felony" and face prison terms of five years. In 1967 the law was ruled unconstitutional (via the 14th Amendment adopted in 1868) by the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws

In a statement of sheer ignorance, Vice President Kamala Harris told NPR: “This [Dobbs v. Jackson] is the first time in the history of our country that the United States Supreme Court has taken a constitutional right that was recognized …” (Interview with Asma Khalid 28 June 2022 here.) It absolutely was not. To be generous, let us allow that Vice President Harris misspoke.

 

It was the law of the land that no Asian could become a US citizen. That fact was cited by “the great dissenter” Justice John Marshall Harlan in his reply to the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling affirming racial segregation. Harlan noted that by law, an Asian, who could not become a citizen would be allowed to ride in a railway carriage with White people, though a Colored person, born here, an Army veteran, perhaps, could not. 

World War I US Army veteran Bhagat Thind Singh was denied his citizenship. The Court affirmed that racially, as an Aryan, Singh was “White” but that to the common man of America, he was an Asian and therefore ineligible for citizenship. 

 

In 1935, Jehovah’s Witness Christians in Minersville, Pennsylvania, refused to salute the flag in a pledge of allegiance ceremony. They were expelled from school. In 1940, the Supreme Court upheld the decision: Minersville School District v. Gobitis. Freedom of religion is not absolute, the Court said, but is subsidiary to the need for national unity and therefore national defense. That decision was overturned in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943). 

The fact remains - contrary to the opinion of the Vice President - that SCOTUS has taken away rights from people.

While the First Amendment promises freedom of religion, there is no explicit right to freedom from religion. While the Federal government is barred from establishing a national religion, states can and have (Massachusetts and Virginia) had their own government-supported churches. 

 

About 30 years ago, it occurred to me that if abortion takes a human life and is therefore murder, then a miscarriage must be manslaughter. I am pretty sure that I offered it as an argument to libertarians and progressives at social gatherings and was met with blank stares. It seems to have sunk in. (NPR here: Losing a pregnancy could land you in jail in post-Roe America.) You would have to prove that you were not negligent, that you obtained pre-natal care and followed the regimen prescribed for you. Absent that, you are negligent. 

I do not understand why "a State’s regulation of abortion is not a sex-based classification" except, perhaps, because men are also prohibited from terminating their pregnancies, just as the rich and poor alike are forbidden to sleep under bridges. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

 

The GOP as Pushy Beggars 

Tycoon Dough is Democratic 

Ayn Rand versus Conservatives 

The Science of Liberty

Crimes Against Logic: Exposing Bogus Arguments 

 

Censorship in Cyberspace 1991-2021

I placed myself outside the accepted norms on two discussion boards for amateur astronomers, The Sky Searchers and Cloudy Nights. I withdrew from TSS though I still participate with CN. 

 

To me there is no doubt that the owners of the discussion boards can have any rules they want: it’s their property. My problem—and it is entirely my own—is that the privately-own spaces are marketed as forums for discussion and in those discussions I found myself marginalized for not sharing common though unstated assumptions.

 

On The Sky Searchers, I posted a negative review of The Science and Art of Using Telescopes by Philip Pugh (Springer 2009). I placed similar though somewhat different versions on Cloudy Nights and Stargazers Lounge. You can read another here on Necessary Facts. On TSS, I received a nastygram from a moderator demanding to know how I could “launch an unprovoked attack on one of our special authors.” (The quote is inexact. I no longer have access. My IP address is blocked.) I said that they would not have a problem in the future and deleted the review. When I went back to find the exact exchange, I found the block. 

 

Cloudy Nights LLC is a discussion forum for amateur astronomers. It is hosted by Astronomics, a second-generation family-owned retailer of telescopes and related instruments and accessories. The discussion board is now over 30 years old and has more than 115,000 unique usernames. Their policies and processes are time-tested and mature. However, they do include contradictory applications. 

