Questions of conscience are largely banished from public discourse on current affairs, which almost exclusively adopt and develop a purely utilitarian, goal-driven, desire-based, everything’s relative, man-is-the-measure-of-all-things perspective. What we ask are questions like, "Are the Iraq and Afghanistan wars making us safer? Are we establishing stable, democratic regimes there that will respect individual rights?" Not, "Is it wrong to murder people to make ourselves safer from possible future attacks, or in order to establish what we believe will be a good political system for the survivors of our beneficence?" It is very clear from public discourse and debate about such things that both the initial choice of action, and our persistence in carrying it out, depend on the answers to our very own goal-driven assessments and utilitarian calculations.

Recently, Rev. Terry Jones caused an international brouhaha by announcement of plans to burn Qurans during services at his Dove (yes, you read that right, the symbol of peace) World Outreach Center on September 11th, the ninth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Towers and Pentagon. Modern man generally responded in typical fashion. General Petraeus (reflecting the utilitarian, our well-being and pain are paramount standard) asked this not to be done because it would inflame the passions of our enemies and thereby endanger our troops. The Religion News Service attacked the Rev. Jones’ — personality. (It’s too much, you really can’t make this stuff up.) Appeals for tolerance abounded.

While the planned book burning fizzled out, many Americans are still outraged and preoccupied with the proposed plan to build an Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero, and a dedicated segment of the media rides that wave. I realize that many, many people who may be reading this are not Christians, or even despise Christianity. I do not count myself as a Christian, though raised in that faith. Regardless, the Rev. Terry Jones, and many who denounce the building of the Islamic civic center and mosque are people who consider themselves Christians. Fred Reed had a really excellent article the other day endeavoring to explain why some Muslims might be angry with the West. But even if those considerations fail to defuse the anger that the book burners and building denouncers feel towards Muslims or Islam by illustrating that these outraged Christians are like the man who decries the splinter in his brother’s eye and sees not the beam in his own, even if they persist in seeing some or all Muslims as their enemies, well, they are still commanded by the one they call Lord to love and forgive their enemies. So it seems they might want to consider an old-school sermon on this subject, from a time when these things still meant something to some people, before religious news services offered personality assessments, before so much of Christianity, in self-righteous assurance of its own grace and personal relationship with God, turned away from self-examination and the commandment to love one’s neighbor, toward partnering themselves, the great, Moral Majority, with princes and principalities in the calling: "Come, let us make a world that is well pleasing to us."

Christians, should, theoretically, have a reason, therefore, to think of these things. But even for us non-Christians, I think it worthwhile and instructive to hark back to a time when writers still knew both the demands, and language, of conscience, so different from the passivity of tolerance, so much more demanding than the utilitarian, needs-based, self-serving standards given free rein today.

In time-honored fashion, therefore, I select, for our reading today, a passage that is ever timely, from the conclusion of Sren Kierkegaard’s Works of Love:

It is said, "Forgive, then you will also be forgiven."1 Someone, however, might manage to misinterpret these words in such a way that he imagined that it was possible to receive forgiveness himself although he did not forgive. Truly this is a misinterpretation. Christianity’s view is: forgiveness is forgiveness; your forgiveness is your forgiveness; your forgiveness of another is your own forgiveness; the forgiveness you give is the forgiveness you receive, not the reverse, that the forgiveness you receive is the forgiveness you give. It is as if Christianity would say: Pray to God humbly and trustingly about your forgiveness, because he is indeed merciful in a way no human being is; but if you want to make a test of how it is with forgiveness, then observe yourself. If honestly before God you wholeheartedly forgive your enemy (but if you do, remember that God sees it), then you may also dare to hope for your forgiveness, because they are one and the same. God forgives you neither more nor less nor otherwise than as you forgive those who have sinned against you. It is only an illusion to imagine that one oneself has forgiveness although one is reluctant to forgive others. No, there is not a more exact agreement between the sky above and its reflection in the sea, which is just as deep as the distance is high, than there is between forgiveness and forgiveness. It is also a delusion to believe in one’s own forgiveness when one refuses to forgive, for how could a person truly believe in forgiveness if his own life is an objection against the existence of forgiveness! But a person deludes himself into thinking that he himself for his part relates himself to God and on the other hand that with regard to another person he relates himself only to the other person rather than that in everything he relates himself to God.

Therefore to accuse another person before God is to accuse oneself, like for like. If someone is actually wronged, humanly speaking, then may he take care lest he be carried away in accusing the guilty one before God. Ah, we are so willing to deceive ourselves, we are so willing to deceive ourselves into thinking that a person for his part should have a private relation to God. But the relation to God is like the relation to the authorities; you cannot speak privately with a public authority about something that is his business — but God’s business is to be God. Suppose a domestic servant, to whom perhaps you are otherwise well disposed, has committed a crime, a theft, for example, and you do not know what to do about the matter. Then above all you do not privately approach the highest public authority, because he does not know of anything private in matters of theft. He will promptly have the guilty party arrested and initiate proceedings. Similarly, if you want to pretend that you are completely outside the matter at hand and now privately want to complain to God about your enemies, God will make short shrift of it and bring charges against you, because before God you yourself are a guilty party — to accuse another is to accuse yourself.2 In your opinion, God should, so to speak, take your side, God and you together should turn against your enemy, against the one who did you wrong. But this is a misunderstanding. God looks impartially at all and is wholly and completely what you want to make him only in part. If you address him in his capacity as judge — yes, it is leniency on his part that he warns you to desist, because he is well aware of the consequences for you, how rigorous it will become for you; but if you refuse to listen, if you address him in his capacity as judge, it does not help that you mean he is supposed to judge someone else, because you yourself have made him into your judge, and he is, like for like, simultaneously your judge — that is, he judges you also. But if you do not engage in accusing someone before God or in making God into a judge, then God is the gracious God.

Let me illustrate this by an incident. There was once a criminal who had stolen some money, including a hundred-rix-dollar bill. He wanted to change this bill and turned to another criminal at the latter’s house. The second criminal took the bill, went into the next room as if to change it, came out again, acted as if nothing had happened, and greeted the waiting visitor as if they were seeing each other the first time — in short, he defrauded him out of the hundred-rix-dollar bill. The first criminal became so furious over this that in his resentment he notified the authorities of the matter, how shamefully he had been defrauded. The second criminal was of course imprisoned and charged with fraud — but alas, the first question the authorities raised in this case was: How did the plaintiff get the money? Thus there were two cases. The first criminal understood quite correctly that he was in the right in the case of the fraud; now he wanted to be the honest man, the good citizen who appeals to the authorities to obtain his rights. Ah, but the authorities do not function privately or take up any isolated matter it pleases someone to lay before them, nor do they always give the case the turn the plaintiff and the informer give it — the authorities look more deeply into the circumstances. So it is also with the relation to God. If you accuse another person before God, two actions are instituted immediately; precisely when you come and inform on the other person, God begins to think about how you are involved.

Like for like; indeed, Christianity is so rigorous that it even asserts a heightened inequality. It is written, "Why do you see the splinter in your brother’s eye but not see the log that is in your own?" A pious man has piously interpreted these words as follows: The log in your own eye is neither more nor less than the seeing and condemning the splinter in your brother’s eye. But the most rigorous like for like would of course be that seeing the splinter in someone else’s eye becomes a splinter in one’s own eye. But Christianity is even more rigorous: this splinter, or seeing it judgingly, is a log. And even if you do not see the log, and even if no human being sees it, God sees it. Therefore a splinter is a log! Is this not a rigorousness that makes a mosquito into an elephant! Ah, but if you bear in mind that from the point of view of Christianity and truth God is always present in everything, that it is solely around him that everything revolves, then you will certainly be able to understand this rigorousness; you will understand that to see the splinter in your brother’s eye in the presence of God (and God is indeed always present) is high treason. If only you could avail yourself, in order to look at the splinter, of a place and a moment in which God is absent. But, in the Christian sense, this is the very thing that you must learn to hold fast, that God is always present; and if he is present, he is also looking at you. At a moment when you really think God is present, it surely would not occur to you to see any splinter in your brother’s eye or occur to you to apply this dreadfully rigorous criterion — you who are guilty yourself. But the point is, even if all better persons, as far as their own lives are concerned, do their best to have the thought of God’s omnipresence present (and nothing more preposterous can be imagined than to think of God’s omnipresence at a distance), they still often forget God’s omnipresence as they relate themselves to other people, forget that God is present in the relationship, and are satisfied with a purely human comparison. Then one has security and quiet to discover the splinter. What then is the guilt? This, that you forget yourself, forget that God is present (and he is indeed always present), or that you forget yourself in his presence. How uncircumspect to judge so rigorously in God’s presence that a splinter comes to be judged — like for like; if you want to be that rigorous, then God can outbid you — it is a log in your own eye. The authorities certainly have already regarded it as a kind of brazenness on the part of that criminal we mentioned to want to play the righteous man who pursues his rights legally and judicially, alas, a criminal who himself must be prosecuted legally and judicially — but God regards it as presumptuousness for a human being to pretend purity and to judge the splinter in his brother’s eye.

How rigorous this Christian like for like is! The Jewish, the worldly, the bustling like for like is: as others do unto you, by all means take care that you also do likewise unto them. But the Christian like for like is: God will do unto you exactly as you do unto others. In the Christian sense, you have nothing at all to do with what others do unto you — it does not concern you; it is a curiosity, an impertinence, a lack of good sense on your part to meddle in things that are absolutely no more your concern than if you were not present. You have to do only with what you do unto others, or how you take what others do unto you. The direction is inward; essentially you have to do only with yourself before God. This world of inwardness, this rendition of what other people call actuality, this is actuality. The Christian like for like belongs to this world of inwardness. It turns itself away and will turn you away from externality (but without taking you out of the world), will turn you upward or inward. In the Christian sense, to love people is to love God, and to love God is to love people — what you do unto people, you do unto God, and therefore what you do unto people God does unto you. If you are indignant with people who do you wrong, you actually are indignant with God, since ultimately it is still God who permits wrong to be done to you. But if you gratefully accept the wrong from God’s hand "as a good and perfect gift,"3 then you are not indignant with people either. If you refuse to forgive, then you actually want something else: you want to make God hard-hearted so that he, too, would not forgive — how then would this hard-hearted God forgive you? If you cannot bear people’s faults against you, how then should God be able to bear your sins against him? No, like for like. God is actually himself this pure like for like, the pure rendition of how you yourself are. If there is anger in you, then God is anger in you; if there is leniency and mercifulness in you, then God is mercifulness in you. It is infinite loving that he will have anything to do with you at all and that no one, no one, so lovingly discovers the slightest love in you as God does. God’s relation to a human being is at every moment to infinitize what is in that human being at every moment.

Endnotes:

1. Matthew 6:14: "For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you."
2. See, e.g., Luke 6: 37: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven," and Matthew 7:2: "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
3. James 1:17.

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of Nation of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines the American character as revealed by the gun control debate.

The Best of Jeff Snyder

I have waited and waited thinking that surely someone, somewhere would blurt out the obvious riposte to this Presidential claim, and point out the awful significance of the truth, but to date, I have not seen it. So I feel I simply must say it now, or burst.

We will never be asked again to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes? Again? Hey Congress and President, here’s a dose of truth for you! We weren’t asked to bail out Wall Street the first time! There was absolutely nothing voluntary about it. The financial system threatened a complete meltdown only about two years ago, and I still remember exactly what happened. You and the private banking cartel known as the Federal Reserve just bailed it out. In fact, I pretty clearly recall that when then Treasury Secretary and ex-Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson was demanding $700 billion in TARP funds from Congress, making threats that Americans would turn feral if the banking system collapsed and warning Congress that it would have to declare martial law, the American public, which wasn’t asked but which freely volunteered its opinions anyway, disapproved of the bailouts about 99 to 1. I also recall that the American people overwhelmingly opposed the bailout of General Motors as well, but you did it anyway. So Obama, thanks for the reassurance and the noble pledge, if that’s what you think they are, but I’m not really losing any sleep worrying about whether I’ll be asked again to foot the bill for Wall Street’s "mistakes," because I know that asking and listening to the public are absolutely no part of the process. We are the ones who pay. That pretty well sums up our entire role in the system.

Obama’s remark provides a simple case study in the uses of political lies and unction. The reference to the American people is meant to convey to us that we and our government undertook the bailout together, that the government carried it out in service to us and to protect us. His remark also invites the public to experience the passage of the law as a certain emotional and moral catharsis, disarming and defusing dangerous emotions that could threaten the status quo: "Yeah, Wall Street! We bailed you out once, but we won’t do it again, so watch out! There are limits to our generosity! We bailed you out, and you owe us big time! You should be ashamed of yourselves and you better behave! This new law will make sure you do!" Obama is telling us that a new sheriff is in town, thus inviting us to return to our customary passivity and somnambulance, in the belief that new sheriff is going to clean the place up.

(As an aside, Obama’s speech provides a thumbnail sketch of how our system works: we get an implied debt of gratitude from the robber barons and a promise from the government of "never again," they get the money. And by the way, when Obama promises, "never again," please note that what he is implicitly and really saying is that we’re not going to do anything about what happened this time. We’re letting them get away with it and we’re letting them keep the fruits of their plunder. His speech had not one word of pursuing legal action against anyone who created the crisis, and just promised future regulation to prevent repeats. If the architects of the financial crisis were currently in the midst of civil lawsuits clawing back the bonuses they’ve paid themselves over the last decade on the grounds that they were based on fraud, deceit and manipulation, and if they were currently being criminally prosecuted and facing hard time, Obama would not have to promise us, "never again!" He could simply point to the results, and say to the up and comers of the financial industry, you, too, can choose this exciting career path for yourselves, with these devastating consequences to your families!)

The way in which the ruling class has responded to our current financial crisis has demonstrated, far more viscerally and successfully than decades of libertarian or Marxist analysis and critique ever did, that our nominal "rulers," the President and Congress, are little more than complicit agents or unwitting stooges of the oligarchy. The role our President and Congress plays in this system is, appearing in the guise of servants of the people, to sidetrack us from assuming responsibility for ourselves and our own communities. By perpetually holding out to us the promises of a progressive betterment of our condition and easing of our burdens — hope, change, and never again — they defer the day we realize that we must rely upon and act for ourselves. While we make our demands and wait with hope for change, they continue to enact laws essentially purchased by the oligarchy’s lobbyists that reduce us to debt peonage and dependence, impose forced patronage (e.g., the recent health insurance reform act) and, in general, institute a neo-feudalism administered by a centralized surveillance, prison and warfare state. Time spent by us trying to "reform" government to make it work for the people, the way it’s "supposed" to, is just time gained in progressive enslavement.

The big lie of the bailouts was that, because we need a banking system, we had to save the particular banks that were "too big to fail" and — surprise! — their existing banker management. No, we could have nationalized those banks and put them in receivership, transferred their deposit and checking accounts to smaller, sound banks, set up a liquidation trust to sell their "toxic" assets, terminate their management, let their shareholders be wiped out, pay off their creditors with whatever remaining value their assets fetch, and prosecute those responsible. This is what we did in the Savings and Loan crisis. The truth is that, when faced with probably the most significant political choice of their lifetimes, our representatives and President chose to save the oligarchy, not the "banking system" that serves the people.

Here’s a fairly reliable guide to analyzing political justifications. Whenever a politician justifies his actions on the basis of a "trickle down" economic theory, such as, we had to bail out the too-big-to-fails in order to save you, or we need to provide corporations with subsidies and tax breaks so that they provide you with jobs, they are, by self-admission and by definition, not acting for the common good, but are instead taxing or regulating you to hand over benefits to the oligarchs. What’s amazing is that they will actually tell you that they are acting to confer great, undeserved benefits upon a tiny group of individuals in the supposed belief and expectation that you will indirectly benefit from the subsidiary effects of that group’s great and good fortune! Our legislators and President are perfectly willing to create, for a select, small handful, a feast so far surpassing the voracity of gluttony that the dogs may adequately feed themselves from crumbs that fall from the table! This, to them, is an acceptable model of "serving the people!" And this is what they offer as justification for their actions — to the dogs! So much can they count on your eagerness to lap up the crumbs that fall from that table, or your numbness or tuned-out apathy, or your downtrodden and brought-to-heel state, that they can safely offer "trickle down" to your face and to their parrots in the media without facing so much as a raised eyebrow in response.

If the concept of a true "common good" — a good that is commonly shared or available directly without having to be provided only to a small, select group of others and then "trickle down" to the remainder by indirect and subsidiary effects — is too far removed from the experience of our legislators and President to understand, and they need a direction for making laws that take from some to give to others, then a "trickle up" theory would be a far better guide for them to follow because it would far better approximate a truly common good. In contrast to our current system, "trickle up" policies would reduce tax and regulatory burdens on labor and favor production, instead of favoring and showering the largest rewards upon the trading of financial assets, would not provide special treatment to rentiers and would, instead, seek to reduce the overhead charged by rentiers.

Returning to Obama’s speech, the take-away lesson is pretty basic. If we really want to end our role as the dupes and rubes of this system, we can’t play along. We have to follow the example of the grocer that Vaclav Havel described in The Power of the Powerless, who refuses to put the party slogan in his store window and thereby stops reinforcing, perpetuating, and creating the mass lie and illusion that the government serves the people. We can’t let the rhetorical flourishes, Calls to Greatness or National Purpose, and the supposed uplifting speeches about the American people, i.e., the manipulation, lies and unction offered up daily by politicians and by their parrots in the press, just slide. We have to call them on it, and say the truth, out loud, over and over again. We have to let them know that, whatever they think about themselves, and whatever they say about how they are here to help and to serve us, we know them by their actions, and recognize them not as public servants or saviors they claim to be, but as what they are: the puppets, stooges and front men of the oligarchy.

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of Nation of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines the American character as revealed by the gun control debate.

The Best of Jeff Snyder

Within the last year, the Treasury Department has bailed out AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and forced Bank of America to acquire Merrill Lynch while promising that Treasury would take care of Merrill’s losses on its mortgaged-backed securities. The Federal Reserve, a government-sponsored private bank, has provided hundreds of billions in credit support to faltering or insolvent banks. Details not provided. With letters from voters to Congress running hundreds to 1 against, Congress approved $700 billion in TARP funds for the Treasury Department to purchase banks’ toxic assets. It now turns out that no one can say, or is willing to say, how the first $350 billion or so of those funds were used or to whom they were paid.

To deal with the toxic assets it is purchasing in order to save the banks, the Treasury Department created a program under which companies can form public-private enterprises (PPEs) to buy pools of these assets from the Treasury and resell them. The Treasury or other government agency set up for this business will put up 7%, the private company will put up 7% and the PPE can obtain 86% government financing to purchase these toxic assets at a discounted price determined by the FDIC. The financing is nonrecourse, so if the PPE does not make enough money to repay the loan, the private company is not liable for the deficiency, and the losses are absorbed by the taxpayers. The result is that, after the taxpayers absorb the initial losses in value on the toxic assets in an amount determined by the FDIC, for 7% of the discounted value down, the private company in the PPE gets the chance to make a profit reselling the same toxic assets that it or its comrades in finance helped create in the first instance. Is this a great country or what?

The Administration forced a cram down of General Motor’s creditors and, with 67% of the American people opposing the plan, acquired a substantial ownership interest in GM and bailed it out. The federal government is now in the car as well as banking businesses.

With only about 37% of the American people supporting it and 43% opposing it, Congress passed a $787 billion spending spree bill to caffeinate the zombie economy. It’s money we don’t have. By its own estimates, the federal government is going to run a deficit this year of about 1.6 trillion dollars, and projects a ten-year estimated budget deficit in excess of $9 trillion. That’s on top of our existing national debt, and doesn’t include the interest costs the government is going to incur to pay on the bonds it issues to obtain that money.

Despite blowout deficits as far as the eye can see, despite the fact that the country is in a deep recession and possibly at the beginning of a long-term depression, the Obama Administration escalates the war in Afghanistan, continues the war in Iraq, effects no retrenchment in our empire of military bases or our commitments abroad, and proposes to increase spending on the military.

With respect to civil liberties, the Obama Administration continues the Bush Administration’s policies on indefinite detainment, rendition, electronic surveillance, trials by military tribunals and disregard of habeas corpus. While these gross violations continue, Attorney General Eric “Nation of Cowards” Holder has just announced that DOJ will be commissioning a preliminary investigation of CIA underlings who acted outside of the four corners of the Bush Administration’s guidelines on “enhanced interrogation” of terror suspects. By targeting, as its first priority, those who acted outside the guidelines, the DOJ diverts attention from the far more glaring problem of the legality of the guidelines themselves, which authorized practices that clearly constitute illegal torture. While the DOJ apparently plans to demonstrate our commitment to the “rule of law” by making examples of some low-level foot soldiers in the War on Terror, the architects of the program at the Department of Justice, like John Yoo, and in the Bush Administration, like Dick Cheney and George Bush, remain uninvestigated, uncharged, and free. It’s a pretty conclusive demonstration that the President and his administration are now above the law in this country.

According to statistics in a recent New York Times article, in the 30-year period, 1977—2007, median family income rose less than 1% per year, after adjustment for inflation, while the share of income of the top 1% of Americans rose from about 9% to 24%. In the last 3 decades, the wealthiest Americans succeeded in capturing the economic benefits of nearly all of the productivity gains and income growth. The rest of us were left to finance our lifestyles and children’s’ college educations with credit, indenturing ourselves to banks and credit card companies for decades.

One in nine Americans is now on food stamps. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nationwide unemployment rate is 9.4%, but that’s a carefully crafted measurement largely recognized to understate the true state of affairs. The head of the Atlanta Federal Reserve has just publicly stated that, when you factor in the people who have stopped looking for jobs and those who want to work full-time but have only part-time jobs, the unemployment rate is currently 16%. He also delivered the news that manufacturing jobs are not coming back to the US.

According to a Financial Times article the other day, we have entered “a new stage in the foreclosure crisis that may not be easily addressed by government loan modification programmes”: mounting joblessness is now fueling the US housing crisis. As of the end of June, more than one in eight homeowners was either behind in mortgage payments or in the process of foreclosure. Meanwhile, jobs continue to be lost each month, and the Administration and financial press do victory dances simply because the rate of losses is declining. What world do these people live in?

It is hardly surprising that more and more Americans, who have rediscovered the reality of what it means to try to live within their means, are wondering what it will take to get “their” Congress and President to, first, recognize, and then, act in accord with, reality. Instead, they are treated to Congress’ and the Obama Administration’s efforts to reform the nation’s health care system, a new set of new programs and social insurance mandates that are estimated to cost another $1 to $1.6 trillion over the next ten years, will impose additional taxes on people earning in excess of $250,000 per year, and penalties on certain small businesses or penalties if they do not provide health insurance coverage to their employees.

And so, after a year in which the members of Congress have continually disregarded the voters’ wishes and committed them to trillions in debt to save the rich, the members of Congress, on return from the capital to the provinces this summer, have been caught unawares, completely surprised at the vitriol that has been directed at them in this summer’s town hall meetings. Some of the voters are calling them socialists or fascists, and waving the swastika at them! Some of the voters are spluttering with rage, are incoherent, or saying contradictory and stupid things, like telling their representatives that they don’t want government involved in health care, but don’t take away our Medicare! The folks at Comedy Central are having some fun with that. Look at these morons rage! Ah oui, c’est très amusante, cela!

Not everyone sees this as a source of hilarity or, like some pundits, a reason to bemoan the sad, infantile state of political “discourse” in this country. Trends forecaster Gerald Celente, citing the anger at this summer’s town hall meetings, says that we are in the early stages of “The Second American Revolution.” Whether it is true remains to be seen, but the prediction certainly echoes a vibrant chord of dissension running through the tenor of the times.

Celente’s name for the developing conflict is potentially misleading, in that it suggests, by implicit reference to the mythology of our first revolution, that the eventual outcome may be more freedom, not less. But as Bertrand de Jouvenel pointed out in his examination of the growth of power, historically, revolutions have always resulted in greater centralization of power, greater control over society’s resources by the state and greater tyranny, as some strong man or group found a way to harness and ride the rage to a new position of command.

What road are we on? Is the anger we see in town hall meetings limited to Congress’ attempt to reform our health care system? Are some of these people mad just because Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have whipped them into a frenzy about socialism? Yeah, it’s possible, but then again, why were they able to do that? Some commentators have noted that the anger is being fueled by people’s anxiety and uncertainty over their jobs and what’s going to happen to them. No doubt that there’s something to that, but I suspect that it has a lot more to do with something they are not uncertain of at all, some fundamental truth that’s just been really rammed home, namely, that whatever happens, they’re the ones who pay. They’re the ones who must not only bear their own losses but recompense the losses of the architects of the disaster. They’re the ones who must adjust and whose income and lives must diminish, so that those who are too big to fail continue to receive their due, and can continue to live in the style to which they’ve become accustomed. They’re the ones who are supposed to be consoled by President Obama’s assurances that “our best days are ahead,” apparently coming right after they’ve finished paying a few trillion dollars to assure that our financiers’ best days continue to be right now.

Those who want to ponder the possibility of the things that can’t happen here may want to spend some time looking to literature and history in their reflection on current events, for a little additional perspective and illumination. At times during the last year I could not help but recall Charles Dickens’ famous description of the behavior of the ruling class and wealthy in the days preceding the French Revolution. It is an accomplishment of the best of our times that the times Dickens describes no longer seem so very different from our own, some horrific state of affairs that existed once, long ago, but which, mercifully, could never happen under so resplendent a democracy as ours, founded as it is on respect for the rights of man. I am referring, of course, to A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and particularly to Dickens’ portrayal of French society in Book II, Chapter 7, “Monseigneur in Town.”

For those who aren’t familiar with it, the story is a romance. One of the lovers, the man, is a decent enough fellow but, unfortunately for him, a member of a hated aristocratic family. He, his lover and her father must escape France and the fury of the mob. A not uncommon predicament at that time, apparently, as it is estimated that about 160,000 fled France during the Revolution, most of them aristocrats and clergy. As a novelist, Dickens was not trying to provide an analytical or historical explanation of the causes of the French Revolution. His task was simply to provide sufficient context so that his readers would understand the long pent-up rage breaking forth, sweeping the Ancien Régime away in a tsunami of blood and destruction, and his readers would feel the lovers’ great peril.

I have reprinted the chapter below. There is much that could be said about Dickens’ portrait of French society in the days before the Revolution, but the reader will enjoy mulling it over for himself. I think it worthwhile to draw attention to a few notable aspects.

First, while Dickens certainly alludes to, and occasionally describes, the extremes of wealth and poverty of that time, it is not this great discrepancy, but the behavior and attitudes of the upper classes that are the focal points of his description of pre-revolutionary French society. It is a great example of the subtlety of Dickens’ social and political observation. He tacitly recognizes that it is not the poverty of the masses, or the great wealth of the upper classes per se, but the way the upper classes behave and the way they treat the masses, that fuels the coming violence.

His portrait of this behavior is scathing. The preoccupations and diversions of their own class are their greatest care, and the basis for their administration of the state:

“Monseigneur was out at a little supper most nights, with fascinating company. So polite and so impressible was Monseigneur, that the Comedy and the Grand Opera had far more influence with him in the tiresome articles of state affairs and state secrets, than the needs of all France. . . . Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business, which was, to let everything go on in its own way; of particular public business, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must all go his way — tend to his own power and pocket.”

The bubble world they have constructed for themselves, that they travel and live in, is so artificial, so isolated and shielded from the realities of everyday life and the conditions of human life that their own lives have become “unconnected with anything that [is] real.” or any “true earthly end.” While a few exceptional people among them have begun to have “some vague misgiving . . . that things in general were going rather wrong,” their focus and activities remain fixed on their own well-being. Their efforts to address this unease are of a “spiritual” nature, completely inward and self-absorbed:

“Besides these Dervishes, were other three who had rushed into another sect, which mended matters with a jargon about u2018the Centre of Truth:’ holding that Man had got out the Centre of Truth — which did not need much demonstration — but had not out of the Circumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out of the Circumference, and was even to be shoved back into the Centre, by fasting and seeing of spirits.”

Not for one instant does it occur to them to question, address or alter the actual way in which they live their lives, the conditions of their fellow man, or the fundamental structure of their society.

Certainly the upper classes don’t feel any kinship with the people, or feel that they, with them, are a part of some overall common society. Expecting that degree of feeling would be completely utopian. No, the French upper classes don’t recognize that they have anything to do with the people. The people are a completely different, and lower, order of being. They are not even human. When describing the aristocratic perspective, Dickens refers to the people as “dogs,” and “rats.”

And yet this indifference to and disassociation with their fellow man, this elevating conceit of the upper classes really is remarkable, and a fatal flaw, because the reality is that their wealth in fact comes from the people, from their labor and production, and the fate of the upper classes ultimately depends upon, and is completely bound up in, the condition of the people.

While our own ruling class may not have reached the extreme of behavior described by Dickens, we can see some degree of semblance of this indifference and disregard in the business practices of the last few decades. For example, over the last three decades, American companies eliminated manufacturing jobs here and had their goods made abroad, thereby lowering production costs, lowering prices and increasing sales and profits. What happened to the American skilled laborers who lost their jobs? Not the companies’ problem. Dickens’ description of consequences visited upon the common people by the actions of the upper classes is as accurate for America as it was for pre-revolutionary France: “In this matter, as in all others, the common wretches were left to get out of their difficulties as they could.” (Don’t think that, unlike then, the “safety net” provided by our welfare state makes some kind of difference. That prevents people from starving, at least as long as enough people still have jobs to pay the taxes that fund the programs. It does not create new productive enterprises that replace the lost ones.)

While moving manufacturing to low-cost venues abroad seemed a really good idea for the individual company, the reality was that this was not just the bright idea of one company, it fast became the bright idea of many manufacturers. So while the strategy promised increased profits, if enough Americans ceased making anything that people, somewhere in the world, wanted to buy, if enough Americans suffered this type of fate, who in America was going to buy all these goods, even at reduced prices?

Judging by the results, it would appear that factoring the long-term social and macroeconomic consequences of one’s business strategies into the formulation of those strategies is not a key lesson of the curriculum at America’s premier business schools or Fortune 500 internship, mentoring and manager training programs. Yet, if they’re not taken into account, if they’re always someone else’s problem, at some point the common wretches’ problems will become the companies’ problems, possibly at the point that they overwhelm everything else. If your business strategy is based on playing the timing game of get while the getting is good and the rest be damned, at some point time runs out, and the heap of money that you’ve made before that date may not really be enough to weather the storm, and may vanish in an instant. See, e.g., current events.

The final aspect of Dickens’ portrait that I wish to highlight is the blindness of the upper classes to the coming bloodbath, and the apparent unshakable security of their position almost right up to the day it breaks. They have no sense that they are pushing people closer and closer to the brink, and never have the slightest doubt but that they are secure in the power that their position and wealth confers, and their insulation from the conditions of the rest of their society. As Dickens portrays it, even at the edge of the precipice, there is still no sign of their danger or impending doom, and it seems that things will just go on the same way forever.

We see this in the second part of the chapter, where a Marquis’ carriage runs over a small child in the streets of Paris, and the carriage stops to secure the horses. A crowd forms around the Marquis’s carriage, but Dickens notes that “[t]here was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but watchfulness and eagerness; there was no visible menacing or anger.” The Marquis is imperial and speaks to people in the crowd, but does not doubt for one instant the security of his position. Nor would he have any cause to do so for, as Dickens notes, “[s]o cowed was their condition, and so long and hard their experience of what such a man could do to them, within the law and beyond it, that not a voice, or a hand, or even an eye was raised.” It seems such people could never rise up to overthrow anything. The people have been brought so low, so reined in that they have no option but to continue paying, carrying and kowtowing to this predatory and useless class. But the reader knows, as the Marquis does not, that this is an illusion, that the pressure is growing, that the tighter the controls, the worse they are treated, the harder they are squeezed, the greater the coming explosion will be. The reader knows, as the Marquis does not, the dam will soon break and these people, silent and cowed today, will be part of a bloodthirsty mob tomorrow.

The facts that there are no rumblings of revolt, no outbreaks of hostility, no displays of anger, that the people are as subdued and tractable, as fully under thumb as ever, are absolutely no indication that all is well, that matters are not coming to a head. This, of course, is what makes the disconnectedness and self-absorbed, self-regard of the upper classes all the more dangerous and, ultimately, fatal.

Dickens sees that, for those living at that time, the French Revolution was not a gradual, unfolding series of events, each more clearly foretelling the horror to come, but a sudden, complete rupture of the social order, cataclysmic, like an earthquake. The ground is solid, permanent, fixed and unmoving; nothing is more stable or certain. Yet underneath the pressure is building until one day it reaches a point where the plates suddenly slip. The earth moves, a chasm may open beneath one’s feet, and the landscape is forever altered.

It is because Dickens shows life shortly before the Revolution proceeding the same as ever, that the concluding words of his chapter are so powerful: “all things ran their course.” The aristocrats are attending their Fancy Ball and “the rats,” meaning the people, “are sleeping in their dark holes.” Nothing has changed. There are no new developments that give cause for concern. Life is proceeding in the same way, everything is as it should be, all’s right with the world and it’s bright and wonderful and marvelous. Yet, as readers with the hindsight of history, we know where this course leads, and how it ends.

“MONSEIGNEUR, one of the great lords in power at the Court, held his fortnightly reception in his grand hotel in Paris. Monseigneur was in his inner room, his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest of Holiests to the crowd of worshippers in the suite of rooms without. Monseigneur was about to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France; but, his morning’s chocolate could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four strong men besides the Cook.

Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur’s lips. One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died of two.

Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, where the Comedy and the Grand Opera were charmingly represented. Monseigneur was out at a little supper most nights, with fascinating company. So polite and so impressible was Monseigneur, that the Comedy and the Grand Opera had far more influence with him in the tiresome articles of state affairs and state secrets, than the needs of all France. A happy circumstance for France, as the like always is for all countries similarly favoured! — always was for England (by way of example), in the regretted days of the merry Stuart who sold it.

Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business, which was, to let everything go on in its own way; of particular public business, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must all go his way — tend to his own power and pocket. Of his pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea, that the world was made for them. The text of his order (altered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not much) ran: “The earth and the fullness thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur.”

Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embarrassments crept into his affairs, both private and public; and he had, as to both classes of affairs, allied himself perforce with a Farmer-General. As to finances public, because Monseigneur could not make anything at all of them, and must consequently let them out to somebody who could; as to finances private, because Farmer-Generals were rich, and Monseigneur, after generations of great luxury and expense, was growing poor. Hence Monseigneur had taken his sister from a convent, while there was yet time to ward off the impending veil, the cheapest garment she could wear, and had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich Farmer-General, poor in family. Which Farmer-General, carrying an appropriate cane with a golden apple on the top of it, was now among the company in the outer rooms, much prostrated before by mankind — always excepting superior mankind of the blood of Monseigneur, who, his own wife included, looked down upon him with the loftiest contempt.

A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood in his stables, twenty-four male domestics sat in his halls, six body-women waited on his wife. As one who pretended to do nothing but plunder and forage where he could, the Farmer-General — howsoever his matrimonial relations conduced to social morality — was at least the greatest reality among the personages who attended at the hotel of Monseigneur that day.

For, the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and adorned with every device of decoration that the taste and skill of the time could achieve, were, in truth, not a sound business; considered with any reference to the scarecrows in the rags and nightcaps elsewhere (and not so far off, either, but that the watching towers of Notre Dame, almost equidistant from the two extremes, could see them both), they would have been an exceedingly uncomfortable business — if that could have been anybody’s business, at the house of Monseigneur. Military officers destitute of military knowledge; naval officers with no idea of a ship; civil officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives; all totally unfit for their several callings, all lying horribly in pretending to belong to them, but all nearly or remotely of the order of Monseigneur, and therefore foisted on all public employments from which anything was to be got; these were to be told off by the score and the score. People not immediately connected with Monseigneur or the State, yet equally unconnected with anything that was real, or with lives passed in travelling by any straight road to any true earthly end, were no less abundant. Doctors who made great fortunes out of dainty remedies for imaginary disorders that never existed, smiled upon their courtly patients in the ante-chambers of Monseigneur. Projectors who had discovered every kind of remedy for the little evils with which the State was touched, except the remedy of setting to work in earnest to root out a single sin, poured their distracting babble into any ears they could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur. Unbelieving Philosophers who were remodelling the world with words, and making card-towers of Babel to scale the skies with, talked with Unbelieving Chemists who had an eye on the transmutation of metals, at this wonderful gathering accumulated by Monseigneur. Exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding, which was at that remarkable time — and has been since — to be known by its fruits of indifference to every natural subject of human interest, were in the most exemplary state of exhaustion, at the hotel of Monseigneur. Such homes had these various notabilities left behind them in the fine world of Paris, that the spies among the assembled devotees of Monseigneur — forming a goodly half of the polite company — would have found it hard to discover among the angels of that sphere one solitary wife, who, in her manners and appearance, owned to being a Mother. Indeed, except for the mere act of bringing a troublesome creature into this world — which does not go far towards the realisation of the name of mother — there was no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant women kept the unfashionable babies close, and brought them up, and charming, grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as at twenty.

