He has fecal matter in his cranium.

Somewhere, at the rainbow's end, America would return to her founding principles. The Federal Government would be shrunk, laws would be few, taxes minimal. That was what I thought. Hoped, anyway.

Huh? What is it with these idealistic fools now-a-days? Don't they know that government NEVER shrinks. It has to be CUT back.

I avidly read conservative and free-market literature during those years with the sense that I was, as a sort of late convert, catching up with the conservative movement. I took it for granted that other conservatives had already read the same books and had taken them to heart. Surely we all wanted the same things! At bottom, the knowledge that there were rational limits to politics. Good old Aristotle. At the time, it seemed a short hop from Aristotle to Barry Goldwater.

You're "Conservative". You're "Right". Fascism is also "Right".

Raise your eyes and you'll see.

I found my niche in conservative journalism as a critic of liberal distortions of the US Constitution, particularly in the Supreme Court's rulings on abortion, pornography, and "freedom of expression."

Huh? How does this match with the "laws would be few" statement earlier?

He seems to be saying that he was critical of the FREEDOM to have an abortion or to make/have porn and so forth.

Which would mean that he wanted MORE LAWS to restrict these things.

Nearly everything liberals wanted the Federal Government to do was unconstitutional. The key to it all, I thought, was the Tenth Amendment, which forbids the Federal Government to exercise any powers not specifically assigned to it in the Constitution.

Wouldn't that mean that the Federal Government could NOT pass laws against abortion or pornography or "freedom of expression"?

Instead of fighting liberal programs piecemeal, conservatives could undermine the whole lot of them by reviving the true (and, really, obvious) meaning of the Constitution. Liberalism depended on a long series of usurpations of power.

Indeed. That would certainly shut down the Federal Center for Pornography.

Wait, there isn't one.

So, telling the government that it can't do anything that isn't specified in the Constitution will stop pornography?

cookoo cookoo

That alone would invalidate the Federal welfare state and, in fact, nearly all liberal legislation.

Again, that "liberal legislation" is MOSTLY comprised of laws saying it is LEGAL to do something.

If the government can't say whether it is legal or not, then the government can't say that it is not legal.

Bork himself took the view that the Tenth Amendment was unenforceable. If he was right, then the whole Constitution was in vain from the start.

If that is the 10th amendment, why would it being invalid invalidate everything that came before it?

In a way I had transferred my patriotism from America as it then was to America as it had been when it still honored the Constitution.

That would be legal ownership of slaves and women would not have the right to vote. Right?

At first I thought the great corruption had occurred when Franklin Roosevelt subverted the Federal judiciary; later I came to see that the decisive event had been the Civil War, which had effectively destroyed the right of the states to secede from the Union

Yep, right.

I've written more than enough about my career at the magazine, so I'll confine myself to saying that it was only toward the end of more than two happy decades there that I began to realize that we didn't all want the same things after all.

Wow, only 20 years. That's quite a speedy advance for the average "conservative".

To put it in simple terms, everyone at that magazine can't decide where they all should eat each day or which sports team should win or whether cats are better pets than dogs.

But you expected "everyone" to agree with you on a topic such as the philosophical basis/goals of government?

Talk about your sheltered upbringing.

Not that I was betrayed. I was merely blind. I have no one to blame but myself. The Buckley crowd, and the conservative movement in general, no more tried to deceive me than I tried to deceive them. We all assumed we were on the same side, when we weren't. If there is any fault for this misunderstanding, it is my own.

You all opposed the same "enemy". Those damn "liberals".

That was the focus of your efforts. To criticize the work of the "liberals" and to seek ways to undo those works.

When it came time to actually build something yourself, you found that everyone who was on "your side" was only there because your hated the same thing, not because you had the same vision of the future.

Murray's view of politics was shockingly blunt: the state was nothing but a criminal gang writ large. Much as I agreed with him in general, and fascinating though I found his arguments, I resisted this conclusion. I still wanted to believe in constitutional government.

Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not.

When it is not, is still possesses the potential to become a criminal gang.

Freedom is not free.

Murray and I shared a love of gangster films, and he once argued to me that the Mafia was preferable to the state, because it survived by providing services people actually wanted.

Death by electrocution is better than death by hanging because you get nasty rope burns when you hang.

Once its monopoly of force was granted legitimacy, constitutional limits became mere fictions it could disregard; nobody could have the legal standing to enforce those limits.

The right to keep and bear arms.

Freedom is not free.

The state itself would decide, by force, what the constitution "meant," steadily ruling in its own favor and increasing its own power. This was true a priori, and American history bore it out.