 

They say that they do not allow discussions of religion and politics. And that’s fine with me, except that several people do quote the Bible in their signature fields. Psalm 19:1 is perhaps the most common: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handywork.” In fact, my Austinite neighbor, Ed LaBelle has an outreach called “Psalm 19 Astronomy” and he writes under that label for the local astronomy club newsletter as well as Cloudy Nights. They do work hard at urban sidewalk outreach taking their telescopes to the public and I applaud their successes.

 

On The Sky Searchers, when birthdays come around, one of the frequent contributors places her good wishes in an off-topic chat area. As it was November, I followed suit by quoting astrological forecasts for the day as a nod to other Scorpios. Those were pulled down by the moderator because astrology is not allowed on TSS. If that stricture is in the published rules, I missed it. In a wider context, however, astrology is a religious practice and I wonder if the moderator would have pulled down a Christian benediction. 

On Cloudy Nights, in the off-topic forum, I placed a version of my Christmas star essay, which in the past I placed in the Austin Astronomical Society newsletter. (Two versions are 2015 here and 2017 here on NecessaryFacts.)

The article was only a historical view of a popular problem. The International Planetarium Society website (www.ips-planetarium.org) lists over 100 citations to the Star of Bethlehem. Writing in Archaeology Vol. 51, No. 6 (Nov/Dec 1998), Anthony F. Aveni cited 250 “major scholarly articles” about the Star of Bethlehem. 

The moderator, csa/montana, pulled it because it discusses religion, which is not allowed on Cloudy Nights. And that would be fine, if people did not have Scriptural quotes in their  signatures. 

Cloudy Nights hosts a forum for discussing Light Pollution. The guidelines are very clear. They do not allow people to advocate shooting out lights with BB guns. 

LP Forum Guidelines - Please Read

Started by Glassthrower, Jan 21 2008 10:23 PM

Cloudy Nights wishes to foster a positive environment where the science of light pollution can be discussed. People seeking to learn more about light pollution should be able to come here, peruse the information available, discuss the issue, and walk away with something positive gained - and hopefully a new appreciation (or at least a curiosity) for starry dark skies the way nature originally intended them. 

We want to provide useful information that will help people take civic action on their own, or with local/national networks (like the IDA) - to implement dark-sky friendly regulations in their area. Working with local and state governments, zoning commissions, lighting boards, and utility departments can be an intimidating experience for the uninitiated - we'd like to offer a place for others to share their experiences and resources in this respect. But the politics of the day should always take a back seat to the academic and the science. Stick to the facts and leave the feelings out of it. 

Full statement here:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/150672-lp-forum-guidelines-please-read/

Personally, I believe that concerns about light pollution and the associated problem of new constellations of artificial satellites are mostly Luddite rants against progress. The recent launch of the James Webb Space Telescope dramatically caps 64 years of progress in placing sensors and recorders away from the Earth, its atmosphere, and lights. That said, I am not insensitive to the frustrations of ground-based astronomers. In fact, I share them. But I tally the convenience of electricity and night-time lighting as a diminutive cost to myself. (Against Dark Skies on NecessaryFacts here. and I Like Satellite Constellations here.) 

In response to a post, I quoted from those two essays. The moderator csa/montana closed the discussion saying that it had become political. So, it is appropriate to call for the United Nations to regulate the launching of satellites and further for your local government and the UN to debate whether and how to address light pollution. However, it is not allowed to question the need for those interventions.

 

http://www.phrack.org/archives/issues/38/2.txt

                                ==Phrack Inc.==

                 Volume Four, Issue Thirty-Eight, File 2 of 15

                          [-=:< Phrack Loopback >:=-]

                                By Phrack Staff

 

     Phrack Loopback is a forum for you, the reader, to ask questions, air problems, and talk about what ever topic you would like to discuss.  This is also the place Phrack Staff will make suggestions to you by reviewing various items of note; magazines, software, catalogs, hardware, etc.