The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance upon Monseigneur. In the outermost room were half a dozen exceptional people who had had, for a few years, some vague misgiving in them that things in general were going rather wrong. As a promising way of setting them right, half of the half-dozen had become members of a fantastic sect of Convulsionists, and were even then considering within themselves whether they should foam, rage, roar, and turn cataleptic on the spot — thereby setting up a highly intelligible finger-post to the Future, for Monseigneur’s guidance. Besides these Dervishes, were other three who had rushed into another sect, which mended matters with a jargon about “the Centre of Truth:” holding that Man had got out of the Centre of Truth — which did not need much demonstration — but had not got out of the Circumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out of the Circumference, and was even to be shoved back into the Centre, by fasting and seeing of spirits. Among these, accordingly, much discoursing with spirits went on — and it did a world of good which never became manifest.

But, the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel of Monseigneur were perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment had only been ascertained to be a dress day, everybody there would have been eternally correct. Such frizzling and powdering and sticking up of hair, such delicate complexions artificially preserved and mended, such gallant swords to look at, and such delicate honour to the sense of smell, would surely keep anything going, for ever and ever. The exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding wore little pendent trinkets that chinked as they languidly moved; these golden fetters rang like precious little bells; and what with that ringing, and with the rustle of silk and brocade and fine linen, there was a flutter in the air that fanned Saint Antoine and his devouring hunger far away.

Dress was the one unfailing talisman and charm used for keeping all things in their places. Everybody was dressed for a Fancy Ball that was never to leave off. From the Palace of the Tuileries, through Monseigneur and the whole Court, through the Chambers, the Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except the scarecrows), the Fancy Ball descended to the Common Executioner: who, in pursuance of the charm, was required to officiate “frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps, and white silk stockings.” At the gallows and the wheel — the axe was a rarity — Monsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal mode among his brother Professors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, and the rest, to call him, presided in this dainty dress. And who among the company at Monseigneur’s reception in that seventeen hundred and eightieth year of our Lord, could possibly doubt, that a system rooted in a frizzled hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and white-silk stockinged, would see the very stars out!

Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and taken his chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of Holiests to be thrown open, and issued forth. Then, what submission, what cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation! As to bowing down in body and spirit, nothing in that way was left for Heaven — which may have been one among other reasons why the worshippers of Monseigneur never troubled it.

Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper on one happy slave and a wave of the hand on another, Monseigneur affably passed through his rooms to the remote region of the Circumference of Truth. There, Monseigneur turned, and came back again, and so in due course of time got himself shut up in his sanctuary by the chocolate sprites, and was seen no more.

The show being over, the flutter in the air became quite a little storm, and the precious little bells went ringing down-stairs. There was soon but one person left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat under his arm and his snuff-box in his hand, slowly passed among the mirrors on his way out.

“I devote you,” said this person, stopping at the last door on his way, and turning in the direction of the sanctuary, “to the Devil!”

With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as if he had shaken the dust from his feet, and quietly walked down-stairs.

He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in manner, and with a face like a fine mask. A face of a transparent paleness; every feature in it clearly defined; one set expression on it. The nose, beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly pinched at the top of each nostril. In those two compressions, or dints, the only little change that the face ever showed, resided. They persisted in changing colour sometimes, and they would be occasionally dilated and contracted by something like a faint pulsation; then, they gave a look of treachery, and cruelty, to the whole countenance. Examined with attention, its capacity of helping such a look was to be found in the line of the mouth, and the lines of the orbits of the eyes, being much too horizontal and thin; still, in the effect of the face made, it was a handsome face, and a remarkable one.

Its owner went down-stairs into the courtyard, got into his carriage, and drove away. Not many people had talked with him at the reception; he had stood in a little space apart, and Monseigneur might have been warmer in his manner. It appeared, under the circumstances, rather agreeable to him to see the common people dispersed before his horses, and often barely escaping from being run down. His man drove as if he were charging an enemy, and the furious recklessness of the man brought no check into the face, or to the lips, of the master. The complaint had sometimes made itself audible, even in that deaf city and dumb age, that, in the narrow streets without footways, the fierce patrician custom of hard driving endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner. But, few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, and, in this matter, as in all others, the common wretches were left to get out of their difficulties as they could.

With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of consideration not easy to be understood in these days, the carriage dashed through streets and swept round corners, with women screaming before it, and men clutching each other and clutching children out of its way. At last, swooping at a street corner by a fountain, one of its wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses reared and plunged.

But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would not have stopped; carriages were often known to drive on, and leave their wounded behind, and why not? But the frightened valet had got down in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at the horses’ bridles.

“What has gone wrong?” said Monsieur, calmly looking out.

A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like a wild animal.

“Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!” said a ragged and submissive man, “it is a child.”

“Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his child?”

“Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis — it is a pity — yes.”

The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened, where it was, into a space some ten or twelve yards square. As the tall man suddenly got up from the ground, and came running at the carriage, Monsieur the Marquis clapped his hand for an instant on his sword-hilt.

“Killed!” shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extending both arms at their length above his head, and staring at him. “Dead!”

The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis. There was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but watchfulness and eagerness; there was no visible menacing or anger. Neither did the people say anything; after the first cry, they had been silent, and they remained so. The voice of the submissive man who had spoken, was flat and tame in its extreme submission. Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyes over them all, as if they had been mere rats come out of their holes.

He took out his purse.

“It is extraordinary to me,” said he, “that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in the, way. How do I know what injury you have done my horses. See! Give him that.”

He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again with a most unearthly cry, “Dead!”

He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom the rest made way. On seeing him, the miserable creature fell upon his shoulder, sobbing and crying, and pointing to the fountain, where some women were stooping over the motionless bundle, and moving gently about it. They were as silent, however, as the men.

“I know all, I know all,” said the last comer. “Be a brave man, my Gaspard! It is better for the poor little plaything to die so, than to live. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an hour as happily?”

“You are a philosopher, you there,” said the, Marquis, smiling. “How do they call you?”

“They call me Defarge.”

“Of what trade?”

“Monsieur the Marquis, vendor of wine.”

“Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine,” said the Marquis, throwing him another gold coin, “and spend it as you will. The horses there; are they right?”

Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time, Monsieur the Marquis leaned back in his seat, and was just being driven away with the air of a gentleman who had accidentally broke some common thing, and had paid for it, and could afford to pay for it; when his ease was suddenly disturbed by a coin flying into his carriage, and ringing on its floor.

“Hold!” said Monsieur the Marquis. “Hold the horses! Who threw that?”

He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of wine had stood, a moment before; but the wretched father was grovelling on his face on the pavement in that spot, and the figure that stood beside him was the figure of a dark stout woman, knitting.

“You dogs!” said the Marquis, but smoothly, and with an unchanged front, except as to the spots on his nose: “I would ride over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew which rascal threw at the carriage, and if that brigand were sufficiently near it, he should be crushed under the wheels.”

So cowed was their condition, and so long and hard their experience of what such a man could do to them, within the law and beyond it, that not a voice, or a hand, or even an eye was raised. Among the men, not one. But the woman who stood knitting looked up steadily, and looked the Marquis in the face. It was not for his dignity to notice it; his contemptuous eyes passed over her, and over all the other rats; and he leaned back in his seat again, and gave the word “Go on!”

He was driven on, and other carriages came whirling by in quick succession; the Minister, the State-Projector, the Farmer-General, the Doctor, the Lawyer, the Ecclesiastic, the Grand Opera, the Comedy, the whole Fancy Ball in a bright continuous flow, came whirling by. The rats had crept out of their holes to look on, and they remained looking on for hours; soldiers and police often passing between them and the spectacle, and making a barrier behind which they slunk, and through which they peeped. The father had long ago taken up his bundle and bidden himself away with it, when the women who had tended the bundle while it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the running of the water and the rolling of the Fancy Ball — when the one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate. The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together in their dark holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course.”

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of Nation of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. He occasionally blogs at The Shining Wire. Read this interview with him.

The Best of Jeff Snyder

This is the kind of arcane financial news that is easy to disregard. When people hear "Swiss bank accounts," they may brush off the attacks as the problems of the ultra rich. If only we were so "unfortunate" to have this kind of problem to worry about, right? Unfortunately, however, I think we do. I believe that there is far more to this than a temporary, one-time money grab by the IRS from tax evaders. I believe this is also very bad news even for us “wage slaves.”

The day Mr. Huebert’s article appeared, the Justice Department announced that the US and Switzerland had reached an agreement in principle to settle the US lawsuit against UBS AG seeking the names of 52,000 account holders. No details of the agreement were released but, given the amount of leverage that the US can bring to bear on UBS’s operations in the United States, it would be astounding if UBS had not agreed to some major accommodation to US demands.

Let’s go back and supply a little context about how we get to this issue in the first place.

Like most countries, the US taxes its residents on income that they earn outside of the US. Unlike most countries, the US also taxes its nonresident citizens on their worldwide income. Solely by virtue of being born here, the US claims lifelong rights to your earning stream even if you take up permanent residency in another country. As a result, the US is constantly seeking ways, through treaties, laws or, now we see, international strong arm measures, to track the international financial transactions of its citizens, whether in the name of preventing drug trafficking, money laundering, tax evasion or other crimes.

US taxpayers are required to report, and pay taxes, on interest or other earnings derived from foreign accounts. Unlike US banks, which will send you and the IRS a Form 1099 each year, foreign banks do not have an obligation to report your earnings to the IRS. Accordingly, the IRS is keenly interested in finding out from you whether or not you have any such foreign accounts.

Schedule B to Form 1040 (used for reporting interest and dividends) asks, "At any time during (the previous year), did you have an interest in or a signatory or other authority over a financial account in a foreign country, such as a bank account, securities account, or other financial account?" As described by the law firm of Bove & Langa in an on-line article about this matter, the answer to this question has serious potential consequences:

The question calls for nothing more than checking a "yes" or "no" box in response, but most taxpayers (and many tax preparers) just ignore it. The yes box or the no box, that’s it. There are no boxes that say, "maybe" or "I don’t understand the question," or "I decline to answer on the grounds that an answer may incriminate me." Maybe there should be such choices, since there are many who do not fully understand the serious implications of ignoring the question when such an account exists, or worse, of intentionally providing an incorrect answer, which, surprisingly, may include no answer at all. That is to say, intentionally leaving both boxes blank could be deemed a false answer by the IRS or a court."

In addition to this reporting obligation on Form 1040, a U.S. citizen, resident alien and even certain persons who are not resident but are doing business in the US with no other connection are also required, by the Bank Secrecy Act, to report the existence of a foreign account to the IRS on Treasury Department Form 90-22.1 if the combined total value of all such accounts exceeds $10,000 at any time during the year. The definition of the type of accounts that must be reported is very broad and includes even prepaid credit card and debit card accounts. The report must be filed even if the accounts generate no interest or other taxable income. As described by Bove & Langa, the penalties for a willful failure are quite severe:

"[t]he civil penalties for failing to report the account on the prescribed form . . . can range from up to $10,000 for a "non-willful" failure, and for a willful failure the greater of $100,000 or half the balance in the foreign account. [emphasis supplied.] If criminal activities are involved, the monetary penalties are increased and may be accompanied by possible imprisonment for up to ten years.[footnote omitted] . . . [F]ailure to maintain adequate records of the foreign account may result in additional civil and criminal penalties. The IRS states that records should be kept for five years."

As Mr. Huebert pointed out, while the IRS is seeking information about approximately some $20 billion in UBS accounts, because of the possibility that most people with these accounts may have been accurately reporting all earnings and paying all applicable income taxes on those earnings, it is possible that the IRS will not obtain all that much money, especially when judged against the current federal deficit. However, since the intentional failure to report an account can result in loss of one-half of the entire account, the IRS does indeed have a very strong financial motivation to obtain the UBS information, because even a relatively small number of noncompliant taxpayers with very large foreign accounts could generate sizable revenues. The threat of this penalty alone will give the IRS considerable leverage for nonreporting taxpayers to settle somewhere between the penalties for unintentional and intentional failure, likely resulting in considerable tax revenues from persons who honestly didn’t know they were violating the law.

More importantly, the IRS’s highly visible targeting of the "establishment" Swiss banking system will likely garner much greater future compliance with these reporting obligations, so that the IRS and US government will likely obtain detailed information about many more foreign accounts from people who have either intentionally hidden these accounts or who just want to "play it safe." In this regard, please note that TDF-90-22.1 requires the reporting individual to provide the account number of the account itself, as well as the names of the account holders and name and address of the financial institution, thus providing all the information necessary to enable the governmental to file tax liens, seek the freezing of accounts or other enforcement actions available to it under tax treaties or applicable foreign laws.

Still, it is very likely that these consequences will fall predominantly upon very high-income taxpayers. Unfortunately, the US strong arm tactics to compel foreign banks to disclose US account holders’ information are having an additional, and more disturbing effect on a far greater number of people, and one that is quite possibly also intended by our lords and masters. And that is this: to make it extremely difficult for Americans to have accounts abroad, and therefore to prevent both the safeguarding of wealth outside the United States and living outside of the United States.

According to this Forbes article, Americans are fast becoming pariahs of foreign banks. Because of US demands and pressures, foreign banks in countries around the world are deciding to close Americans’ accounts, or are not permitting Americans to open new ones. In some cases, the banks are not terminating or rejecting new applications for just securities or investment accounts, but also current accounts, i.e., the standard checking accounts people use for their living expenses. In other words, the US is making it more difficult for you to live in another country, by creating international difficulties that, in the end, will seriously obstruct your ability to conduct everyday financial transactions in a foreign country. By creating high costs for foreign banks to permit US citizens to open and maintain even checking and savings accounts in foreign countries, US citizens will be unable to have the normal banking services they need to live in a foreign country, and will not be able to do things like pay rent, utilities, travel on public transportation and buy groceries.

Possibly the most unequivocal sign that distinguishes a totalitarian system from a relatively free society is the simple right to leave. In totalitarian societies, the "iron curtain" falls, and "citizens" are not free to leave. The people and their assets are effectively property of the state. They, and everything they produce, are "human resources" that belong to the government. The "citizens" are more accurately described as prisoners confined within their national borders.

The US government’s attacks on foreign financial institutions are one more means by which the US is slowly establishing controls that will prevent the populace from escaping their indentured servant status here, or just escaping, period. One of the effects of these attacks will be, to some extent, to lock American assets into American banks and keep funds here, onshore, where they are readily controllable, seizable and debasable. These attacks are a way of closing the borders, are the makings of a banking “Berlin Wall.”

Slowly and methodically, we are being locked in.

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of Nation of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. He occasionally blogs at The Shining Wire. Read this interview with him.

The Best of Jeff Snyder

Pierre Lemieux, a French Canadian, economist, professor, author, libertarian thorn in the flesh of the Canadian Leviathan, and a friend, has become a felon. Pierre refused to answer one of the questions on his application to renew his firearms license, and the licensing center refused to renew his license. He now faces the prospect of 10 years in prison for keeping firearms without a license.

I will tell you some of his story. At this stage you may be thinking that it’s going to be about gun control but, rest assured, it’s not. Too many see trees, only trees, everywhere they look, and never a forest. Every abuse, every injustice is singular, isolate, one more thing to be addressed, corrected or reformed — unfortunate, deplorable really, but circumscribed, in an arena separate from the rest of life, someone else’s problem, and someone else’s cause.

No, Pierre’s story is about what it means to be ruled, what it means to need permission from the state. And if you stop looking at trees and see the forest, then Pierre’s refusal to follow orders may pose a question for you: How far will you accommodate the state before you resist? Is there some limit to your ability to mold yourself to the state’s designs? At what point will the state cross a line within you, when what you are ordered to do is more than you will accept or bear, when you will say, "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise"?

Or does no such line exist? Are you that final object of all the state’s labors, that Quintessential Being that the state expects, demands and needs you to be: a plastic person?

In 1995 Canada passed an "Act Respecting Firearms and Other Weapons," generally referred to simply as the "Firearms Act" or by its original bill number, C-68. At the time, Canada already had handgun registration. The Firearms Act created a long gun registry and a new firearm licensing authority, and required citizens to possess licenses to own firearms. The licenses are good for five years. Pierre registered his firearms, and submitted his first application for a firearms license in 1996, which was granted, his first application for renewal in 2001, which was granted, and his second request for renewal in 2007, which was denied.

Pierre believes that Canadians have the right to own firearms without government approval. In fact, he has written extensively on the subject to educate his fellow Canadians and to peaceably restore respect for this right. Nevertheless, like most people, Pierre complied with the registration and licensing scheme in order to keep what he loves and to live a "quiet life." Unfortunately, despite his best efforts to comply, Pierre ran into his own personal limit with an impertinence in the license application that he simply could not abide, viz., question 6(d) of the license application, which asks:

"During the past two (2) years, have you experienced a divorce, a separation, a breakdown of a significant relationship, job loss or bankruptcy?"

The instructions to the application state that all personal history questions must be answered, and that "[I]f you answer YES to any of the questions . . . you MUST provide details on a second page. . . . If details are not provided, your application cannot be processed. A YES answer does not mean your application will be refused but it may lead to further examination."

In each of 1996, 2001 and 2007, Pierre, waging what he describes as "a dignity battle" against the law, refused to answer this question, instead responding that "My love affairs are none of your business / Ça ne vous regarde pas." In 2007, Pierre took the additional step of sending, by registered mail, a copy of his application, a cover letter and three pages of his book, Confessions d’un coureur des bois hors-la-loi, which chronicles his resistance against Canadian gun control laws, to the Prime Minister of Canada.

Two months after his license expired, having heard nothing from the licensing center, Pierre made a freedom of information request to find out the status of his application. Eventually, he received word that his license renewal was denied by reason of his failure to answer question 6(d). Pierre now owns firearms — registered firearms — in violation of the law, a crime punishable by 10 years in prison. On the webpage where he chronicles his resistance to the Canadian license law, Pierre wonders: " Will I be the first Canadian to be jailed for refusing to tell the state about his love life? Not the last one, I fear."

If an activity is licensed by the state, then it is a privilege conferred and controlled by the state, and not a right. The conditions on which the privilege is conferred are matters of legislative or administrative grace; the person may not lawfully engage in the activity and is not affirmatively protected from state incursion simply by reason of being a person, as would be the case with an "individual right." The Firearms Act empowered an agency with a mandate to create and administer a licensing program and vested very broad powers in the agency to establish the particulars of the program. The Act clearly establishes that ownership of firearms in Canada is a privilege conferred only upon those deemed worthy by satisfaction of conditions determined by the licensing authority.

Stop and consider for a moment this by method of "legislation." The founding "law" simply directs a combined legislative/judicial/executive agency to create and enforce a program without bothering to prescribe the contents of the program or even any significant limits on the exercise of that "authority." Instead, it vests the agency with very broad discretion to define and administer the program. This form of legislation is, historically, a favorite with advocates of gun control, but it is by no means atypical of modern law-making, and is often used to control all sorts of activities. For example, the act establishing the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States is in large part of this nature, being essentially a mandate to the agency to go forth and create clean air and water.

Consider what this type of "legislation" says about how truly, deeply, worried your "representatives" are about your lives. They cannot be troubled to precisely define the contents of the "laws" to which you will be subject, to define or circumscribe the conditions that may ultimately be imposed upon you or resultant burdens upon you and, therefore, do not limit how impertinent, overreaching or arbitrary they may become. Instead, the laws to which you will be subject largely or in significant part are devised by men and women who are not subject even to the minimum accountability of having to be re-elected to maintain office, who are protected from removal from office by civil service laws and who will never, ever be accountable to the innumerable citizens they harm for the harebrained regulations they impose. The legislators don’t have to make any of the difficult decisions, won’t be blamed for agency regulations that outrage the electorate, and it’s just fine with them if you have to incur significant costs in time, money and energy to bring actions in the courts to overturn the agency’s edicts, or to lobby the legislators to bring their administrative dogs to heel. There’s certainly no problem with more lobbying, it means more political contributions! The legislators dodge responsibility and accountability to the electorate, and position themselves as saviors who can remedy the abuses of the administrative agencies. An ideal system, really!

For reasons known only to it, the Canadian licensing bureau decided that it needs to know details about each applicant’s love life, job losses, and bankruptcies in order to determine whether to issue a firearms license. Doubtless many of us are dulled, if not numb, to the presumptions of wisdom and competence, and intrusiveness, of government agencies, but consider the god-like heights that the Canadian firearms licensing bureau claims as its own. The air is indeed rare there! It is going to make decisions whether to grant or deny a firearms license based on its evaluation of your love woes, job loss or bankruptcy!

"Provide details," it commands. Assuming you can get past the monumental presumptuousness that demands that you submit, as a matter of official record, intimate details about your life to be mulled over by some police official, really, how does one respond to that? What level of detail, exactly, are they demanding? Would "My wife and I were divorced six months ago" be sufficient? Or is one required to add some salient, hopefully spicy details? "My God! For a while there, it was almost like "War of the Roses!" I refused to leave the house! She smashed some of my things and in retaliation I uprooted her beloved rose bushes! The tears! The screaming fits of rage! It was a complete nightmare! Now it’s over and, fortunately for all concerned, we live in completely different provinces!" Or does one add page after page of Henry James-like psychological detail of every gesture, facial expression and step of the breakup, the job loss, the bankruptcy?

Assuming one provides sufficient details, the agents who process the applications will then decide what significance these personal facts have for firearms ownership. This is pretty impressive! Consider that state-licensed psychiatrists, actual medical doctors who have specialized in the scientific study of mental health, cannot reliably predict, do not even claim to be able to predict, who is and is not going to commit an act of violence. Yet fear not and be ye amazed! The intrepid agents of the licensing bureau can and will determine who among those recently wounded in love, employment or credit relationships may safely own a firearm, doubtless relying upon gut instincts finely-honed through years of processing applications!

Maybe the licensing bureau isn’t going to use psychological profiling. Maybe, instead, the details it needs are the names and phone numbers of your ex-lover, your ex-boss and the creditors who lost a bundle when you filed for bankruptcy. And maybe the bureau will then contact them and make inquiries. "Hello. This is Officer Smith from the Firearms Licensing Bureau. Your [choose one] [ex-lover], [former employee] [former debtor] is asking us to renew his firearms license so that he can continue to own firearms for the next five years. Are you okay with that? Does that give you any cause for concern?" And then the bureau can decide whether to issue a license based on what these people say about you. Not quite a judicial determination of the existence of a crime, you understand, with an actual crime charged, penalties for perjury, the opportunity to confront and cross-examine your accusers and rules about what is and isn’t admissible evidence, but hey! Good enough for administrative agencies, which make their own rules and act as legislature, judge and enforcer.

Who knows how the licensing bureau will evaluate this information? They want it, and they will act upon it, and that is all the applicant needs to know. The activity for which the supplicant need a license is a privilege conferred by the state and, therefore, at bottom rests on nothing more than meeting their conditions, i.e., on pleasing the authorities, who most assuredly will do as they please.

This is what it is to be ruled, for your activities to be privileges conferred by the state, for the conditions of your life to be determined based on some legislator’s or administrator’s "good ideas" for governance. This is what it is to have your life controlled by another who has the power to fine you and throw you in jail for failing to comply with his conditions.

This is why American gun owners vehemently oppose registration of guns and licensure of firearms ownership. It doesn’t matter what the law says or whether it’s a "good idea" or what its supposed socially-worthwhile, beneficially-motivated "intent" is. It’s how the law’s power is wielded that determines the conditions of your life. This is why, when the NRA and gun owners supported "shall issue" concealed carry licensing laws, currently in place in 37 states, the laws were carefully crafted to specify precisely the procedures to be followed, to enumerate the only conditions that could be imposed, all of which were objectively determinable and none of which depended upon the exercise of agency discretion, and to impose time and cost limits for processing, so that, upon satisfaction of strictly objectively verifiable criteria, the licensing authority was required to issue the permit. This is why American gun owners demanded that state legislatures pass these new laws and repeal the old licensing laws that were enacted in the early 20th Century, laws like the Sullivan Act, which still governs the residents of New York City. While appearing on the surface to be even-handed, those older statutes simply conferred broad, nebulous discretion on a licensing authority, with the result that they have been and, where still in effect, are, administered in a way to insure that only the "right" sort of people obtain permits. In New York City, this means that men like Donald Trump and Howard Stern get carry permits, but not the multitudes whose lives just aren’t important enough to warrant the privilege of self-protection. (For a more extensive discussion of the arbitrary nature of discretionary licensing statutes, see this policy analysis of "shall issue" concealed carry laws.)

While Pierre is now a felon because of his nation’s gun control laws, never forget that this is how he got in trouble with the state: He acted on the basis that there are some details about his life, important to him, that are his affair and his alone.

No one who believes he has the right to control you, who believes, further, that he has the right to engineer a society according to his ideas and plans, will ever accept this. It is an affront to his arrogance, to his arrogation of power to control you as he deems fit. To have "lawful authority" — really, political power — is precisely to have a free hand to use coercion to suit your purpose, without necessity of justification. If you are simply carrying out a prescribed course, if there is no discretionary element to your "authority" that permits you to shape it and use it to your purpose, it is not power but mere processing and ministration: you are a mere servant, a functionary, a minion. In brief, you are you: a servant and whatever government requires you to be, and manifestly not a king, a sovereign, a president, a semi-divine one, a colossus bestriding the earth.

Anyone who believes they have the right to control you ultimately must act ruthlessly, because a person does not control another unless, in the absence of willing consent or consent obtained through misrepresentation or fraud, he will compel the other to act as he commands. Ask yourself why a refusal to answer a single question about your love life is accompanied by a threat of, and merits, 10 years in prison. The failure to answer this question inflicts no actual harm on any citizen. The punishment cannot, therefore, be for harm the refusal has caused any specific victim or "society" at large. No, the injured party here is the state itself. The refusal to answer the state’s question is an affront to the state’s "authority," and its claims to operate, and manage society, as it sees fit. The real "crime" is that the subject has failed to follow the state’s orders. He has failed to submit to and participate in the state’s project to control or engineer society in accordance with the state’s plans. Possibly, for example, the licensing bureau’s motivation for asking about love woes, job losses and bankruptcies is that it hopes to be able to prevent some future crimes (with guns, at least) based on certain facts that the licensing bureau believes have some degree of predictive value for determining who will and won’t commit crimes. That is, it may be implementing a general policy directive to shape an aggregate outcome (a reduction in crime) based on the fact that a certain small percentage of ex-lovers, ex-employees and bankrupts will commit armed violence against their former lovers, former employers or creditors. In refusing to answer the question, then, the applicant thwarts the state’s plans and rebukes the state’s claim to an authority to control or engineer society in accordance with its purpose. The "crime" is not a personal crime, like murder, robbery or pollution of the air or water, but a political crime. The essence of the crime is lèse majesté. The "criminal" has refused to obey the state’s fiat, and in so doing has committed an intolerable affront to the state’s claim to an absolute "authority." He has shown his willingness to keep and act upon his own counsel and not follow orders. The state cannot let that stand and continue to be a state. It is the ultimate crime, and that it is why it is dealt with ruthlessly, meriting the same punishment that Solzhenitsyn informed us that Stalin’s political prisoners in the Gulag received for rebukes to authority: a tenner. Evidently, like minds, each claiming a right to control and engineer both man and society, perceive like threats, and respond with a like "solution."

In his letter to the Prime Minister, Pierre notes that he is ashamed that he has not joined the Canadian heroes who are resisting the Firearms Act by refusing to register their guns or apply for licenses. These peaceful, otherwise law-abiding men and women occasionally hold open protests in front of government buildings daring the authorities to arrest them and throw them all in jail for ten years. According to information obtained by Pierre under a freedom of information request, as of February 2009, the Royal Mounted Canadian Police estimate that there were 185,925 owners of long guns alone who are not in compliance with the firearms registration and license laws.

We know now that Pierre need not have been ashamed, for it is clear that he is no less heroic. The state pushes and pushes; too much is never enough. It demands nothing less than absolute, complete control over an avidly obedient populace. To the state, there is no difference between 99% compliance and zero compliance. If there is one thing, one thing alone that it commands that you are unwilling to do for it, you have rebuked its authority and you are a threat, and the state will take you down. Pierre tried to comply for the sake of an undisturbed, peaceful life, but there was one thing the state demanded that he was not willing to do. There is something within him, some inherent dignity, he is not willing to relinquish or alter to suit the bastards. And so he refused to act as he was commanded to act, he refused to be a plastic person, forever conforming himself to the shapes devised for him by men and women with delusions of grandeur and whose tools for creating utopia are tasers, guns, fines and prison. And for that he may get ten years in jail.

So this is how it is. If you can labor "within the system" forever to obtain the reform that will correct this abuse, and that one, and each and every other abuse that arises, now and forever; if you can labor forever to exchange your current masters for better ones, a better Congressperson, a better Senator, a better President; if, in short, your idea of "citizenship" or "activism" is playing whack-a-mole with those lording it over you; if you can wait forever for the permission that you need to live life peaceably as you envision it; if you can march forward uplifted on Hope and Change; if you can find reasons and make excuses forever why Change cannot be achieved fully, just yet; if, in short, nothing can cause you to call into question the fundamental belief that it is good and proper for some people to have a "right" to control your life and the rest of society, using, as their tools, lying, fraud, manipulation, threats, grants of legal monopolies, protection and immunities, payoffs ("subsidies"), confiscation, fines, tasers, guns and jail; and if, when their commands are finally issued directly to you and you are confronted with tasers, guns, fines and jail, everything about you is conformable, malleable; if at no point will you ever openly refuse to comply with their plans when you are ordered to do so; then relax, the state is not coming for you. You are a plastic person, deforming yourself to fit into the shape that the state designs for you. You are no threat and you can be controlled because there is no one there to offer any resistance.

But if there is some peaceful activity you care about deeply, if you invest your life in it and the state should seek to control this in a way that that truly hurts you, then you will collide with the state, and what you love will be used against you. That is how the state operates. That is how it implements its self-described mission of "protecting" and "caring" for you. And if, because of this thing you love, you have some limit, some thing or aspect of yourself you will not give up or alter, then you are a threat, then you are an affront and rebuke to your government’s assumption of complete control. You have demonstrated that you will not dance to the state’s tune, that you are an individual and not a cog in the state’s machine, and Pierre’s story may someday also be your story.

Pierre has filed a motion of appeal before the Québec provincial court, asking that the license refusal be quashed and apologies issued. He also argues that the Firearms Act and related criminal code provisions are unconstitutional, and that he does not need any license to exercise his traditional liberty to possess firearms. The court date has been set for May 26 and 27, 2009, in room 207 of the Mont-Laurier Courthouse, Québec, starting at 9:30 a.m. each morning. Richard A. Fritze, an Alberta lawyer and well-known defender of Canadian firearms owners and their rights, is representing Pierre pro bono. In addition, several expert witnesses will testify on behalf of Pierre’s position, including Joyce Malcolm, author of To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origin of an Anglo-American Right, Colin Greenwood, a now retired senior English police officer who authored a landmark work on the history of England’s gun control laws and their failure to reduce violent crime, and Professor Gary Mauser, who co-authored an article in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy with Don Kates titled, "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?

These experts have generously agreed to assist Pierre for only the cost of their travel and accommodations, but Pierre needs funds to pay for what will most likely be a long and difficult battle. Please consider supporting him. If you wish to assist Pierre’s fight by donating, please contact Paul Rogan, publisher of Canadian Access to Firearms, who is acting as a pro bono fund-raiser. Alternatively, The Canadian Constitution Foundation has established a "Pierre Lemieux Legal Fund." to provide funds to support Pierre’s case and you may instead donate earmarked funds to the CCF. Mr. Rogan can provide details on how to make your contribution through CCF.

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of Nation of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. He occasionally blogs at The Shining Wire. Read this interview with him.

Jeff Snyder Archives

Here’s why this is a good idea:

• There’s essentially no loss to the Treasury, because those amounts aren’t currently taxable anyway. While the funds are ultimately taxed when taken out after retirement (presumably at lower rates because the retiree isn’t working any more and is in a lower tax bracket), and this represents some loss to the Treasury on a time value basis, the benefits to the economy from a quicker recovery will mean greater overall tax revenues and savings in government programs.

• Stocks overall aren’t going to appreciate in value for the near future and there aren’t many real "growth" opportunities in this market available to the typical American participant in a 401(k). Americans in the know are pulling funds out of stocks, which are just going down or oscillating in the same sickening range of depressed values, and putting their 401(k) moneys in bonds or money market funds, which are generating returns only slightly better than the CPI at best. At worst, the huge amounts of cash being shifted into Treasuries and bonds is creating an unsustainable bubble in Treasuries and bonds that will also soon burst. On the other hand, using pretax dollars to prepay debts will save all of the future interest costs on the prepaid debt — e.g., 18% on credit card debt, 8% or 10% on a car loan over 3 years, or 6% or 7% on a mortgage with a remaining term of 24 years. This is in effect a better "return" than is available to almost anyone in this economy. These avoided costs or "savings" translate into much more discretionary income — and more for saving and investment when the economy again begins to grow — down the road.

• The prepaid debt will bring necessary cash into the banks and other consumer financial institutions.

It is difficult to obtain current information regarding cumulative annual 401(k) contributions. However, a 2005 fact sheet from the Employee Benefit Research Institute indicates that, at the end of 2003, there were approximately 42 million participants in 401(k) plans. The cumulative amount of personal indebtedness that could be eliminated through temporary authorization to use pretax dollars otherwise slated for 401(k) plans is enormous.

Americans need to shed debt, not begin borrowing even more. Instead of "stimulating" us to keep borrowing to buy buy buy, how about "stimulating" us to improve our personal balance sheets by eliminating debt so we have a future in which we can live live live?

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of Nation of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. He occasionally blogs at The Shining Wire. Read this interview with him.

Jeff Snyder Archives

In this article I want to explain, with reference to a few simple economic factors, how this happened and why our remaining wealth is neither going to be restored nor grow — unless and until certain fundamental changes are made. Specifically, we need to eliminate the Federal Reserve System. This is one of those topics that gets you quickly dismissed in American politics as a complete nutburger, but it is my hope that I can explain this with reference to such familiar experience that it will become apparent why the Federal Reserve System is a key factor in our current predicament.

Middle-class wealth resides predominantly in college and retirement savings. (I exclude homes because homes are a consumable good, not an investment). These savings are incentivized through tax exemptions but at the price of restrictions on use and penalties on early withdrawal. As a means of increasing future wealth, this program of "saving for our future" has now been proven to be largely ineffective, if not completely illusory. Pre-crash investment wealth is not coming back, and any increase in nominal value will reflect inflation (i.e., a decrease in the purchasing power of the dollar) rather than a real increase in value. The government’s polices guarantee that we will have no real investment growth for a very long time. This will not change unless and until the Federal Reserve is eliminated.

You have noticed that, for a long time now, at least since the Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s, banks do not pay any real interest on your money, that the rates they offer rarely even approximate the annual CPI rate, let alone the real rate of inflation. Dollars left sitting in a savings account or even in a timed deposit like a certificate of deposit, are actually just losing value. This is because (i) by law, only U.S. dollars are legal tender within the United States, so that all other currencies are excluded, and (ii) the supply and cost of credit is controlled by the Federal Reserve.

The first factor is relevant because the Federal Reserve’s power depends almost entirely on the fact that it is a private cartel that controls a legal monopoly over money. Were all currencies, or even some moderate number of currencies of other nations or financial institutions acceptable as legal tender, the Reserve would face competition that would compel it to act more responsibly. If every person could designate the form of legal tender in which he was to be paid, currencies that better preserved value would be favored over currencies that did not. For example, a short time ago, when the dollar was quickly depreciating against the euro, there was a news story that merchants in New York City were putting signs in their windows for the European tourists flocking to the city because of the favorable exchange rates: "Euros accepted here." By accepting euros, the merchants were acquiring a currency that, relative to the dollar at that time, actually enhanced and preserved their purchasing power. If every employee, every person could, day to day, state that he was accepting payment only in euros, or yen, or Swiss francs, or (oh no!) gold and silver, the continual risk of flight from the dollar would impose discipline on the Reserve or, in the absence of the Reserve (which in truth would then have little reason for existing since it could not reap the benefits of a legal monopoly), the Congress.

