The USexit campaign

“Our jobs are being sucked away from our country, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore, folks,”
— Donald Trump quoted in “Experts Warn of Backlash in Donald Trump’s China Trade Policies”,  The New York Times (2 May 2016)

There are some people in the USA who are intrigued by the Brexit referendum (jobs are being sucked away from the UK, and we’re going to end it now) and see parallels between Brexit with the anti-foreign (USexit?) comments of the Donald Trump (and of Bernie Sanders).

An interesting collection of comments (“letters”) about Brexit,  from Europeans who are not British-born, appeared in The Guardian: I particularly liked a cartoon by Riad Sattouf from France, and a letter in the same article (a couple of contributions down) from Slovenian-born Slavoj Žižek with a wonderful line — relevant to the US primaries — "Socialist nationalism is not the right way to fight the threat of national socialism." 

From The Encyclopaedia Brittanica entry on “National Socialism”, last updated 2016-03-22:

In almost every respect it was an anti-intellectual and atheoretical movement, emphasizing the will of the charismatic dictator as the sole source of inspiration of a people and a nation …

Inherent rights

Are there any truly inherent rights?

In Thomas Jefferson’s initial draught of the US Declaration of Independence, inherent rights are at the forefront:

We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant [sic], that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness;
— Thomas Jefferson, Original Rough Draught of the Declaration of Independence, June 1776

These clauses form the basis for the most quotable sentence in the final document, where Jefferson’s original was modified by others to read:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
— The US Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776

Note that “from that equal creation” became “endowed by their Creator”.

 

Published shortly before Virginia native Jefferson’s rough draft, the Declaration of Rights by the Virginia Constitutional Convention contained affirmations of inherent rights similar those made by Jefferson, with an additional assertion of a civic right to property. There was a partial list of rights of men in Virginia, and Jefferson will have been well aware of its content:

Section 1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
...
Section 11. That in controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other and ought to be held sacred
— Virginia Declaration of Rights, 12 June 1776 [My emphasis]

In Virginia, to be a slave was not treated as really human (not a “man” with any inherent or civic rights); slaves were treated as a man’s “property”. Many years later, treating humans as property (because that was what the US Constitution allowed) created the infamous Dred Scott v Stanford decision by the US Supreme Court. There is a world of difference between the metaphysical claim in the US Declaration of Independence that every person has an inherent right to life and to liberty, and the pragmatic requirement in the Virginia Declaration of Rights that people should not be deprived of the enjoyment of life and their liberty.

 

Societies differ and a metaphysical “inherent” right is only worth anything in a particular society if, pragmatically, it is also considered a “civic” right in that society. Any inherent right is only a right if it is an agreed civic right, and that agreed civic right is enforced by civic society (“... the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other”). To claim an inherent right to “liberty” (from a creator?) might make a persuasive ideology but, in a conflict between different people’s liberties, the supreme authority is not a god creator but some sanctioning civic institution such as the judicial system.

 

After searching the US Constitution for explicit references to what is a “right”, there is one right that is asserted:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

—US Constitution. Article I. Section 8 [My emphasis]

Of course, those writing the constitutional drafts contained many authors and some inventors … After adoption, there were pressures to clarify what were rights and what society could do to curtail those rights:

The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added:
— Preamble, US Bill of Rights, ratified 15 December 1791 (my emphasis)

In the language of the time, clauses to be added to the US Constitution were further stipulations that either were “affirmative; expressive; not decretory; not promissory” (declaratory) or were “expressing limitation” (restrictive) — definitions taken from a contemporary dictionary by Samuel Johnson (A Dictionary of the English Language; Various publishers, 1755). Decretory is defined by Johnson as “judicial; definitive”; thus declarative clauses — which are not decretory — are not dependent on judicial processes, they just exist. In other words, there were two types of clauses: clauses affirming the inherent rights of individuals (rights independent of any societal process); and clauses blocking impositions on the civic rights of individuals.

 

When we look at the US Bill of Rights, there are no inherent rights defined, there are only civic rights. Ultimately, the designers of the Bill realized that giving general definitions of rights or of admissible powers was well-nigh impossible, and so — after enumerating a few rights and a few powers in previous amendments — there were the cop-out amendments, and no definitions of either rights or powers:

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

10. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people

In a controversy between one person’s liberty to smoke (a right?) and my liberty not to have my lungs assailed by that person’s nicotine pollution (a right?) we need a system of laws, and the power to enforce those laws. The preservation of liberty does not mean unfettered liberty, rather it means we need strong judicial sanctions to enforce conflicting liberties, and civic society government is the enforcer.

