That’s out of the way now.

My question to pro-lifers is: what’s the end game? What exactly are you wanting to accomplish with the pro-life movement?

Do you want abortion doctors convicted of murder? That would seem like a logical conclusion. But, I don’t see that being pushed.

Do you want it simply made illegal? If so, then on what basis is it an illegal action? Because the basis for it’s illegality determines what type of punishment is going to be tied to it. Again, I don’t see that discussion.

Do you want the women who have abortions to be convicted? If so, convicted of what? Murder? I haven’t seen an answer to that.

Do you want it to be a constitutional amendment? Because if it’s not, then it’s a state issue. And you don’t seem to want that.

Questions like these don’t seem to be generating any answers because the abortion issue has been so thoroughly politicized that it has morphed into something new that’s hard to nail down. The morality questions haven’t changed, but the politics have cause the whole argument to lose it’s framing. In a way, when you strip a question like this down to only it’s moral components, you’re left with an end that has no means.

So what’s the answer? Depoliticizing the argument. Abortion can’t be fought as an “issue” any more. There’s only one way to eliminate abortion, and that’s in the heart of yourself and your children. It’s not laws that will keep my daughter out of the abortion room. It’s me. It’s what I teach her. It’s her moral vision. It will never be a law that will keep any woman out of that room. It will always be what’s inside them that will make the choice. Government doesn’t help. Like with everything else, it just muddies the water with empty rhetoric.

Congress hasn’t declared a war since 1941, but hundreds of thousands of war dead since then prove that laws are meaningless. Making something illegal doesn’t stop it. The thing that stops sin and crime is what’s inside a man’s heart, not what a group of people I’ve never met before write down on some paper.

I’m pro-life to my core, but I also see the futility of modern law. We can’t look to government for any kind of redress or to mete out justice of any kind. They aren’t in the justice business any more. I choose liberty instead. And I’ll fight my battle in the heart, not in the court room.

When Bastiat speaks of “the Law”, he is referring not to any one particular law, but to the system of codes, rules and regulations that we are to live by as imposed on us by a government. Government is force. And the rules it forces you to obey, taken as a whole, are “the Law.” This is the subject of the book.

His premise is simple, and he repeats it often: “The law is justice.” It’s not anything else. The appropriate use of law is the protection of life, property and liberty. Because these things preceded the law, the law will always be metaphysically subordinate to them. When the law steps outside of that narrow vision, it creates injustice, in violation of it’s nature. This is his argument in a nutshell. He starts this way:

We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life — physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

..

If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.

–Frederic Bastiat, The Law

He goes on to define property as that which is obtained by labor, and plunder as that which is taken by force from the labor of others. The main thrust being that if an individual can’t, by law, do a certain thing, then government (the will of many individuals) can’t do that thing either. In this context, taxation is “legal plunder”, war is legal murder, etc.

What does he say about the state of post-civil war America?

…look at the United States [in 1850]. There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its proper domain: the protection of every person’s liberty and property. As a consequence of this, there appears to be no country in the world where the social order rests on a firmer foundation. But even in the United States, there are two issues — and only two — that have always endangered the public peace.

What are these two issues? They are slavery and tariffs. These are the only two issues where, contrary to the general spirit of the republic of the United States, law has assumed the character of a plunderer.

Slavery is a violation, by law, of liberty. The protective tariff is a violation, by law, of property.

It is a most remarkable fact that this double legal crime — a sorrowful inheritance from the Old World — should be the only issue which can, and perhaps will, lead to the ruin of the Union. It is indeed impossible to imagine, at the very heart of a society, a more astounding fact than this: The law has come to be an instrument of injustice. And if this fact brings terrible consequences to the United States — where the proper purpose of the law has been perverted only in the instances of slavery and tariffs — what must be the consequences in Europe, where the perversion of the law is a principle; a system?

–Frederic Bastiat, The Law

Ron Paul was right. This is a truly great book. There are a million quotes I could paste in here. Too many. It will, at the very least, give you a better understanding of Ron Paul’s own philosophy of government.