The Reserve has two powers pertinent here. It can create credit by fiat (more colloquially, "print money"), and it can set the rate at which it will extend this credit to other banks for use by those banks. Essentially, banks are not willing to pay you anything, or much, for the use of your money because the banks can get boatloads from the Reserve and can get it dirt-cheap. Right now, the federal funds rate is 0.25%. The Reserve is essentially giving it away for almost nothing. Even a year ago, the rate was only 3.5%. The ability of banks to obtain cheap, seemingly unlimited credit from the Reserve devalues your money and, here’s the key, actually prevents your money from participating in the making of money. It prevents you from benefiting from being a capitalist with your own funds, however limited they may be. You cannot grow your own wealth by making it available to productive enterprises. The Reserve shunts you out of growth of your money through savings and investment because it can always provide vast sums of money more cheaply than investors.

The Reserve’s control of this legal monopoly over legal tender and credit relegates you, permanently, to the status of a consumer. By providing no financial incentive to save, and by actually penalizing saving through deflation in value of the dollar, the Reserve creates an incentive to spend all available funds as received. This benefits commercial interests that cater to consumption, and the financial institutions that provide credit for that consumption, creating additional profits for those companies that would otherwise be lost if a portion of your discretionary income were saved and invested in production rather than spent on consumption or debt service for past consumption.

Okay, forget about saving. What about the stock market? We don’t have to save, we can "invest" our funds in stocks, and our "investment" can grow over time. Right? That’s why we’ve all been diligently funding our IRAs and 401ks.

Thanks to the latest financial crisis, we now know the answer: No. It’s the same as with saving, because the Reserve’s unlimited supply of cheap credit also makes stock irrelevant. While this has long been the actual predictable result of the Reserve’s operations, it is now apparent from the news on the nation’s business pages. From the time of the dot-com bust in the 1990s until the recent financial crisis, stocks were essentially going nowhere, simply oscillating within a range, and they have now lost substantial value. In 2008, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 33.8%; the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index fell 38.6%; and the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 40.5%.

The reality is that companies almost never issue public stock to raise capital for their businesses. There are two powerful reasons for this. First, companies can get credit from banks via the Reserve cheaper, easier and with lower transaction costs than they can get it from investors. The Reserve undercuts investors in favor of financial institutions. Secondly, the payment of interest on debt is a deductible expense for income tax purposes, while dividends (payments on capital) are not, so that the after-tax cost of debt is even less than nominal interest rate charged.

The tax advantage alone is a nearly insuperable incentive to fund business expansion with debt instead of equity. The U.S. corporate income tax rate is a minimum of 34% for taxable income in excess of $100,000. At this rate, the after-tax cost of paying a 10% return on $10 million in capital is $1,515,152 ($1,000,000/.66), and of paying a 10% return on a $10 million debt is $660,000 ($1 million—$340,000 tax benefit). Combine the tax incentive for debt financing with cheap credit from the Reserve, and the economic system is overwhelmingly skewed in favor of minimizing capital investment and maximizing debt financing.

Note that the effect of these systems is to shunt profits away from investors in productive enterprises to the payment by productive enterprises of interest to financial institutions which, nota bene, themselves require little capital because of the nation’s banking laws and Reserve’s unlimited cheap credit. This system is a bankers’ dream come true because it maximizes the borrowing of money. Unfortunately, the moral hazards of (i) such a near complete supplanting of capital and, (ii) (thanks to the Reserve’s legal monopoly) interest rates untested by competitive market pressures and hence dissociated from reality, virtually guarantee an ultimate crash. It is hard to imagine a system with a greater built-in predilection for boom and bust.

Please note one other effect of this system that ought to concern everyone besides lenders. Dividends do not have to be paid when money is not available, and investors in common stock are not secured creditors. Interest, on the other hand, does have to be paid, and banks have security interests on assets, and will foreclose if not paid. Accordingly, a company that raises capital to finance its expansion and activities is better able to weather financial vicissitudes than one that has financed itself with debt. Since debt must be paid, the effect is that, in a downturn, the company, to survive, must act quickly to reduce its labor costs. As between the two forms of financing, debt financing guarantees that a company will seek to minimize its business losses by firing workers. In other words, debt financing essentially guarantees that there will be greater and more rapid job losses in an economic downturn.

The moral of the story? If we get rid of the Reserve, we get rid of an institution with the power to undercut all investors and to provide cheap credit divorced from economic reality, and if we also get rid of the tax bias in favor of debt financing, then companies will have a more rational balance of capital and debt, investors may again be able to make money on their money, and companies will have a greater ability to hang on to workers, who they will need when business picks up again.

Back to those 401k’s. Since, thanks to the Reserve’s low interest rates and our tax policy, companies essentially no longer raise money by selling stock publicly, there is a relatively fixed pool of public securities in which all persons seeking to invest may invest. The investment demand far exceeds the supply. As a result, stocks become "overvalued." That is, the price per share becomes primarily a function of the large demand, and the huge amount of capital seeking to invest in the same relatively fixed group of assets, rather than a rational reflection of the income stream from the shares or even their companies’ liquidation values. Before the current financial crisis, shares traded at multiples of earnings unheard of even two decades before.

In other words, courtesy of the Reserve and tax policy, (i) stocks are not a real economic growth opportunity, but are, instead, (ii) a demand bubble that will eventually burst, at a sizable loss disproportionate to the actual decline in the company’s revenues or decline in liquidation value.

It should be apparent from the foregoing that the Reserve’s current policy of reducing the federal funds rate to practically zero and the government’s bailout of banks and other financial institutions by providing capital to offset their losses is an attempt to protect the preferred position of the banks. It should be equally apparent that this policy will only deepen and prolong the crisis, by further shunting any and all other capital, including the savings of the middle class, from participation in economic growth and development. The purported goal of shoring up the banks is to once again get credit flowing (i.e., generating continued profit opportunities for banks through even more borrowing), which supposedly thereby indirectly benefits the rest of us through business expansion and renewed personal consumption. This is a trillion dollar trickle down theory to end all trickle down theories! "Reaganomics" never dared to dream on this scale!

So long as the Reserve is running the show, your money will have no place to participate in and profit from the economic growth of this country. Your place will be to spend your money to make profits for others, particularly banks. There is simply no reason we should stand for this or play along. We need an end to the Reserve as well as changes in tax policy to eliminate the economic disadvantage imposed upon capital relative to debt. As I hope I have made clear, bringing back capital (and eliminating debt) permits everyone’s savings to participate in real economic growth, instead of in illusory demand bubbles, enables businesses to better weather economic downturns and protects more jobs. These elementary facts are ignored because our country’s policy is to protect and benefit banks, through policies that maximize debt financing using monopoly money. Hey Congress! How about the rest of us? Remember us, the people you supposedly serve? Bring back capital!

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of Nation of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. He occasionally blogs at The Shining Wire. Read this interview with him.

Jeff Snyder Archives

DIGG THIS

Reports of the Treasury Department’s proposed bailout legislation are focusing on the cost to the US taxpayer, the "socialist" nature of this intervention in the supposedly free market, and the question whether it will work, but not on exploring just how it’s going to work. It is important to understand just how far the proposal is from real socialism, because it is actually far more shocking than socialism. It’s a continuation of what we already have — creating profit-making opportunities for the wealthy off of the backs of taxpayers.

Socialism — actual nationalization or governmental joint ownership — would at least theoretically be an improvement over the current bailout proposals, because the government might then demand actual financial integrity and actually prosecute company officers and managers whose misdeeds and recklessness cause the government to lose its share of the company’s profits. There is nothing in the proposed legislation that indicates that the federal government will end up with ownership interests in financial institutions. The bailout is controlled by the Federal Reserve, which is a private organization looking out for private interests, NOT a government entity supposedly protecting the public interest.

The reality of how the bailout is actually going to work is highlighted by a provision found in Senator Dodd’s proposed alternative to the Treasury’s bailout legislation. To my knowledge, the significance of this relatively obscure provision has escaped media comment. But first, some context. A 1932 provision of the Federal Reserve Act allows the Fed to lend funds to non-banks (e.g., private companies and partnerships) at a discounted rate "in unusual and exigent circumstances." Specifically, 12 U.S.C. 343 provides, in pertinent part, as follows:

In unusual and exigent circumstances, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, by the affirmative vote of not less than five members, may authorize any Federal reserve bank, during such periods as the said board may determine, at rates established in accordance with the provisions of section 357 of this title, to discount for any individual, partnership, or corporation, notes, drafts, and bills of exchange when such notes, drafts, and bills of exchange are indorsed or otherwise secured to the satisfaction of the Federal reserve bank: Provided, That before discounting any such note, draft, or bill of exchange for an individual or a partnership or corporation the Federal reserve bank shall obtain evidence that such individual, partnership, or corporation is unable to secure adequate credit accommodations from other banking institutions. All such discounts for individuals, partnerships, or corporations shall be subject to such limitations, restrictions, and regulations as the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System may prescribe. [Editorial comment: note that the Fed prescribes its own rules and is "regulated" by itself, not by Congress. In other words, it does what it likes. No one in Congress and neither McCain nor Obama is talking about changing this.]

Section 19(a)(2) of Senator Dodd’s original bill provides that if the Federal Reserve Board exercises this authority, it must notify the Senate Committee on Housing, Banking and Urban Affairs and the House Committee on Financial Services of "the specific terms of the actions of the Board, including the size and duration of the lending, the value of any collateral held with respect to such a loan, the recipient of warrants or any other potential equity in exchange for the loan, and any expected cost to the taxpayer for the cost of such exercise."

The first thing to notice about the Dodd language is that it contemplates the possibility that both stock or other equity and warrants may be acquired and transferred by the Board to private parties, and not to the government. Under 12 U.S.C. 343, the Fed already has this power to structure loans as it sees fit in unusual and exigent circumstances. The Dodd bill simply requires that the Senate and House be informed what the Fed has done, and provides no authority to Congress to control it. So the vaunted Congressional "oversight" consists simply of being informed of what has been done after the fact. But note this well: The bailout bill provides no mechanism for assuring that the federal government acquires any ownership stake in the companies it bails out for the funds it provides. It is not nationalization. What will happen is that the Fed will have the power to preserve and make new kings of finance on the backs of taxpayers.

Some examples, all of which appear to be permissible under the terms of the proposed bailout bills, will help illustrate how this is going to play out. In order to save a financial institution that is actually bankrupt because it doesn’t have the reserves to absorb the losses from the toxic $500 million mortgage-backed security portfolio, the Fed purchases the $500 million portfolio at face value. In order to minimize the Fed’s ultimate loss, and because the Fed is not equipped to actually deal with the mortgages in this pool, the Fed sells the portfolio to some other institution or a new private vulture fund created for this purpose. Naturally, the mortgage pool is risky, so it has to be sold at a deep discount with sufficient room in it that the private interests that will purchase it can expect to make a profit from taking this on. Let’s suppose that the Fed sells it at $.20 on the dollar. The taxpayers have therefore lost $400 million on the bailout. Ultimately, the pool collects $.60 on the dollar and makes a profit of, say, $.20 on the dollar. By shifting the losses to the taxpayers (for which they receive nothing), a new profit making opportunity has been created for the big boys. Essentially, the taxpayers financed the new profits by absorbing losses in excess of the amounts that are fully and finally realized. Congress receives a report.

Suppose, instead, that the Fed, using its authority to lend money to businesses "in unusual and exigent circumstances," loans a troubled financial institution $500 million at a very low interest rate secured by $500 million, face value, of the company’s "toxic" mortgage backed securities. The terms of the loan provide that as payments are received on the securities, they are applied against the interest and principal amount of the loan, and that the loan is otherwise nonrecourse, that is, the company is liable only to the extent of the value of the collateral pledged as security. Thus the U.S. treasury can expect to recoup some portion of the funds and the taxpayers are only on the hook ultimately for the portion of the loan that can’t be paid for from collections on the securities and for the time value of the money, which is hopefully substantially less than the full amount loaned. In addition, suppose that part of the deal is that the Fed also receives warrants (options) to acquire, say 50%, of the company’s stock at $X per share, which can be paid either in cash or, by what is its equivalent, by canceling the same amount of debt on the loan. The warrants are transferable, as is the stock that is obtained by exercising the warrants.

Perhaps you begin to see the possibilities. First, suppose the ailing company needs even more money. The Fed exercises the warrants and pays even more taxpayer money to purchase the company’s stock. Thus, the $700 billion bailout is in fact only the beginning, and this eventuality is expressly acknowledged by the Dodd proposal. But consider the next step. The Fed now holds 50% of the company’s stock, which it may sell at a price determined by the Fed in order to recoup part of the loss on the loan. Naturally, the company still may not be in the greatest shape, so the stock has to be sold at a depressed value, with sufficient margin so that the purchaser will be motivated to buy because he expects to make a handsome profit. Again, because the loss was shifted to the taxpayers, a new profit making opportunity has been created for the big boys. Congress receives a report.

Or finally, consider this alternative variation on the loan scenario just mentioned. The Fed’s financial analysts issue a report concluding that, ultimately, the toxic mortgage-backed securities that are collateralizing the Fed’s $500 million loan will pay $.0.80 on the dollar. Let’s assume that the exercise price on the warrants is effectively $0.10 on the dollar amount of the debt, and the Fed sells the warrants for $0.05 on the dollar amount of the debt, or an amount which, when added to the exercise price the warrant holder will have to pay to buy the stock, effectively equals $.15 on the dollar amount of the debt. (The Fed can’t ask for too much, because investors won’t buy if they don’t have a realistic chance of making a profit!) The Fed reports to Congress that it expects that the loss to the Treasury on this transaction will only be 15%, because it expects to collect $.80 and it has sold the warrants at $.05. A few years go by. It turns out (who knew?) that that the toxic mortgage-backed securities are only yielding $.40 on the dollar, and since this is a nonrecourse loan, the remainder of the debt is just a loss to the US taxpayers. Meanwhile, the company, freed from its toxic contingent losses, has been able to rebuild itself into a financial titan. Turns out that the warrants are now worth five times the amount the investors paid for them, and the investors are going to make a killing! Ha ha! Now that’s what America is all about! Being rewarded for taking risks!

With hundreds of billions at its disposal, the Fed has the ability to preserve and create new titans of finance. The bailout process will not be unlike Russia’s creation of overnight billionaires through the public sale of rights to its national resources for ludicrously low sums of money, all accomplished at the expense of the taxpayer. I believe we here in the US call this "crony capitalism" when practiced in Russia. The taxpayers will bear the losses, receive nothing for it, while new profit opportunities are created for the ruling class. Nothing prevents this. Congress will receive reports.

This is not socialism, but pure Americanism. The people trying to perpetrate this grand theft would like you to continue to think it’s socialism, because that mistake hides the reality of what it really is. Nowhere does the federal government end up with an actual ownership stake in the companies it is bailing out that would permit it, ultimately, to continue to recoup losses and even profit on its loan, theoretically lessening the burdens on taxpayers (way) down the road. I am not saying this rosy scenario would ever come to pass — we’re talking about government here after all — but that would be socialism.

The proposed bailout solutions are more of the same — plus ça change you can believe in. The game is rigged and we are the losers. Neither Republicans or Democrats are proposing to do anything to fix the real source of the problem that impoverishes all but the most wealthy — fractional reserve banking and the Federal Reserve. Without eliminating that system, more "regulation" can never eliminate the moral hazard or power to create unearned wealth that comes from the power to manufacture credit out of thin air. "Regulation" is just the mantra that politicians reach for to mollify you with a promise to prevent a recurrence of a nightmare enveloping us that they have helped create, in this case while they completely ignore or fail to see the real cause of the problem, guarantying that it will recur. Think about what politicians are actually promising. Regulation! Solution to all future problems! It does nothing for you now, it does not ameliorate one iota the suffering brought down on you now. For you, what’s done is done and you just have to suck it up! The politicians will take care of it by protecting you in the future! And if it doesn’t work, we won’t know that until later, when the next disaster occurs, when the politicians will promise more regulation or better regulation again! Eventually, after you’ve lost everything, they’ll get it right! Maybe! We’ll have to wait to see! For the titans of industry though, what’s done is not done, For you, regulation, for them, money. You will remediate them, now, for the damage they have inflicted on themselves, and pay for it the rest of your lives. It’s not socialism, it’s the American way of business.

The only candidates who are actually promising to address the root cause of the current financial disaster are third-party candidates Ralph Nader, Chuck Baldwin, and Cynthia McKinney who have signed, with Ron Paul, a statement of agreement on the actions they will take in the areas of foreign policy, privacy, the national debt and the Federal Reserve. To the American voter I say, if the bailout discussions don’t show you what the System really is and your place in it, your eyes are unopenable. But if this disgusts you, if you really want change and not more of the same ("regulation!"), if you really want to vote your pocketbooks and place yourselves on a path to financial security, you will have to abandon your favored system of Voting Only for Someone Who Can Win (yes, even though the winners will receive reports about what the Fed has done!), and vote for someone who will really address the conditions of your bondage to this country’s ruling class.

Clarification

In my article above on the "crony capitalism" aspects of the proposed bailout, I failed to make clear that, under the Dodd proposal, the Secretary of the Treasury would indeed be required to make arrangements on terms that could result in the acquisition by the Treasury of securities in financial companies that received bailout funds, complete with protective anti-dilution measures. As of yesterday, this was being vehemently resisted by the Secretary of Treasury Paulsen and by Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke. The analysis in the article therefore reflects the possibilities inherent in the powers that Henry Paulsen and Bernanke are seeking to obtain from Congress, and which were included in their original proposal (which granted them unreviewable power), not what the original Dodd proposal mandated. Today, House leaders and others are meeting behind closed doors to hash out a final bill. Only the final bill will reveal whether the government may end up owning actual securities in companies that are bailed out, and what freedom the Treasury or Federal Reserve will have to price and sell the securities. Even if the Treasury obtains the securities, as long as it has the freedom to sell them on terms it deems acceptable, the "crony capitalism" possibilities inherent in government acquisition of these securities survives.

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of Nation of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. He occasionally blogs at The Shining Wire. Read this interview with him.

Jeff Snyder Archives

DIGG THIS

Now that Barack Obama is backpedaling fast on his promised u201Cchange,u201D many of his supporters may be experiencing a natural disgust with politics and wondering, What do we do now?, or, as the question is more classically posed, What is to be done? For those who are ruled, this, and not u201CQuis custodiet ipsos custodes?u201D (Who will protect us against the protectors?), is the fundamental political question, the latter embodying a plaintive, supplicant, u201Cprotect meu201D mindset that guarantees perpetual subjection. In 1896, Leo Tolstoy wrote a letter to the liberals of his day who were, then as now, laboring unsuccessfully to achieve what he described as a u201Cgradual conquest of rightsu201D through the political process. His letter is the most concise, cogent answer to the question I have discovered. His recommendations have not been widely accepted or practiced, but reading his letter now we see the same government abuses, the same boy emperor who will listen only to advice from self-serving flatterers who tell him what he wants to hear, the same sycophantic hacks, the same acquiescence of polite society, the same attempts at reform and the same failures of reform in his day as in ours. The same.

Tolstoy references the failures of liberalism in Russia for the 70 years preceding his letter, i.e., through virtually the entire 19th Century. For Tolstoy, this was a long enough trial period to draw some conclusions. Far from really changing government, u201Cboth reason and experience clearly showu201D that a u201Cgradual conquest of rights [through the political process] is a self-deception which suits the government admirablyu201D and u201Cactually tend[s] to strengthen the power and the irresponsibility of governmentu201D (emphasis added). A striking claim! Could it be true? Well, consider the preferred American method: implementing the u201Creformu201D in a way which oligopolizes benefits for and control by moneyed interests, thus further strengthening the u201Cpartnershipu201D between government and those interests to exploit the rest of us. For example, Americans by and large want universal health care. The proposals under consideration, however, are variants of mandating universal medical insurance. Who are the beneficiaries of that?

Tolstoy proposes a third alternative to revolution and reform. I have asked Lew to reprint Tolstoy’s letter (set forth below) in the hope that some of those now feeling the sting of disappointment over Obama’s backpedaling may be receptive to pondering Tolstoy’s advice. I recommend it as a starting point, to help dust off the cobwebs. Those wishing to follow up with a more modern and comprehensive treatment would be well rewarded by reading Vaclav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless, certainly one of the greatest political works of the 20th Century. Havel’s extended essay provided both a theoretical understanding and practical recommendations for the non-violent resistance that helped end communist rule in Eastern Europe. It contains invaluable insight and lessons for anyone confronting monolithic power.

Let’s briefly review where we are. Congress no longer affects even a pretense of responding to the u201Cwill of the People.u201DAt least 70% of Americans have consistently wanted this country out of Iraq for some time, yet the Democrats who were elected in 2006 to extricate us from the war and who control the House of Representatives — the only place where revenue bills may originate — continue to appropriate funds for our wars, and have now provided funding well into next year. Despite controlling the purse-strings, men, women and children suffer, die and are dislocated while Democrats posture that their hands are tied because they are not filibuster- and veto-proof, offering the hope — and note that it is only hope, because they are certainly making no definite promises — of ending the war if only Americans will give them a Democratic president and more than 60 percent of the seats in Congress. Americans, Iraqis, all are held hostage to delivery of unopposable control of the country to the Democrats. Since November 2006 they have had the power, they have had the mandate, and they have done nothing to end the war. In fact, they gave us The Surge. With the exception of Dennis Kucinich, who voted against the war and appropriations for the war, the House Democrats are accessories to an illegal war, morally bankrupt and despicable. (I trust you can infer the claim I would make about Republicans.)

Yet this absence of any desire to change course and calculated inaction are not the worst of it. Far from even beginning to extricate us from the Middle East, Congress is busy committing us further. They spiked a provision that denied the President authority to attack Iraq. Seymour Hirsch recently reported that last year the Democratic-controlled Congress authorized $400 million for covert operations against Iran, purportedly to destabilize that country’s religious leadership. House Resolution 362, which has 220 co-sponsors, a majority of the entire House, calls on the President to create a naval blockade of Iran, a clear act of war against that nation. Should Iran attempt to break the blockade or otherwise retaliate, American blood-lust will almost certainly take care of the rest, and military action against Iran will be inevitable. Clearly it does not bother large numbers of Americans that they are manipulated into providing the desired response — they voted for George Bush by the tens of millions after it was clear he lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and millions still support him.The dictates of party identity, the pleasures of party solidarity, the welcome distraction from the conditions of one’s own life and opportunity to give free reign to anger and hatred against those who, we are told, are our enemies apparently more than compensate any possible outrage at being played for fools and conned into supporting outright murder and plunder.

The country proceeds to possible world war, desolation and incalculable loss while the media and the politically active are consumed with the cult of personality and group symbolic identification that we call elections, convinced that that way lies Hope and Change. But now, to the increasing dismay of some of his staunchest supporters, Barack Obama, the very Candidate of Hope and Change, has moved with breath-taking speed right-ward to what, really rather amazingly, is now described as u201Cthe middleu201D (empire and the warfare-surveillance-police-state thus being presented as an accepted given and norm), and is saying and doing many things that seem a lot more like u201Cstaying the courseu201D than u201Cchange.u201D Arianna Huffington has counseled him that moving to the middle is for losers, but it’s too late. The fact that he is doing it demonstrates that he will say and do whatever he believes he needs to say and do for the sake of his ambition and power. It’s no longer clear which, if any, of his erstwhile principles are merely tactics, and whether it’s anything but tactics all the way down.

Obama has said that u201Cwe have to be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless in getting in.u201D Not only does this position have a completely open-ended time-frame, but it also embodies the same hubris, the same presumption we made going in, namely, that we Americans have the wisdom, knowledge and power to socially engineer a stable solution for the different peoples residing in the artificial geographic construct called u201CIraqu201D that will withstand outside and internal forces and is favorable, or at least not hostile, to our interests. The rhetoric sounds thoughtful and impressive, but belies the hope that we will be getting out of Iraq anytime soon.

He has told AIPAC that he u201Cwould do everything — and I mean everythingu201D to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Thus he is committed to war with Iran as a means of stopping it from developing the nuclear bomb, and apparently willing to use the nuclear option. After all, it’s certainly part of u201Ceverything.u201D

He has lamented his rhetorical excesses and backed away from his promise to renegotiate NAFTA and, in a move that was highly distressing to many progressives, he reversed his opposition to granting retroactive immunity to telecoms and supports the latest FISA bill. He plans to expand Bush’s faith-based initiative program and to elevate the program to a u201Cmoral centeru201D of his administration! Obama’s u201Cnew politicsu201D is beginning to look a lot like u201Cpolitics as usual.u201D It appears that the only thing the Candidate of Hope really is offering is hope.

And so it is dawning on Democratic activists that the hopes for ending the war they placed on the outcome of the 2006 elections, which were dashed by a supine Democratic Congress and so postponed and re-focused on the 2008 elections, may not be fulfilled regardless of who wins. The way is left wide open for things to get worse, and it does not appear that they are going to get appreciably better soon.

It’s pretty amazing. We have the worst, most unapproved President of our lifetimes and possibly in American history, a war that at least 70% of the people want out of, the dollar is plummeting, the economy is in a shambles and no one knows where the bottom is. And still the candidates hedge and waffle, and build escape hatches into their speeches. What would circumstances have to be, exactly, to get a firm commitment to a complete change in direction out of these people? Instead, we are forever offered u201Cbetter managerialism.u201D

So this is it?Is this as good as it gets? Must we forever play the losing game of accepting the lesser of two evils? Is this our fate, to forever labor and work in the hope that, maybe, once in our entire lifetimes we will have the right President and Congress who will for a brief span Do The Right Thing? Is this the role we accept being consigned to? Is this what we cling to?

The Constitution provides us with four peaceable levers with which to move the federal government: freedom of speech and assembly, the right to petition the government, and the vote. As recent events should have confirmed beyond all doubt to all but the willfully blind, in each case the moment arm of these levers is too short, the mass endeavoring to move it too insubstantial, to effect any real change in direction. And this is true for a very obvious but rarely mentioned reason that dooms them to failure: not one of these mechanisms has the power to effect any specific action. None of them can require or compel the elected official to take any particular action whatsoever. None of them can revoke what has been done or terminate any ongoing government activity. None of them can hold any elected official accountable for any action he has taken while in office.

What sort of u201Cprincipalu201D is it that cannot instruct his u201Cagentu201D to take a specific action on his behalf and replace him immediately if he fails to do so? A less euphemistic word for u201Cpetitioningu201D is u201Cbegging.u201D What sort of u201Cprincipalu201D has to beg his agent to do something for him and hope that he will carry it out? We will have a better understanding of our predicament and greater clarity of purpose if we stop calling these people u201Crepresentativesu201D and describe them as what they truly are — rulers, and if we stop calling ourselves u201Ccitizensu201D and describe ourselves as what we really are — subjects.

There is one way to get what one wants, to be a real principal to real agents. It is neither mentioned nor prohibited by the Constitution, and it is not available to the common citizen but it is, most interestingly, defended by its supporters as part of u201Cfreedom of speech.u201D And that one way, that fundamental freedom to get the law or government action that one wants is: to buy it. In this case the piper does indeed call the tune, and it is, conveniently, beside the point who puts the nominal agent in office.

Why would any voter continue participating in this sham?

If not the vote, if not assembly or petition, where is the lever to move ourselves from the spot? What is to be done? In 1896 Tolstoy answered, u201CEvidently not what for seventy years past has proved fruitless, and has only produced inverse result.u201D In his letter, reproduced below, Tolstoy argues that, of the two methods available to change government, revolution and reform, the u201Cgradualistu201D path chosen by reformers is even less effective and less rational than outright violent revolt (which Tolstoy rejects as immoral, as well as self-defeating). Far from being progressive, the activities of reformers are in fact harmful u201Cbecause enlightened, good, and honest people by entering the ranks of the government give it a moral authority which but for them it would not possess.u201D In other words, it is the people who with the best of intentions are trying hardest to make the government u201Cwork,u201D to make the system live up to its ideals (or more accurately, its own PR), that sustain and perpetuate the power that is crushing them and us. The worthy goals that honest and sincere activists in and outside of government seek to achieve, their nobility of purpose, confer legitimacy upon the entire system, while the power it provides is used by those u201Cwho form [government's] core — the violators, self-seekers, and flatterersu201D for the benefit of the few. If they would cease cooperating, government would lack the moral patina that confers legitimacy upon the entire enterprise and colors — and gives a free pass to — government’s misdeeds as unfortunate, unintended or misguided accidents or excesses rather than what they are — rank criminality.

George Bush may be the most destructive President of our lifetimes, but it is the well-intentioned activists and voters who, by trying to make the system perform u201Cas it should,u201D sustain the system of belief and social network that confers upon him that absolute power, in the hope and desire that all that power may someday be turned to good account to achieve their desired ends. We stop far short of the problem if we think that the question for us is whether Obama or McCain will be the greater evil. Those who support make possible the sweeping power available to the greater and the lesser evil.

Non-cooperation and withdrawal of support is not, however, Tolstoy’s sole counsel. Equally important is that we pursue the activities and goals we care about and desire to bring about independent of government, neither seeking nor seeking its assistance or involvement. Do you want health care for those who cannot afford it? Then instead of working to have government u201Csolveu201D the problem by mandating that all citizens be covered by medical insurance, work without government to establish, maintain and support independent charitable clinics and hospitals. Once we cease believing that government is u201Cthe answeru201D and accept that the rest of us, acting on the only basis we have at our disposal — voluntary cooperation, is the only u201Cansweru201D that there’s ever going to be, our field of activity is wide open and there is much to be done.

This of course threatens government with marginalization as well as loss of prestige and legitimacy, and that threat may pressure government to curb certain excesses or reform, but Tolstoy did not recommend it as a tactic to bring government to heel. He believed this to be the proper way to act. His goal was not to u201Cbring government aroundu201D to better serving humanity but to discover how we should live. True to form, then, Tolstoy closes the letter by counseling that one must have clarity of purpose based on a spiritual understanding of life to truly carry out his second recommendation.This may seem to us extraneous or overblown, but Tolstoy is trying to tell us something important here. It is the reason he counsels against focusing on seeking u201Csmall practical ends,u201D such as universal health care. Such activities do not challenge or even begin to address the fundamental basis of the political power that commands vast resources with which to exploit the weak and wage war on a scale unimaginable to the monarchs and tyrants of the past More importantly, they also indicate that one is missing the heart, and true beginning, of the matter — the question of how one is to live.

The vote is easy and costs nothing because it means nothing, because it is pure fantasy and self-deception. As Arthur Silber has just said in connection with a discussion of the myth of the earlier achievements of the Progressive Era in American history and those who mistakenly place their hopes in a u201Cmiracleu201D called Obama, if we really want to alter this country’s course before complete collapse we’re going to need u201Cmore understanding, and much, much more courageu201D than we have now. The necessary desire, and that courage, will never arise as long as we think that our role is to express our opinion and select those who agree with us, and will not arise out of hope or desire for more and better government benefits or the cessation of the latest war. If change and not the illusion of change is what we want, then many of us are going to have to find within ourselves a quite different conception of who we are and what we will dedicate ourselves to than we now possess.

Letter to the Liberals

by Leo Tolstoy

Written in 1896, this letter is available in (the out-of-print) Tolstoy On Civil Disobedience and Non-Violence, Bergman Publishers, New York (1967), pp. 141—154. The prefatory note and endnotes, which provide helpful historical information and context, were with one exception written by the translator. ~ JS

Note by Translator: This letter was addressed to a Russian lady who wrote to Tolstoy asking his advice or assistance when the "Literature Committee," Komitet Gramotnosti, in which she was actively engaged, was closed. The circumstances were as follows: A "Voluntary Economic Society" (founded in the reign of Catherine the Great) existed, and was allowed to debate economic problems within certain limits. Its existence was sanctioned by, and it was under the control of, the Ministry of the Interior. A branch of this society was formed called the "Literature Committee." This branch aimed at spreading good and wholesome literature among the people and in the schools, by establishing libraries or in other ways. However, their views as to what books it is good for people to read did not tally with those of the government, and in 1896 it was decreed that the "Voluntary Economic Society" should be transferred from the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior to that of the Ministry of Education. This sounded harmless, but translated into unofficial language it meant that the activity of the Committee was to terminate, and the proceeding of the whole Society was to be reduced to a formality.

I should be very glad to join you and your associates — whose work I know and appreciate — in standing up for the rights of the "Literature Committee," and in opposing the, enemies of popular education. But in the sphere in which you are working, I see no way to resist them.

My only consolation is that I, too, am constantly engaged in struggling against the same enemies of enlightenment, though in another manner.

Concerning the special question with which you are preoccupied, I think that, in place of the "Literature Committee" which has been prohibited, a number of other "Literature Associations," to pursue the same objects, should be formed without consulting the government, and without asking permission from any censor. Let government, if it likes, prosecute these "Literature Associations," punish the members, banish them, etc. If government does that it will merely cause people to attach special importance to good books and to libraries, and it will strengthen the trend toward enlightenment.

It seems to me that it is now especially important to do what is right quietly and persistently, not only without asking permission from government, but consciously avoiding its participation. The strength of the government lies in the people’s ignorance, and government knows this, and will, therefore, always oppose true enlightenment. It is time we realized that fact. And it is most undesirable to let government, while it is diffusing darkness, pretend it is busy with the enlightenment of the people. It is doing this now, by means of all sorts of pseudo-educational establishments which it controls: schools, high schools, universities, academies, and all kinds of committees and congresses. But good is good, and enlightenment is enlightenment, only when it is quite good and quite enlightened, and not when it is toned down to meet the requirements of Delyanof’s or Durnovo’s circulars. And I am extremely sorry when I see valuable, disinterested, and self-sacrificing efforts spent unprofitably. Sometimes it seems to me quite comical to see good, wise people spending their strength in a struggle against government, to be maintained on the basis of laws which that very government itself makes just what it likes.

The matter is, it seems to me, this:

There are people (we ourselves are such) who realize that our government is very bad, and who struggle against it. From before the days of Radishchef [i] and the Decembrists [ii] there have been two ways of carrying on the struggle; one way is that of Stenka Razin, [iii] Pugatchef, [iv] the Decembrists, the Revolutionary party [v] of the years sixty, the Terrorists [vi] of the thirteenth of March, and others.

The other way is that which is preached and practiced by you — the method of the "Gradualists," which consists in carrying on the struggle without violence and within the limits of the law, conquering constitutional rights bit by bit.

Both these methods have been employed unceasingly within my memory for more than half a century, and yet the state of things grows worse and worse. Even such signs of improvement as do show themselves have come, not from either of these kinds of activity, but from causes of which I will speak later on, and in spite of the harm done by these two kinds of activity. Meanwhile, the power against which we struggle grows ever greater, stronger, and more insolent. The last rays of self-government — the zemstvos (local government boards), public trial, your Literature Committee, etc. — are all being done away with.

Now that both methods have been ineffectually tried for so long a time, we may, it seems to me, see clearly that neither the one nor the other will do — and why this is so. To me, at least, who have always disliked our government, but have never adopted either of the above methods of resisting it, the defects of both methods are apparent.

The first way is unsatisfactory because (even could an attempt to alter the existing regime by violent means succeed) there would be no guarantee that the new organization would be durable, and that the enemies of that new order would not, at some convenient opportunity, triumph by using violence such as has been used against them, as has happened over and over again in France and wherever else there have been revolutions. And so the new order of things, established by violence, would have continually to be supported by violence, i.e. by wrong-doing. And, consequently, it would inevitably and very quickly be vitiated like the order it replaced. And in case of failure, all the violence of the revolutionists only strengthens the order of things they strive against (as has always been the case, in our Russian experience, from Pugatchef’s rebellion to the attempt of the thirteenth of March), for it drives the whole crowd of undecided people, who stand wavering between the two parties, into the camp of the conservative and retrograde party. So I think that, guided by both reason and experience, we may boldly say that this means, besides being immoral, is also irrational and ineffective.