Yep. And we've witnessed an even more rapid progression of that lately.

Yet there are some people, even here, who argue that such is not happening.

And he made it stick by force of arms.

Political power flows from the barrel of a gun.

Freedom is not free.

Once granted, state power naturally becomes absolute.

Negative. The tendency is there. And with our system, it can EASILY be reversed. All we have to do is VOTE.

On the other hand, it can EASILY be started again. By voting for people who would do so.

Notionally, "We the People" create a government and specify the powers it is allowed to exercise over us; our rulers swear before God that they will respect the limits we impose on them; but when they trample down those limits, our duty to obey them remains.

Even in the army, we were told that we were OBLIGATED to REFUSE illegal orders.

Freedom is not free.

My fellow Christians have argued that the state's authority is divinely given. They cite Christ's injunction "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" and St. Paul's words "The powers that be are ordained of God."

He was speaking of taxes. Pay your taxes.

At first sight, St. Paul seems to be more positive in affirming the authority of the state. But he himself, like the other martyrs, died for defying the state, and we honor him for it; to which we may add that he was on one occasion a jailbreaker as well.

And many normal, average, church-going Germans joined the army and fought and DIED to keep the Allies from conquering them.

If you oppose one state, that does not mean you oppose all states or even all temporal rules.

He may have meant that the state and slavery were here for the foreseeable future, and that Christians must abide them for the sake of peace. Never does he say that either is here forever.

Cool. The guy who is arguing about not "interpreting" the Constitution is now "interpreting" what is in the Bible.

It's "bad" when other people do it and the results aren't what I like.

It's "good" when I do it to achieve the results I want.

"But what would you replace the state with?" The question reveals an inability to imagine human society without the state. Yet it would seem that an institution that can take 200,000,000 lives within a century hardly needs to be "replaced."

Which presumes that there would be LESS loss of life if there wasn't a state.

Since the conversion of Rome, most Western rulers have been more or less inhibited by Christian morality (though, often enough, not so's you'd notice), and even warfare became somewhat civilized for centuries; and this has bred the assumption that the state isn't necessarily an evil at all.

What history have YOU been reading? "Christian morality"? Like only kill people you don't like? That seems to be the "morality" of most of the rulers of the past 1500 years.

Dude, check into the history of the Popes. Raise your eyes.

But, as St. Paul says, there comes a time to put away childish things.

Check the Crusades, the witch hunts, the Pope's actions during WWII, the Church's stand on slavery and so forth.

You are NOT an anarchist.

You are a wannabe theocrat.

You're already "interpreting" the Bible to fit YOUR viewpoint.

This is one of those "freedom is slavery" things, I hope it doesn't make too much sense.

OK, bad metaphor, slavery is, in fact, one of the freedoms lost to liberalism.

Another thing that sort of makes sense is that section about the right to secced. The civil war did fundimentaly change the relationship between the Fed and the States. And it doesn't take a nut to be of the opinion that those changes are contrary to the intent of the Founders in writing the Constitution. The Republicans (bit of irony there) were out to turn a federation of at least theoreticaly independant States (and at the time, that meant what we call "countries" now) into a single Republic. A rather blatant piece of unconstitutional nation-building, which the Federalists rightly opposed.

But I'm glad the Federalists failed, for a couple of reasons.

One is that as a Wisconsonian, I probably would have been drafted to invade Illinois over the air pollution that drifts from Chicago to Milwaukee by way of Lake Michigan. Wouldn't have taken an occupation or regime change, just removing Chicago and convincing them not to rebuild it in that spot. A cow did it once, we have lots of cows. Hmm, Mrs. O'Leary's Cow as a WMD...

The other is that very oppression that our author is talking about. In a strict reading of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights is basicaly meaningless. The liberties it describes would only restrict the Feds, leaving the States to do whatever they wanted to their citizens and residents, as long as it didn't interfere in interstate commerce. So the USA couldn't tell you you have to worship KThulu, but your home State could tell you "convert or die". Your home State would be free to demolish unathorized churches, and prevent you from complaining abut it. But your State would have to allow heathens from other States to engage in commerce.

Yep, the Civil War, by force and not law, allows the Fed to walk all over the rights of the States, and impose civil liberties on States that consider them inconvenient or even immoral.

And as one of those evil Liberals, I actually think that's a good thing. I wish it had been accomplished in a more civilized manner, and I see that it goes too far on a regular basis. But all in all, I prefer being an American to being a Wisconsonian, or Saint's preserve us, an Illinoisan.

(Yes, I'm aware that the story of the Chicago Fire being started by Mrs. O'Leary's Cow is now considered questionable at best, but still...)