 

Date: March 22, 1992

From: "Michael E. Marotta" <MERCURY@lcc.edu>

Subject: Censorship in Cyberspace

To: Phrack Staff

 

I have been hired to write an article about the control of information in

cyberspace.  We all know that Fidonet moderators and sysops devote their OWN resources for us to use.  There is no question about the "right" of the sysop or moderator to delete messages and users.  The practice of censorship is nonetheless newsworthy.

 

If YOU have experienced censorship on Fidonet or Usenet, Prodigy or CompuServe,or another BBS or network, I am interested in learning about your story.  If you can supply downloads of actual encounters, so much the better.

 

If you have ever been censored, send me physical world mail about the event.

 

               Michael E. Marotta

               5751 Richwood  #34

               Lansing, Mich. 48911

 

http://www.phrack.org/archives/issues/38/2.txt

 

http://cu-digest.org/CUDS5/cud514.txt

Computer underground Digest    Wed Feb 17, 1993   Volume 5 : Issue 14

                           ISSN  1004-042X

 

       Editors: Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer (TK0JUT2@NIU.BITNET)

       Archivist: Brendan Kehoe

       Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth

                          Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala

       Copy Editor: Etaion Shrdlu, Seniur

 

Date: Thu, 11 Feb 93 20:17 EST

From: "Michael E. Marotta" <MERCURY@LCC.EDU>

Subject: File 5--Censorship in Cyberspace

 

Excerpts from "Censorship in Cyberspace" (c) 1993 by Michael E. Marotta the complete text (2000 words) appears in the ($5) 1993 Retail Catalog of Loompanics, P. O. Box 1197, Port Townsend, WA 98368. Founded in 1974, Loompanics, publishers of unusual books, features about 300 titles on privacy, underground income, self-defense, etc.

+++++

As Ayn Rand noted, when people abandon money, their only alternative when dealing with each other is to use guns.   Yet, the anti-capitalist mentality permeates cyberspace.  Most public systems and networks actually forbid commercial messages.  So, computer sysops and network moderators are reduced to cavalier enforcement of their personal quirks.

 

When Tom Jennings created Fidonet, Omni magazine called him an "online anarchist."  Since then, Fidonet has developed a governing council and lost Jennings.  Over the last two years, I have been banished from

these Fidonet echoes: 

         * Stock Market for saying that Ivan Boesky is a political

           prisoner

         * Virus for saying that viruses could be useful

         * Communications for saying that telephone service

           should not be regulated by the government

         * International Chat for asking "How are you" in Hebrew

           and Japanese.

 

Kennita Watson, whom I met on Libernet, told me this story:

 

         When I was at Pyramid, I came in one day and

         "fortune" had been disabled.  I complained to

         Operations, and ended up in a personal meeting with

         the manager.  He showed me a letter from the NAACP

         written to Pyramid threatening to sue if they

         didn't stop selling racist material on their

         machines.  They cited a black woman who had found

         the "...there were those whose skins were black...

         and their portion was niggardly.... 'Let my people

         go to the front of the bus'..." fortune, and

         complained to the NAACP.  I suspect that she (and

         the NAACP) were clueless as to the meaning of the

         term "niggardly".  I (as a black woman) was

         embarrassed and outraged. Because of the stupidity

         of a bunch of paranoid people, I couldn't read my

         fortune when I logged out any more. "

 

It is important to bear in mind that to the censor, censorship, like all evils, is always an unpleasant but necessary means to achieve a good result.  Robert Warren is a sysop who replied to an article of mine on Computer Underground Digest.  He said: ... People have a right to say what they want in public, but some don't care about the responsibility that comes with it. So you zap 'em."  Now, there is no argument with his basic premise: Since he owns the equipment, he has the final say in its use.  This is his right.  Likewise, the administrators of publicly-funded university computers also engage in censorship under a mandate to serve the people who pay taxes.  "All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely," the historian John E. E. Acton said.  It is no surprise that this applies in cyberspace.

 

   Political and social freedom have little to do with constitutions or elections. Congress could choose a new prime minister every day or the people could elect the secretary of state to a three year term. The details are unimportant.  Some places are free and some places are controlled because the people in those places need freedom or accept oppression.  It always comes back to the individual.

