The Reason For Reason

Here’s a description which makes the book (Signature In The Cell) sound like it is science fiction.

The universe is comprised of matter, energy, and the information that gives order to matter and energy, thereby bringing life into being. In the cell, information is carried by DNA, which functions like a software program. The signature in the cell is that of the master programmer of life. http://www.signatureinthecell.com/about-the-book.php

The trick in this case is to set up “information” as a constituent of the universe comparable to “matter and energy”, then pretend that the universe is like a computer … where the hardware needs the software to make it work. That creates a need for the “MASTER PROGRAMMER“, viz., “GOD“.

Tom Sowell wrote this passage (from Dismantling America) where the principle applies to the rhetorical fog generated by, for example, Rabbi Moshe Averick and Stehpen C. Meyer, too.

Separating words from realities is one of the most important steps toward evaluating government policies … any serious attempt to see government policies for what they are means keeping our eyes fixed on facts, despite the distractions of rhetoric…. seek to penetrate the fog of rhetoric.

Just as political rhetoric is designed to hide political-economic reality, so the idea behind the fog of religious rhetoric about “Intelligent Design” is to hide basic facts of physical reality.

So here, we need to penetrate the fog of “ID” (aka “Creation, by God!”).

Any serious attempt to see so-called “scientific theories of ID” for what they are means keeping our eyes fixed on facts, despite the distractions of rhetoric.

The more they get into it, the more we need to question just why the Republican Party is so obsessed with getting Obama re-elected. The field of Republican presidential candidates doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

The Republicans are almost making Obama look good. Of course, it is impossible for Obama to actually look good — since he is so incredibly bad — but the Republican Party seems to have no plan other than to try to make Obama look good by comparison.

The government basically has one job to do: protect individual rights by outlawing the initiation of physical force against citizens (by other citizens, other countries, bureaucrats, etc.) In that context of peaceable interaction, individuals must be free of government coercion, free to make their own choices about what they want to do with their lives (even if their choices are to waste their lives, indulge in doing stupid stuff that’s no good for them, etc.).

Note that this does NOT mean that each individual’s choices for action are tailored to suit that actor’s best interests. Maybe, maybe not. In any case, it is none of the government’s business.

But the notion that if you take the citizens of a country collectively, then somehow “the aggregate of their collective decisions will always result in a set of decisions that is better tailored to everyone,” is fantastic (that is, nonsensical). That kind of thing just doesn’t happen in real life. There is absolutely no way in the world to know that any particular “aggregate, collective set of decisions” in the economy is better or worse for “everyone.” The idea of trying to figure that out is mind-boggling.

What we can know is that it doesn’t make any political difference whether people make better or worse choices for themselves, as long as they are free to peaceably make their own decisions and live with them.

The practical effect of McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008 made it seem for all the world as if McCain were on the payroll of Obama’s election team. To put it mildly, McCain egregiously refused to call a spade a spade when he had the chance to call Obama on Obama’s horrible history and ideology of anti-Americanism.

And now for the 2012 election, it looks as if the Republicans want to help Obama again — by running Romney as a supporter of Obamacare (as well as of increasing federal taxing and spending). So how can the Republicans hope to convince people to switch Presidents when we already have one who is also for all that?

The “OWS” gangs, like the TEA Party groups, have people in them. However, the “OWS” people want the opposite of what the TEA people want. The TEA Party wants the government to respect and protect individual rights, while the “OWS” crowd wants the government to violate individual rights. Quite a difference.

At The Objective Standard, Craig Biddle wrote: “In order to live as a human being, a person must be able to act on his own judgment; the only thing that can stop him from doing so is other people; and the only way they can stop him is by means of physical force.”

But I don’t think this is true. To see this vividly, suppose you are alone on an island. What can stop you from acting on your judgment? Certainly, no other person can. If you decide that you should go fishing or pick some berries or build a shelter, you are free to do so. But suppose a storm blows up to the island, lightning strikes a huge tree, and it falls on you, pinning you down.. Clearly, you are now unable to act on your judgment as you were previously able to. If you had planned to go fishing, you can’t go. If you had planned to build a shelter, you can’t build it. Whatever your plans were, they are now ruined, and, if you are not freed from being pinned down, you will soon die.

Craig gave an example of another person coming to the island and making you a prisoner by tying you to a tree. So now we have two separate cases of some physical force stopping you from being able to act on your judgment. Why is the second a violation of your rights, while the first isn’t? The crucial distinction is: the metaphysical vs the man-made.

There is no volition involved in the physical processes of storms, lightning, and the like. There is volition involved in the initiation of physical force by one (or more) person(s) against another person. In the case of the storm, what happened was unfortunate. In the case of being tied to the tree, what the other person did was immoral.