Overall, I guess you could say that 1984 felt like two different books. The first half felt like simply a parabel of future society. But, the second half takes you deep into the evil that absolute power can produce in the mind of man. Whereas Ayn Rand’s Anthem was similar in it’s vision of where government would go in the future if it remained un-checked, 1984 was a much darker book. Anthem only gives you vague impressions of the people behind the curtain of government. 1984, in contrast, introduces you to them in their fullness.

Throughout the first two-thirds of the book, I kept running into phrases and whole sections that sounded like they perfectly described what we see in our own government today. It was, at times, uncanny. Here’s some that stood out to me about war:

“…in a physical sense war involves very small numbers of people, mostly highly-trained specialists, and causes comparatively few casualties. The fighting, when there is any, takes place on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at…”

–George Orwell, 1984

“The primary aim of modern warfare .. is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.”

–George Orwell, 1984

“The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed.”

–George Orwell, 1984

“War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war.”

–George Orwell, 1984

“It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.”

–George Orwell, 1984

“…In past ages, a war, almost by definition, was something that sooner or later came to an end, usually in unmistakable victory or defeat… But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded. As we have seen, researches that could be called scientific are still carried out for the purposes of war, but they are essentially a kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not important. Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer needed. Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police.”

–George Orwell, 1984

“The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair… The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word ‘war’, therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist.”

–George Orwell, 1984

To say that this book is highly recommended is an understatement. It is a must read. But, make sure you carve out some time, because once you start reading it, you probably won’t put it down until you’re finished.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WVtpao0KSM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGDisyWkIBM

I understand your concerns regarding Sections 1031 and 1032 of the FY 2012 NDAA. As we continue to combat terrorism around the world and fight extremists on the battlefields in Afghanistan, it is important to have a judicial system in place to bring these suspects to justice. However, allowing detainees suspected of supporting terrorist activities to be tried in civilian courts in the United States jeopardizes the security of the city in which the trials would be held and would award detainees the same rights as U.S. citizens, hindering the government’s ability to bring these enemy combatants to justice. To mitigate these concerns, the Guantanamo Military Commission was created to give fair and meaningful trials to unlawful enemy combatants housed at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

–Scott Brown, via @siracusa (emphasis mine)

What is he saying in plain language? He’s saying, “The bill of rights inhibits justice.” Obviously, this is ridiculous. The rights we have been “guaranteed” (as much as words on paper can guarantee anything) by the constitution are there specifically to ensure that justice is brought about. The withdrawal of those rights guarantees only that raw power will prevail. It has nothing to do with justice.

But, remember what we’re talking about here. The whole controversy is about detaining Americans, captured on American soil. So, when Scott Brown says that trying these folks in court would “award detainees the same rights as U.S. citizens,” he is evidently saying that once you are detained, you are no longer a citizen. This is actually fairly consistent with the trajectory of criminal justice as a whole over time. Convicted felons can’t own guns or vote. They are treated like non-citizens. Now, Scott Brown just takes the next logical step and includes suspects in the non-citizen category also. Why wait for a conviction to strip citizenship when you can go ahead and do it just for being detained?

What a load of crap.

Writing for Bloomberg View yesterday, Peter Orszag explained how in the private sector, “defined contribution” pensions have become the rule:

“The defined-contribution concept is already familiar to most American workers through their retirement benefits. Over the past two decades, company retirement programs have moved decisively away from defined-benefit plans, in which workers are paid a given amount of retirement income, and toward defined- contribution 401(k) plans, in which risks — from fluctuating financial markets, for example — are borne by workers.”

“In 1985, a total of 89 of the Fortune 100 companies offered their new hires a traditional defined-benefit pension plan, and just 10 of them offered only a defined-contribution plan. Today, only 13 of the Fortune 100 companies offer a traditional defined-benefit plan, and 70 offer only a defined-contribution plan.”

Orszag predicts that the same trend should be expected in the health-care market too. In fact, he claims that the adoption of the president’s health-care bill will accelerate this transition.

–Veronique de Rugy, NRO Corner

What is Peter Orszag saying here? He’s saying that a transition period is beginning where more and more of our health care costs are going to be paid by us directly, instead of our employers. This won’t come in the form of higher premiums. It will come in the form of higher co-pays and higher deductibles. This has already begun in the place where I work.