 

   Dehnbase Emerald BBS is home to libertarian and objectivist discussions and is a vital link in Libernet.  The number is (303) 972-6575.  Joseph Dehn is not interested in enforcing rules.

 

   Albert Gore and George Bush agreed on the need for a "data superhighway."  The Electronic Frontier Foundation has recommended that this national network be open to commercial enterprises.  This is good.  An open market is the best protection against power and corruption.

 

------------------------------

Previously on Necessary Facts

 

The Science of Liberty 

The Sociology of Freedom 

Why Evidence is not Enough 

Jerry Emanuelson's Algebraic Proof of Ricardo's Law of Association. 

Tycoon Dough is Democratic 

Crimes Against Logic: Exposing Bogus Arguments  

  

New Plate and Stickers

Having retired from the Texas State Guard, the time came to change the messages on my car.

The State of Texas grants a long list of specialty plates for those who have served. Federal military veterans from all branches can display their highest honors with Bronze Star and Purple Heart among many others. Disabled veterans have their own serial numbers (DV-) as well as the message.

I designed and paid for the central bumper sticker:
ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE
LIVING THE DREAM
SERVING TEXAS
I had a hundred run off and then distributed some to my buddies in the TXSG, donating the bulk of the inventory to our "Country Store" retail operation run by the T-4 (Logistics) shop.

The Barlett for President sticker came from a West Wing fan site, of course. I wish that I lived in that universe. We were enthralled by the characters who were working the most important jobs of their lives. Even most of the Republicans were admirable.




My goal here is to change the messages periodically. In the waiting file, I have "Who is John Galt" and " I (heart) Capitalism" among others.

The new license plate is a chemical formula for urea. It can be NH2-CO-NH2 or CO(NH2)2 or other representations. In 1828, urea was the first organic compound made in a laboratory entirely from inorganic components. (See Wikipedia here.) Among other achievements, its synthesis supposedly disproved the theory of vitalism. Vitalism posits that "life" is an ineffable and irreducible quality. I am not sure that I accept that, but I am sure that organic compounds can be found in stellar nebulae. I do not know how strings of hydrocarbons become living organisms. The empirical evidence is nonetheless unarguable.

To the right of Question Authority is "What do you geek?" It was a campaign from the City of Austin Public Library last year to promote a wide range of interesting and curious passions from a diverse array of representational patrons. (They were real people. I am just not sure that they were truly library patrons rather than professional models.) It now eclipses the little square which read "Bring them Back Alive" (a promotion of the American Automobile Association) though in Hungarian. The AAA gave them out in many languages.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Centralization and the Inverse Square Law
Politics and the Inverse Square Law
Gregory M. Browne's Necessary Factual Truths
The Problem of Induction: Karl Popper and His Enemies

Crimes Against Logic: Exposing Bogus Arguments

The author calls this “a troubleshooting guide” similar to the owner’s manual of a car or computer. “It is aimed at everyday users and consumers of reasoning…” It certainly meets that measure. The main thrust is on failures of right reason such as inconsistency, equivocation, and begging the question. The author also reveals false claims, principally phony statistics.

Before moving into financial consulting and electioneering for the open market in his homeland of New Zealand, Jamie Whyte completed master’s and doctor’s degrees in  philosophy at Cambridge University (Wikipedia here).  You can find some of his essays archived at the Cobden Centre here. The Centre is named for the successful manufacturer and proponent of laissez-faire in early 19^th century Britain, Richard Cobden.  His writings are archived at the Online Library of Liberty here.

In formal terms, Jamie Whyte is an objectivist, a strict rational-empiricist whose logically consistent statements explain experiential facts. This book is his attack on some of the people who fail to meet either standard.

 

Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments
of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders
by Jamie Whyte. (McGraw-Hill 2004, 157 pages.)
Google Books has an extract of the first chapter
on why you do not have a right to your opinion, here. 