As an exercise, I think a little editing would do the trick:

The moral principle is: If we are to live and prosper, we must always act on our rational judgment—our basic means of living. And this brings us to the big question: What — aside from the bad choices of avoiding rationality (e.g., drunk driving) or the bad luck of not avoiding overwhelming natural forces (e.g., getting buried in an avalanche) — can stop us from acting on our judgment?

Looking at reality, Rand observed that what can stop a person from acting on his judgment is other people; and the only way they can stop him is by means of physical force. To see this vividly, . . .

In order to live as a human being, a person must be able to act on his own rational judgment; in the context of social living, the only thing that can stop him from doing so is the initiation of physical force by other people against him.

At Powerline, Steven Hayward, quotes Hayek:

All modern governments have made provision for the indigent, unfortunate, and disabled and have concerned themselves with questions of health and the dissemination of knowledge.

This is probably true, and to that extent all modern governments are making the same mistake in failing to properly protect individual rights. A reasonable government would not make “provision for the indigent, unfortunate, and disabled” nor would it impose controls over “question of health and the dissemination of knowledge.”

To think about why this is the case, consider the connection between these two statements:

1. It is okay to help people.

2. It is not okay to rob people.

The point I want to make is that Hayek would have been right to have come to the conclusion that “There is a big reason why the government should not play any role, nor ever take the initiative, in such areas as social insurance and education, nor temporarily subsidize certain experimental developments. Our problem here is not so much the aims, as such, as that the methods of government action are impossible to rationally apply to them.”

The link Hayek quote at the top continued:

There is no reason why the volume of these pure service activities should not increase with the general growth of wealth.

But there IS a reason why no government should ever provide any such “pure service activities” at any time or place, and regardless of the amount of wealth involved. The reason is that a proper government must by rights treat all people equally before the law.

There cannot rightfully be different laws for black people as compared to white people, rich people as compared to poor people, or friends of Obama compared to non-friends, etc. And to protect our rights, the government must act according to laws (instead of to the whims of politicians and/or voters).

There are common needs that can be satisfied only by collective action and which can be thus provided for without restricting individual liberty.

Any “collective action,” that is, any instance of people working together in groups, in which the participation is not voluntary on everyone’s part is necessarily “restricting individual liberty” (i.e., positioning some as masters and some as slaves) — and thus should not be legal.

For instance, it would be quite legitimate for 10 people to get together to share their money to help feed some hungry friends (or strangers). But it should be illegal for those ten to gang up on some other people to coercively take their money to use to feed those friends (or strangers).

It can hardly be denied that, as we grow richer, that minimum of sustenance which the community has always provided for those not able to look after themselves, and which can be provided outside the market, will gradually rise,…

Well, up to there he has a point. But the quote mistakenly goes on:

… or that government may, usefully and without doing any harm, assist or even lead in such endeavors.

History clearly shows that, to the contrary, the welfare state (or socialism of any variety) always does harm instead of providing useful assistance or leadership. Where has there ever been any exception? And, given the theory, how could there ever be any? Turning charity into looting is simply a bad idea.

We need as much gridlock as we can get in Washington — at least until we can roll back all the regulations and spending increases of the last forty years (as a start).

VDH has some interesting comments on the fact that “many people are now ‘sick and tired’ of the Obama administration’s efforts to silence critics.“

There was a news bit about a guy named Doug Edwards asking Obama to raise taxes, please.

The irrationality of that request is gruesome to behold.  Can a person making such a request be both awake and honest at the same time?  (One theory might be that Edwards wants some money, but that private investors aren’t interested — so he figures if the government takes it from them, then he can get his government friends to give it to him.)

Anyway, I came up with this nice gritty analogy:

It’s like you had some nice wavy hair and you liked to get it slightly trimmed every week to keep it looking good.  But then your old barber retires and Obama becomes your new barber.  You pay him the $100 for your weekly haircut, and he rushes to shave your head.  You say, “Hey, that’s not what I wanted!”  Obama replies, “Well, your last barber left such a mess that this was the best I could do.  But, just pay me $1000 more and I’ll put all the hair back to make it look like it should.  Pay me right now!”

There is a Presidential election coming up.  There are several Republicans vying for the nomination to run against an incumbent Democrat.  The Republicans are mostly spending their time knocking Republicans, rather than explaining why a Republican should replace Obama.  I suspect this is because they are afraid trying to contrast themselves to Obama because that would make it easier for the voters to see that they are not really offering anything much better than Obama.

Of course there is the alternative explanation that they are all so convinced that Obama will lose against anybody that they feel he is irrelevant.

That just leaves the voters with the problem that there may be nobody any good to vote for.  (Sort of like the last Presidential election, and look where that got us!)