The other method is, in my opinion, even less effective or rational. It is ineffective and irrational because government, having in its hands the whole power (the army, the administration, the Church, the schools, and police), and framing what are called the laws, on the basis of which the Liberals wish to resist it — this government knows very well what is really dangerous to it, and will never let people who submit to it, and act under its guidance, do anything that will undermine its authority. For instance, take the case before us: a government such as ours (or any other), which rests on the ignorance of the people, will never consent to their being really enlightened. It will sanction all kinds of pseudo-educational organizations, controlled by itself: schools, high schools, universities, academies, and all kinds of committees and congresses and publications sanctioned by the censor — as long as those organizations and publications serve its purpose, i.e. stupefy people, or, at least do not hinder the stupefaction of people. But as soon as those organizations, or publications, attempt to cure that on which the power of government rests, i.e. the blindness of the people, the government will simply, and without rendering account to any one, or saying why it acts so and not otherwise, pronounce its "veto" and will rearrange, or close, the establishments and organizations and will forbid the publications. And therefore, as both reason and experience clearly show, such an illusory, gradual conquest of rights is a self-deception which suits the government admirably, and which it, therefore, is even ready to encourage.

But not only is this activity irrational and ineffectual, it is also harmful. It is harmful because enlightened, good, and honest people by entering the ranks of the government give it a moral authority which but for them it would not possess. If the government were made up entirely of that coarse element — the violators, self-seekers, and flatterers — who form its core, it could not continue to exist. The fact that honest and enlightened people are found who participate in the affairs of the government gives government whatever it possesses of moral prestige.

That is one evil resulting from the activity of Liberals who participate in the affairs of government, or who come to terms with it. Another evil of such activity is that, in order to secure opportunities to carry on their work, these highly enlightened and honest people have to begin to compromise, and so, little by little, come to consider that, for a good end, one may swerve somewhat from truth in word and deed. For instance, that one may, though not believing in the established Church, go through its ceremonies; may take oaths; and may, when necessary for the success of some affair, present petitions couched in language which is untrue and offensive to man’s natural dignity: may enter the army; may take part in a local government which has been stripped of all its powers; may serve as a master or a professor, teaching not what one considers necessary oneself, but what one is told to preach by government; and that one may even become a Zemsky Nachalnik, [vii] submitting to governmental demands and instructions which violate one’s conscience; may edit newspapers and periodicals, remaining silent about what ought to be mentioned, and printing what one is ordered to print; and entering into these compromises — the limits of which cannot be foreseen — enlightened and honest people (who alone could form some barrier to the infringements of human liberty by the government, imperceptibly retreating ever farther and farther from the demands of conscience) fall at last into a position of complete dependency on government. They receive rewards and salaries from it, and, continuing to imagine they are forwarding liberal ideas, they become the humble servants and supporters of the very order against which they set out to fight.

It is true that there are also better, sincere people in the Liberal camp, whom the government cannot bribe, and who remain unbought and free from salaries and position. But even these people have been ensnared in the nets spread by government, beat their wings in their cages (as you are now doing with your Committee), unable to advance from the spot they are on. Or else, becoming enraged, they go over to the revolutionary camp; or they shoot themselves, or take to drink, or they abandon the whole struggle in despair, and, oftenest of all, retire into literary activity, in which, yielding to the demands of the censor, they say only what they are allowed to say, and — by that very silence about what is most important — convey to the public distorted views which just suit the government. But they continue to imagine that, they are serving society by the writings which give them the measure of subsistence.

Thus, both reflection and experience alike show me that both the means of combating government, heretofore believed in, are not only ineffectual, but actually tend to strengthen the power and the irresponsibility of government.

What is to be done? Evidently not what for seventy years past has proved fruitless, and has only produced inverse result. What is to be done? Just what those have done, thanks to whose activity is due that progress toward light and good which has been achieved since the world began, and is still being achieved today. That is what must be done. And what is it?

Merely the simple, quiet, truthful carrying on of what you consider good and needful, quite independently of government, and of whether it likes it or not. In other words: standing up for your rights, not as a member of the Literature Committee, not as a deputy, not as a landowner, not as a merchant, not even as a member of Parliament; but standing up for your rights as a rational and free man, and defending them, not as the rights of local boards or committees are defended, with concessions and compromises, but without any concessions and compromises, in the only way in which moral and human dignity can be defended.

Successfully to defend a fortress one has to burn all the houses in the suburbs, and to leave only what is strong and what we intend not to surrender on any account. Only from the basis of this firm stronghold can we conquer all we require. True, the rights of a member of Parliament, or even of a member of a local board, are greater than the rights of a plain man; and it seems as if we could do much by using those rights. But the hitch is that in order to obtain the rights of a member of Parliament, or of a committeeman, one has to abandon part of one’s rights as a man. And having abandoned part of one’s rights as a man, there is no longer any fixed point of leverage, and one can no longer either conquer or maintain any real right. In order to lift others out of a quagmire one must stand on firm ground oneself, and if, hoping the better to assist others, you go into the quagmire, you will not pull others out, but will yourself sink in.

It may be very desirable and useful to get an eight-hour day legalized by Parliament, or to get a liberal program for school libraries sanctioned by your Committee; but if, as a means to this end, a member of Parliament must publicly lift up his hand and lie, lie when taking an oath, by expressing in words respect for what he does not respect; or (in our own case) if, in order to pass most liberal programs, it is necessary to take part in public worship, to be sworn, to wear a uniform, to write mendacious and flattering petitions, and to make speeches of a similar character, etc. — then by doing these things and forgoing our dignity as men, we lose much more than we gain, and by trying to reach one definite aim (which very often is not reached) we deprive ourselves of the possibility of reaching other aims which are of supreme importance. Only people who have something which they will on no account and under no circumstances yield can resist a government and curb it. To have power to resist you must stand on firm ground.

And the government knows this very well, and is concerned, above all else, to worm out of men that which will not yield, in other words, the dignity of man. When this wormed out of them, government calmly proceeds to do what it likes, knowing that it will no longer meet any real resistance. A man who consents publicly to swear, pronouncing the degrading and mendacious words of the oath; or submissively to wait several hours, dressed up in a uniform, at a ministry reception; or to inscribe himself as a special constable for the coronation; or to fast and receive communion for respectability’s sake; or to ask of the head censor whether he may or may not, express such and such thoughts, etc. — such a man is no longer feared by government.

Alexander II said he did not fear the Liberals because he knew they could all be bought, if not with money, then with honors.

People who take part in government, or work under its direction, may deceive themselves or their sympathizers by making a show of struggling; but those against whom they struggle — the government — know quite well, by the strength of the resistance experienced, that these people are not really pulling, but are only pretending to. And our government knows this with respect to the Liberals, and constantly tests the quality of the opposition, and finding that genuine resistance is practically non-existent, it continues its course in full assurance that it can do what it likes with such opponents

The government of Alexander III knew this very well, and, knowing it, deliberately destroyed all that the Liberals thought that they had achieved and were so proud of. It altered and limited trial by jury; it abolished the "Judges of the Peace"; it canceled the rights of the universities; it perverted the whole system of instruction in the high schools; it reestablished the cadet corps, and even the state’s sale of intoxicants; it established the Zemsky Nachalniks; it legalized flogging; it almost abolished the local government boards (zemstvos); it gave uncontrolled power to the governors of provinces; it encouraged the quartering of troops (eksekutsia) on the peasants in punishment; it increased the practice of "administrative" [viii] banishment and imprisonment, and the capital punishment of political offenders; it renewed religious persecutions; it brought to a climax the use of barbarous superstitions; it legalized murder in duels; under the name of a "state of siege" [ix] it established lawlessness with capital punishment, as a normal condition of things — and in all this it met with no protest except for one honorable woman [x] who boldly told the government the truth as she saw it.

The Liberals whispered among themselves that these things displeased them, but they continued to take part in legal proceedings, and in the local governments, and in the universities, and in government service, and in the press. In the press they hinted at what they were allowed to hint at, and kept silence on matters they had to be silent about, but they printed whatever they were told to print. So that every reader (who was not privy to the whisperings of the editorial rooms), on receiving a liberal paper or magazine, read the announcement of the most cruel and irrational measure unaccompanied by comment or sign of disapproval, sycophantic and flattering addresses to those guilty of enacting these measures, and frequently even praise of the measures themselves. Thus all the dismal activity of the government of Alexander III — destroying whatever good had begun to take root in the days of Alexander II, and striving to turn Russia back to the barbarity of the commencement of this century — all this dismal activity of gallows, rods, persecutions, and stupefaction of the people has become (even in the liberal papers and magazines) the basis of an insane laudation of Alexander III and of his acclamation as a great man and a model of human dignity.

This same thing is being continued in the new reign. The young man who succeeded the late Tsar, having no understanding of life, was assured, by the men in power to whom it was profitable to say so, that the best way to rule a hundred million people is to do as his father did, i.e. not to ask advice from any one but just to do what comes into one’s head, or what the first flatterer about him advises. And, fancying that unlimited autocracy is a sacred life — principle of the Russian people, the young man begins to reign; and, instead of asking the representatives of the Russian people to help him with their advice in the task of ruling (about which he, educated in a cavalry regiment, knows nothing, and can know nothing), he rudely and insolently shouts at those representatives of the Russian people who visit him with congratulations, and he calls the desire, timidly expressed by some of them, [xi] to be allowed to inform the authorities of their needs, "nonsensical fancies."

And what followed? Was Russian society shocked? Did enlightened and honest people — the Liberals — express their indignation and repulsion? Did they at least refrain from laudation of this government and from participating in it and encouraging it? Not at all. From that time a specially intense competition in adulation commenced, both of the father and of the son who imitated him. And not a protesting voice was heard, except in one anonymous letter, cautiously expressing disapproval of the young Tsar’s conduct. And, from all sides, fulsome and flattering addresses were brought to the Tsar, as well as (for some reason or other) ikons, [xii] which nobody wanted and which served merely as objects of idolatry to benighted people. An insane expenditure of money, the coronation, amazing in its absurdity, was arranged; the arrogance of the rulers and their contempt of the people caused thousands to perish in a fearful calamity, which was regarded as a slight eclipse of the festivities, which should not terminate on that account. [xiii] An exhibition was organized, which no one wanted except those who organized it, and which cost millions of rubles. In the Chancery of the Holy Synod, with unparalleled effrontery, a new and supremely stupid means of mystifying people was devised, viz., the enshrinement of the incorruptible body of a saint whom nobody knew anything about. The stringency of the censor was increased. Religious persecution was made more severe. The "state of siege," i.e. the legalization of lawlessness, was continued, and the state of things is still becoming worse and worse.

And I think that all this would not have happened if those enlightened, honest people, who are now occupied in Liberal activity on the basis of legality, in local governments, in the committees, in censor-ruled literature, etc., had not devoted their energies to the task, of circumventing the government, and, without abandoning the forms it has itself arranged, of finding ways to make it act so as to harm and injure itself; [xiv] but, abstaining from taking any part in government or in a business bound up with government, had merely claimed their rights as men.

"You wish, instead of ‘Judges of the Peace,’ to institute Zemsky Nachalniks with birch rods; that is your business, but we will not go to law before your Zemsky Nachalniks, and will not ourselves accept appointment to such an office: you wish to make trial by jury a mere formality; that is your business, but we will not serve as judges, or as advocates, or jurymen: you wish under the name of a ‘state of siege,’ to establish despotism; that is your business, but we will not participate in it, and will plainly call the ‘state of siege’ despotism, and capital punishment inflicted without trial, murder: you wish to organize cadet corps, or classical high schools, in which military exercises and the Orthodox faith are taught; that is your affair, but we will not teach in such schools, or send our children to them, but will educate our children as seems to us right: you decide to reduce the local government boards (zemstvos) to impotence; we will not take part in it: you prohibit the publication of literature that displeases you; you may seize books and punish the printers, but you cannot prevent our speaking and writing, and we shall continue to do so: you demand an oath of allegiance to the Tsar; we will not accede to what is so stupid, false, and degrading: you order us to serve in the army; we will not do so, because wholesale murder is as opposed to our conscience as individual murder, and above all, because the promise to murder whomsoever a commander may tell us to murder is the meanest act a man can commit: you profess a religion which is a thousand years behind the times, with an ‘Iberian Mother of God,’ [xv] relics, and coronations; that is your affair, but we do not acknowledge idolatry and superstition to be religion but call them idolatry and superstition, and we try to free people from them."

And what can government do against such activity? It can banish or imprison a man for preparing a bomb, or even for printing a proclamation to working-men; it can transfer our "Literature Committee" from one ministry to another, or close a Parliament — but what can a government do, with a man who is not willing publicly to lie with uplifted hand, or who is not willing to send his children to an establishment which he considers bad, or who is not willing to learn to kill people, or is not willing to take part in idolatry, or is not willing to take part in coronations, deputations, an addresses, or who says and writes what he thinks and feel? By prosecuting such a man, government secures for him general sympathy, making him a martyr, and it undermines the foundations on which it is itself built, for in so acting, instead of protecting human rights, it itself infringes them.

And it is only necessary for all those good, enlightened, and honest people, whose strength is now wasted in revolutionary, socialistic, or liberal activity, harmful to themselves and to their cause, to begin to act thus, and a nucleus of honest, enlightened, and moral people would form around them, united in the same thoughts and the same feelings; and to this nucleus the ever-wavering crowd of average people would at once gravitate, and public opinion — the only power which subdues governments — would become evident, demanding freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, justice, and humanity. And as soon as public opinion was formulated, not only would it be impossible to close the "Literature Committee," but all those inhuman organizations — the "state of siege," the secret police, the censor, Schlusselburg, [xvi] the Holy Synod, and the rest — against which the revolutionists and the liberals are now struggling would disappear of themselves.

So that two methods of opposing the government have been tried, both unsuccessfully, and it now remains to try a third and a last method, one not yet tried, but one which, I think, cannot but be successful. Briefly, that means this: that all enlightened and honest people should try to be as good as they can, and not even good in all respects, but only in one; namely, in observing one of the most elementary virtues — to be honest, and not to lie, but to act and speak so that your motives should be intelligible to an affectionate seven-year-old boy; to act so that your boy should not say, "But why, papa, did you say so-and-so, and now you do and say something quite different?" This method seems very weak, and yet I am convinced that it is this method, and this method only, that has moved humanity since the race began. Only because there were straight men, truthful and courageous, who made no concessions that infringed their dignity as men, have all those beneficent revolutions been accomplished of which mankind now have the advantage, from the abolition of torture and slavery up to liberty of speech and of conscience. Nor can this be otherwise, for what conscience (the highest forefeeling man possesses of the truth accessible to him) demands, is always, and in all respects, the activity most fruitful and most necessary for humanity at the given time. Only a man who lives according to his conscience can have influence on people, and only activity that accords with one’s conscience can be useful.

But I must explain my meaning. To say that the most effectual means of achieving the ends toward which revolutionists and liberals are striving, is by activity in accord with their consciences, does not mean that people can begin to live conscientiously in order to achieve those ends. To begin to live conscientiously on purpose to achieve any external ends is impossible.

To live according to one’s conscience is possible only as a result of firm and clear religious convictions; the beneficent result of these in our external life will inevitably follow. Therefore the gist of what I wished to say to you is this: that it is unprofitable for good, sincere people to spend their powers of mind and soul in gaining small practical ends; e.g. in the various struggles of nationalities, or parties, or in Liberal wire-pulling, while they have not reached a clear and firm religious perception, i.e. a consciousness of the meaning and purpose of their life. I think that all the powers of soul and of mind of good people, who wish to be of service to men, should be directed to that end. When that is accomplished, all else will be accomplished too.

Forgive me for sending you so long a letter, which perhaps you did not at all need, but I have long wished to express my views on this question. I even began a long article about it, but I shall hardly have time to finish it before death comes, and therefore I wished to get at least part of it said. Forgive me if I am in error about anything.

Notes

[i] Radishchef, the author of "A Journey from Petersburg to Moscow," was a Liberal whose efforts toward the abolition of serfdom displeased the government. He committed suicide in 1802 — TR.

[ii] The Decembrists were members of the organization which attempted, by force, to terminate autocratic government in Russia when Nicholas I ascended the throne in 1825. — TR.

[iii] Stenka Razin was a Cossack who raised a formidable insurrection in the seventeenth century. He was eventually defeated and captured, and was executed in Moscow in 1671. — TR.

[iv] Pugatchef headed the most formidable Russian insurrection of the eighteenth century. He was executed in Moscow in 1775. — TR.

[v] The series of reforms, including the abolition of serfdom, which followed the Crimean War and the death of Nicholas I, were, from the first, adopted half — heartedly. Since about the time of the Polish insurrection (1863) the reactionary party obtained control of the government and has kept it ever since. The more vehement members of the Liberal party, losing hope of constitutional reform, organized a Revolutionary party in the sixties, and later on the Terrorist party was formed, which organized assassinations as a means toward liberty, equality, and fraternity. — TR.

[vi] Alexander II was killed by a bomb thrown at him in the streets of Petersburg on the thirteenth of March (N.S.), 1881. This assassination was organized by the Terrorist party. — TR.

[vii] During the Reform period, in the reign of Alexander II, many iniquities of the old judicial system were abolished. Among other innovations "Judges of the Peace" were appointed to act as magistrates. They were elected (indirectly); if possessed of a certain property qualification, men of any class were eligible, and the regulations under which they acted were drawn up in a comparatively liberal spirit. Under Alexander III the office of "Judge of the Peace" was abolished, and was replaced by "Zemsky Nachalniks." Only members of the aristocracy were eligible; they were not elected, but appointed by government, and they were armed with authority to have peasants flogged. They were less like magistrates and more like government officials than the "Judges of the Peace" had been. — TR

[viii] Sentenced by "Administrative Order" means sentenced by the arbitrary will of government, or the Chief of the Gendarmes of a province. Administrative sentences are often inflicted without the victim being heard in his own defense, or even knowing what acts (real or supposed) have led to his punishment. — TR.

[ix] The "Statute of Increased Protection," usually translated "state of siege," was first applied to Petersburg and Moscow only, but was subsequently extended to Odessa, Kief, Kharkof, and Warsaw. Under this law the power of capital punishment was entrusted to the governor — generals of the provinces in question. —TR.

[x] Madame Tsebrikof, a well — known writer and literary critic, wrote a polite but honest letter to Alexander III, pointing out what was being done by the government. She was banished to a distant province for a time and was then allowed to reside, not in Petersburg, but in the government of Tver. — TR

[xi] By the representatives of the Tver Zemstvo and others, at a reception in the Winter Palace on the accession of Nicholas II. —TR

[xii] Conventional painting of God, Jesus, Angels, Saints, the mother of God, etc., usually done on bits of wood, with much gilding. They are hung up in the corners of the rooms as well as in churches, etc., to be prayed to. — TR.

[xiii] As part of the coronation festivities a "people’s fete" was a ranged to take place on the Khodinskoye Field, near Moscow. Owing to the incredible stupidity of the arrangements, some three thousand people were killed when trying to enter the grounds, besides a large number who were injured. This occurred on Saturday, May 18 (O.S.) 1896. That same evening the emperor danced at the grand ball given by the French ambassador in Moscow. — TR.

[xiv] Sometimes it seems to me simply laughable that people can occupy themselves with such an evidently hopeless business. It is like undertaking to cut off an animal’s leg without its noticing it. —Tolstoy’s Note

[xv] "The Iberian Mother of God" is a wonder — working ikon of the Virgin Mary which draws a large revenue. It is frequently taken to visit the sick, and travels about with six horses; the attendant priest sits in the carriage bareheaded. The smallest fee charged is six shillings for a visit, but more is usually given. — TR.

[xvi] The most terrible of the places of imprisonment in Petersburg; the Russian Bastille. — TR.

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of Nation of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. He occasionally blogs at The Shining Wire. Read this interview with him.

Jeff Snyder Archives

DIGG THIS

It is a mistake to start with what we want and proceed to finding justifications for what we want. It has been a disaster for Americans, Iraqis and the world — spiritually, morally and intellectually — that our public intellectuals apply their talents to justifying and bolstering a position they support instead of honestly questioning and analyzing whether the position deserves support, spreading obfuscation instead of clarity, darkness instead of light.

On October 4th, the New York Times published an article revealing the existence of secret Department of Justice legal opinions supporting the administration’s use of the "harshest interrogation techniques." These memos were written shortly after the Justice Department appeared, by its public statements, to have "abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations" and after the Congress moved to outlaw cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Some supporters of the practices rallied to the administration’s defense. In an article in the October 9 Wall Street Journal titled, "So Be It — The dangers of defining torture down," Bret Stephens warned against the danger of lessening the moral stigma attached to the word "torture" if certain persons (such as the New York Times), define the term down by improperly applying it to practices that do not really amount to torture. He also took strong issue with a recent editorial in The Economist that recommended that the administration end the use of these brutal methods and concluded that, even if many lives might be lost because of that, “so be it.” The Economist came to this conclusion because respecting “human rights is what it means to be civilized.”

Stephens’ article undertakes the task of upholding morality while simultaneously defending practices that he later tacitly concedes are inhumane and degrading. Specifically, Stephens seeks to defend the moral integrity inherent in a concept, so that we may be appropriately horrified when the word "torture" is accurately applied to the cases where it occurs and our interrogators and leaders know where the line is in inflicting pain and injury upon others, while simultaneously defending the actual inhumane conduct of interrogators and our leaders, which, he believes, does not rise to the barbarous level of "torture." A distinction this fine, an apology this ambitious surely merits some attention for the insights it may shed into the mechanisms of justification we, as a people, are now being asked to accept and employ in order to live with ourselves. Let’s see how it works.

Stephens states that "[t]orture is a word that preserves its moral force only when used precisely and consistently to denote uniquely barbarous acts. u2018The needle under the fingernail’ is one example. Simply to mention it causes most people instinctively to shudder." "By contrast," he goes on,

"u2018slaps to the head,’ among the examples cited by the [New York] Times of the administration’s u2018brutal’ methods, doesn’t come close to meeting any plausible definition of torture. The other examples — hours held naked in a frigid [50 degree Fahrenheit] cell; days and nights without sleep while battered by thundering rock music; long periods manacled in stress positions; or the ultimate, waterboarding’—come progressively closer to the line, and perhaps they cross it. But how do we tell?"

Generally speaking, it’s not a good sign when someone looking to defend a course of action adopts the posture that an ordinary word with a well-worn meaning and usage is a vague and problematic concept that cries out for precise elucidation. In such context, questions or statements like, "What is truth?," "And who is my neighbor?," "It all depends on what the meaning of u2018is’ is," and "But how do we tell (what torture is)?" are likely to be more indicative that the questioner is seeking an excuse or wiggle room for his — or others’ — actions, than that he is of a profoundly philosophical frame of mind seeking Socratic self-understanding or Cartesian certainty.

Webster’s defines torture as "1 a : anguish of body or mind : AGONY; b : something that causes agony or pain; 2 : the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure." Significantly, Stephens does not recur to the dictionary to dissipate the cloud of unknowing within his mind, but seeks his answers elsewhere. He proposes that a 1978 decision by the European Court of Human Rights dealing with Britain’s treatment of members of the Irish Republican Army is "a useful benchmark" for distinguishing torture from non-torture.

There, he informs us, the court found that wall-standing, hooding, subjection to noise, deprivation of sleep, food and drink, even when "applied in combination, with premeditation for hours at a stretch," and despite the fact that some detainees sustained massive injuries, did not constitute torture, although the court did find it was "inhuman and degrading treatment." In apparent approval of the court’s findings and decision, Stephens’ states that "by maintaining the u2018distinction between u2018torture’ and u2018inhuman or degrading treatment,’ the court sought to preserve the u2018special stigma [attached] to deliberate inhuman treatment causing very serious and cruel suffering.’"

Take note here of Stephens’ preferred form of definition. He bypasses the wisdom inherent in the ordinary usage of the term, which defines torture without regard to the means employed and solely with regard to the effect or the intent and the effect (anguish of body or mind, or the infliction of intense pain to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure). Instead, he appears to suggest that torture can or should be defined by reference to a catalogue of prohibited and exempt techniques. In particular, he appears to believe that certain techniques can or should be declared per se to not be "torture," regardless of prolonged premeditated use resulting in massive injury. I have a few observations about this.

First, Stephens seems to have a bizarre scale for measuring torture. At the beginning of his article he cites the needle under the fingernail as a horrifying instance of torture. This admittedly causes intense pain but would appear to fall far short of massive injury. He seems to reject the needle under the fingernail based on its "instinctive shudder" factor but is fine with techniques that possess no "instinctive shudder" factor but which can be repeatedly applied, alone or in combination with other "shudderless" techniques, to produce massive injury. Is this really rational or sane?

Second, the idea that certain techniques can be declared per se to not constitute torture bears no relationship to the reality of the human body. Third, and notably unlike the ordinary meaning of the word, such an approach fails to recognize the ingenuity that people are capable of bringing to the task of blazing new trails in cruelty.

According to Stephens, slaps to the head do not even plausibly fall within the meaning of torture. Really? How about slaps to the head of a 150 lb man, or a 130 lb. woman or a 14 year old boy or girl, or a 70 year old man, by a 220 lb man that benches 250 lbs, squats 340 lbs and can military press 180 lbs (not extraordinary numbers by any stretch), and who has sufficient boxing or marital arts training to understand that to deliver really devastating blows you don’t just swing your arm but use your legs to step in or to turn your hips so that you are putting your leg strength into the blow and delivering the momentum of your entire 220 lb body? How many such slaps within what time frame will it take before concussion or permanent brain injury occurs? What about slaps to the ears that break the eardrums? What happens if the process is repeated? Do you suppose it possible to render a person permanently deaf this way? What about slaps that dislocate the jaw followed by repeated slaps or slaps that slam the lower jaw upwards and break teeth or sever the tongue?

But according to Stephens, distinctions such as those made by the European Court of Human Rights "are not u2018legal sophistries,’ as the [New York] Times would have it. They are a juridical necessity to ensure that our definition of torture does not become so diluted as to render its prohibition unenforceable." So in Stephens’ view, not only do we need to define torture carefully in order to preserve the strength of the moral stigma inherent in the concept, but also to make sure that we can enforce its legal prohibition.

However, Stephens’ claim that the dilution of the definition of prohibited conduct renders the prohibition unenforceable is simply wrong. If torture is determined by courts who, lamentably, take their guidance from the over-refined sensibilities of the New York Times, to encompass actions which are not even plausibly within its meaning, such as slaps to the head, the result will be that interrogators who slap heads will be prosecuted for torture, not that no one will be prosecuted for torture. The application of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to the activities of persons who are not members of organized crime, such as people who protest abortion (a terrible dilution of the moral stigma attached to the concept of "racketeering" and devastating blow to conceptual purity of the type Stephens decries), has not lead to the repeal or unenforcement of RICO, but to its accepted, expanded applicability.

The only plausible real concern, not expressed by Stephens but coincidentally eliminated by his approach to upholding morality and law, is that, without a legally permissible catalogue of exempt techniques, interrogators and those they take orders from (our leaders) might well be prosecuted for torture whenever they inflict intense pain to punish or coerce or cause agony of body or mind. Stephens’ grand defense of the moral and legal orders thus dovetails completely with the Bush administration’s desire to define torture to exclude certain techniques so long as they are not applied to the point of organ failure (death, generally speaking), with complete exemption from prosecution. It seems to me that what Stephens is really arguing for is absolution, and moral and legal "clarification" is his means to that end.

Having made his case for preservation of the moral and legal orders, Stephens moves on to deal with The Economist’s "so be it" — its recommendation that we should abandon our use of "enhanced" interrogation practices, even though many lives may be lost from our refusal to brutalize others in order to obtain potentially life-saving information.

"For the record, count me as one who does not object to the interrogation to which KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] was reportedly subjected, including waterboarding. This is not because I take the use of waterboarding lightly . . . [but] because I take the threat posed by KSM seriously.

"That makes it difficult for me to subscribe to the "So be it" line of reasoning."

The Bush administration’s interrogation program is a general program open to all "unlawful enemy combatants," and The Economist was rejecting it on that basis. So it is noteworthy that Stephens states his approval solely in terms of the specific case of the terrorist who confessed to masterminding the 9/11 attacks and playing a role in numerous other atrocities. Taken literally, this is disingenuous, because Stephens does not respond to The Economist’s position in like kind, but instead approves of a single instance and leaves himself a loophole equal to all remaining possible applications of the program.

That would be pretty sly if that were his intention, but it is likely that Stephens selected KSM as an example of the success of the program by which it should be judged, or as symbolic of the whole. But by selecting KSM as his poster boy, Stephens covers up and evades material issues relating to programmatic brutality. First, he seeks to bypass the rightful question we might ask ourselves about whether it is right to brutalizing others for any reason, let alone in order to find out if they know something useful to us, by invoking a picture of its application to a known bad man who might have what we want. He offsets our rightful and humane doubt about the propriety of brutalizing others by directing us to focus on its application to an "evil doer," someone we think deserves it.

Second, he completely sidesteps the quotidian reality that the techniques will often, perhaps primarily, be used against people we have no or little way of knowing are in fact guilty of participating in terrorism or have "actionable intelligence," and who we will subject to suffering in order to find out if they have actionable intelligence and if or to what extent they are involved in terrorism. In fact, even in the case hand-picked by Stephens, as far as the public knows, while interrogators obtained confessions of past atrocities, we did not find out any information from KSM that has led to the prevention of new attacks.

Third, by choosing the mastermind of 9/11, he surreptitiously enlists the desire to punish as support for a program whose purpose is supposedly to obtain life-saving information. Stephens and other supporters of "enhanced" interrogation may not be too concerned what happens to KSM, and may be happy to see him interrogated simply to find out whether he has any information, because of the feeling that he deserves everything he gets and more for what he has done. In other words, support for these practices may tacitly rest in large part on the approval of harsh interrogation practices as a form of "street justice." The problem is that, legally speaking, we are supposed to determine guilt before punishing. The problem is that we — the public in whose name this is done — don’t know and can have no assurance that the prisoner is in fact guilty unless guilt is determined in a public trial that begins with the presumption of innocence and rests on a finding by a jury of the prisoner’s peers that the evidence supports a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The problem is that our ancestors fought long and hard to save us from the "justice" of the Star Chamber, which we, in our desire to strike at someone for our wounds, usher back so we can stick it to the likes of KSM without the necessity of a trial or the niceties of an antiseptic death by injection following the judicial determination of guilt.

Any memo, law or executive order protecting the use of specified "enhanced interrogation techniques" provides a general grant of discretionary and largely unreviewable power to persons largely hidden from the light of day, easily used for other than avowed purposes, and resting almost completely on a "trust us" basis. Under the Military Commissions Act, the right to decide who is one of "us" and who is one of "them" is reserved to a handful of people who are granted the authority by the President to declare in secret proceedings which of us are "unlawful enemy combatants." It may easily be years before any court reviews their decision, if ever — a long time to endure "enhanced" interrogation. It is willful blindness to not see that, not only this is a complete evisceration of the entire Anglo-American legal tradition, but that it hands an extremely powerful weapon of fear and intimidation to the administration to be used against its perceived enemies.

All of these issues are just swept under the rug by Stephens’ evocation of KSM.

Now let’s look at his criticism of the "so be it" position:

"Taken seriously, it says that the civilized world would be better off sustaining a nuclear 9/11 than tarnishing its good name, that righteous victimhood is a finer thing than an innocent life saved through morally compromised methods, and that self-preservation is not the most fundamental requirement of democratic life."

First, each of these three assessments assumes that we will obtain information through the use of "enhanced" interrogation that enables us to prevent a nuclear 9/11, save a single innocent life, or preserve ourselves, that we wouldn’t have obtained the life-saving information in any other way, or prevented the attack in some other way (such as, for example, bringing all troops home from the Middle East and ceasing to meddle in their internal affairs). Stephens’ criticisms simply posit that the benefit will be realized. In point of fact, we cannot actually know this ahead of time. The reality is that, we are torturing people now, some or many of whom are innocent or may prove or to have no useful information, in the expectation or mere hope of obtaining life-saving information. Again, note that even with Stephens’ cherry-picked example, we do not know if any information obtained from KSM has prevented a nuclear 9/11, saved an innocent life, or preserved ourselves. (Given the Bush administration’s desperate need to trumpet its few successes, I suspect that if it had led to anything this grand, we would have heard about it — ad nauseaum.)

It would be one thing to attempt to justify this on utilitarian grounds, and argue that a few should suffer so that many more can live, and that the innocent whose lives are destroyed and bodies maimed or injured by our interrogation practices are simply acceptable "collateral damage" whose pain and suffering is outweighed by the lives saved. This would suffer from the typical utilitarian shortcoming that one cannot know the actual benefits and costs ahead of time, so that one proceeds on the basis of presumptive costs and benefits (or for the dishonest, its ready substitute, wishful thinking), and really knows whether one was wise and whether what one did was "right" only after the fact — an approach to practical morality and policy that, you may have noticed, has not served us all that well in going to war with, and occupying, Iraq. But Stephens does not go down this path and is not really a utilitarian. He is apparently willing to have us engage in inhumane and degrading interrogation practices of innumerable others over an unspecified period, presumably for the duration of the War on Terror (forever), to save even "a single innocent life." I say "apparently" because he has only told us that he approves of these practices in a specific case, although even in that case we don’t know if the information has saved a single life. If he means that to be symbolic of the whole, however, then this is not the calculus of someone attempting to rationally identify and weigh the expected costs and benefits in order to maximize overall welfare, but one who pursues a goal without regard to its morality, cost or toll.

Let’s recall the context. Stephens is arguing in support of the extrajudicial interrogation of prisoners held indefinitely without representation and without a prior trial to determine their guilt on the basis of sufficient evidence. From both a legal and moral point of view, the operational principal of such a system is that the prisoner is guilty — presumed to be involved with terrorism and in possession of actionable intelligence about it — until proven innocent by the failure of the interrogator to elicit any such information during sustained periods of torture, or, uh, infliction of inhumane and degrading treatment causing massive injury. It is completely contradictory, and morally and mentally deranged, for someone whose operational principal is that people are guilty until proven innocent, and who is willing to inflict massive injuries on, and accept untold harm to innocent others, to argue that the goal of his actions is to protect a single innocent life.

Finally, Stephens rejects a "so be it" acceptance of the consequences of not using harsh interrogation practices to obtain information because it implies that "self-preservation is not the most fundamental requirement of democratic life." Leaving aside Stephens’ intriguing suggestion that the most fundamental requirement of monarchical, socialist, communist and islamofascist life is something other than self-preservation, Stephens is right. The Economist’s statement implies that what kind of people we are is more important than that we are. If physical survival is the bedrock standard, then, by definition, all other considerations are subordinate and fall away. Preemptively attacking others in the name of "defense," torturing, raping, maiming, murdering and even nuking THEM — everything is permitted US to save US.

And not just utter criminality. If physical survival is the most fundamental requirement, then "cutting and running" are also permitted, if that will save our hides. If capitulating to the terrorists’ or insurgents’ demands by leaving Iraq, completely leaving the Middle East and ceasing to fund Israel or aiding any other countries in the Middle East will reduce their animus towards us and result in fewer attacks and more lives saved then, based on our most fundamental requirement, we should be doing that too. No? This is not what he means? Would Stephens say that, even if staying in Iraq will cost lives here, then, "so be it?" Then he must have some requirement that is more important than "self-preservation," physical survival. He must agree with The Economist that there is some standard that trumps mere survival, that who we are is more important than that we are, although each has a different idea about what kind of people we should be.

So Stephens fails to convince me either that the inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners to extract information is acceptable or that position taken by The Economist is wrong. Beyond that, however, I question Stephens’ entire approach to the topic.

Perhaps the question whether it is right to brutalize others is not properly answerable by reference to an analysis of what’s in it for us, or even by the question, what kind of people do we want to be (civilized, humane, crusaders for democracy around the world, etc.). Perhaps seeking self-referential satisfaction cannot lead to what is right, and what is right depends on treating others as real as — and like — ourselves, an approach embodied in the Golden Rule, Kant’s "categorical imperative," the Christian commandment to love one’s enemies, and the Hindu concept of ahimsa.

We should consider it.

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of Nation of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. He occasionally blogs at The Shining Wire. Read this interview of him.

DIGG THIS

It is not unusual to find, in many media and blog reports about Ron Paul, the statement that he won’t, or can’t, win. Not, be it noted, that "political analysts agree" that he can’t win, which would at least indicate that this is an opinion based on some sort of analysis. No, just "he can’t win," reported in the same manner a reporter might say, "Ron Paul visited Austin yesterday." I have never seen or heard this statement supported with an explanation. It is just presented as a fact, or self-evident truth.