 

For example, a owners of a power station can claim a freedom to produce energy in any way they wish, whereas those who are affected by pollution from that power station can claim a freedom from aggression, a freedom not to have their property assailed by that pollution — their property might be the water they drink or the air they breathe. To obtain redress for this aggression by the owners of power stations — the creators of pollution — requires either civic law or physical force (the law of the gun). Of course, civic law might need to be enforced by physical force.

 

Libertarian-leaning Senator Rand Paul said in an interview with Jon Stewart, when talking about property rights and pollution, “you don’t have the right to pollute your neighbor’s property” (my emphasis, note that it is a civic right not an inherent right). We might ask: who is the enforcer of the laws that say you (as a neighbour) should not have your property polluted? Who has the power, and who creates the laws? Rand Paul is a senator from the state of Kentucky, and other states want to stop pollution from Kentucky’s power stations. Paul tried to introduce legislation in the US Congress that defined emissions from Kentucky power stations as admissible, as non-aggressive — therefore giving Kentucky a civic right to pollute.

 

The liberty (or freedom) of people outside Kentucky to be free from pollution seemed less important than commercial interests or the next election when Rand proposed a bill that "Would rein in out-of-control EPA rule that hurts Kentucky coal families" — this went down well with his constituents and those who contributed to his campaign coffers. A fellow Republican and senator from another state did not agree: Kelly Ayotte said “The reality is that air pollution does not stop at state borders, and New Hampshire should not be the tailpipe for pollutants from out-of-state power plants. It is a matter of common sense to ensure that one state’s emissions are not unduly harming another state’s air quality.”

 

Paul did not think property rights were sacrosanct, in that they were definitely civic rights that depended on the law: states’ property rights — freedom from another state’s unpleasant emissions in your state — were not sufficiently important because his (polluting) state needed the jobs. Whether tobacco smoke is a killer or not (it is a killer) does not affect the unpleasantness of having to suffer another’s cigarette smoke, and whether power-station pollution is a health risk or not (it is a health risk) does not affect the unpleasantness of having to suffer the pollution.

 

Libertarians do not really believe in liberty, when ignoring other peoples liberty is beneficial to their interests. Libertarians want the civic power to impose their own liberty even if this involves deleterious effects on other people.

What begat marriage?

In nearly all early societies:

• Males dominated females.
• The mother of a child was certain.
• The father of a child was never certain.

Men usually controlled most of the property in civic society, and then these men died. Here is the fundamental question: who controlled a man’s property when he died? Which persons had the civic rights to a dead man’s property?

Apart from the mothers of his children, a man’s children were obvious candidates — but though we always know the mother, we cannot be certain about the father. Even though fathers throughout history have loved their children, and a father usually wanted his children (and their mother(s)) to inherit his property, in any society where there was ownership of property there needed to be rules of inheritance. When we read in the Old Testament that “Aleph begat Beth who begat Gimel ...” we may be talking about attribution of parentage, of resulting inheritance rights and powers, but we are not talking about genetics.

It is clear that any child’s maternity was always clear, whereas paternity is never certain. Attribution of parentage was was one reason paternity was turned into a civic relationship between a man and one or more women with civic rights and civic powers — we call modern forms of such a civic relationship “marriage”. Civic institutions of marriage were created to protect property rights. Though there those who say “Love is all you need”, biological paternity was hardly ever 100% certain and so civic paternity (established by marriage) defined inheritance. There have been so many different civic institutions we might class as marriage that it is clear that something termed “traditional” marriage cannot have a very long tradition — and contemporary proponents of traditional marriage often mean a civic institution involving one male and one female and their legitimate offspring.

Though two people in love is a nice idea, we can see that, in many societies, marriage-like civic institutions were not created for the purpose of procreation (procreation is easy) but were created for the attribution of parentage: not only was attribution of male parentage important for such things as inheritance, but also for a “father” to establish ownership of his civically-designated offspring, turning children into his property. Male (and female) parental “rights” can turn into parental dictatorship, of so many kinds (in 2014, 31 US states still do not have laws banning a rapist from having visitation rights with any child of the rape). With the death of a spouse, the civic laws concerning marriage were applied to inheritance and determined what property went to the surviving spouse and to the children of the two spouses.