The first crime that Whyte investigates is the claim that you have a right to your opinion. No such right exists. Whyte points out that this assertion is founded on an ambiguity. You do have a political right to an opinion. However, that is not to be confused with the epistemic right to an opinion. The epistemic right to an opinion, says Whyte, is similar to the right to boast. Just as you first must achieve something worthy of boasting, so, too, is the “right” to an opinion earned by correctly identifying facts and then explaining them rationally. When someone retreats by claiming that they have a “right” their opinion, they are actually admitting that they are wrong, or at the very least, they can present no reasons and facts to support their assertions.

In the chapter “Prejudice in Fancy Dress” Whyte demolishes Pascal’s Wager and several other examples including Faith and Mystery. The subhead “But Still” examines calls for the acceptance of ignorance. This is actually a variant of the non-existent right to an opinion. Yes, the facts are on your side. Yes, your argument is logical. But still I prefer my prejudices.

The chapter “Shut Up!” scrutinizes several ways that those losing an argument seek to cut off debate by silencing their opponent. Well-known facts are boring. That a claim can be countered with a boring fact in no way mitigates the strength of the contrary assertion. That a boring fact has been marshaled is especially strong, as it points to a clear violation by the party demanding that the other shut up. 

Under the subhead “Shut Up, You Sound Like Hitler” Whyte calls mass murder “something of a lottery.”  He tells of being in a Lenin Bar in Auckland, “decorated with red stars and black and white images of the great Communist leader.”  Hitler bars, he notes, seem to be in short supply. 

In the chapter on “Empty Words” Whyte goes into some depth on the use and abuse of sneer quotes. His example focuses on post-modernist philosopher Imré Lakatos. When you say that my “facts” are in dispute, it is clear from the quotes that you do not believe my claims to be facts. Whyte says that in discussing the work of physicist A. A. Michelson, Lakotos’s excessive use of sneer quotes reveals that he believes knowledge to be impossible because facts are non-existent. This is not unique to one philosopher. Whyte calls the abuse of quotes a hallmark of post-modernist academic writing.

Implied Generalizations slip into discussions – and usually slip by unchallenged. Whyte offers a bald example. When a Christian says that homosexuality should be illegal because it is condemned in the Bible, that is an implied generalization because the Bible condemns many things, including the use of cotton-polyester blends. Backing off from making illegal the use of mixed fabrics (also working on the Sabbath and eating shellfish) then leads to an inconsistency. Whyte also offers a mundane example in Tony Blair’s active campaigning against fox hunting while insisting that other forms of hunting (including fishing) would never be proscribed by his government. Why not?  The implied generalization is that cruel sports are wrong. The resultant inconsistency is that some are acceptable after all.

The chapter “Begging the Question” is subtle and deep. Most of this book was fun to read and I had little difficulty relating to the material. Whyte is a good writer. His topic is compelling. His examples are from everyday experience. However, I read “Begging the Question” three times through and made close notes all along. It paid off well. Whyte sets up a debate in which libertarian Jack calls for an end to regulations. Socialist Jill claims that this would lead to mass poverty. In fact, Jill is begging the question. Jack’s position is that property rights are absolute. Rather than accepting the premise, Jill needs to address it by first showing that property rights are not absolute. Whyte then offers a longer discussion on tolerance. When a Christian fundamentalist asserts that abortion is murder, the response is not, “If you believe that, then do not have an abortion, but neither should you interfere with the rights of others to have them.”  Substitute the word “murder” for “abortion” and you can see that the plea for tolerance only begs the question: Is abortion murder or not? 

You will find discussions of false statistics, weasel words, hurrah words, morality fever, coincidences, and more. It is easily true that no one likes to be contradicted, but that is one way that we discover the truth. As Whyte points out, when you are crossing the street in the false belief that there are no cars coming, you don’t mind being contradicted. Intransigent devotion to the truth is always in your best interest.

  

(An earlier version appeared under Books on the Rebirth of Reason discussion site for September 3, 2008,  here.)  