This tactic, of presenting an event that has not yet occurred as a fact, a given or fait accompli, is at best impertinent and at worst an underhanded tactic intended to influence the electorate by undermining support. The eventual outcome is, after all, a decision that is to be made by the voters, first through the primary process and then through the general election. It is presumptuous, and not the place of either reporters or commentators, to tell the voters what they can’t do. In this regard, any voter worth his salt will adopt a Lockean approach to every opinion monger’s attempt to foreclose the future by cloaking it in air of inevitability that renders the voter’s beliefs and actions risible and meaningless, because destined to fail. I refer not to John Locke the philosopher, whose work is the foundation of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but to his namesake on Lost, who rebuffs everyone who tries to stop him by telling him that he can’t do it with a peremptory "Don’t tell me what I can’t do." (See also the first and sixth set of script quotes here and the fifth set here).

Why this haste to announce, prejudge or preordain the outcome? What pressing necessity compels our intrepid reporters and commentators to tell us that Ron Paul can’t win? I can’t read minds, so I can’t say for certain what motivations lie behind this remark. However, as someone who writes, and has to decide what to leave in and leave out, it is clear that the authors feel a very strong need to express their own position on Ron Paul’s candidacy, and possibly to affect the voter’s decision, and they do it in this fashion. In this regard, the statement that Ron Paul can’t win, presented as a given, can serve a number of purposes, some relatively innocent, others not.

It can be a way for the author to distance himself from the campaign, letting us know that he is not taken in by the Ron Paul revolution, so that we know his own sympathies lie elsewhere, or that he remains hardheaded and sober, able to coolly assess the phenomenon with his expert or insider’s view of the processes unfolding before him.

It can be the means by which the reporter wishes us to understand that he is wise in the ways of the world, knows how the America electoral process really works, understands how highly circumscribed, and thus predictable, the ultimate outcome is, and knows that the structure or demands of this process will prevent Ron Paul from winning. (He just can’t be bothered to share the explanation with us at the moment.)

It can serve as a dismissal or condemnation, an insinuation that the Ron Paul candidacy is out of the mainstream, flaky, cultist, and so will never achieve widespread support.

And at worst, and whether intended or not, it can be a tacit suggestion to the voter to abandon his support for Ron Paul, or to not waste time even finding out about Ron Paul, because the candidacy is doomed to failure. It can act as an implicit appeal to the voter to be "realistic," to make himself a part of a team that can win, so that he may ultimately be part of the winning team. I have, for example, heard Rush Limbaugh overtly make this kind of argument in past elections. His message and voting philosophy is always, don’t waste your vote on quixotic candidacies. Support the candidate on our side who has the best chance of winning, even if he is less than perfect, so that our side can win, and you can get something of what you want, instead of not voting or dividing the vote, losing to the other side and getting even less of what you want, and a disaster for our country.

While couched as advice to make your vote meaningful, the "don’t waste your vote" appeal (subtext: real change is impossible) is a tactic used to herd and control voters. Its illogical, manipulative, and debasing nature becomes obvious as soon as you state what it is that it really asks, namely, that the voter base his vote on what the largest number of votes of others (who are still on his "side") is going to be, for the purpose of adding to that number. There is an obvious epistemological flaw in this plan. If everyone were to act on this basis, the absurdity is evident. But even if only a large enough group number of people acts on this basis, then no one really knows what others really do believe or what their preferred choice really is, because too many are expressing, not their own choice, but what they believe the greatest number of others (still on their "side") believe. Obviously, this makes a complete mockery of voting, not least because it makes it impossible to claim that the final vote registers a real consensus of what voters truly believe. Instead, it becomes a consensus of what voters believe other voters believe, or some indeterminate mixture.

The tactic would be valid only if everyone first knows what everyone else’s real preferences are, and, accordingly, requires two votes to actually implement: a first vote in which everyone votes their conscience and real choice, and then a second vote in which only those who lost on each side get to change their votes and reallocate them, in an act of gamesmanship for the express purpose of affecting the ultimate outcome. Without this, in the context of a single vote, the strategy simply creates a muddle by obscuring the voters’ real preferences and this, I suspect, is part of its purpose. Thus does the status quo gain an added patina of legitimacy and staying power, as no one is sure of one another’s real degree of support, and each voter walks away thinking, well, I don’t like this very much, but look at how many others seem okay with this.

The real reason for the appeal lies in its implementation, however. As a practical matter, in order for the voter to carry out his plan to coordinate his vote with others, he will have to rely on polls, media reports, pundits, and radio and other media personalities to inform — or tell — him who is "electable," who can win, and who is too marginal to win. He has to trust someone to inform him who is electable and who is not, so that he does not "waste" his vote. By agreeing to treat himself as a tool to be used for "the good of the team," the voter essentially cedes power and influence to a handful of gatekeepers and king makers. This is the primary purpose of the appeal to not waste votes — it directs votes into the channels chosen by a handful of insiders, operatives and elites. The voter agrees to treat himself as a tool of others, lets (what he is told or believes, rightly or wrongly, is) the judgment of others determine his own action, and so becomes a tool for others, and is used accordingly.

Finally, if the voter is going to abandon his real choice, compromise his principles or beliefs for the sake of party, to gain something of what he wants, or even just to prevent "the other side" from winning, then he should realize that he is in no position to claim betrayal or outrage when the person he helps put in office compromises or abandons supposedly bedrock principles to get something of what that elected official wants. Pot, meet kettle. It is hypocritical, dysfunctional and delusional of the voter to expect that his elected official will adhere to a standard of integrity to which the voter cannot even hold himself. Someone once tried to explain this dynamic to us: "As you measure, so it will be measured unto you." If you believe no other candidate represents your principles, the honest thing to do is to not vote at all, rather than bestowing on some other candidate the illusion of a level of support and legitimacy that he or she does not really have, and thus misleading your fellow citizens and swelling the head of the elected official who believes he or she just received a thumbs up in an "accountability moment."

So, supporters of Ron Paul, or of other underdogs and dark horse candidates like Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel, if you want to live your own life, if you want to pursue your own destiny and not let others tell you what you are capable of, then vote your conscience, and don’t settle for less. And when operatives and pundits try to foreclose or corral your vote by telling you that your candidate can’t win, remember that you are a free agent. Be a voter in the Lockean mold. Tell them, don’t tell me what I can’t do.

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of Nation of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. He occasionally blogs at The Shining Wire. Read this interview of him.

DIGG THIS

Boy: Do not try to bend the spoon; that’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Boy: Then you will see, it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

~ The Matrix (1999)

Mr. Bush has vetoed the latest war-spending bill from Congress because it set a date to begin troop withdrawals, despite the fact that the withdrawal date was non-binding and the bill did not require the withdrawal of the hired mercenaries fighting the war. Congress may now attempt to create an even looser version that will leave Mr. Bush with even more maneuvering room to continue his war. Many of us wonder what we might do to end this war, sickened by the prospect that it will drag on until sometime after a new president is elected. Since Mr. Bush will not respect the people’s wishes to get out of Iraq, we should commence a campaign demanding that Messrs. Bush and Cheney resign their offices and put civic pressure on their "corporate sponsors" to cease their support.

Why adhere to the script prescribed for us and wait for the next election, why wait for Congress to impeach? Why temporize? We do not need to accept those procedures and timetables as the arbiters of how many more men, women and children will be killed, how many cities and villages laid ruin in our name for our interests and safety. It’s time to go off script. The fact that no formal mechanism existed to remove Don Imus from the airwaves certainly did not stand in the way of those who wanted his termination, and the absence of a formal plebiscite to remove a sitting president or vice president need not detain us. We may e-mail Messrs. Bush and Cheney and ask for their resignations, and keep asking. We may hold street rallies demanding their resignations, as 100,000 Israelis just did to oust Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz. We may e-mail the CEO of Halliburton, among others profiting from the war, and ask him to publicly justify his company’s participation in a war of aggression started under false pretenses. Does the profit motive permit everything? Does pursuit of profit provide a free pass on moral or social responsibility for the company’s participation in an unjust war? Is the answer to the question, "Why?", simply, "Because I can"?

Why let pollsters be our proxies, why not speak directly? If we establish a website to keep tally of the number of Americans asking for the resignations of Messrs. Bush and Cheney and to organize rallies, then we and the whole world can know just how many of us want these men out of office immediately, how many of us believe these men do not represent us, are not our leaders and have no authority to act in our name. If enough Americans refuse to recognize authority in Messrs. Bush and Cheney, say, for example, more Americans than voted for him in the last election, they will resign. Or the administration will stand exposed to the world as having no support and legitimacy. Why? Because of the nature of political authority.

Political authority is not a force of nature; it does not inhere in Messrs. Bush and Cheney as gravity inheres in mass, and we are not held in orbit around them as the earth is the sun. Political authority is a social construct. It exists because we believe it exists, have faith in it, and act as if it exists or, for those who would like nothing better than to get their hands on it, because it is a game that must be continued in order to acquire that power to exploit for their own interests and goals. As such, it is not something that Messrs. Bush or Cheney actually possess — we have it. Let’s stop trying to bend the president. Clearly that’s impossible. Instead, only try to recognize the truth: there is no president; it is only yourself. Our desire that someone exercise power over others for our benefit is the source of, and provides the tools for, our own subjugation and exploitation.

In 1548, a French law student named Étienne de la Boétie (pronounced "Bwettie") wrote an essay titled "Discours sur la Servitude volontaire, ou Contr’un" (Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, or, Against the One). La Boétie made the counterintuitive and revolutionary discovery that governments do not rule by force of arms. The handful of men and women who wield ultimate political power do not and cannot possess sufficient force to compel the people to obey them or, more accurately, cannot possibly compel their subjects to do everything that is necessary in order to sustain their power. The truth is that people are enslaved or tyrannized through their own cooperation and their own initiative in, not just cooperating, but furthering the ruler’s goals in order to acquire power and wealth by sharing in the spoils. If enough people would realize this, and refuse to cooperate in their own subjugation, la Boétie argued, the ruler’s authority would simply collapse; tyranny would end without bloodshed. So far as I am aware, la Boétie’s essay is the first call for noncooperation and civil disobedience, and first explanation of why it can work.

La Boétie identified several mechanisms by which the people accede to authority and rulers co-opt the people. The main reason people obey is, simply, habit. They grow up with it, it is just the way things are. Worse, the people, in modern parlance, "identify with the aggressor." A people’s history, which in reality is the story of their subjugation, exploitation and degradation by their rulers, becomes their fine tradition and glorious exploits, and unfelt (because habitual and routine) subjection becomes part of their very identify, in which they take great pride. People who are among the most overworked, highly regulated and taxed humans on the planet sing out that they are "proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free":

"Men are like handsome race horses who first bite the bit and later like it, and rearing under the saddle a while soon learn to enjoy displaying their harness and prance proudly beneath their trappings. Similarly men will grow accustomed to the idea that they have always been in subjection, that their fathers lived in the same way; they will think they are obliged to suffer this evil, and will persuade themselves by example and imitation of others, finally investing those who order them around with proprietary rights, based on the idea that it has always been that way."

Second, rulers stultify their subjects by diverting them with entertainment, games, medals, and spectacles. La Boétie refers primarily to more ancient times, when governments had a more direct hand in providing entertainment. Today, governments still build or help finance public stadiums but the overwhelming bulk of entertainment is provided by private industry. However, la Boétie’s basic point, that entertainment and "vain pleasures" are opiates that make servitude easier to bear and ignore, remains valid:

"This method tyrants use of stultifying their subjects cannot be more clearly observed than in what Cyrus did with the Lydians after he had taken Sardis, their chief city, and had at his mercy the captured Croesus, their fabulously rich king. When news was brought to him that the people of Sardis had rebelled, it would have been easy for him to reduce them by force; but being unwilling either to sack such a fine city or to maintain an army there to police it, he thought of an unusual expedient for reducing it. He established in it brothels, taverns, and public games, and issued the proclamation that the inhabitants were to enjoy them. He found this type of garrison so effective that he never again had to draw the sword against the Lydians. . . . Do not imagine that there is any bird more easily caught by decoy, nor any fish sooner fixed on the hook by wormy bait, than are all these poor fools neatly tricked into servitude by the slightest feather passed, so to speak, before their mouths. Truly it is a marvelous thing that they let themselves be caught so quickly at the slightest tickling of their fancy. Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books."

Third, rulers purchase allegiance with favors and gifts. La Boétie wrote well before the welfare state was conceived and well before rulers had sufficient powers of taxation to purchase and maintain support by creating actual dependency on government through programs that provided regular benefits to large segments of the population — programs like Social Security and Medicare, or the tax benefits and subsidies we identify as "corporate welfare." Were he writing today, he would surely add these to his list. At the time, however, he was talking about something more primitive but nonetheless effective, something perhaps best summed up as the lottery mentality. Gifts and handouts teach the people to view their government as a font of benefits, the source of a potential windfall. They encourage people to look upon government as a beneficent entity. But it goes beyond that. The general notion of government as a source to be tapped for goodies also serves the same function in quelling dissent and unhappiness with government’s burdens as the lottery does in suppressing people’s discontent with their economic predicament, diverting them from looking too closely into its cause and generally reconciling them quietly to their fates:

"Roman tyrants invented a further refinement. They often provided the city wards with feasts to cajole the rabble, always more readily tempted by the pleasure of eating than by anything else. The most intelligent and understanding amongst them would not have quit his soup bowl to recover the liberty of the Republic of Plato. Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then everybody would shamelessly cry, “Long live the King!” The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them. A man might one day be presented with a sesterce and gorge himself at the public feast, lauding Tiberius and Nero for handsome liberality, who on the morrow, would be forced to abandon his property to their avarice, his children to their lust, his very blood to the cruelty of these magnificent emperors, without offering any more resistance than a stone or a tree stump. The mob has always behaved in this way — eagerly open to bribes that cannot be honorably accepted, and dissolutely callous to degradation and insult that cannot be honorably endured."

We see with this last statement that la Boétie posits a certain nobility of person or character that rejects being bought off, that bristles rather than crumbles in the face of threats, that refuses to join in the banditry and plunderfest called government — a nobility that is perhaps not much in evidence. Early in his essay la Boétie talks about the enervating effects that subservience has on character: "liberty once lost, valor also perishes. . . . an enslaved people loses in addition to . . . warlike courage, all signs of enthusiasm, for their hearts are degraded, submissive, and incapable of any great deed. Tyrants are well aware of this, and, in order to degrade their subjects further, encourage them to assume this attitude and make it instinctive." In this regard it is instructive to note the craven nature of the notion that providing "security" is the primary purpose of government and the pandering use made of this concept in government’s efforts to expand its authority and functions. No politician that I am aware of, and certainly not the Republicans or Democrats in general, rejects the primacy of this notion. Mr. Bush keeps arguing that Iraq IS the battleground, and the Democrats argue that Mr. Bush’s misbegotten misadventures are diverting the country from providing real protection and confronting the REAL threats. Clearly "security" is too useful to abandon as the way forward to new frontiers in government. But its primacy indicates how degraded the American character is, and how little we see it.

Fourth, rulers claim the role of defender of the people, maintaining that their actions are for the common good in order to obtain the people’s trust:

"They didn’t even neglect, these Roman emperors, to assume generally the title of Tribune of the People, partly because this office was held sacred and inviolable and also because it had been founded for the defense and protection of the people and enjoyed the favor of the state. By this means they made sure that the populace would trust them completely, as if they merely used the title and did not abuse it. Today there are some who do not behave very differently; they never undertake an unjust policy, even one of some importance, without prefacing it with some pretty speech concerning public welfare and common good."

Fifth, rulers hold themselves aloof and cloak their actions with ritual and mystery in order to induce reverence and admiration by encouraging people to imagine them as greater than they are, a higher order of being. This is one reason that rulers never want their inner discussions and workings publicly exposed. If people saw how ignoble the process really was, their authority would be undermined. Left to speculate, people will imagine that the ruler acts wisely and justly, because it is what they want to believe.

"The kings of the Assyrians and even after them those of the Medes showed themselves in public as seldom as possible in order to set up a doubt in the minds of the rabble as to whether they were not in some way more than man, and thereby to encourage people to use their imagination for those things which they cannot judge by sight. Thus a great many nations who for a long time dwelt under the control of the Assyrians became accustomed, with all this mystery, to their own subjection, and submitted the more readily for not knowing what sort of master they had, or scarcely even if they had one, all of them fearing by report someone they had never seen. The earliest kings of Egypt rarely showed themselves without carrying a cat, or sometimes a branch, or appearing with fire on their heads, masking themselves with these objects and parading like workers of magic. By doing this they inspired their subjects with reverence and admiration, whereas with people neither too stupid nor too slavish they would merely have aroused, it seems to me, amusement and laughter. It is pitiful to review the list of devices that early despots used to establish their tyranny; to discover how many little tricks they employed, always finding the populace conveniently gullible, readily caught in the net as soon as it was spread. Indeed they always fooled their victims so easily that while mocking them they enslaved them the more."

But the main foundation and support of the ruler’s authority, la Boétie claimed, was those who aligned themselves with the ruler and eagerly furthered the ruler’s goals in order to reap the benefits of participating in the ruler’s scheme, the underlings who would align themselves with those people, and so on, establishing an extended chain of fealty based on sharing the spoils of subjugation and exploitation.

"This does not seem credible on first thought, but it is nevertheless true that there are only four or five who maintain the dictator, four or five who keep the country in bondage to him. Five or six have always had access to his ear, and have either gone to him of their own accord, or else have been summoned by him, to be accomplices in his cruelties, companions in his pleasures, panders to his lusts, and sharers in his plunders. These six manage their chief so successfully that he comes to be held accountable not only for his own misdeeds but even for theirs. The six have six hundred who profit under them, and with the six hundred they do what they have accomplished with their tyrant. The six hundred maintain under them six thousand, whom they promote in rank, upon whom they confer the government of provinces or the direction of finances, in order that they may serve as instruments of avarice and cruelty, executing orders at the proper time and working such havoc all around that they could not last except under the shadow of the six hundred, nor be exempt from law and punishment except through their influence.
The consequence of all this is fatal indeed. And whoever is pleased to unwind the skein will observe that not the six thousand but a hundred thousand, and even millions, cling to the tyrant by this cord to which they are tied."

The announcement of a new initiative to benefit from the exploitation of the people — say, for example, a War on Terror — calls forth a crowd of supporters and volunteers who hope to gain by participating and carving out a role for themselves in the scheme. La Boétie refers to not only the ruler’s inner circle, men like Donald Rumsfeld or Paul Wolfowitz, and the men in lesser public offices who align themselves with this inner circle, but the entire network that forms around a ruler or his plans "in order to win some profit from his tyranny and from the subjection of the populace." So in our day it includes government contractors, private companies manufacturing expensive devices for airports or buildings hoping to cash in on the security crack-down, and partisan hacks who extol and flatter the ruler, misrepresent or defend his indefensible acts in order to aggrandize themselves and profit from it, recapitulating the role of courtier to king. This weakness, that ambitious men and women who see how they may profit from aligning themselves with the ruler and serving his plans at the expense of their fellow man, this, la Boétie claims, is the "mainspring and secret" of domination. If he is right, we might end the war sooner by calling those who profit from this war to account, and pressuring them to cease their participation, rather than trying to bring changes about formally through the political process. Pursuit of political means keeps our focus diverted from the supporters, without whom the plans would never proceed, and gives them a free pass.

As Lew Rockwell has noted, the truth of la Boétie’s discovery that rulers do not maintain their authority through force of arms, or stated less metaphorically, through murder, violence, coercion, fear and punishment, is vividly illustrated by our failures in Iraq. Simply eliminating a country’s military, creating a new police force, encamping our soldiers, helicopters and tanks in their midst and cowing the general populace does not make a new government. In what we call a democracy, legitimacy and power depend on brokering, achieving and constantly maintaining a privileged position as an intermediary among competing or warring social forces, each of whom wants a proxy to fight and win its battle against the others and generally accepts or at least acquiesces to this ruling class or system for the victories it might yield over its social opponents.

Consider, for example, the mileage gained by both Democrats and Republicans from taking opposing sides of the pro-life, pro-choice debate, or the mileage gained by Republicans, for example, from taking the pro-gun rights position, uttering pieties about the Second Amendment without ever repealing the laws which, based on their rhetoric, should be struck down as unconstitutional. In such cases, the idea is that they do not yet have a complete enough victory over opponents, or enough power to give supporters what they want and to do what, of course, it is right to do. In other words, party members need to continue their support and redouble their efforts until that nirvana of plenipotent power is achieved, when the party will finally have the ability to grant all wishes. The voters’ desire to achieve victory through compulsion (law) thus generates and sustains both the regime and the power necessary to accomplish that goal.

As I mentioned above, la Boétie’s discovery also explains, in significant part, the success of Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Solidarity movement in Poland, and Charter 77 and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. At first, the movement is met with resistance and repression if not outright violence — the state’s reflexive action against all threats. But as long as the movement remains nonviolent and based on the participants’ desire to cease "living within the lie" (as Vaclav Havel has put it), this repression only further undermines the state’s authority, by demonstrating that the regime does not have the support of ordinary people who wish to do no more than carry on their lives with dignity, live in the truth and pursue "the aims of life" (Havel, again). The violence or repression reveals even more clearly that the regime has little or no legitimacy and has only open coercion and violence with which to maintain itself. More and more people’s eyes are opened and participate, or become sympathetic bystanders who now see truth of what is happening, a tipping point is reached, the powers that be must scramble to re-orient and restructure themselves to recover legitimacy, and the old regime collapses, like air rushing out of a balloon.

Noncooperation is practiced here whenever someone decides he or she will not join our military because he or she rejects Mr. Bush’s war in Iraq; whenever a general or military commander refuses to volunteer or take on an assignment in the War on Terror because he or she does not believe in Mr. Bush’s goals or methods; when a soldier refuses to participate in the war because he or she believes it to be an unjust or illegal war; when an engineer, scientist, programmer or machinist refuses to work for a company making weapons of war. If we wish to stop this war, then more of us need to say no to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and the companies and executives who are on board with and profiting from this war.

Messrs. Bush and Cheney claim their power is derived from a document established by we, the people. Since they supposedly work for us, we may ask them to tender their immediate resignations. A few days ago I sent this e-mail to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney:

Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney,

You have inflicted terrible and incalculable harm on our country, the Iraqi people and the world. The avowed nobility or sanctity of your purposes and goals cannot and does not justify or sanitize the malign and destructive means you have employed, the deaths of tens of thousands, the destruction and ruin that you have brought on Iraq, the destruction of Constitutional protections and common law safeguards that protect people from arbitrary authority, tyranny and injustice, or the massive debt you are incurring for your war that will burden us for generations. As one of “We, the People” that you claim to serve, I want you to know that you do not represent me, and you do not have any authority to act in my name or on my behalf. I have never asked for, nor do I want, your service or your protection. As one of “We, the People” that you claim to serve, I am asking you to resign, immediately.

I typed my name and gave the name of the town and state in which I reside. My theory is that perhaps our soldiers can stand down as we stand up.

Sending e-mails demanding resignation is not much in the way of direct action, although if tens of millions of Americans did it and we had a public tally for all the world to see, it would, at a minimum, be a profound embarrassment to the administration and further weaken it. We will have to engage in other forms of peaceful noncooperation and civil disobedience, such as rallies demanding their resignation, protests in the streets or outside defense contractors’ offices, launching a defense contractor disinvestment and noninvestment campaign or campaign asking defense contractors to justify their participation in an illegal war started under false pretenses, if we want to end this war sometime before the next person takes occupancy of the White House and even starts the process. Obtaining widespread participation in these forms of direct action depends foremost on spreading the truth about what this administration has done and is doing. But the change in mindset regarding our field of action is equally critical — understanding that if we want the war to end we have to abandon the highly circumscribed role prescribed for us (voting), obstruct the war through noncooperation and civil disobedience, openly reject and delegitimize the authority of Messrs. Bush and Cheney, and begin demanding that war contractors justify themselves and account for their complicity.

Since Mr. Bush and his government derive near-absolute power from the near-absolute fervor with which we believe that government should "protect" us, to succeed we must learn to stop using government as our shield and weapon against one another, as the proxy that fights our battles for us. We must learn to achieve results by bypassing government. Government is so entwined in all aspects of our lives that every one of us is, to a greater or lesser degree, compromised. But it is precisely for that reason that we need to assist one another and proceed with some compassion. Many, perhaps most, of the men and women who work in the factories that make tanks, bombs and other weapons of war may not like how their work is being used in this war any more than the rest of us like how our tax dollars are being used, but have just as little idea what to do about it, or feel that they have just as few options as we do to do anything about it. The Hindu notion of ahimsa was central to Gandhi’s campaign, just as Christ’s command to love one’s enemies was the foundation of Dr. Martin Luther King’s commitment to nonviolence. Underlying these values in action is understanding in your bones that "all of us are in this together," and by "all" I do not mean only those within the confines of American borders. Vituperation cannot be the way forward. People who are attacked will attack back. People who are hated will hate back. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword. Noncooperation, civil disobedience, the pricking of conscience by calling to account, confronting those who are destroying and hurting others with the consequences of their actions and the disconnect between their alleged goals and their destructive means, social action — those should be the ways forward.

The Bush administration has shown beyond doubt that the existing regime is broken, that the constitutional system of checks and balances does not work and cannot withstand sheer effrontery. It is time for a new paradigm. We must become, and call others to join, the non-co-opted.

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of Nation of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. He occasionally blogs at The Shining Wire.

DIGG THIS

A sizable portion
of the American electorate heads to the polls today to cast votes
for members of the House and Senate, as well as various governors
and representatives in the states. The campaigns this season have
been particularly brutal, buzzing with allegations or evocations
of gay sex, pedophilia, bribery and corruption, racial prejudice,
preference for the rights of terrorists over the safety of Americans,
and a craven desire to turn tail and run from the Iraqi field of
battle. It seems a worthwhile time to ask ourselves, now, while
so many of us are at a fever pitch, before we know the results of
the election and bask in elation or wallow in sorrow, before the
question recedes far into the background, subordinated to our efforts
either to exploit our side's newfound power, or to gather strength
and mobilize for the next election battle: what is this thing so
many of us are about to do?

I write this
not to dissuade anyone, at this hour, from voting, far less to encourage
anyone to vote for particular candidates, but simply to provide
food for thought, and more importantly, to urge voters to consider
an alternate form of activism beginning on the day after the election,
regardless of whether their party wins or loses. It is important
to question what, exactly, it is we have when we have the vote,
if we are to advance one step beyond our present position.

I'd like to
return to what a few notables and ne'er-do-wells from the 19th
century said on this subject, back when American and English democracy
were still young and (thought to be) full of great promise. In part
I do this because these authors' works are easily accessible. But
more importantly, I cite their discussions as an indication that
the truth of a thing can be known or available for a long time,
while people continue playing the same fruitless game, convinced
it is a game that can be won and, even better, that they
can win, without ever letting the truth of the thing sink in and
alter their course of action. Perhaps now is the time some will
choose to forever break with this pattern, and set off in a new
direction. I urge this consideration because there seems to be little
solace or hope available in the results of the election regardless
of which party wins. If the Republicans retain control of the Congress
after the history of the last six years, they will conclude, rightly,
that they can essentially get away with anything, confident that
their base will never abandon them as long as the party leadership
and its associated spokesmen in talk radio, newspapers and evangelical
Christians can continue to successfully portray the Democrats as
closer to Pure Evil in the lesser of two evils sweepstakes known
as elections. If the Democrats gain control of Congress, or at least
the House, there seems precious little cause for celebration. This
is the party that, given a President who lied us into an unjust
and illegal war, who admits violating statutes and the Constitution
and arrogates to himself the right to exempt himself from laws,
cannot even bring itself to promise that, if it obtains majority
control, it will end the war as expeditiously as possible, repeal
the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act, defund the President's
illegal activities or commence impeachment proceedings. As Joseph
Sobran has pointed out, it is a delusion to believe there are two
parties which stand for different principles, when one party never
repeals or revokes the acts made while the other party was in control,
but leaves them standing while pursuing its own, new agenda.

What, then,
is the vote? The vote offers the prospect to the electorate that,
if they can succeed in forming themselves into a majority, they
may enact or force their ideas of what is good for all upon a minority
that is opposed or indifferent to that vision. The vote is a contest
in which the stakes are power over the minority. And how is this
contest conducted, and how do people who have the vote behave? In
the Pickwick
Papers (1837), Charles Dickens provides a description
of electorate behavior that captures the Blue State/Red State America
of today as fully as the perfervid election contests of early 19th
century England:

It appears,
then, that the Eatanswill people, like the people of many other
small towns, considered themselves of the utmost and most mighty
importance, and that every man in Eatanswill, conscious of the
weight that attached to his example, felt himself bound to unite,
heart and soul, with one of the two great parties that divided
the town — the Blues and the Buffs. Now the Blues lost no opportunity
of opposing the Buffs, and the Buffs lost no opportunity of opposing
the Blues; and the consequence was, that whenever the Buffs and
Blues met together at public meeting, Town-Hall, fair, or market,
disputes and high words arose between them. With these dissensions
it is almost superfluous to say that everything in Eatanswill
was made a party question. If the Buffs proposed to new sky-light
the market-place, the Blues got up public meetings, and denounced
the proceeding; if the Blues proposed the erection of an additional
pump in the High Street, the Buffs rose as one man and stood aghast
at the enormity. There were Blue shops and Buff shops, Blue inns
and Buff inns; — there was a Blue aisle and a Buff aisle, in the
very church itself.

Of course
it was essentially and indispensably necessary that each of these
powerful parties should have its chosen organ and representative;
and, accordingly, there were two newspapers in the town — the
Eatanswill Gazette and the Eatanswill Independent; the former
advocating Blue principles, and the latter conducted on grounds
decidedly Buff. Fine newspapers they were. Such leading articles,
and such spirited attacks! — "Our worthless contemporary,
the Gazette" — "That disgraceful and dastardly
journal, the Independent" — "That false and scurrilous
print, the Independent" — "That vile and slanderous
calumniator, the Gazette;" these, and other spirit-stirring
denunciations were strewn plentifully over the columns of each,
in every number, and excited feelings of the most intense delight
and indignation in the bosoms of the townspeople.

Mr. Pickwick,
with his usual foresight and sagacity, had chosen a peculiarly
desirable moment for his visit to the borough. Never was such
a contest known. The Honourable Samuel Slumkey, of Slumkey Hall,
was the Blue candidate; and Horatio Fizkin, Esq., of Fizkin Lodge,
near Eatanswill, had been prevailed upon by his friends to stand
forward on the Buff interest. The Gazette warned the electors
of Eatanswill that the eyes not only of England, but of the whole
civilized world, were upon them; and the Independent imperatively
demanded to know, whether the constituency of Eatanswill were
the grand fellows they had always taken them for, or base and
servile tools, undeserving alike of the name of Englishmen and
the blessings of freedom.

This is the
vote; it has always been the vote; it will always be the vote. Polarization
of all human interaction and endeavors, universal rancor and dissension,
slander, calumny, lies, deliberate mischaracterization of the words,
positions and deeds of the opposition, self-righteous indignation,
fantasies of crushing the opposition, and sheer delight in the downfall
of others.

The essence
of the vote is the acquisition of power over others, not, note well,
the good faith determination of the relative worthiness of specific
societal goals. If it were the latter, the vote would be structured
as a vote on goals or programs, and the Congress and President could
be a semi-permanent group of functionaries or administrators whose
job was nothing more or less than to implement those goals in good
faith. As the prevalence of negative campaigning illustrates, because
the essence of the contest is to determine who will rule over others,
the contest invariably turns on the character of the persons who
will exercise this power, not on specific programs or goals of the
candidates, as each side seeks to portray the other as evil bogeymen
who cannot be trusted with power, who will wreak havoc on our country
and quite possibly end life as we know it. Because the stakes are
power over others, and not a circumscribed, narrow power but a virtually
unlimited power, the natural reaction to this attempted power grab
is the fiercest opposition. The nature of the contest — – the pursuit
of power over others — by its nature creates polarization and opposition,
and calls forth ugly emotions and underhanded tactics.

People put
faith in government because they view it as an instrument for mutual
protection, reform of injurious practices, punishment of wrong-doers,
and general maintenance of good order and conduct. The 19th
century New England preacher, Adin Ballou, asked us to consider,
however, whether it was reasonable to believe that a system so constituted
was actually capable of achieving such goals. After all, the tactics
employed in the vote do not end, and the nature of the contest does
not change, after the election. The same tactics are used in promoting
the adoption of new legislation or appointments to the judiciary.
Is it reasonable to suppose that such means are genuinely constituted
to achieve harmony and well-being in a real commonwealth? Is this
how people who truly feel kinship
with one another and seek one another's best interests behave? Can
such means result in mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation
in pursuit of a common good?

Many people
seem to take for granted that legal and political action afford
to good men indispensable instrumentalities for the promotion
of moral reform, or at least for the maintenance of wholesome
order in society. Hence we hear much said of the duty of enforcing
certain penal laws, of voting for just rulers, and of rendering
government "a terror to evil-doers." Now I make no objection
to any kind of legal or political action, which is truly Christian
action. Nor do I deny that some local and temporary good has been
done by prosecutions at law, voting in our popular elections,
and exercising the functions of magistracy, under the prevailing
system of human government. But I contend that there is very little
legal and political action under this system, which is strictly
Christian action. And I deny that professedly good men do half
as much to promote as they do to subvert moral reform and wholesome
order in society, by legal and political action. The common notions
respecting these matters are extremely superficial, delusive and
mischievous. Look at facts:

1. Is it
   not a fact, that men strenuous for legal coercion, who devote
   themselves to the prosecution of lawbreakers as an important
   duty, generally become incapable of benevolent, patient, suasory
   moral action? Do they not become mere compulsionists? Do they
   not become disagreeable to humble minds, and objects of defiance
   to the lawless? Is not this generally the case? I am sure it
   is. Reliance on injurious penal force costs more than it comes
   to, as an instrumentality for the promotion of moral reform.
   It works only a little less mischievously in morals than in
   religion.

2. Is it
   not a fact, that equally good men are divided among all the
   rival political parties, and that, under pretence of doing their
   duty to God and humanity, they vote point blank for and against
   the same men and measures, mutually thwarting, as far as possible,
   each others’ preferences? Every man knows this. Does God
   make it their duty to practice this sheer contradiction and
   hostility of effort at the ballot-box! Does enlightened humanity
   prompt it! No; there must be a cheat somewhere in the
   game. The Holy Ghost does not blaspheme the Holy Ghost; nor
   Satan cast out Satan. Either the men are not good, or
   their notions of duty are false. [Emphasis supplied.]

3. Is it
   not a fact that the most scrupulously moral and circumspect
   men in all the rival political parties are uniformly found,
   with very rare exceptions, either among the rank and file of
   their party, or in the inferior offices? Are our wisest and
   best men of each party put forward as leaders? Are not the managers
   — the real wire-pullers — generally selfish, unscrupulous men?
   Whatever may be the exceptions, is not this the general rule?
   We have all seen that it is. How then is it to be accounted
   for, on the supposition that political action is so adapted
   to moral reform and wholesome order in society? The facts contradict
   the theory. The good men in political parties are not the leaders,
   but the led. They do not use political action to a noble end,
   but are themselves the dupes and fools of immoral managers —
   put up or put upon, foremost or rearmost, in the center or on
   the flank, just as they will show and count to the best advantage.
   All they are wanted for is to show and count against the same
   class in the other party. Their use is to give respectability,
   weight of character and moral capital to their party. They are
   the “stool pigeons,” the “decoy ducks,” the take-ins of their
   managers. The way they are used and the game of iniquity played
   off, are the proofs of this. Yet this is what many simple souls
   call having influence.

4. Is it
   not a fact that of the very few high-toned moral men, who happen
   to get into the headquarters of political distinction, not one
   in ten escapes contamination, or utter disgust?

And now what
do all these facts prove? That under the present system of government,
legal and political action is generally anti-Christian. That political
good men are influential chiefly as tools for mischief. And that
non-political good men are the most likely to render legalists
and politicians DECENT in the affairs of government. [From Chapter
VII, Christian
Non-Resistance (1846)]

Ballou saw
that the nature of government, the very nature of the perpetual
contest among people to acquire power over one another, belied the
stated purposes of creating a genuine commonwealth. Such system
was supremely well constituted, however, to be commandeered by the
unscrupulous for selfish purposes, all the while gaining moral legitimacy
from the well-intentioned who navely believed that power could
be used to better society.