Though many fathers loved those they accepted as their children, history and tradition has many examples of males manipulating their civically-designated offspring to further the father’s desire to expand his property — many wars in Europe were fought over property (lands) and succession to the ownership of those lands, and many US slave-owners fathered children with female slaves. Disputes between monarchs and putative monarchs over the control of lands were grist to many a playwright’s mill. When a man married a widow, the widow’s children became his property, and so the children’s inheritances became the basis of his claim to new properties (lands) — those new properties had been owned by the widow’s dead spouse. With the emphasis on property, succession, and inheritance in civic laws concerning marriage, it is fitting that the US Supreme Court in the case of United States v Windsor (2013) decided the inheritance of spousal property by the widow of a female spouse was unfairly taxed because the widow of a male spouse would not be taxed. The taxation of the lesbian spouse was due to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage as being only between a man and woman. DOMA was held to be unconstitutional because it was a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons protected by the US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.

All you need is love.

Technorati Tags: civic powers, civic rights, DOMA,inheritance,male dominance,marriage equality, maternity, paternity, property rights,rape, succession, traditional marriage, visitation rights

Rights and powers

In Thomas Jefferson’s initial draught of the US Declaration of Independence, inherent rights are at the forefront:

We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness;
— Thomas Jefferson, Original Rough Draught of the Declaration of Independence, June 1776

These clauses form the basis for the most quotable sentence in the final document, where Jefferson’s original was modified by others to read:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
— The US Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776

Note that “from that equal creation” became “endowed by their Creator”.

Guns waste lives

A slogan from the gun-rights world: “Guns don’t kill, people do”, though more accurately it should be “Guns don’t kill, shooters do”. This slogan points out that, though a gun may be used to kill somebody, it requires a shooter to pull the trigger. Of course a shooter is only a shooter if the shooter has a gun (no gun, no shooter) and guns can kill by accident (no shooter, yet gun kills). Another slogan from the gun-rights world: “Guns save lives”.  Guns have no feelings and know nothing of saving lives, so perhaps “Guns don’t save lives, people do” though the people involved are not necessarily shooters. What lives are saved? Nationally, in 2009, more twice the number of people died from suicide (36,909) than died from homicide (16,799) and “Suicide was the only leading cause of death showing a significant increase” from the previous year. More suicides involved a gun (18,735) than homicides with a gun (11,493).

Throwing all into confusion

Considering the mischief caused by Tea-Party Republican representatives, and the resulting confusion about how to end the shutdown, here is Rawlins Lowndes’s realistic view of the proposed US  constitution of 1787, as collected in the Anti-Federalist Papers (54):

Great stress was laid on the admirable checks which guarded us, under the new Constitution, from the encroachments of tyranny; but too many checks in a political machine must produce the same mischief as in a mechanical one – that of throwing all into confusion. [1]

Lowndes was trying to protect slavery in South Carolina against those in the Northern States, those who would try to do away with that peculiar institution: affirming that “whilst there remained one acre of swampland in South Carolina, he should raise his voice against restricting the importation of Negroes.” He was a pragmatist.

Dwelt a miner, forty-niner

Actually, the California Gold Rush started, not in 1849, but in January 1848 when gold was found in Coloma, California. Though it is difficult to be precise, it is thought that gold worth many billions of dollars in current values was extracted, a great deal of money and a great contribution to the USA economy. For example, San Francisco grew from a few hundred residents before the discovery of gold to almost 40000 residents in a very short time. This was growth through exploitation of US natural resources (and miners) and not through exploitation of US ingenuity (though, no doubt, many miners were ingenious), which had a multiplier affect throughout the US economy, thus increasing federal government income.

 

Single-parent families, in black and white

When talking of children living without mothers or without fathers things are not simple. There are many varying reasons for single-parent families from death of a spouse/partner to no spouse/partner in the first place. The consequences for individual families are also varied, and poorer finances are generally are an important consequence – though there is a world of difference between a divorced affluent woman in her late 30s and a never-married adolescent living alone with her baby.

Based on US Census Bureau figures for 2011 from the Annie E. Casey Foundation National Kids Count Program, 16,356,000 white children and 6,509,000 black/African-American children live in single-parent families. The total of single-parent children for all ethnicities is 24,718,000; and so about 66% of single-parent children are white and 26% black (of white children, 38% are non-Hispanic white and 28% are Hispanic/Latino).

Insanity we trust

In the aftermath of the killings in Newtown there have been many calls on the Republican side for control not of guns but of people who might be shooters: people with mental health problems, bad guys with guns; and particularly bad people with mental health problems who are guys with guns. People with mental health problems are not well-treated, we are told, and should never been allowed the freedom they had. Not “well-treated”? – welcome to the US health care morass, encouraged by Republicans.
How do we know who has mental problems? – it all depends upon where you start. In the US public theatre, the same behaviour might be considered quirky, eccentric, around the bend, crazy, deranged, insane, or socialist – or perfectly acceptable and normal.