Every company I’ve worked for over my career has split my monthly health care premium costs with me 50/50 and every year the premium goes up about 8%-10%. This is a fairly standard way of doing it in the private sector corporate world. But, two years ago, we were notified that in order to avert an increase in premiums, we were raising the deductibles for certain procedures and raising the co-pay by $10 per visit. The same thing happened again this year. You see what’s happening right? The premium didn’t rise, but my out-of-pocket costs still rose. I’m paying a larger percentage of my health care costs now, even though my premium hasn’t risen in two years. This is what you can expect to happen over the course of the next decade or two. It’s unavoidable.

As health insurance companies shift more of the cost on to us, it’s going to hurt. But, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. Sure, some people will be hurt very badly by this. But, the net result will be a lowering of prices in the health care market as consumers have to pay more and more of the costs directly to the provider without going through the insurance company. It’s going to hurt doctors as well as consumers, since they will have to adjust to this new paradigm too.

But, as I said earlier, it’s unavoidable, and necessary. Prices simply have to come down or consumers won’t be able to pay. In case you haven’t noticed, being charged $100′s of dollars just to talk to a doctor for 5 minutes and have him write you a Zithromax prescription isn’t exactly sustainable market pricing. And the fact that the total(employee + employer) premium for my family coverage health insurance is now more than my monthly mortgage payment further indicates a massive correction coming at some point.

The first premise of my argument is:

What I’m basically saying is that the most readily accessible information about war is predominantly some form of propaganda. And, by propaganda, I don’t mean some sort of tin foil hat kind of thing. I just mean that the narrative of the information we read and watch is guided in a certain direction so that a particular impression is given. This does not mean that there is a secret person, or group of people within government that exert this control over the narrative. Instead, there are groups of people at every level of government, business and media that benefit from misinformation about war. And, because of this, they are all coincidentally on the same page.

I think, that war information is propaganda, is obvious if we consider these facts about such information(news):

1. Fear causes people to be less interested in the veridicality of news and information they receive about war.
2. Self-interest at every level of government produces an organic filtering of news as it travels through the bureaucracy.
3. Civilians naturally flee active and potential war zones, leaving only the military and embedded journalists behind.
4. Battlefields, thus being controlled by militaries and absent of competing news interests will inherently provide only curated news.

These seem fairly obvious to me, and provide a context that we can use to judge history as we look at a few examples.

There are four phases of war propaganda that we can look at:

1. The Leadup to War
2. The Ground War
3. The Actors Involved
4. Post-war Justification

I’ll cover the first two here, and go over the next two in the next post of this series.

1. The Leadup to War (Justifying initiation of hostilities)

“The deception of whole peoples is not a matter which can be lightly regarded. A useful purpose can therefore be served in the interval of so-called peace by a warning which people can examine with dispassionate calm, that the authorities in each country do, and indeed must, resort to this practice in order, first, to justify themselves by depicting the enemy as an undiluted criminal;”

–Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in War-time: Propaganda Lies of the First World War

Proper justification for the initiation of a war is absolutely critical for gaining the popular support necessary in a democratic system. Therefore, the lead-up to war is where the narrative is the most controlled. There are many examples of this, and whole books have been written on the topic. So, for the sake of brevity, I’ll share three examples that I feel are the most easily explainable: the sinking of the Lusitania, the Gulf of Tonkin and the killing of babies in Kuwait. These three events cover a large time period and show that lead-up propaganda is nothing new and hasn’t really changed much.

• The Sinking of the Lusitania

  The latest studies of the Lusitania wreckage confirm that the ship was indeed carrying munitions. The Germans were right. Wilson had been warned by the Germans in advance that they considered the Lusitania to be a valid target since it was carrying war supplies and munitions to and from England. Wilson, instead, did not warn Americans sailing on the ship about the threat, and publicly denounced the German action in a series of three “notes.” The sinking of the Lusitania was widely used in war posters and recruiting propaganda to whip up sentiment for America joining the war.

  Churchill, for his part, in a confidential memo said, “It is most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hope especially of embroiling the U.S. with Germany. For our part we want the traffic – the more the better and if some of it gets into trouble, better still.”