Another 19th
century New Englander exposed voting as a self-delusory form of
gaming with moral issues that flatters the voter's self-importance
without achieving anything significant. While Thoreau's Civil
Disobedience is widely known for its exposition of a particular
form of resistance and protest, less attention is typically paid
to one of the great themes of that work, namely, that such form
of protest is necessary because government is founded on majority
rule and established by the vote. Thoreau derides the self-delusion,
passivity and ineffectiveness of those who believe it possible to
reform the government, and to establish what is right, by the vote,
namely, by expressing their opinion.

There are
thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war,
who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming
themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with
their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what
to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom
to the question of free trade, and quietly read the prices-current
along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and,
it may be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price-current
of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret,
and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and
with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy
the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most,
they give up only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed,
to the right, as it goes by them. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine
patrons of virtue to one virtuous man. But it is easier to deal
with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary guardian
of it.

All voting
is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight
moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral
questions; . . . The character of the voters is not staked. I
cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally
concerned that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it
to the majority. . . . Even voting for the right is doing nothing
for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it
should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy
of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When
the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery,
it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because
there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote.
They will then be the only slaves.

The voter acts
under the delusion that he may bring about some result in the world
by the mere expression of his opinion. This is a delusion
that flatters a man's self-importance, and conduces to keep him
in his place while he busies himself with finding, joining and creating
men of like opinion, since that which he wants depends on numbers.
Most talk radio, much punditry, and much group "leadership"
is built on this delusion: the flattery of having one's own opinions
affirmed and repeated with stentorian righteousness, the busyness
of building consensus, that is, uniform blocks of opinion, the self-importance
attached to the assumption that one's mere opinion, one's
voice, counts for something.

For Thoreau,
there is only one test of what a man really esteems and believes:
that which he acts upon. A man who is really concerned with
a matter will not simply express an opinion on the subject, or petition
for what he believes is right. He acts, without waiting first for
the approval of the majority. "If you are cheated out of a
single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing
that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even
with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual
steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never
cheated again. Action from principle, and the perception and the
performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially
revolutionary."

By establishing
a system founded on the marshalling of opinion, people who believe
that the best or most efficacious means of achieving their goals
for the country is by securing victory for their party are shunted
into perpetually busying themselves with building party and consensus,
and to that extent cease doing actual work to achieve their goals.
And this, from the perspective of the elites who benefit from the
status quo, is the great stability and improvement inherent in democracy,
in contrast to other forms of government: by offering the commoners
the prospect of acquiring power, and a power founded on marshaling
those who share similar views, people busy themselves primarily
with the acquisition and maintenance of power and efforts to build
"consensus," thereby effectively preserving and prolonging
the status quo.

It is sometimes
averred that, whatever defects government by majority rule has,
it has the merit of minimizing conflict by providing a means by
which the majority can achieve or pursue its goals, without resorting
to actual violence and bloodshed. This is wrong, however, because
the system is founded on opinion and it costs next to nothing to
have an opinion. The real worth of a thing and strength of a desire
is revealed by what a person actually does, not what opinion
he holds. It is far too easy to believe a thing and never act upon
it. It is far too easy to hold beliefs that are little more than
self-flattering opinions about oneself that one takes credit for
holding.

If the Iraq
War depended upon only those who would actually volunteer to go
there and fight and those who would voluntarily pay to support it,
we would soon find out how many supporters of the war there really
were. A man who acts upon what he believes will soon experience
real life consequences of his behavior; he will learn, adapt or
respond accordingly. A man can hold an opinion that it costs him
little to nothing to hold forever. Far from minimizing conflict,
therefore, a system of majority rule founded on consensus multiples
conflict and makes conflict more likely, for it is too easy for
men to espouse beliefs and principles for which they, personally,
will never experience serious consequence, and for which others
— some small minority — will pay the price.

If Ballou and
Thoreau are right, very little good can ever come from voting or
the political process. What IS effective is to form voluntary associations
of interested parties to achieve goals without the aid of politics
or legislation. While Thoreau is famous for advocating outright
civil disobedience to government when government compels action
against conscience, Ballou (or, for that matter, Martin Luther King
or Gandhi) are better known as advocates of simple PEACEFUL noncooperation.
(A decision to not ride the public busses is not "civil disobedience"
because it breaks no laws, but is a simple refusal to cooperate
with or participate in one's own repression or exploitation.)

If, for example,
we desire to curtail our government's adventures abroad, forget
trying to build a party that can actually say no to unjust wars,
and work to encourage people to not enlist in the military, and
to help them not choose the military out of the necessity of their
personal circumstances. Encourage engineers, scientists, business
people to not work for the companies that produce weapons of war.
This can be recommended both on religious grounds, and on the pragmatic
or simple moral ground that they do not unwittingly make themselves
tools of men who will lie them into unjust and unnecessary wars,
and make themselves parties to murder for illegal, unknown, unstated
reasons.

The goals different
people may seek cannot be prescribed beforehand, because they must
spring from and be maintained by action founded in the actual passion
of the participants. What is critical, is that such action simply
eschew politics, legislation and the courts, i.e., all forms of
compulsion, and be conducted in a peaceful, voluntary, civil manner
that deals with others on the basis of honesty and in good faith,
even while opponents will not. While this form of activism may seem
to promise too little to those who hope for sweeping change promised
by gaining control of the legislative process, pursuit of that chimera
has the potential to sidetrack people for a lifetime. The Republicans
had control of the Congress and the Presidency for the last six
years. Ask the conservatives if they got what they wanted. Consider,
instead, whether Thoreau is right, and whether only "Action
from principle, and the perception and the performance of right,
changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary."
Act accordingly.

November
7, 2006

Jeff
Snyder [send
him mail]
is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of
Nation
of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines
the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. He
occasionally blogs at The
Shining Wire.

He
was arrested for violating the 1998 handgun ban, plead guilty, was
convicted, and served some time in jail. His bishop, the Bishop
of Manchester, had been speaking about gun control at an anti-gun
rally only a few days before Fr. Daggett’s court hearing, and recommended
that Fr. Daggett be defrocked. Apparently the Anglican Church acted
on this recommendation, and Mr. Daggett has returned to his prior
profession of dealing in antiques.

In
an interview with Manchester Online on September 12, 2002
following his release, Mr. Daggett was, in the words of the reporter,
"unrepentant" about his right to self-defense. He is quoted
in the news report arguing the right to self-defense is necessary
to a civilized society, and a civilized society cannot exist if
government infantilizes its citizens by depriving them of the right
to make moral choices.

"I
would claim the gun laws in this country are illegal. Under a 1688
Bill of Rights, which has never been repealed, it says that everyone
has the right to possess a weapon for self-defense. … I am not
an advocate of violence but I am an advocate of civilized society.
It can only exist when people have the option to make adult choices.
It is possible for a gun to be used as a defensive weapon."

Despite
his "unrepentant" stance on his right to bear arms, Mr.
Daggett stated he was sorry for the adverse publicity he brought
to his parish. "I have strong views about the individual’s
right to self protection but I lost sight of the fact that, as a
priest, my responsibility is not just to myself. … The unfortunate
aspect of all this is the embarrassment I have brought to my congregation.
I am deeply sorry for that. If I had been less bullheaded and more
responsible perhaps this could have been avoided." These words
suggest had he thought of the consequences of his imprisonment upon
his parishioners, he may not have kept his handgun, but disposed
of it in order to comply with the ban.

Damned
If You Do

This
story contains important lessons for anyone who opposes unjust,
immoral or unconstitutional laws. Some gun owners in this country
violate laws banning the carry of arms, in order to carry a gun,
or have one in their car, for self-defense. Many who do this believe
self-defense is a God-given or fundamental individual right, and
the laws prohibiting the carry of arms by citizens in good standing
are both immoral and unconstitutional.

By
carrying arms for self-defense in violation of the law, these men
and women are acting in accord with their principles. But in violating
the law, they take the risk Mr. Daggett ran, of being caught, convicted,
sent to jail and losing their livelihood. If one is going to take
this course of action, he should consider very carefully the consequences
to himself and others, and be sure he is willing and able to live
with them. Some who weigh these considerations choose to not violate
the law because of the consequences to themselves and others, despite
their conviction that they have a moral and individual right to
do so.

Two
things stand out in Mr. Daggett’s story. First, he has no remorse,
shame or guilt for violating his country’s law. Indeed, in words
that are reminiscent of Thoreau in "Civil Disobedience,"
Mr. Daggett told the Manchester OnLine reporter, "I enjoyed
my time in prison."

While
the news report characterizes this as unrepentant, and perhaps expects
us to find this shocking, this attitude is actually the predictable
consequence of the nature of modern law.

At
common law, for an act to be criminal it had to be committed, in
the words of Blackstone, with a "vicious will" (where
"vicious" has the older meaning of "having the nature
or quality of vice or immorality" rather than the more common
modern meaning of "brutal"). The requirement of "bad
intent" insured that only acts that sprang from immoral or
blameworthy intent could be defined as crimes, and were punishable.

Modern
law requires only an act be committed with intent, not bad intent,
to be defined as criminal. This permits the state to criminalize
conduct that precedes harmful conduct, in order to prevent that
harmful conduct. As with gun bans, the law is used to restrain men
before they have done anything that would be harmful or wrong, i.e.,
while they are still innocent, in order to prevent an act that would
be wrong or harmful, like murder.

A
man who breaks such a law may feel many things, including embarrassment,
social opprobrium, and self-reproach for breaching the trust of
people who depend upon him, but the one thing he cannot feel is
moral guilt, because bad intent is not an element of the crime.
Thus, the state of mind of a man convicted of such a crime, like
Mr. Daggett, cannot properly be characterized as "unrepentant"
because there is nothing to repent. Morally, he is blameless, having
had no intent to commit harm. Accordingly, he cannot feel that he
has deserved his punishment. His punishment will forever be unmerited
because he knows he is not (morally) guilty.

Threats

If
modern law does not seek assent to, or compliance with, law based
on men’s moral judgment, upon what, then, does it rely to secure
men’s obedience? The threat of punishment – and in a particularly
noteworthy way.

Again,
Mr. Daggett’s experience is instructive. Mr. Daggett clearly did
not fear, or even mind, jail. He was willing to accept jail for
living in accordance with his principles. What he realized, however,
too late, was he could not accept the effect his imprisonment would
have on others – he could not bear the thought of his failure to
fulfill his responsibility to others.

This,
then, is what it comes to: the state uses a man’s sense of responsibility
against him, to divide him. That which a man loves is used against
him, held hostage to obedience to the state’s laws. Consider, a
person may believe his responsibilities include defending his family
from violent crime, and so desire to carry a handgun for protection.
A parent may believe his responsibility to his children includes
the responsibility, not only of protecting them, but also of preserving
his own life so he can continue to love and support them, and so
desire to carry a handgun for protection.

The
state comes along and bans the carry of guns – for the citizenry’s
"protection." Now each must choose in which manner he
will risk failing to live up to his responsibilities: A husband
and father may choose to carry, risking depriving his wife and children
of his love and support if caught and convicted. He may, instead,
choose to not carry, in order to insure he will not fail in his
responsibilities to his loved ones due to imprisonment. But if he
is assaulted, and fails to protect himself or his loved ones because
he chose to not carry, then he has also failed, and must forever
live with the thought he knew what he should have done and failed
to do it.

Either
course a man must hate himself, because either way he fails to act
fully in accordance with what he believes to be right and responsible
– risking either death or grave injury to himself or a loved
one if he fails to carry, risking loss of his ability to provide
love and support if he is imprisoned for being, as Mr. Daggett said,
"bull-headed."

A
Means to Control

What
is critical to understand is the state counts on this to secure
obedience to laws that rest on its (supposedly democratic) fiat,
rather than on assent to moral judgment about right and wrong (as
in the case of laws that criminalize actions only if there is bad
intent). The state uses a man’s sense of responsibility and what
he loves against him, to control him.

Certainly
a state that so uses its "citizens" will not be creating
any goodwill toward itself, or respect for its laws, for it is not
possible to respect such laws, or to love a government that so treats
you. Such laws, instead, lead only to questioning the state’s legitimacy.
For if government, as its modus operandi, sees what is best in us
only as its opportunity and means to control us, then what is the
nature of that government?

October
18, 2004

Jeff
Snyder [send
him mail]
is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of
Nation
of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines
the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. His
website is here. This
article originally appeared in American Handgunner, July/Aug
2003.

True,
the government left certain domains of individual action largely
free, particularly matters concerning speech and sex. These activities
posed no real threat to the state. When not used to entertain and
divert, the power of speech was used principally to clamor for more
or better goods from the state, or for “reforms” to make the state
work “better,” thereby entrenching the people’s dependency. And
insofar as sex was concerned, well, the people’s behavior in this
area also really had no effect on the scope of state power. In fact,
the rulers noted that people’s preoccupation with matters of sexual
morality – whether premarital, teenage pregnancy, adultery,
divorce, homosexuality or general “who’s zooming who” – diverted
the people’s attention from the fact that they were, for economic
and all other intents and purposes, slaves.

Slaves,
though, who labored under the illusion that they were free. The
people were a simple lot, politically speaking, and readily mistook
the ability to give free reign to their appetites as the essence
of “personal freedom.”

In
that fruitful land, the state took about 50 percent of everything
the people earned through numerous forms of taxation, up from about
25 percent only a generation earlier. However, this boastful people,
who believed themselves to be the freest on earth, retained the
right to keep and bear arms. Tens of millions of them possessed
firearms – just in case their government became tyrannical
and enslaved them.

In
that land, an astronomical number of regulations, filling more than
96,000 pages in the government’s “code of regulations,” were promulgated
by persons who were not elected by the people. The regulators often
developed close relationships with the businesses they regulated,
and work in “agencies” that had the power both to make law –
and to enforce it.

The
agencies were not established by the government’s constitution,
and their existence violated that instrument’s principle of separation
of powers. Yet the people retained the right to keep and bear arms.
Just in case their government, some day, ceased to be a “government
of the people.”

In
that land, the constitution contemplated that the people would be
governed by two separate levels of government – “national”
and “local.” Matters that concerned the people most intimately –
health, education, welfare, crime, and the environment – were
to be left almost exclusively to the local level, so that those
who made and enforced the laws lived close to the people who were
subject to the laws, and felt their effects.

So
that different people who had different ideas about such things
would not be subject to a “one size fits all” standard that would
apply if the national government dealt with such matters. Competition
among different localities for people, who could move freely from
one place to another, would act as a reality check on the passage
of unnecessary or unwise laws.

But
in a time of great crisis called the Great Economic Downturn, the
people and their leaders clamored for “national solutions to national
problems,” and the constitution was “interpreted” by the Majestic
Court to permit the national government to pass laws regulating
practically everything that had been reserved for the localities.

Now
the people had the pleasure of being governed by not one, but two
beneficent governments with two sets of laws regulating the same
things. Now the people could be prosecuted by not one, but two governments
for the same activities and conduct. Still this fiercely independent
people retained the right to keep and bear arms. Just in case their
government, some day, no longer secured the blessings of liberty
to themselves or their posterity.

In
that fair land, property owners could be held liable under the nation’s
environmental legislation for the cleanup costs associated with
toxic chemicals, even if the owners had not caused the problem.
Another set of laws provided for asset forfeiture and permitted
government agencies to confiscate property without first establishing
guilt.

Yet
the people retained the right to keep and bear arms. Just in case
their government denied them due process by holding them liable
for things that were not their fault. (The Majestic Court had long
ago determined that “due process” did not prevent government from
imposing liability on people who were not at fault. “Due process,"
it turned out, meant little more than that a law had been passed
in accordance with established procedures. You know, it was actually
voted on, passed by a majority and signed by the president. If it
met those standards, it didn’t much matter what the law actually
did.)

Oh
well, the people had little real cause to worry. After all, those
laws hardly ever affected anyone that they knew. Certainly not the
people who mattered most of all: the country’s favorite celebrities
and sports teams, who so occupied the people’s attention. And how
bad could it be if it had not yet been the subject of a Movie of
the Week, telling them what to think and how to feel about it?

In
that wide-open land, the police often established roadblocks to
check that the people’s papers were in order. The police –
armed agents of the rulers – used these occasions to ask the
occupants whether they were carrying weapons or drugs. Sometimes
the police would ask to search the vehicles, and the occupants –
not knowing whether they could say no and wanting to prove that
they were good guys by cooperating – would permit it.

The
Majestic Court had pronounced these roadblocks and searches lawful
on the novel theory, unknown to the country’s Founding Forebears,
that so long as the police were doing this to everyone equally,
it didn’t violate anyone’s rights in particular.

The
roadblocks sometimes caused annoying delays, but these lovers of
the open road took it in stride. After all, they retained their
right to keep and bear arms. Just in case their government, some
day, engaged in unreasonable searches and seizures. In that bustling
land, the choice of how to develop property was heavily regulated
by local governments that often demanded fees or concessions for
the privilege. That is, when the development was not prohibited
outright by national “moistland” regulations that had no foundation
in statutory or constitutional law.

Even
home owners often required permission to simply build an addition
to their homes, or to erect a tool shed on their so-called private
property. And so it seemed that “private property” became, not a
system protecting individual liberty, but a system which, while
providing the illusion of ownership, actually just allocated and
assigned government-mandated burdens and responsibilities.

Still,
this mightily productive people believed themselves to live in the
most capitalistic society on earth, a society dedicated to the protection
of private property. And so they retained the right to keep and
bear arms. Just in case their government ever sought to deprive
them of their property without just compensation.

Besides,
the people had little cause for alarm. Far from worrying about government
control of their property, the more immediate problem was: what
to buy next?

The
people were a simple lot, politically speaking, and readily mistook
the ability to acquire an endless assortment of consumer goods as
the essence of personal freedom.

The
enlightened rulers of this great land did not seek to deprive the
people of their right to bear arms. Unlike tyrants of the past,
they had learned that it was not necessary to disarm the masses.
The people proved time and time again that they were willing accomplices
to the ever-expanding authority of the government, enslaved by their
own desire for safety, security and welfare.

The
people could have their guns. What did the rulers care? They already
possessed the complete obedience that they required.

In
fact, in their more Machiavellian moments, the rulers could be heard
to admit that permitting the people the right to keep and bear arms
was a marvelous tool of social control, for it provided the people
with the illusion of freedom.

The
people, among the most highly regulated on earth, told themselves
that they were free because they retained the means of revolt. Just
in case things ever got really bad. No one, however, seemed to have
too clear an idea what “really bad” really meant. The people accepted
the fact that their government no longer even remotely resembled
the plan set forth in their original constitution. And the people’s
values no longer remotely resembled those of their Founding Forebears.
The people, in their navet, really believed that the means of
revolt were to be found in a piece of inanimate metal! Really it
was laughable. And pathetic.

No,
the rulers knew that the people could safely be trusted with arms.
The government educated their children, provided for their retirement
in old age, bequeathed assistance if they lost their jobs, mandated
that they receive health care, and even doled out food and shelter
if they were poor.

The
government was the very air the people breathed from childhood to
the grave. Few could imagine, let alone desire, any other kind of
world.

To
the extent that the people paid any attention to their system of
government, the great mass spent their days simply clamoring for
more or better “programs," more “rational” regulations, in short,
more of the same. The only thing that really upset them was waste,
fraud, or abuse of the existing programs. Such shenanigans brought
forth vehement protests demanding that the government provide their
services more efficiently, dammit!

The
nation’s stirring national anthem, adopted long ago by men who fought
for their liberty, ended by posing a question, in hopes of keeping
the spirit of liberty alive. Did the flag still fly, it asked, over
the land of the free? Unfortunately, few considered that the answer
to that question might really be no, for they had long since lost
an understanding of what freedom really is.

No,
in this land “freedom” had become something dark, frightening, and
dangerous. The people lived in mortal terror that somewhere, sometime,
some individual might make a decision or embark upon a course of
action that was not first approved by some government official.

Security
was far more preferable. How could anyone be truly free if he were
not first safe and protected?

Now
we must say goodbye to this fair country whose government toiled
tirelessly to create the safety, fairness and luxury that all demanded,
and that everyone knew could be created by passing just the right
laws. Through it all, the people vigorously safeguarded their tradition
of firearms ownership.

But
they never knew – and never learned – that preserving
a tradition and a way of life is not the same as preserving liberty.
And they never knew – and never learned – that it’s not
about guns.

October
18, 2004

Jeff
Snyder [send
him mail]
is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of
Nation
of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines
the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. His
website is here. This
article originally appeared in American Handgunner, Sep/Oct
1997.

The
implicit claim that transforming Mideast nations into democracies
will eliminate, or at least vastly reduce, their willingness to
harbor terrorists or sponsor terrorism has, to my knowledge, not
yet been seriously questioned. Certainly based on popular war rhetoric,
there is reason to disbelieve it. If, indeed, "they hate us,"
why wouldn't their countries, once reconstituted as representative
democracies, continue polices that expressed the consensus of hatred
harbored by their peoples? True, the newly constituted democracies
could not act openly in supporting terrorists or exporting terrorism,
any more than any dictatorship or oligarchy that wished to survive
would. But are democracies incapable of covert action? How would
transformation into representative democracies eliminate grievances
the people of those countries have against the United States, or
at least eliminate covert sponsorship of terror as a means of dealing
with those grievances?

Perhaps
the claim ought not to be investigated on the basis of its literal
meaning at all, considering the possibility that it's real value
lies in the manner in which it is likely to be heard, namely, as
a statement that we must make them be more like us. Nevertheless,
while the principal justification for the war in Iraq these days
seems to be that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein,1
in his speech at the Republican National Convention President Bush
again claimed the necessity and saving grace of transforming Mideast
countries into democracies:

"Because
we acted to defend our country, the murderous regimes of Saddam
Hussein and the Taliban are history, more than 50 million people
have been liberated, and democracy is coming to the broader Middle
East. . . . Free societies in the Middle East will be hopeful
societies, which no longer feed resentments and breed violence
for export. Free governments in the Middle East will fight terrorists
instead of harboring them. So our mission in Afghanistan and Iraq
is clear: We will help new leaders to train their armies, and
move toward elections, and get on the path of stability and democracy
as quickly as possible."

If
transforming Mideast countries into democracies is to be considered
part of the War on Terror, the claim that democracy is an antidote
to terrorism should be analyzed and addressed. While we wait for
the day that our media, newly rededicated to unearthing the truth
following acknowledgements of their failure to challenge the administration’s
claims about WMD, finally press the Bush administration for an explanation
of how and why democracy extinguishes terrorism, we can consult
what others who have given some thought to the matter have said.
This is not the first time in history that terrorism loomed large
as a major threat to the nation state. The 19th century
anarchists, many of whom had links to international labor movements
and communism (transcendent ideologies rather than states), were
considered grave threats by the European monarchies and democracies
of the day, and occasioned considerable fear, especially in the
halls of government and the cities that were their favorite targets.

In
1894, in an essay titled, "The
Ethics of Dynamite," the English political theorist and
"voluntaryist," Auberon Herbert, traced the moral and
material genesis of the dynamiter to the existence of popular, democratic
government itself, and its foundation on majority rule. If Herbert's
analysis is correct, terrorism cannot be eliminated or controlled
by converting monarchies, aristocracies, oligarchies and dictatorships
into democracies. Herbert proposed a quite different approach to
the problem, warning that if we did not learn the lesson of the
real origin of the dynamiter but responded by meeting force with
force, we would all face "a bitter and evil time of which no
man could read the end."

Terrorism
is not opposed to government

Herbert
began by arguing against two viewpoints common then as now: first,
that the dynamiter is opposed to government; and second, that this
phenomenon has little or nothing to do with the actions of government
itself, but springs instead from some other soil (then, labor movements
or communism, now militant Islam). Far from being opposed to government,
Herbert argued, dynamite, i.e., the use of murder and terror to
achieve political goals, was in fact simply a new development in
the art of government:

"Now,
many worthy people are apt to look on dynamite as the archenemy
of government, but . . . remembering that undeniably the great
purpose of government is the compulsion of A by B and C to do
what he does not want to do, it is plain that such a view fails
to distinguish essence from accident, and to appreciate the most
characteristic qualities that inhere in this new political agent.
Dynamite is not opposed to government; it is, on the contrary,
government in its most intensified and concentrated form. . .
. It is government in a nutshell, government stripped, as some
of us aver, of all its dearly beloved fictions, ballot boxes,
political parties, House of Commons oratory and all the rest of
it. How, indeed, is it possible to govern more effectively, or
in more abbreviated form, than to say: "Do this – or
don't do this – unless you desire that pound of dynamite
should be placed tomorrow evening on your ground floor study."
It is the perfection, the ne plus ultra, of government."

Next,
he argued that the dynamiter was in fact an entirely predictable
consequence of the actions of modern governments, of treating the
lives and property of individuals as "administration material."
The dynamiter was governments' "very own child, both the product
of and reaction against the methods of u2018governing' men and women,
which they have employed with so unsparing a hand."

"How
could you build up these lawless, irresponsible, all-grasping
governments, and not expect to see some dark shadows, some grotesque
imitations, some terrible caricatures, begotten of them? How could
you deify force in one form before the eyes of all men, and not
expect sooner or later to see other deifications set up at its
side? . . . In truth, the new deity is not in the least unaccountable.
He is only too easy to account for. Both his moral and his physical
genesis lie at the door of the European governments. To almost
all of them, we may in turn say: u2018Tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin'2
In their different degrees they are, nearly all of them, alike;
for long years they have plowed and sown and harrowed the soil;
and lo! the crop is here. If any government thought that it could
indefinitely go on turning men and women into administration material,
fastening its grip closer and closer on their property, their
lives, and their beliefs, until the chief purpose of human existence
became – half-unconsciously, perhaps – in the eyes of
these governmentalists, to supply a state revenue out of blood
and sweat, while, fed and nourished by this state revenue, the
grandeur of the governments was ever growing and growing, with
officials magnified into creatures of a semidivine order, and
a splendid and highly exciting game carried on by means of all
this annexed property, and all these annexed lives, against other
governments, equally engaged in playing the same splendid and
exciting game – if they thought that this life of the gods
ruling at their ease in the empyrean would flow on forever in
a happy and unbroken stream, that nations, made of living men
and women, might be turned wholesale into low forms of government
property, without some strange phenomena, without some startling
products and reactions breaking through the calm of the surface,
we can only say of them, that, true as ever to the bureaucratic
tradition, they were not in contact with the realities of flesh
and blood – that they were, in an old phrase of Mr. Gladstone,
u2018living up in a balloon.' Two things were sure to arise, and they
have arisen. In the moral world some men would begin to look at
these gigantic structures of power, to ask questions about them,
to finger them, and to probe deep to see on what moral foundations
they rested; while in the world of daily life some men, less patient
than their fellows, would be maddened by the close, painful grinding
of the wheels of the great machines left wholly to the control
of officials, and would become the right stuff for the wildest
counsels to work in."

To
these two worlds, the "moral world" and the "world
of daily life," Herbert then turns to examine the moral and
physical genesis of the dynamiter.

The
moral genesis of the dynamiter

Herbert
argues that "one of the devil's seeds" was sown by the
observations and critical inquiries made by various philosophers
and other "potentialities," stretching from Herbert Spencer
back to Milton, into the underpinnings of popular government. "A
time came when the well-known phrases, u2018the power of the people,'
u2018the will of the people,' u2018the will of the majority,' which had
so often been spoken orc rotundo, with a real sort of thunder
of their own, when directed against things still more unreal than
themselves, began to ring a little hollow, and to provoke critical
inquiry into what was the true substance underlying these mighty
oratorical expressions." As summarized by Herbert, the upshot
of these examinations was that the claimed right of a majority to
govern does not rest on any moral foundation, but on power:

"And
what sort of philosophical doctrine is this – that numbers
confer unlimited rights, that they take from some persons all
rights over themselves, and vest these rights in others? . . .
Here are two men. If there are such things as rights, these two
men must evidently start with equal rights. How shall you, then,
by multiplying one of the two, even a thousand times over, give
him larger rights that the other, since each new unit that appears
only brings with him his own rights; or how, by multiplying one
of the units up to the point of exhausting the powers of the said
multiplication table, shall you take from the other the rights
with which he started? . . . Is it possible to suppose, without
absurdity, that a man should have no rights over his own body
and mind, and yet have a 1/10000000th share in unlimited
rights over all other bodies and minds? If he does not begin by
possessing rights over himself, by what wonderful flying leap
can he arrive at rights over others? yet, if he once possess these
rights over himself, how can he ever be deprived of them, and
become the statutable property of others? and again, where can
a crowd of individuals get rights from, unless it be from the
individuals themselves, who make up the crowd? and yet, if the
individuals possess these rights over themselves, as individuals,
what place is left for rights belonging to the crowd, as a crowd?
You may appoint a committee, a government, or whatever you like
to call it, and delegate to it powers already possessed by the
individuals, but by no possibility can this delegated body be
seized with larger powers than those possessed by the individuals
who called it into existence; by no possibility can the creature
possess greater authority than those who created it. It is easy
to understand that an individual can delegate full powers –
powers of life and death – over himself; but how can he delegate
powers, which he himself does not possess, over another individual?
You may give your own rights away, but you cannot possibly give
away, however generous your mood, the rights of your fellow-man.
If, however, you persist in attributing such powers to the delegated
body, please say exactly whence – from what human or superhuman
source – it has drawn them, since it is plain that it has
not drawn them from the individuals. Nor is it possible to escape
from the difficulty by denying human rights, and declaring that
rights are only imaginary things, for, in that case, government
itself has no rights. By such sweeping and reckless denial of
rights you make of government the very outlaw of outlaws. All
that it has done or is doing would then be absolutely void of
moral foundations. All its regulations, its takings its compulsions,
would then simply rest upon what is convenient in the opinions
of some persons, and what could be enforced by their superior
strength; and, therefore, of course, it would be liable, as the
mere product of convenience, to be removed in any way, or by any
weapon, that is convenient and superior to itself in strength."

Popular
government rests simply on power, upon "what is convenient
in the opinions of some persons, and what could be enforced by their
superior strength," not on right. The fact that a group constitutes
a majority confers no right upon it to govern, or as Herbert puts
it time and again, three men have no greater right to rule two men
than two men have to rule three. This realization, however, that
there is no real moral foundation to it, that government is simply
the stronger party enforcing its will, will be taken by some as
a license for all out war, who will vie in the contest of strength
using any means at their disposal:

"But
the moment that this truth – that no moral foundations for
unlimited and undefined power could by any intellectual ingenuity
be discovered anywhere – that if the world rested upon the
elephant, and the elephant upon the tortoise, still the tortoise
rested only in space – the moment that this truth was grasped
in all its significance by the quick perceptions of the nineteenth
century, the moment that all rhetorical sophistries were swept
aside, and it was seen that, morally speaking, three men had no
better right to govern two men than two men to govern three, then
at once it became open to any revolutionary section of the minority,
who considered that war was to be met by war, and were not impeded
by any moral scruples as regards the use of means, to equalize
or reverse the conditions of power by finding some new agent which
had "governing force" in it. This new agent was supplied
by dynamite, and from that day it has become war – war between
those who govern openly by majorities and those who govern secretly
by dynamite."

An
interlude wherein I quibble with something Herbert has said

Herbert's
critique is framed in terms of a query whether any moral basis exists
to support a claim that the "will of the people" or "the
will of the majority" commands or possesses "unlimited
rights" or "unlimited and undefined power" over others.
This leaves open, at least theoretically, the possibility that such
form of government might act legitimately as long as confined within
a circumscribed, defined sphere of human action that respected individual
rights, such as a right of free speech or a right to freely exercise
one's religion. Why Herbert framed his inquiry this way is unclear.
While this suggestion of a loophole might flatter his English and
American readers, Herbert's questions and line of reasoning apply
with equal force to a claim of right to govern any activity of others;
his questions and analysis lose no force when the words "unlimited"
or "undefined" are deleted. Herbert's critique belies
a claim of right to rule others even within some defined, limited
sphere of action.

The
same may be said of the Bill of Rights. On what basis are the rights
listed there beyond majority control while other activities are
not? What theory of right supports the conclusion that those specific
activities are untouchable, while others are subject to control
by the majority? It would appear difficult, if not impossible, to
develop a theory explaining why the specific activities identified
there were in some uniquely specifiable way sacrosanct or special
forms of human behavior, particularly deserving of respect, while
all others were freely subject to majority control. In fact, it
is far easier to proceed in the opposite direction. In the chapter,
"The
Right to Ignore the State," in Social Statics (1851),
Herbert Spencer demonstrates that the same arguments that have been
employed to justify the right of individuals to freely exercise
their religion imply a right to disregard the state in all other
activities, as long as the individual does not infringe on the equal
liberty of another, and that the distinction between religious liberty
and civil liberty is arbitrary, all action being a matter of conscience.

The
rights listed in the Bill of Rights are there because they reflect
historic clashes of people with the government, cases where the
people (or more accurately, some notable segment of them) simply
would no longer tolerate the government's attempts to control or
regulate them. The right to trial by jury and other essential features
of due process established by Magna Carta were forced
upon the King essentially at sword point. Freedom of speech
was established due in large part to juries that time and again
refused to enforce libel and other actions against the press. The
enumerated "rights" are cases where government has made
a virtue of necessity, withdrawing from the field only to continuously
press against the boundaries and commence the long, slow process
of winning back the power that was lost. They are clearly not the
product of some general moral theory that divides human conduct
into that which others have a right to control and punish, and that
which others have a duty to leave alone, and so are not based upon
a theory of limited government so much as historic practice and
accommodation. It would therefore be a mistake to conclude that,
if Herbert intended to leave a loophole for a defined area of human
conduct that was legitimately subject to control by majority vote,
the U.S. Constitution or the English Parliament and Bill of Rights
is that system.

The
material genesis of the dynamiter

Herbert
finds the material genesis of the dynamiter in "the working
of the great official machines" – their arrogance, cruelty,
pedantry, their incapacity, their oppressive and vexatious rules
and their "maddening influence," by which he means, literally,
their capacity to drive people mad.

"Almost
every European government is a legalized manufactory of dynamiters.
Vexation piled upon vexation, restriction upon restriction, burden
upon burden, the dynamiter is slowly hammered out everywhere on
the official anvil. The more patient submit, but the stronger
and more rebellious characters are maddened, and any weapon is
considered right, as the weapon of the weaker against the stronger.
"

Herbert
draws most of his examples from France, but notes that a similar
"black list" might be drawn up against Germany, Austria,
Italy, Spain, Russia or Turkey. He cites examples of mismanagement
and the backwardness of state hospitals in Europe. He argues that
few things evidence the "official cynicism and arrogance with
which the law is administered in the Paris law courts" than
the fact that there is hardly a civil lawsuit there which does not
last at least a year. Matters are worse, though, in the police courts,
where it is not unheard of to dispose of up to 200 hundred criminal
cases at a single sitting summarily without listening to any defense
– a rate of about one case every minute. "This lightening
like or electric dispatch of business is secured by putting the
delinquents into batches, according to the nature of their offense."

This
kind of official arrogance and cruelty is not limited to criminal
matters but, Herbert states, can be found in almost everything government
touches:

"Take
the ludicrous prohibition about sea water. An unfortunate seaside
resident may not go and dip his bucket into great Father Ocean
and carry off water for his bath, as such liberty might interfere
with the revenue derived from salt. I would commend this fact
to any innocent-minded land nationalizer as a trifling but significant
example of the spirit in which governments deal with so-called
national property. So, too, if I am rightly informed, no ordinary
person is allowed to fish in the sea within the three-mile limit
– that ordinary right of the citizen being turned into a
bit of state property and reserved for special classes of persons."

Even
in his beloved England, where the people have not yet been wholly
"officialized" and turned into "government material,"
he has seen

"a
clever and industrious workman driven to the edge of revolt by
the persecuting character of our education laws, and changed from
a man ready to fight within the law to one who was almost ready
to fight outside it. There are men, not bad parents, who have
passed from town to town to avoid this persecution. These are
families who have broken up their homes and lived as they could,
in their detestation of it.3 It
is time that we laid aside this odious weapon of compulsion. More
and more bitter will be the fruit of it as the years go on. Compulsion
everywhere is a brutalizing weapon."

What
is to be done?

Herbert's
claim was that the domestic or internal policies and practices of
European states were creating homegrown terrorists. If anything,
his analysis has greater force in the arena of international
politics. Not subject to any overarching world government, the nations
of the world are in the proverbial Hobbesian "state of nature"
with regard to one another, that is, they are in a state of perpetual
war. When one nation, such as the United States, acts against the
people of another state or some segment of them, the action patently
is not taken by those who are their elected representatives or their
own government. There is no semblance or pretense of legitimacy
or right; it is power pure and simple, and it invites a response
in kind.