Economic faith, economic reason

It is far more difficult to combat faith than it is to combat reason and knowledge. A faith that there can be such a thing as a “free” market, or unambiguously “private” property, is difficult to shake.

Take the notion of a free market: there is no exact definition, but try “An economic system where prices, wages and trade are unregulated and prices are determined by competition between businesses”.  There has never been a truly free market because a “free market” is an ideal and interesting idea but, unfortunately, it is an ideal lodged in faith. The free market article of faith cannot cope with a complex society, because regulations exist at all levels of society protecting private property and public speech, enforcing contracts, plus a myriad of other things.

The rites of job creators

In June 1993, shortly after Bill Clinton became US President, the US unemployment rate was 7.0%. Under Clinton the unemployment rate dropped dramatically to 3.9% in December 2000, and the top rate of taxation had increased from 31% when he entered office to 39.6%. 

In June 2001, shortly after George W Bush became US President, the US unemployment rate was 4.5% and the first of the Bush tax cuts were enacted (to create jobs). One year after the tax cuts became the law of the land, June 2002, the unemployment rate had already increased to 5.8%, and at the end of the Bush administration (and another set of income tax cuts) the unemployment rate was 2.8% higher at 7.3% together with many other problems. (BLS figures.)  Unemployment might have increased because of the tax cuts, or there might be other reasons, but there does not seem to be any support for the Republican rite that tax increases suppress job creation or – the reverse – tax cuts create jobs.

Majorities mandate miasmas

Miasma
1. An unwholesome atmosphere
2. Unhealthy vapours rising from the ground or other sources

After elections the unwholesome atmospheres usually come from ideologues who always know better (but are no better). One commentator saw the 2008 US general elections as “I've read that Obama doesn't have a mandate, but I don't know what planet you have to come from to draw that conclusion” – personally, I come from the planet Earth. Votes in elections may decide winning candidates, but votes in elections do not decide which were the winning ideas. The only tangible consequences of elections are the persons who were elected. The elected then act according to their intangible ideas of what should happen (their own personal mandates). These actions also have consequences, and certain self-confirming superior individuals have always feared the unintended consequences of actions resulting from misguided votes in majoritarian elections – miasmic assertions such as Mitt Romney’s remarks that Obama administration actions “were very generous in what they gave to those groups”, or James Madison’s worry that some groups would not act in the “permanent and aggregate interests of the community”.

Declaring independence from the governed

In the 2012 presidential election only about 17.7% of the population of Louisiana voted Obama, but then only 25.2% voted Romney. In fact, less than half of the Louisiana populace (the Louisiana governed) voted in the 2012 presidential election, which means that less than half of the governed gave any consent to anybody. Louisiana is the home of “WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:  Peacefully grant the State of Louisiana to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government” – the first secession petition on the White House web site, dated 7 November 2012. Quoting from the US Declaration of Independence, the petition says government should derive its “just powers from the consent of the governed”. The petition was started by “Michael E” about whom little is known. Who gave consent to the Louisiana petition by signing-up? – the Louisiana governed? Looking at the last twenty electronic signatures at this moment (36,825-36,844) five are from the Louisiana governed and the rest are from outside the state.

Abortion and godlings

The desire to favour ideology over compassion for women has surfaced in Ireland in very distressing way. A pregnant woman (Savita Halappanavar) was admitted to University Hospital Galway (UHG), where she was found to be miscarrying and soon was in severe pain. Savita died of septicaemia a week later. Why did Savita die? According to an article in The Irish Times a request for a medical termination was refused because the foetal heartbeat was still present, and “this is a Catholic country”. Perhaps the doctors (godlings?) would also claim that even after rape any pregnancy is “something that God intended to happen” (believed by some in the USA)?

A necessary medical treatment to save the life of the mother because of foetal termination. We have a case where the perceived “rights” of a foetus (who had not been born) superseded the rights of a woman (who had been born) – this unfortunate position appears throughout many conservative political ideologies. Often “abortion” is a political issue dressed in religious clothes.

Hearts of stone

Sometimes ideology overcomes humanity. Sometimes an abstract idea becomes more important than reality. Some human beings forget they exist in world populated by other human beings without whom their existence would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Not wishing to bear one another's burdens, some humans seem devoid of any spiritual or communal feeling – espousing a morality of materialism.

They are statues with their hearts of stone.