• The Gulf of Tonkin Incident

  It’s widely known now, due to the recent de-classifying of material, that Lyndon Johnson lied about the gulf of Tonkin incident that justified, in American eyes, the full scale invasion of Vietnam by U.S. forces. The declassified NSA report that describes the lie says, “It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night. [...] In truth, Hanoi’s navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2.” Robert Mcnamara corroborated this in the documentary The Fog of War.

• Killing of babies in Kuwait

  Like the Gulf of Tonkin event, it is now known that the George H.W. Bush administration lied about the killing of babies by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the lead-up to the first gulf war. It was widely reported, and repeated by Bush himself, that Iraqi Republican Guard troops, during the invasion, had gone into a Kuwaiti hospital, removed babies from incubators and left them to die. The eye witness(known at the time simply as Nayirah) that testified to the event was later found to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, and her story was coached by P.R. firm Hill & Knowlton. The story was false, but it was used readily by the Bush administration to justify the first gulf war. George W. Bush would later use a similar tactic (claiming Saddam was pursuing material for nuclear weapons) to justify the second gulf war.

2. The Ground War (Controlling the narrative)

As long as the lead-up propaganda was properly executed, the narrative of the ground war is fairly easy to control. Once the justification is made to actually start a war, many things will be forgiven in the mind of the public that might be inexcusable in another context. Let’s again look at three events from twentieth century wars.

• The Katyn Forest Massacre

  In 1938, Russia killed 22,000 polish intelligentsia and buried them in mass graves in Katyn Forest. Stalin blamed the Germans for the atrocity after the Nazi government discovered the mass graves at a later date. The massacre was used widely in Europe during the war to reinforce the view of Germany as evil. Of course, German officials would indeed turn out to commit atrocities, but the Katyn Forest massacre was propagandized in a way that covered up war crimes by an ally(Russia) and blamed it on the enemy(Germany). It’s also clear from now-public dispatches between Churchill and F.D.R. that they knew with fair certainty that Stalin was to blame for Katyn, but kept the matter quiet.

• Vietnam Body Count

  This is not an event, but rather an interesting observation that, even to this day, there is almost no awareness of the true death toll in a major U.S. war. Very few average citizens know how many Vietnamese were killed during that decade of active war(nearly two decades of U.S. involvement). The total number of deaths due directly to the war is over 1.2 million. But, the only numbers most Americans are aware of are U.S. troop casualty numbers. This protocol of not reporting on enemy death counts is still in place today, and for good reason. The numbers are shocking.

• Iraqi Body Count

  Again, like Vietnam, the lack of knowledge is what’s so fascinating. The best count we can get on the number of dead as a result of the Iraq war is from the government itself. The number of war dead, according to leaked documents, is placed at well over 100,000, with over 60% of those being civilians. This is a number that virtually no American citizen on the street is aware of because it’s never given to them in a mainstream news broadcast.

  Controlling the ground war narrative in this way is very easy. Since active war zones are under military control, it’s a simple matter to keep journalists out of those areas. And, the reporters who are “embedded” with various troop units have very little incentive to report information that would reflect negatively on military operations, since that would get them sent home.

I’ll examine the propaganda surrounding the personalities of war and the post-war justification period in the next post of this series. These take a long time to research, so it might be slow in coming. I have to get the facts straight however, so I’m taking my time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXCZVmQ74OA

According to Lawrence Stone, “the greatest triumph of the Tudors was the ultimately successful assertion of a royal monopoly of violence both public and private, an achievement which profoundly altered not only the nature of politics, but also the quality of daily life.” It was under Henry VIII that the word state first acquired its modern sense of body politic or supreme civil power; state had already been in use for a hundred and fifty years, but only as a synonym for estate.

–Bruce Porter, War and the Rise of the State

It’s this “monopoly of [public and private] violence” that literally defines the state at it’s most fundamental level. Without a general consent (reluctant or willing) to this monopoly by the public at large, the state would never get off the starting blocks. It requires violence to survive. I’m amazed that this doesn’t give us pause. Shouldn’t any institution that is defined by a self-determined right to inflict harm on others give us serious reason to stop and evaluate it’s legitimacy?