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

George Boole's Laws of Thought

Gregory M. Browne's Necessary Factual Truths

Knowledge Maps

Harriman's Logical Leap Almost Makes It

Why Evidence is Not Enough

Counter-Insurgency

No shit, this stuff really works. You just gotta apply it well. Let it soak in. Then polish it.  It works for the lawful constitutional authority, the occupying army, and the neighborhood police. Law enforcement on patrol, in particular, would benefit from a coating of this on top of time-honored community policing.

Counter-Insurgency Warfare:
Theory and Practice
by David Galula
(Frederick A. Praeger, 1964)

I learned about this book while reading about the challenges in Iraq that were faced by Gen. David Petraeus, Gen. John Abizaid, Gen. Peter Charelli, and Gen. George Casey in The Fourth Star by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe (reviewed here).  That book led me to Eating Soup with a Knife by Lt. Col. John Nagl which referenced this one heavily.

Nagl was the go-to guy for the generals. They and he made it seem as though this was a newly invented wheel.  At work, I asked the oldest colonel if he knew counter-insurgency from his time in Viet Nam.  He replied, “When I taught it at Fort …”  My colonel spoke of identity papers and ration coupons, both tactics recommended by Galula based on the actual histories of counter-insurgency work in Algeria (1954-1962) and Malaya (1948-1960).  Galula also draws on the experiences of both sides of the Chinese civil war. Written in 1963, the book’s allusions to Viet Nam are from the viewpoint of the Viet Minh. 

Counter-Insurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice begins by examining the insurgency. Again, because of the time in which the author lived, the examples come from the communists. Reading the book today, considering Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine, you have to take a broader view.  We considered communism to have been a “foreign ideology” (wrongly, I believe), but Islam surely was not recently imported into the Middle East by a small intelligensia.  That being as it may, the truths that do apply from that time to ours seem absolute. 

Moreover, the broad truths found here apply to civic law enforcement. If the local police perceived organized criminals as an insurgency, and applied the theory and practice of counter-insurgency, law and order would be easier to obtain. 

Conversely, as I read through this highly commendable little book, I understood its limitations in not perceiving insurgency as a set of social problems that are expressed as “crime.”  Criminology has theories of differential association, routine activities, the crime triangle, structural functionalism, social conflict, and rational choice, among about 50 others, that can be applied to the suppression of armed political revolt.

Ironically, for all of the Mao and Che that we read in the 1960s, this book would have been the capstone had we known about it.  Our theory that protests would bring repression that would cause the people to rise up angry against the Man was as simplistic as the scene in Lord of the Flies where the six-year olds want to solve their problem by building a new airplane and flying off the island. 

Galula’s lesson on leniency is the intersection of community policing and counter-insurgency. The Chinese communists treated their nationalist prisoners well, fed them, gave them medical care if possible, and then released them. Yes, some would take up arms again, but most would not. In fact, upon their return, they were imprisoned by their own leaders who feared that they had been contaminated.  Indeed, they had been. Their enemies treated them well; their own leaders were unjust to them. It was pretty easy to know which side you really were on.

As is typical of the times, this book has few citations, no bibliography and no index.  I had intended to draw a parallel between events in the Chinese civil war and the Sunni insurgency. I still believe that such a parallel exists. However, Galula's narrative (pp 15-16) cannot be supported by the histories we accept today. In this case, the theory is strong but the facts are weak. 

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The Syrian Quagmire

If the United States ever sought to build a pro-Western, democratic government in the Arab/Islamic matrix, Syria could have been a good place to start.  The Assad governments have always been secularist. That was why Syria had no problem accepting military aid from the USSR. The Muslim Brotherhood was opposed to Hafez al-Assad, the father of the current president, Bashar al-Assad, because he liberalized trade and commerce, opening up economic opportunities. (Wikipedia here).  Dr. Bashar al-Assad was practicing pediatric ophthalmology in London when his brother was killed in a car crash. (Wikipedia, here.) So, he returned home to take over the family business, running Syria. Instead of supporting his government, the United States made an enemy out of a man who had been dedicated to bringing eyesight to blind children by means of science. 