Herbert's
key insight is that, because government rests on power, all claims
to govern are simply contests of strength. Since government rests
not on right but on power, government by its very nature invites
contests of strength.4 Even the phrases,
"will of the majority," or "majority rule" indicate
that the essence of the thing is simply a contest of wills, a battle
over who will have their way in the empire of desire. Such formulation
of "government" positively invites the challenge posed
by terrorists: "Very well, then, let's test your will and
see how strong it is. Let us see who's will is stronger."
Contra Hobbes, therefore, government is not, and does not
provide, peace, but is simply the continuation of the war of all
against all by other means.

We
then have a choice. We can vie within existing government in accordance
with the accepted rules to acquire and hold the reins of power to
impose our will, winning and benefiting as we can, or losing and
suffering as we must; seeing that there is no right to govern and
it is but war, we can fight by any means necessary to overturn it
and substitute our own government and will, which will be neither
more nor less "legitimate" than the government we replace
(but will provide us with the ability to impose our will instead
of being imposed upon); we can reject the use of force as a means
of dealing with one another.

To
the query, what is more appropriate, that the majority rule the
minority, or the minority rule the majority, Herbert answers: neither.
"Self-ruling, not each-other-ruling [is] the goal in front
of the world." He concludes his essay with an impassioned plea
for men to turn away from the use of "the odious force weapons
with which we have warred against each other."

"If
we cannot by reason, by influence, by example, by strenuous effort,
and by personal sacrifice, mend the bad places of civilization,
we certainly cannot do it by force. Force is the very weakest
and most treacherous of all human implements. The history of force
is the history of the continuous crumbling away of every institution
that has rested upon it. The irony of history has never faltered
for a single generation. It is no mere paradox to say that to
be strong with the world’s strength is to be weak. Whatever on
the one day looked to the eyes of men as if it could defy all
attack, towering above subject things in its magnificence, and
resting on what seemed its immovable and almost eternal foundations
of force, on the morrow has gone to pieces as if it had been wholly
built of rubble and clay. . . . The only thing that lasts through
it all, that endures while the other perishes, is moral force
– the word, the conviction, which attempts to bind no hands
but acts only on the soul. As Emerson said – I don’t remember
his exact phrase – there is only one victory worth winning,
the victory of principle, the victory over souls. To that belief
we have to return, if we have ever held it; or to ascend to it,
if it has never yet been counted amongst our intellectual possessions;
and blessed, thrice blessed, will be the dynamiter, with all his
cruelty and with all his insanity, if in his distorted features
we learn to see as in a mirror a reflection of our own selves,
and thus are compelled to recognize the true character of the
odious force weapons with which we have warred against each other.
If we cannot learn, if the only effect upon us of the presence
of the dynamiter in our midst is to make us multiply punishments,
invent restrictions, increase the number of our official spies,
forbid public meetings, interfere with the press, put up gratings
– as in one country they propose to do – in our House
of Commons, scrutinize visitors under official microscopes, request
them, as at Vienna, and I think now at Paris also, to be good
enough to leave their greatcoats in the vestibules – if we
are, in a word, to trust to machinery, to harden our hearts, and
simply to meet force with force, always irritating, always clumsy,
and in the end fruitless, then I venture to prophesy that there
lies before us a bitter and an evil time. We may be quite sure
that force users will be force begetters. The passions of men
will rise higher and higher; and the authorized and unauthorized
governments – the government of the majority and of written
laws, the government of the minority and of dynamite – will
enter upon their desperate struggle, of which no living man can
read the end. In one way and only one way can the dynamiter be
permanently disarmed – by abandoning in almost all directions
our force machinery, and accustoming the people to believe in
the blessed weapons of reason, persuasion, and voluntary service.
We have morally made the dynamiter; we must now morally unmake
him."

Notes

1. A nonprovable
   and nonrefutable claim, since to prove or refute it would require
   one to know what otherwise would have been, and require us to
   be able to trace the consequences both of Saddam’s removal and
   his continued residency in power over some nonarbitrary length
   of time, at the end of which the results could be tallied and
   the issue settled, a task clearly beyond the limits of human knowledge
   and understanding. The assertion is, therefore, an article of
   pure faith, which means that, politically speaking, it is perfect
   as a justification for the war.
2. Literally,
   “You wanted it,” but more colloquially translated, “You asked
   for it,” or “You brought this on yourself.” The quote is a reference
   to Moliere’s comedy, Georges
   Dandin, Ou Le Mari Confondu (1669).
3. Compulsory
   national education was introduced in England in the mid-1800′s.
   Not all English parents were enthused about the forced separation
   from their children and the usurpation of their right to educate
   as they saw fit. Herbert opposed it. In State
   Education: A Help or Hindrance? (1850), he made a scathing
   critique describing the debilitating effects of government “benefits”
   and the resulting learned helplessness, brilliantly encapsulating
   why government programs, ever proclaimed with promises of an upward
   moral ascent, always result in a downward moral spiral. Herbert’s
   works are available electronically here.
4. What is
   an election but a form of ritual combat? The sports-team style
   media coverage – what are the numbers, who is winning, who
   is losing, who scored a telling blow, who is on offense, who is
   on defense – far from being a failure of meaningful reporting,
   actually reflect the real nature of the event.

September
16, 2004

Jeff
Snyder [send
him mail]
is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of
Nation
of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines
the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. His
website is here.

The
most recent case in point concerns the discovery by certain members
of Congress, including the Senate minority whip, that the Patriot
Act provides investigative tools that go well beyond protection
against terrorism. As reported in the November 5th Las
Vegas Review-Journal, the Patriot Act has apparently been employed
for the first time in a public corruption probe, specifically, to
investigate whether Nevada strip club owner Michael Galardi has
been bribing local politicians. The FBI confirmed that it used Section
314 of the act to subpoena financial records of Galardi and several
present and former Las Vegas city councilmen and county commissioners
to determine if Galardi was making, and the politicians accepting,
illicit payments. Section 314 authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury
to promulgate regulations "with the specific purpose of encouraging
regulatory authorities and law enforcement authorities to share
with financial institutions information regarding individuals, entities,
and organizations engaged in or reasonably suspected based on credible
evidence of engaging in terrorist acts or money laundering activities."

(The
Las Vegas Review-Journal news article does not raise or pursue
the interesting question of how the FBI convinced a judge that its
investigation into whether Galardi's alleged payments of local politicians
using proceeds earned in his topless clubs (presumably a lawful
business in Nevada) constituted "money laundering activities."
Since "bribery of politicians" and "money laundering"
are not, in the normal understanding of those words, remotely similar
activities, one suspects either that the legal definition of "money
laundering" encompasses far more financial activities than
actual laundering or there is some other interesting story here.)

Both
of Nevada's Democratic representatives, Senator and minority whip
Harry Reid and Representative Shelley Berkley, criticized the FBI
for using the Patriot Act in a white-collar criminal probe. Sen.
Reid stated that "the law was intended for activities related
to terrorism and not to naked women," while Rep. Berkley assured
us that "it was never my intention that the Patriot Act be
used for garden-variety crimes and investigations." According
to the news article, Rep. Berkley further indicated that she was
preparing an inquiry to the FBI about its guidelines for using the
act in cases that do not involve terrorism, and stated that the
law makes it easy for citizens' rights to be abused.

What
on earth are we to make of such statements? Both Reid and Berkley
voted for the Patriot Act. Do our "lawmakers" believe
that when they vote for a law, they are only voting their subjective
intentions, regardless of what the words of the act, which they
don't read or understand, say? Do they believe that their unspoken
(and clearly, unwritten) thoughts somehow limit the clear language
of the statute? How do they have the face to act astonished when
they discover that the law is used in the manner that it actually
provides for? How, exactly, are they wronged when the words of the
law they voted for, which they did not bother to read or to reflect
on, exceed their "intentions"? What do they expect when
they abandon the responsibility to write the law by authorizing
the agency responsible for enforcing the law to write it, as they
did with Section 314? Are we supposed to take their protestations
after the fact as evidence that they are looking out for us and
care about our civil liberties, when they could not be bothered
to make the effort in the first place and the current state of affairs
is entirely of their own making?

Let's
say you were a legislator convinced, in the wake of September 11,
that it was necessary to provide the federal government with broad,
powerful new search and seizure powers to prevent terrorism. However,
you were also worried that such extraordinary measures might violate,
in some respects, the 4th amendment, or at the very least
would constitute a drastic expansion of the federal government's
ability to pry into the lives of Americans that could (as Rep. Berkley
is reported to have said) make it easy for citizens' rights to be
abused. How might you reconcile these conflicting desires? Simply
give the federal government carte blanche, and rely on prosecutorial
discretion and non-binding, changeable-at-will internal "guidelines"
promulgated by those charged with enforcing the law to avoid abuse
— i.e., provide no protection at all? Or might you, instead, make
sure the bill contained something along these lines: "Notwithstanding
any other provision of this Act, evidence obtained using, or resulting
from the use of, subpoena powers, reporting procedures or other
means created or authorized by this Act may be employed solely to
prosecute terrorism, aid to terrorism, or conspiracy to commit terrorism
or aid to terrorism, and shall be excluded from use in the prosecution
of any other crime and in any civil or administrative proceeding."
Yes, something like that might prevent the use of Section 314 in
a bribery case, at least if we also paid attention to the act's
definition of "terrorism," to be sure that it did not
encompass all possible human behavior.

Of
course, the Patriot Act contains no such provision, so perhaps we
may be forgiven for questioning how much concern our legislators
had for the potential abuse of the new search and seizure powers
created by the act or for our privacy and rights. However, good
news! There is a possibility that Congress will actually scrutinize
what it passed, if enough people are harmed by the law that Congress
starts to hear about it. The Patriot Act expires in 2005 unless
it is renewed, and Senator Reid, speaking about the act's use in
the Galardi criminal probe, stated that "[M]ore activity like
this is going to cause us to take a close look at what was passed."
So some lawmakers in Congress might eventually read the law, maybe
as early as 2005. If enough lives are first turned upside down or
ruined, if the act's excesses are made manifest and word filters
back from the provinces, Congress will finally look at what it did.

Such
complacence regarding the content of laws would constitute a shocking
breach of trust if we supposed that members of Congress had a duty
to perform the role the Constitution assigned to them, or if we
judged such behavior in light of the theory by which legislation
in a democratic society is legitimated: the process by which
laws are passed supposedly assures us that there is some connection,
some degree of correspondence through "representation,"
between what the laws say and what "the people" actually
think meet — or at least want. If that process becomes a sham, then
it becomes problematic to assert that the laws represent the "will
of the people" or even the "will of the majority."
Laws cease to be "self-government" and become, instead,
fiat imposed upon subjects. However, while the Constitution and
Rousseau's theory of the "general will" may be good material
for the nation's high school civics books, it is doubtful that many
believe this claptrap any more. And so it is unseemly and quaint
to dwell overmuch on how laws are made in this country, lest we
begin questioning whether such laws can ever have any legitimate
claim upon us or be viewed as anything but the exercise of arbitrary,
unaccountable power.

So
indeed it is not my intention, by drawing attention to the recent
remarks of the Democratic representatives of the State of Nevada,
to shame our legislators for their inattention and unconcern, to
cry out that we need more conscientious legislators, or to argue
that we need campaign finance reform so that our representatives
can devote more time to lawmaking and less to fund-raising. Why,
when it is conceivable that even if they did perform the role assigned
to them by the Constitution, the resulting law might have been even
worse?

No,
since legislation is often voted on by men and women who do not
overly trouble themselves to know what the bills they vote on say,
relying perhaps on executive summaries of their contents or, in
a real pinch, the bill's title, and dealing only with the portions
of the bills that lobbyists complain about, since innumerable regulations
are written and passed not by Congress but by unelected bureaucrats
in federal agencies unaccountable to voters, and since our elected
representatives know better than anyone else what it takes to secure
re-election and maintain their position, it seems safe to assume
that our legislators' ignorance of the laws they pass is rational.
It simply is not an important part of the business of being an elected
representative to write or carefully review and deliberate upon
bills, and then exercise close supervision over their subsequent
administration. Doubtless it is far more efficient to let staffers
or the administration write the laws, and simply focus when and
if it becomes apparent that campaign contributions or the votes
of some meaningful number of constituents are at stake. Since the
overwhelming majority of voters are even more ignorant — and even
less desirous to know — the contents of legislation than the members
of Congress, the most important feature of legislation is its symbolic
value — that the act have a good title that clearly announces that
Congress is "doing something" to solve a problem the polls
tell them the voters care about.

My
intention, instead, is to draw attention to the two systemic conditions
that make this conduct possible, rational, and inevitable. First,
legislators are not responsible for the laws that they pass or for
the consequences of those laws. As Lysander Spooner pointed out
in No
Treason — The Constitution of No Authority, the Constitution
itself grants this immunity to federal lawmakers. Article I, Section
6 provides that the members of Congress "shall in all cases,
except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from
arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective
Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any
speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in
any other place." Thus, legislators cannot be held accountable
for any law they pass or for the consequences of their laws. The
sole remedy of the electorate is to vote them out of office.

It
is difficult, if not impossible, to think of any other situation
in which a man is given so extensive a power over the lives, liberty
and fortunes of others where, no matter how great the harm he commits,
the worst and only thing that can happen to him is that he loses
his job.1 Ask whether you
would trust, or willingly use the services of a doctor, attorney,
pharmacist, car manufacturer, or those who make, process and sell
you the foods that you eat if they were exempt from liability for
any harm they committed. Ask whether you would tolerate corporations
that want to sell you their stock telling you, in their annual reports
and prospectuses, the kind of lies and distortions that politicians
routinely utter about government laws and programs — for example,
describing Social Security as a retirement insurance or pension
program, when "ponzi scheme" comes far closer to the truth.
Under securities laws, corporations are not only forbidden to lie
about their financial condition and activities, but are also required
to not omit to tell you anything if omitting the information would
render that which they do tell you misleading. No such anti-fraud
or full disclosure laws apply to political speech.

But
this is not all. A second condition, also noted by Spooner, founds
the entire enterprise of government, top to bottom, on irresponsibility
and unaccountability. Not only are legislators not responsible for
the consequences of the laws they pass, but the voters are also
not responsible for them, because they are not responsible for the
actions of their representatives. The secret ballot insures that
no voter can ever be held accountable for voting for any particular
representative.

Spooner
made these points to demonstrate that representatives were in no
sense "agents" of the people, that the notion of "representative
government" was sheer myth and nonsense. In the real world,
a principal is responsible for the actions of his agent. If the
agent injures another in the performance of his duties for the principal,
the principal is liable. It is this principle that, for example,
allows a person injured by negligent automobile design to sue the
auto manufacturer. The manufacturer cannot escape liability by saying,
"I didn't design it, it was George Doe in my engineering department.
Sue him." If no one assumes responsibility for the acts of
a "representative," the "representative" is
not an agent, or as Spooner puts it, is an agent of nobody, and
is simply acting on his own authority and recognizance.

In
the real world, an agent represents some definite person or group.
Because "representatives" are elected by secret ballot,
however, no "representative" can point to a single person
that he in fact "represents," can ever show that anyone
in particular ever really voted for him, can ever show that he represents
anyone in particular, so in truth and legally speaking he "represents"
no one. He is simply acting on his own authority — for which he
is accountable and responsible to no one. As Spooner puts it, "a
secret ballot makes a secret government." Further, since legislators
are unaccountable for the power they exercise over others, their
power to dispose of the lives, liberty and property of others through
laws is effectively unlimited in scope.2

Thus
it is simply nonsense to assert the government is the "servant"
or "agent" of the people, or that members of Congress
are "representative" of the people. While in office, the
"representatives" simply hold and wield "an absolute,
irresponsible power." The people over whom such control is
exercised are, in reality, nothing more than slaves: "A man
is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master
once in a term of years. Neither are a people any the less slaves
because permitted periodically to choose new masters. What makes
them slaves is the fact that they now are, and are always hereafter
to be, in the hands of men whose power over them is, and always
is to be, absolute and irresponsible."

It
is instructive to consider what a government constructed on the
legal principles of agency would look like, that is, a world in
which men who exercised power over others assumed responsibility
for the consequences of their governance, where voters identified
themselves as the principals of representatives and assumed responsibility
for their representatives' actions.

For
one thing, it would quickly become clear the extent to which "government"
consisted of one group plundering another. For example, supposing
the enactment of laws providing farm subsidies or steel tariffs,
the consumers who pay the resulting higher food or steel prices
and who did not vote for the representatives who approved the legislation
could then bring a rather large class action suit for damages against
all those who voted for the representatives who approved the law.
Assuming they made the case that their food and steel prices were
increased as a result of those laws, the voters who elected the
approving legislators would be charged their aliquot portion of
the damages, to be paid over to the damaged parties, unless the
legislators and their constituents could mount some defense. Outside
of government, however, where men are accountable under principles
of tort law for the harm they inflict on others, the party committing
harm may not escape liability by pleading that, while certain parties
are injured by his actions, he is not liable to them because
their injuries are "offset" in some cosmic balance sheet
by the good conferred by his actions upon some other persons,
or by some collective overall good to "society as a whole."

As
for regulators in agencies, since no one elects them and they don't
even claim to be acting as "representatives," it would
probably be more just to simply hold them personally responsible
for the consequences of their regulations. So, for example, the
parents whose children were decapitated or otherwise killed after
the introduction of air bags could bring wrongful death suits against
the men and women in the Department of Transportation who penned
the regulations requiring their installation in automobiles for
failing to have foreseen what any "reasonable man" exercising
"ordinary care" would easily have foreseen. In other words,
subjecting them to the same legal standard regarding negligence
to which the men who design and manufacture automobiles are subject.

The
nation's trial lawyers would soon have more than tobacco, firearms
and fast food class actions upon which to expend their creative
energies, as the adverse consequences of every subsidy, welfare
program, labor rule, food and drug law, environmental regulation,
and medical insurance regulation became legally actionable. Were
legislators and those who elect them to have responsibility for
their actions, they would no doubt become extremely interested in
the exact contents of legislation and its effects. Very likely,
the ardor many now feel for inflicting public service on others
would soon grow quite cool.

Such
reflections make plain the extent to which the activities that we
consider to compose "government" can proceed only because
those doing the governing are not responsible for the consequences
of their acts. Not the legislators who make the laws and not the
people who want the laws. Not only is the control exercised over
others irresponsible, but such control is possible only because
it is not responsible.

As
there are absolutely no consequences to be paid for using legal
force against others, such a system is an open invitation to predation,
to the use of law as a means of securing unearned benefits. Far
from ending the Hobbesian "war of all against all," government
is an institutionalization of it; it makes it a veritable business.

How
can a system that is founded on irresponsibility, that affirmatively
invites it and actively encourages it, ever create responsibility?
Certainly laws can create coerced conformity of behavior under threat
of punishment. But is that the same as responsibility? Does that
create responsibility? Consider Paul's great insight, in Romans,
that the Law, and by extension, the most rigorous and complete compliance
with the Law, cannot save; the Law can only condemn. Paul was speaking
of God's Law, such as the commandments, but we may suppose that
what is true of God's Law is necessarily true of man's.

The
point is surely not that men do not need laws, that no laws are
legitimate, or that absolute lawlessness equates with absolute responsibility.
Man is a social animal that, if anything, tends to profligacy in
his creation of rules and demands for compliance. There is little
reason to believe that anarchy will soon break out. Rules, procedures
and protocols exist in and for all aspects of life; they are spontaneously
created constantly to address any and every felt need. There are,
for example, protocols for matters as simple as getting on and off
elevators and riding in crowded subway cars. The point is that there
are very grave differences between laws developed by and for parties
who have an ongoing vested stake in how the laws work, who are mutually
accountable and are responsible for the consequences of their actions,
and fiat promulgated by an authority that is not responsible for
its orders or for their consequences.

In
an essay titled "The Needless State," the French political
philosopher Anthony de Jasay notes that, despite the problematic
or non-existent ability, in certain cases, to legally enforce cross-border
contracts in international trade should one party fail to perform,
such trade nonetheless flourishes, and goods from remote parts of
the globe reach our homes, because the participants have worked
out shipping and payment protocols to insure mutual performance,
and have established private trade organizations comprised of those
who engage in such trade and are interested in keeping it operating
smoothly and profitably that, among other things, provide private
dispute resolution. There is no legal punishment, but the existence
of the trade organizations assures that those who violate their
contracts or deal unfairly will soon acquire a reputation within
the group that will effectively blacklist or preclude them from
future dealings. Despite the fact that the cross-border participants
are in a Hobbesian "state of nature" with respect to one
another because they are not subject to a single overarching state
that has authority and control over their conduct, no monolithic
Leviathan to overawe them with threat of punishment to behave, there
is nonetheless cooperation, "law" regulating and guiding
the parties' conduct, and order. One way to view this is that statelessness
does not necessarily mean lawlessness. However, it can also equally
be affirmed that in the situation that de Jasay describes, there
is indeed "government"; it's just not the state. The absence
of the state does necessarily mean the absence of government.

Formerly,
natural law theorists and philosophers made inquiry to determine
the characteristics that made a law "legitimate." These
theories were trashed, and this pursuit largely abandoned, by legal
positivists at the turn of the last century, for whom law was not
"discovered," inherent in or in concordance with a fixed
"human nature," but simply a human artifact, the essence
of which was a rule promulgated by an authority with power to punish
noncompliance. The law, in short, was simply that which a state
made and, since it was something made, it could be whatever a state
declared it to be.

Well,
yes, that is law, but it is a particular kind of law, with
certain characteristics and consequences that distinguish it from
other kinds of laws. The question of legitimacy cannot be
supplanted, or superseded, by efficacy; they are not the same thing.
The mistake is in the leap from the fact that law is made to a conclusion
that it can be whatever we make it. The fact that it is made does
not necessarily mean that it can be manufactured. There are
some human artifacts which no one makes. Language is perhaps the
most obvious example. At some point, some one person used the word,
"whatever" in the manner to which we are now sorely accustomed.
Gradually, it was picked up and used by others because it resonated
with their thoughts and actions; it seemed an apt new way to express
something they wanted to express. It's legitimacy as an expression
inheres in this resonance and concordance. Eventually it will be
abandoned by the same kind of process. At no step in the process
is its use or nonuse imposed on anyone. Indeed, it is doubtful that
even the first person to use it in the new way planned it, or uttered
it with premeditated intent; more than likely it just "came
out." The process is, metaphorically, more akin to an organic
or natural process than to intentional manufacture or fiat, to a
Picardian "make it so." Possibly laws, to be legitimate,
also have to be formed in a similar way. The process by which the
great principles of the common law were formed suggest that this
is so.

Another
example of an artifact that is not made by anyone is the market.
Just as a "command and control" market, where prices are
set by the political process rather than by supply and demand, lacks
real feedback and valid information about the allocation of resources
because prices are shams, that is, lacks the touchstone of reality,
just as this brings hardship in the form of shortages of things
that people want and an oversupply of things that people don't want,
and if persisted in long and extensively enough, complete economic
collapse, so a command and control social structure built upon unaccountable
fiat lacks feedback and real information about its actions because
there is no responsibility for the consequences of its orders. Looking
around us, it is perhaps not too much to say that if persisted in
long and extensively enough, this leads to complete societal collapse.

In
the 19th century Lysander Spooner pointed out that irresponsibility
and unaccountability were the essence of government, in the form
of the state. Not too many pause to consider the implications and
consequences of this, or will hold them fast once they do. Everyone
instead wants "reform" to correct this or that problem,
but none of the reforms go to the fundamental systemic conditions
that make the state what it is. How, then, can they change the nature
of the thing? As Edmund Burke once said, "In vain you tell
me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only
with the abuse. The thing! The thing itself is the abuse!"
There are other means of government than states, and other forms
of law besides fiat. It is high time we again started thinking them.

Notes

1. It is important
   to realize just how attenuated a possibility even this is. Getting
   fired for passing bad laws assumes that voters draw a causal connection
   between the laws passed by their representatives and the harms
   or “unintended consequences” of those laws. First, elections are
   usually far more about the future than the past. Elections generally
   hinge on what benefits the candidates are promising to deliver
   – the “vision thing.” Second, Congress follows the rule that
   you can’t be blamed for a law you didn’t write. Most law-making
   activity is fobbed off to administrative agencies, whose excesses
   or maladroit regulation then permit Congress to appear in the
   role of savior, collecting campaign contributions and votes by
   making promises to correct the problems. Even where Congress acts
   on its own, however, not only are the deleterious consequences
   of legislation not always readily apparent, but the voters have
   little to no incentive to care or notice because of the second
   of the systemic conditions to which I draw attention in this article,
   also noted by Spooner. Voters are not responsible for the actions
   of their representatives. They have no reason to care unless and
   until it adversely affects them directly. As long as the laws
   just destroy other people’s lives, ignorance is bliss.
2. One consequence
   of the fact that legislators are not responsible for the laws
   they pass is that it will be impossible, ultimately, to sustain
   any form of limited government within the bounds specified by
   a constitution. Paper limitations on the scope of power or guarantees
   of individual rights cannot be maintained, for there are absolutely
   no consequences to be paid for violating them, and everyone, legislators
   and voters alike, have every incentive to override them.

November
27, 2003

Jeff
Snyder [send
him mail]
is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of
Nation
of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines
the American character as revealed by the gun control debate.

"During
a routine security screening, authorities say Aguillaume kept reaching
inside her sweater forcing guards to search her again."

"Aguillaume
then became upset and allegedly removed her sweater, shirt and bra.
Police said Aguillaume tried to pull away as an officer attempted
to handcuff her. She later dropped to the ground and refused to
get up."

The
language used is telling. Note, first, that Mme. Aguillaume has
ceased to merit politeness or respect: no Mme., she has simply
become Aguillaume. Yes, let's forget that she is a 56 year old woman
for surely that has nothing to do with anything.

Even
more revealing, though, is the statement, "authorities say
Aguillaume kept reaching inside her sweater forcing guards to search
her again" — as if she had some strange, involuntary twitch
or was, OMG, trying to hide something. If we imagine that Mme. Aguillaume
has a shred of self-respect, it is easy to explain this mysterious
twitch of hers: she was not comfortable with the fact that the screener
was trying to rub or wave a wand over her breasts, so she kept reaching
inside her sweater to cover and protect them. Understandably, this
behavior would be inexplicable to the security screeners, overly
conditioned from screening thousands who, being Americans, have
no self-respect and stand there spread-eagled, dutifully submitting
to the search and possibly thanking the screeners afterward for
keeping them safe.

Becoming
angry or exasperated, and being French, Mme. Aguillaume offered
an alternative means of proving her airworthiness by disrobing,
mere nudity being a natural and inoffensive condition, while submitting
to probing wands is sick and demeaning. Unfortunately, the statutes
and regulations do no permit this alternative proof. Given the nation's
paramount concern for safety and security, one wonders why it isn’t
a patriotic duty to strip at the terminal entrance and proceed to
the airplane seat buck-naked. But no, our bureaucratic protectors
insist that we continue to pretend and adhere to the illusion
that there are standards of decency that must be respected, and
keep our clothes on, all the while they are committing the most
egregious violations of personal respect.

It
is ever thus with the state. It commits an intolerable affront to
a person's dignity and self-respect, and then makes it a criminal
offense when the person actually cannot tolerate it. It is evident
that Mme. Aguillaume did nothing wrong other than to take offense
at indefensible behavior. The AP article does not describe any pandemonium
that ensued upon Mme. Aguillaume's "disorderly conduct;"
it is evident that the essence of her "crime" is simply
that she did not behave as law enforcement expected or wanted her
to behave, there being no real danger in it to anyone.

The
law banning disorderly conduct at an airport was passed by the Indiana
legislature after the September 11 attack. If convicted on that
charge, Mme. Aguillaume could be sentenced to three years. The AP
reports that Mme. Aguillaume "burst into tears . . . when a
judge explained the possible penalties through an interpreter."

This
is what it has come to in America: three years for a 56 year old
woman stripping to the waist in protest of indefensible behavior.
The arrest and laying of formal charges against this woman have
outraged and disgusted me more than words can say. I no longer understand
my country. I no longer know or understand its people.

Gripped
and mastered by fear in the wake of September 11, the FAA institutes
comprehensive, demeaning, and arbitrary searches and seizures. Gripped
and mastered by fear in the wake of September 11 and an even greater
desire to avoid possible financial liability for a failure to protect
its passengers, the airlines give up all legal and financial responsibility
for airport security to the federal government, and an entire new,
unaccountable federal workforce is created for this purpose. Gripped
and mastered by fear in the wake of September 11, the Indiana legislature
creates a hitherto unknown crime, the essence of which is not complying
with security screeners' standards of expected conduct in response
to their illegal and demeaning searches and seizures: "disorderly
conduct in an airport."

Did
we actually believe that we, personally, were "at war with
terror," we might contemplate the words of Japan's great swordsman,
Miyamoto Musashi, who said, "The way of the warrior is the
resolute acceptance of death" — for truly to be a warrior requires
a certain degree of spiritual mastery over self and uncertain existence.
Were we actually a Christian nation, we might contemplate the statement,
made by the highest authority and therefore presumably true,
that he who would save his life will lose it.

Where
are the men in this country who actually understand that
we all die, who have matured under consideration of their own mortality
and are not mastered by it, who understand that what matters is
how we live not how long, and who understand that to abandon and
trample down standards of honorable and right conduct and the principles
this nation was founded upon in a vain quest to insure that one
will die peacefully in one's bed of old, old age is craven and despicable?

Where
are the men in this country who perceive that the elaborate
security measures at the nation's airports cannot accomplish more
than to shift the burden of death to some other Americans
at some other time and place, and who understand that this
lifeboat philosophy — don't take me, take some other American —
is both unchristian and conduct unbecoming a man?

Where
are the men in this country who adhere to the standards of
conduct of a gentleman? It's handcuffs for Mme. Aguillaume! Oh,
yes, nothing personal, it's "routine" and the "procedure"
— meaning that we have ceased to take personal responsibility for
deciding moment to moment on the rectitude of our own behavior and
simply do what others have laid down for us to do.

No,
all standards of right conduct, honor, self-respect, dignity, and
personal liberty reflected in the antiquated and unsafe notions
embodied in the 4th Amendment are readily abandoned and
replaced with reams of new statutes, regulations, and procedures,
to be adhered to with minute, insect-like mindlessness and precision.
Thus do we control our psychic terror and uncertainty — behavior
in form and substance no different than the elaborate rituals and
incantations developed by primitive man to propitiate angry and
unseen gods, and having no greater ability to protect us or control
reality.

If
the security screeners are become mad with power, brooking no affront
to their procedures and authority, however, it is not they who are
at fault but we who permit them to behave this way. Where are the
calls and e-mails to Evansville deputy prosecutor Dawnya Taylor
expressing outrage that Mme. Aguillaume was arrested and is being
prosecuted?

Where
are the men and women who refuse to be subjected to this outrageous
treatment? You want to search me with a wand and rummage through
my personal effects? I guess I'm not flying. You want me to take
off my shoes? You want my nail clipper? I guess I'm not flying.
You want to pat down my wife or daughter? I guess we're not flying.
Let the airplanes cease flying for want of passengers!

No!
We will not pretend that what you are doing is noble, valiant, or
good but assure you that it is depraved and worthy of utmost contempt.
You want safety above all? If that is your highest value, here,
we will give it to you, and ground the nation's airplanes, and when
you are lying on your deathbed may you thank God that you have lived
a long, long time.

Not
here, apparently. Here it's handcuffs and three years for Mme. Aguillaume.
America was some other country, long ago.

November
1, 2002

Jeff
Snyder [send
him mail]
is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of
Nation
of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines
the American character as revealed by the gun control debate.

Few,
I suspect, will doubt that a new groupthink emerged from the ashes
of 9/11. President Bush himself gave the first sign of what was
expected of us shortly after 9/11 when he announced that those who
were not with us were against us. Mainstream conservative publications
such as The Wall Street Journal, National Review and The
Weekly Standard, erstwhile occasional allies in the quest to
establish a more limited government, transformed themselves almost
overnight into staunch apologists and advocates for the War on Terror
and unabashed advocacy of a U.S. Imperium, whole-heartedly devoting
their considerable intellectual and rhetorical skills to the new
cause. Some conservative commentators mocked the idea that we needed
to observe the Constitutional nicety of having Congress actually
declare war before we began bombing Afghanistan, being a mere formality
in a case such as this.

When,
early during the war in Afghanistan, the Bush administration began
advocating war with Iraq, Democrats who did no more than ask for
concrete information about the overall strategy and goal of the
war were lambasted by the administration and talk radio, were quickly
silenced by the fear of adverse public opinion, and hastened to
rehabilitate their reputations by Congressional resolutions supporting
the troops. Not to be outdone in aiding the war effort, Bill Bennett
formed Americans for Victory Over Terrorism in order to "take
to task those groups and individuals who fundamentally misunderstand
the nature of the war we are facing," and to hold meetings
at prestigious universities to staunch a college anti-war movement.
By a stroke of good fortune, Hollywood was ready with the release
of projects glorifying courage, honor, and heroism. Currently, there
is a barrage of commentary and advocacy aimed at creating mass support
for President Bush's plans to bring about a "regime change"
in Iraq.

A
time like this cries out for college and community theater groups
to re-stage Eugene Ionesco's great play about conformity, Rhinoceros.

Ionesco,
generally known as the father of the "Theater of the Absurd,"
was born in 1912 in Romania and settled in Paris at the age of 26.
He despised communism, and campaigned from exile against the authoritarian
regime of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. He died in 1994.
Rhinoceros is perhaps his most famous play. First produced
in Paris in January, 1960, and prompted by Ionesco's reflections
on the German people's transformation into Nazis, the story takes
place in a small French town in which, unaccountably, people begin
changing, in ever-growing numbers, from human beings into powerful,
destructive beasts — rhinoceroses.

When
a rhinoceros first appears in town on a Sunday afternoon, charging
down the street, no one realizes it is one of their fellow citizens.
No one knows where it came from or how it appeared. Did it escape
from a zoo? But there are no zoos nearby! The townspeople are frightened,
shocked and outraged as the beast runs through town, killing a cat.
They can't get over it, they say! It's unthinkable, they say! There
ought to be a law against this sort of thing, they say! They're
not going to stand for it, they say!

After
a rhinoceros runs by a second time, a fruitless argument ensues
between the main character, Berenger, and his fastidious and cultured
friend, Jean. A logician joins in the debate, and much logic and
passion are brought to bear on the question whether there was one
or two rhinoceroses, and whether the rhinoceros was of the African
or Asiatic variety. Some of the other eyewitnesses — Daisy and the
café owners — try to comfort the woman whose cat was killed.

The
next morning at the office people are arguing with Daisy about whether
or not there really was a rhinoceros. Botard, who is very distrustful
of the establishment, does not believe what he reads in the newspapers,
and proclaims that he campaigns against ignorance wherever he finds
it, declares in succession that it is nonsense, an infamous plot,
a myth, and outright propaganda. Dudard, "a law graduate and
first-class employee," is arguing that, well, it is in the
newspaper, and is trying to stick to basic facts. Mr. Papillon,
the head of the office, wants everybody to stop wasting time and
get back to work.

Soon
Mrs. Boeuf shows up to report that her husband will not be at work
because he has the flu. A rhinoceros soon appears outside, trumpeting.
It begins to climb the stairs, as if trying to come to work, and
the stairs collapse. Suddenly, Mrs. Boeuf recognizes that it is
her husband! Although first overcome with shock, she decides she
cannot abandon her husband and jumps down to ride off with him.
Since the stairs have collapsed, the officemates call the fire department
to come rescue them. They are told to wait, they will be there;
they have been called out for other rhinoceroses. As many as 32
have been reported! Botard proclaims the phenomenon a traitorous
plot and vows to unmask the perpetrators.

The
next scene finds Berenger visiting his friend, Jean, at Jean's apartment
to apologize for the argument over the rhinoceros. Jean, however,
is not looking well. His voice has become hoarse, but when Berenger
asks him about it Jean swears that his voice has not changed but
that Berenger's certainly has. Jean's skin is greenish and his head
hurts. He feels hot and he keeps going into the bathroom to cool
himself down, but every time he emerges his skin is greener, and
soon he has small bumps on his forehead. Jean ignores Berenger's
importuning to see a doctor. Berenger apologizes that he is being
so insistent, but after all he is Jean's friend. Jean denies that
there is any such thing as friendship, and that he doesn't believe
in Berenger's friendship. When Berenger remarks that Jean seems
to be in a very misanthropic mood today, Jean eagerly agrees, and
says that people better keep out of his way or he'll run them down,
adding: "I've got one aim in life. And I'm making straight
for it."

