Daresay

It was in the free states of New England that William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of The Liberator, abolitionist, found "contempt more bitter, opposition more active, detraction more relentless, prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen than among slaveholders themselves." Among his own, he was considered a disturber of the peace. This did not deter him: "I am aware that many object to the severity of my language, but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen--but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest--I will not equivocate--I will not excuse--I will not retreat in a single inch--and I will be heard. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and hasten the resurrection of the dead. It is pretended that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true. On this question my influence--humble as it is--is felt at this moment to a considerable extent, and shall be felt in coming years--not perniciously, but beneficially--not as a curse, but as a blessing. And posterity will bear testimony that I was right."

In retrospect, how clear it seems that he was right--a fact then obscured, even in the most progressive section of the United States, by a fog of fears and falsehoods. History has vindicated his ideas when most of his contemporaries wouldn't--openly.

It is a delusion to expect what is right to be pervasive and popular--to expect that expressing or doing what is right will bring immediate recognition or riches. It was never thus. What is right will not enlist the already and many enslaved. Their chains will move them to speak and act to their own subjection. To reverse the networked economic and social enforcement of pernicious political correctness, to avert the slavery of former abolitionists, we should expect to earn some ignominy in the short-term. But while we can, we should speak and act--in spite of economic and social penalties--in favor of truth and freedom--content to bear the contempt of the decadent, the dissolute, and the daunted--to await the consolation of a future vindication.

Truth as a Superlative

Have you noticed that when Americans use the word truth, they often preface it with an adjective like perfectly or absolutely or definitely or very--as if what is true needs embellishment--as if what is true needs an exclamation point? This author was caught doing that yesterday and reminded by his wife that what is true just is. God bless her. In other words, it doesn't need embellishments.

I believe this reveals something about Americans: we consider truth relative--as if stubborn facts were subject to private interpretation. Like good, better, and best, to us, truth has degrees--verity has a hierarchy in America. We think some things are true, some truer, and some truest. So, what makes something that is true a superlative? Is a thing truer when we feel strongly about it or when it strokes our ego or when we know nothing about the facts but it concerns our friends? If truest is truly true, does what is mere "truth" verge on falsehood? And, will what is truest always be what is loudest or prettiest or most popular? Perhaps Winston Churchill, English statesman and historian depicted us well when he said, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing (ie. tell the truth) - after they've tried everything else"?

The Unwritten, Evolving, But Enforceable Law

The Dodd-Frank Bill, a sweeping revision of dozens of laws regulating finance and credit--the lifeblood of the American economy--passed in 2010, outsourced much of Congress' discretion to regulators. Four years later, many of the hundreds of rules proposed by the bill have yet to be written by regulators in the Obama Administration. As critics predicted, the regulatory system has been in chaos for years as a result of Dodd-Frank. One critic of the legislation, law professor David Skeel, observed in the bill a "government partnership with the largest Wall Street banks and financial institutions" and "a system of ad hoc interventions by regulators that are divorced from basic rule-of-law constraints". That the rules remain unwritten burdens the economy with uncertainty. This law may explain why banks are hoarding, instead of lending, unprecedented amounts of money as the international economy contracts. Also, the unwritten nature of the law may enable ex post facto and arbitrary regulatory enforcement. In other words, Americans (ie. those in finance), may be culpable for non-compliance with an as-yet unwritten regulations. Note: ex post facto laws were expressly prohibited by the Constitution.  A couple of years ago, the argument was made that Congress must pass an unpopular law before we would know what is in it; in contrast, Dodd-Frank was passed before it was really written.

Responsibilities Without Rights

When Hillary Clinton alluded recently to a "basic bargain" for Americans who "work hard and play by the rules", she echoed Barack Obama's 2013 State of Union Address in which he said "It is our unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built this country -- the idea that if you work hard and meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead." I am not sure where this basic bargain was discovered. It isn't in the United States Constitution. The rights enumerated therein are not conditioned on one's work ethic or even on one's adherence to responsibilities. In fact, even eccentrics have rights in America. The Constitution circumscribes the government--and not the rights of individuals. To accept the idea of the "basic bargain" is to accept the idea that our rights are conditional--that they are conditioned upon our exertions and/or our obedience (ie. ideological obedience). To assess the quantity of one's work--and thus to determine if "hard work" has been done--is to assess the quality and directionality of one's work: who dictates whether one's work is done, must determine what one's work is and whether it is done satisfactorily. And who dictates whether one has met his responsibilities, must delineate the responsibilities of those he superintends. In effect, he who has responsibilities without rights is as pliant as a puppet, but does not need actuation. Under the "basic bargain", will the hard work, contained in this blog, qualify this author for rights in America (ie. the right to get ahead)?

The Individuality of Integrity; The Collapse of Common Consent

Social science asserts that social preferences cannot be made intelligible in a democracy--that democracy must be either arbitrary or impossible. Proofs are provided by the Condorcet Paradox and the Arrow Impossibility Theorem. Stated differently, political science insists it is futile to expect to translate the popular will into coherent social policy in a democracy--that what is expressed by a close election must be either arbitrary or manipulated. This is, obviously, a very cynical concept.

But it is one that is held by many governing elites in America. It explains some of the cynicism toward the governed and the distrust of the governing in America: there is a belief among our foremost democrats that democracy is impossible. But they won't broadcast this belief: to do so, would be to controvert their own legitimacy; to do so, would be to confess their cynical manipulation of a political system they contest. When these "democrats" envision a "more perfect union" than our constitutional democratic republic, what is it that they envision? What form would their perfect union take--a form far more efficient than democracy--the form of a tyranny? Before modern social science had sway, Winston Churchill, the English statesman and historian, asserted that "democracy is the worst form of government except all of the others that have been tried".



Without the aid of modern science, our forefathers understood the perils of plurality: in arguing for the Constitution, James Madison observed that "democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." To check this tendency of democracies, the founders implemented a republic--a representative democracy. The will of the people would be expressed by representative legislators and electors focused on governance. A republican form of government would mitigate many of the deficiencies of a pure democracy. For example, a republican form of government would address asymmetric access to information: electors and dedicated legislators would be drawn from the elites--from persons with better access to education and information--elected directly by the people. Dedicated and consequently better-informed representatives would express the preferences of a less informed and sometimes misinformed mass of voters in public policy debates. If this characterization of the masses (ie. as misinformed) rankles readers, consider the characterization that the "democrats" described above entertain: they consider the masses completely incapable of self-governance.



The founders recognized that a republican form of government would not mitigate all the deficiencies of pluralism. For example, it would be less efficient about decisions and resource-allocations than would be a dictatorship. It would probably be less constant but longer lived than a kingship. But administered faithfully, it would best protect persons from oppressions and private property from confiscations.



From the axioms of social science, it follows, (and reason confirms) that common consent lacks the integrity of individual conscience. Without unanimous solidarity in leadership, institutions (ie. parties) are incapable of real integrity and real honesty. Their course will be circuitous. An individual, only, is capable of a straight and narrow course--by the grace of God. But only if the individual refuses changing, inchoate collective wisdom. Integrity is an attribute of individuals; it is not an attribute of institutions based on common consent. And it defies leaders who chase mass consent--leaders who are lead by polls and collectives--and not by their conscience.