Apparently, the “strategy” from the U.S. State Department these past ten years has been to foster uprisings of democratic elements within Arab/Islamic nations to topple dictatorships, and bring those peoples into the global community of free trade and open borders.  For a while, the news media called it “Arab Spring.”  The failures are evident everywhere in the Middle East and southwest Asia: Libya, Tunisia*, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan … And no change has come to our good, close, personal, and very royal friends in Saudi Arabia where the few protests were brutally crushed (BBC here and BBC here).

 "President Reagan meeting with Afghan Freedom Fighters 

to discuss Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan. 2/2/83.” 

— Ronald Reagan Library C12820-32.

Just as the failure in Viet Nam was one consequence of a wider and deeper problem, today’s news from Syria demonstrates the results of bad philosophy.  Fifty years ago, the United States attempted to fight a “Cold War” without a specific ideology, and to do so against an enemy that had one.  Independent of President Reagan’s rhetoric, the ultimate failure of communism was an internal problem. Soviet socialism was unworkable. So, too, today, is the United States attempting to defeat a reactionary mysticism in the Arab/Islamic complex, while not identifying explicitly our own ethical virtues – or their metaphysical foundation. That was why, in opposing communism, the Reagan Administration hosted the Taliban in the White House. In hindsight (always 20/20), it would have been better to partner with the USSR to modernize Afghanistan.

As with Viet Nam, the first level of failure was the lack of a democratic tradition within the culture. People are people; and every village and every empire has its checks and balances rooted in popular approval. That is not the same thing as cultural individualism.

The famous Normam Rockwell propaganda painting for World War II, Freedom of Speech, exemplified the American political tradition. We used to say, “Stand up and be counted.” The secret ballot is the Australian Ballot. In colonial America, you could voice a different opinion without guaranteed reprisals from your neighbors.  It was not perfect. Speaking out can always be risky. But, largely, in colonial America, there came to be a tradition of open debate. It took about 150 years to develop. Through those five generations, local government at the village level and the colonial level were the warp and woof of civic affairs. When the British crown seized the colonial administrations, and violated the Bill of Rights of 1689, the fabric was torn.

The so-called “American Revolution” had taken place in the minds of the people in the generation before the Revolutionary War. That war began a year before the Declaration of Independence.

If the U.S. government had a plan or even a vision, it seems to have been that reading manifestos in the streets would rally people to throw off 500 years of isolation and stagnation in order to embrace multiculturalism, diversity, and fusion cuisine.

Since then, the immediate “strategy” of arming so-called moderate rebels in Syria also has failed. The American-sponsored Harakat Hazm surrendered itself and its American weapons to al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra (Telegraph UK here and USA Today here). 

Of course, no such vision existed.  We cannot even say the word “capitalism” aloud, though now we can say “homosexual” in most places.  We have yet to explicitly identify and endorse the cultural trajectory of the Enlightenment that gave birth to our Republic: reality, reason, self-interest, tolerance, initiative, and wealth-production.  Some of those have tendrils within Islamic culture, but nourishing them would take time, perhaps five generations, even after they were identified.

(See “Finding Common Interests with Russia in Syria” by Cmdr. Daniel Dolan, USN (Retired) on the US Naval Institute site here.)

(9 Oct '15: Four Tunisians received the Nobel Peace Prize. "President of the Tunisian employers union Wided Bouchamaoui, Secretary General of the Tunisian General Labour Union, Houcine Abassi, President of the Tunisian Human Rights League Abdessattar ben Moussa and the president of the National Bar Association, Mohamed Fadhel Mahmoud." -- Reuters. Demographically, illiteracy is high, calling into question the basis for democracy there, at least as we understand it. The nation has no democratic tradition.  Tunisia suffered two jihadi massacres, one at the Bardo National Museum, the other on the beach and inside the Riu Imperial Marhaba Hotel.)

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Happy May Day, Comrades