When
Berenger tells Jean that Boeuf has turned into a rhinoceros, Jean
doesn't seem very surprised. He begins arguing that there is nothing
very remarkable about it, that it must have given Boeuf great pleasure
to turn into a rhinoceros, and that rhinoceroses have just as much
right to life as we do. When Berenger demurs that their right does
not include the right to destroy our lives, and that our moral standards
are not compatible with those of these animals, Jean proclaims that
he is sick of moral standards. "We need to go beyond moral
standards!" Berenger inquires what Jean would put in their
place. "Nature! . . . Nature has its own laws. Morality is
against Nature." Would Jean replace moral laws with the law
of the jungle, Berenger asks. Yes, that would suit Jean just fine.

The
argument over the relative superiority of men and rhinoceroses degenerates
and, finally, Jean pokes his head out of the bathroom to say something
and Berenger sees that he has become a rhinoceros. Berenger just
barely slams the door on him as Jean bellows, "I'll trample
you, I'll trample you down!"

The
final act finds Berenger in his apartment, where he is recovering
from an injury he suffered escaping from Jean. Dudard comes to visit
him. Berenger seeks reassurance from Dudard that he is not "becoming
someone else." Is his voice changing? No. Does he have any
bumps on his head? No. Berenger nervously tries to determine whether
he is developing a headache.

They
begin speaking of Jean's transformation into a rhinoceros. Perhaps
it's a disease. Berenger is frightened of catching it. Dudard tries
to calm Berenger down by arguing that the phenomenon is not that
big a deal. Probably the people who have become rhinoceroses will
get over it. And the rhinoceroses are not so bad. If you leave them
alone, they just ignore you. There's nothing you can do about the
situation so just accept it. Let the authorities deal with it.

Eventually
the talk turns to the office and the repair of the staircase. Will
the new one be stone? No, wood. What does Mr. Papillon say about
that? Well, Dudard let's on, nothing. Mr. Papillon has turned into
a rhinoceros. Berenger is shocked. No! He can't believe it! "He
had such a good job!" Berenger thought he had more character!
And it's particularly hard to see why he changed because Berenger
cannot see what possible material or moral advantage there could
be in it for Mr. Papillon.

Surely
Botard must have been incensed at the chief's change? Oh, yes, Dudard
tells him, he was absolutely outraged. Well, Berenger opines, that
proves that Botard is a good man after all. Berenger is sorry that
he misjudged him.

Berenger
is upset; he insists that Mr. Papillon had a duty to resist. Dudard
claims that Berenger is too intolerant. We must understand, and
to understand is to justify. There is no real evil in what occurs
naturally, and what's more natural than a rhinoceros? But what could
be more unnatural than for a man to turn into a rhinoceros, Berenger
wants to know! Well, says Dudard, it is difficult to know where
the line is between normal and abnormal. Berenger claims that Dudard's
excessive tolerance is "really only weakness . . . just blind
spots."

Soon
Daisy shows up to visit, and brings news: Botard's become a rhinoceros!
Berenger cannot believe it. Botard was against it! He protested!
Did he give any reasons? Daisy reports, "What he said was,
we must move with the times! Those were his last human words."

Berenger
allows that now that he thinks it over, Botard's firmness was only
a pose. "Which doesn't stop him from being a good man, of course.
Good men make good rhinoceroses, unfortunately. It's because they
are so good that they get taken in."

A
great noise is heard. The walls of the fire station have been demolished.
All of the firemen have turned into rhinoceroses, the whole regiment
is pouring out of the station, led by drums. More rhinoceroses are
pouring out of the houses everywhere. Dudard observes that there
isn't any of "us" left anymore.

Daisy
suggests that they eat. But Dudard doesn't feel hungry for tinned
food; he suddenly feels like eating out on the grass. Berenger warns
him that he is weakening and pleads with him to stay. No, Dudard
feels it is his duty to stick by his employers and friends, through
thick and thin. Soon he rushes out and is gone.

Daisy
and Berenger are now alone. They discover that each has long harbored
a secret love for the other. They vow to stay with one another:
"No one can separate us. Our love is the only thing that's
real."

The
phone rings, and Berenger answers. Trumpeting is heard from the
receiver. He hands it to Daisy so she can hear; she is shocked and
quickly hangs up. Daisy is frightened. What is going on, she wants
to know. "They're playing jokes now," says Berenger.

Daisy
is rattled. The earth is trembling from the stampedes, and the noise
is incessant. Daisy has a headache. Berenger tries to comfort her
by telling her he loves her, and not to worry, the rhinoceroses
are just a passing phase. But Daisy thinks that they should just
let things take their course; what can they do? "We
must adapt ourselves."

Daisy
looks out at the rhinoceroses. "Those are the real people.
They look happy. They're content to be what they are. They don't
look insane. They look very natural. They were right to do what
they did." Berenger pleads, please, think of our love! No,
Daisy says that she "feels a bit ashamed of what you call love
— this morbid feeling, this male weakness. And female, too. It just
doesn't compare with the ardour and the tremendous energy emanating
from all these creatures around us."

"Listen,"
she says, "they're singing." No, they're roaring, says
Berenger. No, says Daisy, Berenger is mad. They're dancing too,
and they are beautiful. "They are like gods." She slips
out while Berenger is nervously examining himself in the mirror.

Now
Berenger is alone. What can he do? "The only solution is to
convince them — but convince them of what? Are the changes reversible,
that's the point? Are they reversible? It would be a labour of Hercules,
far beyond me. In any case, to convince them you'd have to talk
to them. And to talk to them I'd have to learn their language. Or
they'd have to learn mine. But what language do I speak? What is
my language? Am I talking French? Yes, it must be French. But what
is French? I can call it French if I want, and nobody can say it
isn't — I'm the only one who speaks it. Do I understand what I am
saying? Do I? And what if it's true what Daisy said, and they're
the ones in the right?"

He
begins to examine himself in the mirror, trying to convince himself
that he's not ugly to look at. He looks at old photos, but wonders
if he recognizes the people in them. He contrasts them with rhinoceros
heads he sees, which have become very beautiful. No, he decides,
I'm not good-looking. "They're the good-looking ones! I was
wrong! Oh, how I wish I was like them!"

He
begins imitating their sounds, and tries to turn into a rhinoceros,
but he can't. "I should have gone with them while there was
still time. Now it's too late! Now I'm a monster, just a monster.
. . . I can't stand the sight of me. I'm too ashamed! I'm so ugly!
People who try to hang on to their individuality always come to
a bad end!"

Suddenly
he snaps out of it. "Oh well, too bad! I'll take on the whole
of them! I'll put up a fight against the lot of them, the whole
lot of them. I'm the last man left, and I'm staying that way till
the end. I'm not capitulating!"

So
the play ends.

Rhinoceros
presents a very dark assessment of man's social nature, his desire
to "fit in." No one, it seems, can resist turning into
a rhinoceros. All the good attributes or character traits that people
have are powerless to prevent their transition into powerful, destructive
beasts who readily abandon the constricting moral guidelines of
normal human relations for the freedom and raw, unbounded energy
of "the law of nature," where might makes right and anyone
who stands in the way of single-minded pursuit of a goal is trampled
down. Cultivation, refinement and friendship cannot prevent it (Berenger's
friend, Jean turns). Great powers of thought cannot prevent it (the
logician turns). Being a respected and well-to-do member of the
establishment cannot prevent it (Mr. Papillon turns). Being anti-establishment,
a vocal advocate of social justice and protestor of man's exploitation
of man cannot prevent it (Botard turns). Public service, or dedication
to saving or helping others cannot prevent it (the firemen turn).
Romantic love cannot withstand it (Daisy turns). No human relationship
can survive the overwhelming desire or need to be part of the herd,
to "fit in," to "move with the times," to adjust
to the new "normal." All human relationships pale in significance,
and are cast aside, because of the appealing "ardour and the
tremendous energy" of the New Man.

Indeed,
the only one who does not turn is one who cannot. Berenger,
it is established early in the play, is a man who has never "fit
in" with his fellow man. Not that he is particularly strange
or eccentric. He is polite, basically does his job, but is neglectful
of his appearance, and does not quite inhabit normal human interactions.
He's slightly out of kilter with his fellow man, and drinks too
much because of it. He tells his friend Jean that he "just
can't get used to life." So it seems that Berenger cannot
become a rhinoceros because he has never been in sync with his fellow
man his entire life. However, notwithstanding his social displacement
(perhaps because of it?), Berenger is the staunchest advocate in
the play upholding human ethics and standards against both the "law
of nature" and a non-judgmental moral relativism that tolerates
and accedes to monstrous or "natural" behavior.

Diverse
philosophers have pointed out that man's standards of right conduct
are determined relatively by reference to expected norms within
a realm of conduct that is itself otherwise determined. Aristotle's
description of right conduct as the mean between an excess and deficiency,
e.g., courage being the proper conduct in the spectrum between rash
conduct and cowardice, is perhaps the most well known description
of this phenomenon. As Rhinoceros illustrates, positive character
traits and virtues, and this entire mode of judgment, are no bar
to brutality or to our transformation into monsters, because good
and bad are judged relatively within a realm of conduct whose qualities
are otherwise determined, reflective of and dependent upon what
men accept or expect at the time. Dodard's observation that it is
difficult to say what is normal or abnormal holds true: the normal
is no more than that which is common or the dominant expectation.
At the beginning the rhinoceroses are the monsters, but by the end,
the rhinoceroses have become the beautiful and the sole remaining
human being has become the monster. Nothing has been able to prevent
this reversal of perspective.

No
absolute standard determines what is good or what evil; good is
simply the mean or favored state within the current accepted realm
of behavior. Men whose characteristic means of understanding or
judging themselves and their actions is by reference to the conduct
of others will, ineluctably, "move with the times." Indeed,
the character traits or virtues that made them good "men"
will equally make them good monsters throughout and after the transformation.

Far
different from human virtues are God's commandments, which positively
or negatively enjoin specific conduct, and are not relative to or
contingent upon expected norms or the behavior of others, variable
based on circumstance, but unconditional (e.g., do not kill, do
not steal, love your enemies, love one another).*
It is possible to imagine, for example, that a person who was a
Nazi nevertheless had the human virtues of honor, integrity, loyalty,
bravery, honesty and magnanimity, was a loving husband and good
father, and would be revered as such by his fellow Nazis, for it
is possible to have these virtues within the realm of behavior shaped
by the overall goals of establishing the Third Reich and subjugating
or eliminating the inferior races. It is not possible to imagine,
however, that someone who adheres to the Christian commandments
not to kill and to love one another could be a Nazi. Being unconditional,
God's commandment does not "move with the times," and
so does not permit one to think well of himself because he is virtuous
— a virtuous Nazi.

Rhinoceros,
however, goes well beyond merely illustrating that respected character
traits and virtues are no bar to men's transformation into monsters.
Ionesco's portrait is more frightening that that. Man is a social
creature and, at the extreme, is unsure of his language, may be
incapable of understanding himself, has trouble recognizing others,
and cannot see himself as beautiful or worthwhile except by and
through social interaction and comparison with others, which is
possible only if or to the extent that he is substantially identical
with others. Unless he changes with the others, he becomes, not
merely outcast, but lost to himself; he becomes the monster
whose voice is not understandable. Rhinoceros can be read
to suggest that men will inevitably change, because they must in
order to not lose themselves, in order to "be somebody"
among their fellow man. The play never explains, though, how or
why the transformation of a society takes place en masse.
Theories are floated, people are encouraged to resist by will power
or by appeals to morals, friendship, love, and decency, but this
is always unsuccessful and the transformation nevertheless occurs.
The why or how remains mysterious.

The
assessment of how well Rhinoceros portrays the human condition
or sheds light upon current events is best left to the reader. It
is evident, however, that many of the nation's best and brightest
have answered the Call to Greatness heard echoing in the rumble
of the collapse of the World Trade Center, and have been pressing
us hard to join with them. Listen! Are they singing, or roaring?
It is evident that many find the ardor and tremendous energy of
those who have taken up this new mission tremendously appealing
and irresistible. Are these New Men beautiful, are they like gods,
or have they become beasts? It is evident that long-standing ethical
principles that hitherto governed — standards of decency, privacy
and constitutional protections — are swept away overnight. Do we
need to go beyond moral principles, or do these transformed creatures
have no right to destroy our lives? Will the claim that we need
to "move with the times" and adapt ourselves to the new
reality, heard time and again in our government's pleas for more
power, in calls for war and the destruction of our enemies, and
in the vitriolic mockery of dissent, prove to be our last human
words?

*
"Very often, however, it is overlooked that the opposite of
sin is by no means virtue. In part, this is a pagan view, which
is satisfied with a merely human criterion and simply does not know
what sin is, that all sin is before God. No, the opposite of sin
is faith, as it says in Romans 14:23: u2018whatever does not proceed
from faith is sin.' And this is one of the most decisive definitions
for all Christianity — that the opposite of sin is not virtue but
faith."

~
The
Sickness Unto Death, by Soren Kierkegaard, translated by
Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton University Press, p.
82.

September
13, 2002

Jeff
Snyder [send
him mail]
is an attorney who works in New York City. He is the author of
Nation
of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control.

The
court's apparent desire to seek a head on collision with American
patriotic fervor during the War on Terror is remarkable. The Supreme
Court ruled in 1943 (West Virginia State Board of Education v.
Barnette, 319 US 624) that the First Amendment prohibited any
state from compelling a child to recite the Pledge or punishing
him for failing to do so. The 9th Circuit's case thus
turned completely on the social pressure or opprobrium those who
refuse to recite the Pledge experience if they refuse to do so.
The court could simply have pointed out the absence of any legal
compulsion or penalty, politely indicated that the courts are not
in the business of counteracting peer pressure in the nation's schools
but that is what parents are for, suggested that part of having
convictions is actually having the courage of them, and dismissed
the case. It seems, however, that the court was working hard to
make a Statement. At that it succeeded beyond its wildest expectations.

The
original Pledge was penned in 1892 by Francis Bellamy (1855–1931),
a Baptist minister and Christian socialist. According to John Baer,
who has authored a book on the Pledge and its history, in writing
the Pledge, Bellamy sought to express the ideas of his first cousin,
Edward Bellamy, author of the American socialist utopian novels,
Looking
Backward (1888) and Equality
(1897), and admittedly, the Pledge does declare allegiance to
an ideal, a republic for which the flag stands, which may
or may not happen to exist at any given moment.

The
original Pledge did not contain the words, "under God."
According to Baer, Congress added them in 1954 after a lobbying
campaign by the Knights of Columbus, who thought it important to
distinguish ourselves from atheistic communists. In approving the
legislation, President Eisenhower stated, “In this way we are reaffirming
the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future;
in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons
which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource in peace
and war.” Apparently, from the government's perspective, it is necessary
to have a plenitude of powerful spiritual resources at the government's
disposal for killing and otherwise combating the nation's enemies.

Be
that as it may, the elision of the words, "under God,"
by the 9th Circuit should revive a religious issue that
the use of those words somewhat hides. While it does not generally
occur to anyone, reciting the Pledge is a violation of God's commandment
to have no other gods before Him. A moment's thought should be sufficient
to disclose that this injunction prohibits swearing any oath of
fealty to a flag, republic, nation, government or, yes, even a constitution.
Little thought seems to be given to this matter, it seems, because
it is taken for granted that of course there is only one God, so
who could have any other gods before Him? It is forgotten that it
is a commandment precisely because man's natural condition is, and
tendency is towards, paganism, and that it is a perpetual spiritual
struggle to actually only have one god who really is God. If you
doubt it, try this test: observe your behavior, and then ask yourself
what it reveals about who — or what — your real god is.

If
the import of the commandment is not clear enough, however, we also
have Christ's words from the Sermon on the Mount advising us not
to swear any oaths:

Again
you have heard that it was said to the men of old, u2018You shall
not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have
sworn.' But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven,
for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his
footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great
King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one
hair white or black. Let what you say be simply u2018Yes' or u2018No;'
anything more than this comes from evil. [Matthew 5:33-37.]

And
if that is not sufficient, we also have Christ's observation
that "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate
the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and
despise the other." [Matthew 6: 24] As Kierkegaard has pointed
out (in Judge
For Yourselves!), Christ does not say, no one should
serve two masters, but no one can serve two masters, i.e.,
that it is impossible for a man to serve two masters. Thus,
anyone who thinks he can serve two masters deceives himself, for
in whatever he does, in reality he is only serving one master.

Whatever
the merit, in 1954, of assisting in the fight against godless Communism,
the addition of the words, "under God," arguably
removes this doctrinal objection to pledging fealty to a symbol
of the nation with a claim that the nation is, of course, "under,"
that is, subordinate to, God. Of course, saying it doesn't make
it so, but it is always pleasant to flatter ourselves, and at least
we differ from godless Communists in our pretensions and ideals
(or do I repeat myself?). In short, the words do not really address
the religious issue, but only provide a colorable exemption from
religious injunctions with a self-serving statement that appeases
or flatters the religious conscience.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision ought, therefore,
revive a religious predicament that in truth has never disappeared.
A practicing member of Jewish or Christian faiths who endeavors
to abide by God's commandment that He alone is God and we are not
to have any other gods before Him should consider revisiting the
issue, because the escape clause that gives a nod to God in the
process of swearing undying fealty to an idol of man is, supposedly,
required to be dropped.

Meanwhile,
legally speaking, the upshot of the Circuit Court's opinion is this:
it is unconstitutional to pledge allegiance to a nation that seeks
and holds itself to be "under God." Since, as elided,
the Pledge is unconditional, it is constitutional for one
to declare allegiance to a nation supreme unto itself. Perhaps this
seems like rather straightforward modern statist doctrine to the
9th Circuit majority. Unfortunately, not only did the
court forget President Eisenhower's observation that the government
needs subjects who have powerful spiritual resources that it can
exploit in order to triumph over the nation's many enemies, but
also forgot that we subjects find it difficult to take this doctrine
unadorned: we need our pretensions.

July
4, 2002

Jeff
Snyder [send
him mail]
is an attorney and the author of
Nation
of Cowards — Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control.

A
February 20 article from the London Telegraph reports that
clerics and theologians of the Russian Orthodox Church met "to
decide whether changes to Russia's tax system heralded the coming
of the Antichrist." The reason for this extraordinary meeting?
The introduction of an individual number for each taxpayer.

According
to the report, the conference sought to allay the fears of an imminent
apocalypse. Thousands of believers are boycotting the tax codes
and some dioceses are in a panic over the changes. The source of
this remarkable resistance is a passage in the Book of Revelation
prophesying that the Beast "causeth all, both small and great,
rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand
or in their foreheads." The believers denounce the tax numbers
as the mark of Satan and "a humiliation of man's dignity incompatible
with the holy design of man in God's image and form."

This
story did not receive much play here in the Land of Mammon, where
the Social Security Administration's "numbered from birth"
initiative proceeds apace, and an individual's SSN increasingly
becomes the key link to more and more commercial and government
databases. No, no such qualms from this nation's clerics
and theologians; no need to question the nature of this government
based on the revelations of the nature of evil in scripture. No
silly superstitions here. We are a pragmatic people, and readily
recognize the administrative necessity of accepting and using the
"name" given to us by the State in lieu of the one given
us by our parents. Come, let's enjoy a chuckle at the fears of these
simpleton Russians.

This
is not the first occasion, however, that orthodox believers have
resisted numbering by the State. The former Soviet Union labored
mightily to free its people from the superstition of religion. The
masses could have no legitimate need for opiates in the Worker's
Paradise. Stalin, especially, was so impatient to hasten the withering
of the State foretold by Marxist-Leninist doctrine that he imprisoned
hundreds of thousands of Christians in the labor and death camps
— to help clear the way.

It
was the practice in these camps to assign each prisoner a number
and require him or her to sew it on in three places on his newly
issued prison garb. In The
Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn documents a remarkable case
of resistance to this practice:

"Then
again, they quite blatantly borrowed from the Nazis a practice
which had proved valuable to them — the substitution of a number
for the prisoner's name, his "I," his individuality,
so that the difference between one man and another was a digit
more or less in an otherwise identical row of figures. . . . .

"The
people for whom the numbers were indeed the most diabolical of
the camp's devices were the devout women members of certain religious
sects. There were some of these in the Women's Camp Division near
the Suslovo station (Kamyshlag) — about a third of the women there
were imprisoned for their religion. Now, it is plainly foretold
in the Book of Revelation (Chapter 13,Verse 16) that u2018it causes
all . . . to be marked on the right hand or the forehead.'

"These
women refused, therefore, to wear numbers — the mark of Satan!
Nor would they give signed receipts (to Satan, of course) in return
for regulation dress. The camp authorities . . . showed laudable
firmness! They gave orders that the women should be stripped
to their shifts, and have their shoes taken from them . .
. , thus enlisting winter's help in forcing these senseless fanatics
to accept regulation dress and sew on their numbers. But even
with the temperature below freezing, the women walked about the
camp in their shifts and barefoot, refusing to surrender their
souls to Satan!

"Faced
with this spirit (the spirit of reaction, needless to say; enlightened
people like ourselves would never protest so strongly about such
a thing!), the administration capitulated and gave their clothing
back to the sectarians, who put it on without numbers! (Yelena
Ivanova Usova wore hers for the whole ten years; her outer garments
and underwear rotted and fell to pieces on her body, but the accounts
office could not authorize the issue of any government property
without a receipt from her!)"

(Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 3, Westview Press,
1998, pp. 58, 66-67.)

Imagine
that! Here was a group of women who, infused with the passion of
belief, perceived their world in the light cast by scripture, and
so knew that the desire to number them revealed that their government
was — the Beast! And then acted upon that belief for the sake of
their immortal souls! Not for a day, not for a week or a month,
not to "make a statement" or for the sake of the evening
news, but until the end of their sentences — or death. This they
perceived, this they acted upon, while Western intelligentsia
and academics were busy orating and penning encomiums to, and apologies
for, Communism as the greatest, most moral system yet devised for
instituting the brotherhood of man on earth! What greater illustration
of the difference between belief in God, and belief in Man as the
Measure of All Things?

Here
we have some indication of just what it is to resist the State.
Solzhenitsyn's story perhaps gives some clue that the Russian orthodox
clerics have in essence capitulated to the use of tax numbers. The
theologians do not say that the desire to number citizens indicates
that the government is Evil incarnate and call for resistance. Instead,
they criticize the proposal on the basis of the more mealy-mouthed,
secular humanistic claim that the numbering system does not respect
the "dignity" of man.

Well,
man's "dignity" is a thin reed to hang resistance upon.
Few things are more quickly bargained away. Besides, it seems that
our "dignity" has a remarkably compressible quality, always
shrinking to a new level that is just below the reach of the latest
encroachments by the State, so that we do not have to take action
— just yet. No, that day will come when some new encroachment crosses
the line — as yet undrawn. So the State wishes to number us. Pffft!
Big deal. It's just a number for administrative convenience, to
distinguish me from all the other persons, past, present or future,
who have the same or a similar name. Surely my dignity does not
inhere in so little a thing as use of my name! Call me what you
like; I will use any name you like. It's not the real me.

For
those who require a more "objective" assessment, consider
this. Tax time is upon us. It is necessary, in order to claim a
personal exemption for one's dependents, to report their social
security numbers on Form 1040. This year, a personal exemption is
worth $2,800, and marginal tax rates are 15 to 39.6 percent. Thus,
if you dutifully fill in the number, you will receive a tax benefit
of somewhere between $420 and $1,109. Here, then, I suggest, is
the going price for a man's dignity. Unless, that is, "dignity"
does not inhere in consenting to the numbering of your children,
but dwells in some more rarefied, removed, compressed sphere.

I
do not believe that the women who resisted Stalin's numbering system
did so because they thought it inconsistent with their "dignity."
I think that they thought that their State — or certainly the camp
administration — was Evil incarnate, that they believed that to
accept the numbers would be to surrender their immortal souls to
Evil, and did not shrink from acting on this belief.

No
such resistance here in the Home of the Brave. Here, the most we
will do is vote for a politician who will, hopefully, maybe, someday,
begin to reverse course. If helped by other politicians elected
by others.

Many Americans doubtless believe that numbering is an innocuous
administrative necessity. In truth, your SSN is becoming the gatekeeper
that establishes your status as a citizen in good standing and permission
for your activities. The laws creating your feudal status have already
been enacted and are rapidly being implemented, and if you are interested
to know the extent of it, you may check Charlotte Twight's article,
"Watching
You — Systematic Federal Surveillance of Ordinary Americans,"
in The Independent Review, Volume IV, Fall 1999.

Let's
look at just one fact. Under current federal law, your employer
cannot hire you unless the government confirms that you are not
an illegal alien, a process that requires submission of your SSN.
Thus, the reality is that you cannot (legally) work unless you have
an SSN. In Stalinist Russia, they stripped women to their shifts.
But here in the Land of the Free, you cannot live unless
you are numbered. Oh, and do not think you will be eligible for
the State's charity if you do not work. No, you also need the Number
to receive welfare and food stamps.

If,
then, you persist in thinking that numbering is a mere matter of
orderly procedure, then I would submit that by this law the State
has indicated, oh so casually, that it is willing to hold your life
hostage to compliance with its administrative dictates, that its
administration trumps your need to support yourself — your
right to life. Whether this be Evil, is between you and God.

March
23, 2001

Jeff Snyder is an attorney
who works in New York. He is the author of the upcoming book, Nation
of Cowards – Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, available
in April from Accurate Press (800-374-4049).

Now, in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, when the President is preparing for a mighty war, when over 80 percent of Americans support him and want blood, whether in the name of retribution or justice, now is the time to repeat the words we do not want to hear.

Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. . . .

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

That you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

~ Matthew 5: 38-39; 43-45.

This is all you need to know if you want to do what is right in this situation. We should not wage war on terrorists or the Taliban, nor try to bring them to justice. We should, however, pray for them and do good to them.

In the 1800's a small number of men, including the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, spent a large part of their lives working out the implications of this teaching and trying to spread the word to their fellow man. Much of this good work might have been lost or buried in oblivion but for the efforts of one of them, Leo Tolstoy, who gathered it together in making his own case, still available in the much ignored, The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894).

According to Tolstoy, the meaning of Christ's command to "resist not evil" is plain enough: it is wrong to use force or violence to oppose evil. Since Christ's command is unconditional, there are no exceptions. Not for a "just" war, not for retribution, not for justice, not even for self-defense at the time of the assault. Further, the clear implication is also that it is wrong to participate in any enterprise that employs force or violence against our fellow man (even if only to oppose evil). Christ's command thus renders government illegitimate. The Christian who follows Christ' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, then, will not be a soldier, or participate in any of the institutions of government, the courts or elections, and will not have any recourse to the authorities, the police or the law.

Christ's teaching forever severs the question of what is good or evil, just or unjust, from the question of the use of force, and pronounces the latter wrong and evil under all circumstances. Regardless of what is right, good or just, it is wrong, always, to use force or violence to establish, uphold, vindicate or maintain the right, the good or the just, and it is wrong to use force to punish or "reform" the wicked.

Instead, the Christian "resists not." As Tolstoy notes, "To submit means to prefer suffering to using force. And to prefer suffering to using force means to be good, or at least less wicked than those who do unto others what they would not like themselves."1

Tolstoy musters many arguments to demonstrate that Christ's teaching is the only true and lasting foundation of peace and brotherhood among men, and to explain why violence cannot eliminate evil, but only beget more violence. One of his more powerful arguments concerns the impossibility of settling disputes by recourse to violence when there is no universally accepted, unquestioned criterion for distinguishing good from evil. In the absence of such criterion, the men who are the objects of our violence do not perceive or accept their acts as evil and do not experience the violence directed at them as just punishment for their deeds, but simply as unjust violence and a fresh insult that, in turn, prompts them to respond in kind. Thus, we can expect that a counterattack upon the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and those who harbor them will kindle greater hatred in the Muslim world against us.

Tolstoy was no pie-eyed idealist blind to the nature of man. Although he quotes other advocates of non-resistance who argue on prudential grounds that refraining from the use violence is, in the long run, a safer course than using violence to suppress evil, since it gives least occasion for the creation of ill-will, he did not maintain that those who adhered to Christ's command would soon cease being the object of oppression or violence, or would be but rarely the objects of such acts.

Indeed, Tolstoy spends much effort addressing one of the strongest criticisms of non-resistance, namely, that without government, the wicked will oppress the good. It requires a strong disposition to follow Tolstoy here for, to his everlasting credit, he does not endeavor to support Christ's teaching by prudential appeals to man's rational self-interest through promises that adhering to Christ's teaching will soon make life easy or better for men, nor pretend that eliminating government will end man's inhumanity to man.

The champions of government assert that without it the wicked will oppress and outrage the good, and that the power of the government enables the good to resist the wicked.

But in this assertion the champions of the existing order of things take for granted the proposition they want to prove. When they say that except for the government the bad would oppress the good, they take it for granted that the good are those who are the present time are in possession of power, and the bad are those who are in subjection to it. But this is just what wants proving.

The good cannot seize power, nor retain it; to do this men must love power. And love of power is inconsistent with goodness; but quite consistent with the very opposite qualities — pride, cunning, cruelty.

Without the aggrandizement of self and the abasement of others, without hypocrisies and deceptions, without prisons, fortresses, executions, and murders, no power can come into existence or be maintained. . . . .

. . . ruling means using force, and using force means doing to him to whom force is used, what he does not like and what he who uses the force would certainly not like done to himself. Consequently ruling means doing to others what we would not they should do unto us, that is, doing wrong.2

Since the good, by definition, cannot and will not wield power, "The wicked will always dominate the good, and will always oppress them."3 Moreover, in holding up the specter of imagined future dangers of violence and oppression by others, those who claim we need the government's protection ignore or discount the magnitude of the actual existing violence and oppression already practiced by their own government against its own people and others. Tolstoy concludes that government's ceasing to exist and to provide its "protection" may result in a change in the men who subject the good to oppression and violence, but will not, ultimately, change the overall lot of the good. Thus, good men who see the true nature of their government and its actions cannot be terrorized by specters of the harm that will befall them in government's absence, because they realize that they already are, ever have been and ever will be oppressed and exploited by the wicked. A change in this state of affairs will come about only after most men have learned, through generations of bitter and futile experience, the inability of violence to put an end to evil, and to accept the truth of Christ's counsel.

Tolstoy also takes strong issue, based on the evidence provided by history, with the belief that it is possible to subdue a nation, or improve it, with violence: "And indeed how could nations be subjugated by violence who are led to by their whole education, their traditions, and even their religion to see the loftiest virtue in warring with their oppressors and fighting for freedom? . . . To exterminate such nations . . . by violence is possible, and indeed is done, but to subdue them is impossible."4

Much of Tolstoy's energy in Kingdom of God is directed at answering those who claim that Christ's teaching cannot mean what it plainly says, or that it is too idealistic for men, because it does not agree with how men want to live, or would require too great a change in "the existing order of things." Curiously, although Tolstoy was apparently unaware of his work, the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, often dealt with this characteristic response to God's unconditional commands.

True worship of God consists quite simply in doing God's will.

But this sort of worship was never to man's taste. That which in all generations men have been busied about, that in which theological learning originated, becomes many, many disciplines, widens out to interminable prolixity, that upon which and for which thousands of priests and professors live . . . is the contrivance of another sort of divine worship, which consists in . . . having one's own will, but doing it in such a way that the name of God, the invocation of God, is brought into conjunction with it, whereby man thinks he is assured against being ungodly — whereas, alas, precisely this is the most aggravated sort of ungodliness.

An example. A man is inclined to want to support himself by killing people. Now he sees from God's Word that this is not permissible, that God's will is, u2018Thou shalt not kill.' u2018All right,' he thinks, u2018 but that sort of worship doesn't suit me, neither would I be an ungodly man.' What does he do then? He gets hold of a priest who in God's name blesses the dagger. Yes, that's something different.5

Kierkegaard characterized man's unbelieving or unwilling response to an unconditional demand of the Divine as man's "sensibleness." It is a reaction that many who staunchly adhere to the Bill of Rights will readily recognize. For example, scarcely is the command, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" uttered, before learned law professors and judges hasten to assure us that the words, despite their unconditional and categorical form, do not prevent the state from enacting "reasonable regulations" in the interest of public safety. All sensibleness consists in this refusal to accept God's unconditioned command as the binding ideal that distinguishes right from wrong, to build maneuvering room into it so that we can still think well of ourselves while pursuing our own will. According to Kierkegaard, it is human sensibleness that believes that

To require the unconditioned of human beings is basically madness, a ludicrous exaggeration that, like all extremes, as any sensible person easily sees, takes revenge by producing an effect the very opposite of what it aims at. All human wisdom consists in this glorious and golden principle: to a certain degree, there is a limit, or in this u2018both-and,' and u2018also'; the unconditioned is madness. The mark of mature earnestness is precisely this: it insists that the requirement shall be of such a nature that a person can with pleasure and satisfaction amply meet it though steady effort. Obviously, what none of has done none of us, of course, can do; and if none of us can do it, then the requirement must be changed according to what we have shown we can do by having done it — more cannot be required. Therefore, we insist on a Christianity that can be brought into harmony with all the rest of our life, corresponding to the change that has occurred in the human race through increasing enlightenment and culture. . . .

Who will deny that the world has changed! For the better? Well, that remains a question. . . . But it is eternally certain that nothing so offends sensibleness as the unconditioned, and . . . the immediately obvious mark of this is that sensibleness will never unconditionally acknowledge any requirement but continually claims itself to be the one that declares what kind of requirement is to be made.6

If you are like me, it is sensibleness you will feel welling up within you when you read Christ's words to "resist not evil." It is sensibleness that will question whether they really mean what they seem to say, that will hasten to assure you that there are, there must be, just causes for which violence and resistance are righteous, that will not be willing to accept that we cannot avenge our murdered citizens, or bring the men responsible to justice, believing that somewhere, somehow, there must be maneuvering room in Christ's command to love one's enemies sufficient to kill them.

It is sensibleness that renders Tolstoy's work an obscure volume relegated to the status of a curiosity penned by a great novelist who should have stuck to writing fiction. People do not try to answer his arguments. They are just sensibly ignored. When the Massachusetts preacher, Adin Ballou, died in 1890, after spending fifty years of his life writing about and preaching non-resistance based on Christ's teaching, his obituary in the Religio-Philosophical Journal made no mention of this his life's work. Sensible, surely, for why malign the man by pointing out how much of his life was spent in foolishness, and why disturb readers by raising concerns over what can only be an improper interpretation of the meaning of Christ's command?

Similarly, you are not likely to hear Matthew 5 : 38-45 preached this, the next or any other weekend soon, though if the Christian religion were supposed to have relevance to men's lives, it would appear to be timely.

For those who can accept and have the courage to pursue it, however, the standard has been laid down. While we may admit (I admit) that we do not (I do not) feel Christian love for our enemies, we can at least partially act as required: we can refuse to go to war; we can refuse to try to bring the perpetrators to justice. And if we cannot quite bring ourselves to heed Christ's counsel in full, perhaps we can at least take George Washington's advice to avoid foreign entanglements, bring our troops home from across the globe, stop selling arms to foreign nations and cease meddling in foreign affairs. Not, be it noted, because we hope or believe that we will thereby gain release from further terrorist assaults. Those who destroyed the World Trade Center hate us, and it is possible that nothing we can do will change that, and that they will not stop until they exhaust themselves in their hate. If it is to be done, it must be done only because it is the right thing to do. And this would be a good start: to not go to war.

There is one other consideration that ought compel those of us who believe in God to give this matter the thought it deserves. That is the knowledge that, although God is longsuffering and of great mercy, He by no means clears the guilty, but visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and the children's children, unto the third and fourth generation.7 President Bush is warning us that this war will not be over soon. But I wonder how far his vision extends.

1. Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), translated by Constance Garnett, Nebraska University Press, ©1984, at p. 243.
2. Ibid, at pp. 241 — 242.
3. Ibid, at p. 244.
4. Ibid, at 259.
5. Soren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon "Christendom" (1854-1855), translated by Walter Lowrie, Princeton University Press, © 1944, tenth printing, 1991, p. 219.
6. Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination and Judge For Yourself!, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton University Press, © 1990, pp. 154 — 155.
7. Exodus 34 : 7; Numbers 14 : 18.

September 21, 2001

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in mid-town Manhattan. His website is www.nationofcowards.net.