The rights of the born woman

Given the many arguments about abortion, conclusions about embryos and foetuses are neither self-evident nor unambiguous truths – what is self-evident (and a truth) is that a woman has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If  you believe that life is a gift from a god and all fertilized eggs should be allowed to come to term then, logically, no matter the circumstances of fertilization, nobody should stop any embryo coming to term. Of course, this means any woman has a life that is a gift from a god, because she was once an embryo and then a foetus.

Guns don’t kill people, shooters kill people

It was dark, there were noises and then gunfire:

Friendly fire probably killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona near the Mexican border this week, the FBI said on Friday … a "tragic accident, the result of friendly fire."
— David Schwartz, “Probe points to friendly fire in Arizona Border Patrol death”, Reuters, 6 October 2012

In the dark, it seems as if an agent heard a noise, saw a shadow, and other agents thought they were being fired on by an assailant – and agents shoot to kill when under attack. Border Patrol agents are intensively trained in the use of guns, and they are experts.

More Republican constitutional bupkis

The US constitution seems very clear that taxes should be used to benefit the United States: pay the debts; provide for the common defence and the general welfare. But it’s never that clear: whose debts? which defence? what welfare?

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
— Article I (Section 8), US Constitution, 1787

Almost as soon as the constitution was confirmed there were arguments about debts from the war years, and what debts should be honoured. Taxes were used to pay for an invasion of Canada in the War of 1812, a war that was opposed by states near the Canada border who did not see it as part of any common defence. There was comparatively little discussion of the general welfare.

Blasphemy in veneration

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
— Susan B. Anthony, Bible Resolution speech, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 23-28 January 1896.

I was astounded to find a silly assertion that “the Constitution of the United States, the greatest political document ever written” was actually a religious tract, because “That sacred document shows us the path forward” (“We Believe in America”, Republican Platform 2012). It is perfectly acceptable to venerate those who were there at the founding of USA, and those helping frame the constitution, without turning them into saints.

The bad history boys

When Rick Santorum makes assertions based on a conservative political stance about the place of Christianity in US history, the relationship between the State and religion, and religious freedom, it is often bad history but history that needs more checking than cheap jibes at Barack Obama.  Was the USA always “a moral enterprise” as Santorum thinks?

The emergency room as the safety net

Commoners in need should obtain help and support at the caprice of those affluent enough to get a tax deduction for money given to legally-recognized charities, and the commoners should be thankful.
— What conservatives really mean by “charities should be responsible for providing health care to those who can’t afford it”.

US laws, those who lead, and those who wish to lead, often reinforce the widespread belief in other countries that US society is exceptional in multiple ways for being thoughtless and uncaring.

The government in Washington is not broken

I think Congressmen should wear uniforms like NASCAR drivers so we could identify their corporate sponsors
— a quote of the day

Previous and present legislative stalemates in Congress regarding the US debt limit and extension of revenues through taxation do not mean the US government is broken, it means the US government is working exactly as designed, exactly as socially engineered. The social engineers’ plan was made explicit in the Constitution of the United States of America, and, unfortunately, the design was always flawed – it is the US constitution that is broken.

Pleased with hurting others, inhuman

The 8th amendment to the US constitution seems fairly explicit, until we look at the words in more detail:

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

For example, what was “excessive” in the 1780s in monetary terms is minor now (a dollar then was worth far more than a dollar now), and thus what is excessive now has to seen in relative terms. What did the common people who voted for and against the amendments think the words meant?

A Republican’s moondoggle

Boondoggle: Work of little or no value done merely to look busy.
Moondoggle: Establishing a Moon colony – work of little or no value done merely to look busy (and appear inspirational).

When a government introduces financing into the economy, John Maynard Keynes terms it “loan expenditure” – for example, public unemployment benefit is partly financed out of government loans. Keynes noted that the reasoning behind types of loan expenditure often seem unclear:

It is curious how common sense, wriggling for an escape from absurd conclusions, has been apt to reach a preference for wholly “wasteful” forms of loan expenditure rather than for partly wasteful forms, which, because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict “business” principles.
— J M Keynes “Chapter 10. The Marginal Propensity to Consume and the Multiplier (VI)”, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 1936 [Keynes’s emphasis]

Free speech, free agents, and societal agencies

In 2010, in a case concerning political speech (Citizens United v Federal Election Commission) the US Supreme Court decided by a large majority of 8-1 that “disclaimer and disclosure requirements are valid” for political communications. Clarence Thomas dissented in this portion of the opinion – he worried

I cannot endorse a view of the  First Amendment that subjects citizens of this Nation to death threats, ruined careers, damaged or defaced property, or pre-emptive and threatening warning letters as the price for engaging  in “core political speech, the ‘primary object of First Amend­ment protection.’” [Thomas is quoting from other opinions.]