Post #77,018 by Brandioch 1/26/03 1:31:49 AM Reply	He has fecal matter in his cranium. Somewhere, at the rainbow's end, America would return to her founding principles. The Federal Government would be shrunk, laws would be few, taxes minimal. That was what I thought. Hoped, anyway. Huh? What is it with these idealistic fools now-a-days? Don't they know that government NEVER shrinks. It has to be CUT back. I avidly read conservative and free-market literature during those years with the sense that I was, as a sort of late convert, catching up with the conservative movement. I took it for granted that other conservatives had already read the same books and had taken them to heart. Surely we all wanted the same things! At bottom, the knowledge that there were rational limits to politics. Good old Aristotle. At the time, it seemed a short hop from Aristotle to Barry Goldwater. You're "Conservative". You're "Right". Fascism is also "Right". Raise your eyes and you'll see. I found my niche in conservative journalism as a critic of liberal distortions of the US Constitution, particularly in the Supreme Court's rulings on abortion, pornography, and "freedom of expression." Huh? How does this match with the "laws would be few" statement earlier? He seems to be saying that he was critical of the FREEDOM to have an abortion or to make/have porn and so forth. Which would mean that he wanted MORE LAWS to restrict these things. Nearly everything liberals wanted the Federal Government to do was unconstitutional. The key to it all, I thought, was the Tenth Amendment, which forbids the Federal Government to exercise any powers not specifically assigned to it in the Constitution. Wouldn't that mean that the Federal Government could NOT pass laws against abortion or pornography or "freedom of expression"? Instead of fighting liberal programs piecemeal, conservatives could undermine the whole lot of them by reviving the true (and, really, obvious) meaning of the Constitution. Liberalism depended on a long series of usurpations of power. Indeed. That would certainly shut down the Federal Center for Pornography. Wait, there isn't one. So, telling the government that it can't do anything that isn't specified in the Constitution will stop pornography? cookoo cookoo That alone would invalidate the Federal welfare state and, in fact, nearly all liberal legislation. Again, that "liberal legislation" is MOSTLY comprised of laws saying it is LEGAL to do something. If the government can't say whether it is legal or not, then the government can't say that it is not legal. Bork himself took the view that the Tenth Amendment was unenforceable. If he was right, then the whole Constitution was in vain from the start. If that is the 10th amendment, why would it being invalid invalidate everything that came before it? In a way I had transferred my patriotism from America as it then was to America as it had been when it still honored the Constitution. That would be legal ownership of slaves and women would not have the right to vote. Right? At first I thought the great corruption had occurred when Franklin Roosevelt subverted the Federal judiciary; later I came to see that the decisive event had been the Civil War, which had effectively destroyed the right of the states to secede from the Union Yep, right. I've written more than enough about my career at the magazine, so I'll confine myself to saying that it was only toward the end of more than two happy decades there that I began to realize that we didn't all want the same things after all. Wow, only 20 years. That's quite a speedy advance for the average "conservative". To put it in simple terms, everyone at that magazine can't decide where they all should eat each day or which sports team should win or whether cats are better pets than dogs. But you expected "everyone" to agree with you on a topic such as the philosophical basis/goals of government? Talk about your sheltered upbringing. Not that I was betrayed. I was merely blind. I have no one to blame but myself. The Buckley crowd, and the conservative movement in general, no more tried to deceive me than I tried to deceive them. We all assumed we were on the same side, when we weren't. If there is any fault for this misunderstanding, it is my own. You all opposed the same "enemy". Those damn "liberals". That was the focus of your efforts. To criticize the work of the "liberals" and to seek ways to undo those works. When it came time to actually build something yourself, you found that everyone who was on "your side" was only there because your hated the same thing, not because you had the same vision of the future. Murray's view of politics was shockingly blunt: the state was nothing but a criminal gang writ large. Much as I agreed with him in general, and fascinating though I found his arguments, I resisted this conclusion. I still wanted to believe in constitutional government. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. When it is not, is still possesses the potential to become a criminal gang. Freedom is not free. Murray and I shared a love of gangster films, and he once argued to me that the Mafia was preferable to the state, because it survived by providing services people actually wanted. Death by electrocution is better than death by hanging because you get nasty rope burns when you hang. Once its monopoly of force was granted legitimacy, constitutional limits became mere fictions it could disregard; nobody could have the legal standing to enforce those limits. The right to keep and bear arms. Freedom is not free. The state itself would decide, by force, what the constitution "meant," steadily ruling in its own favor and increasing its own power. This was true a priori, and American history bore it out. Yep. And we've witnessed an even more rapid progression of that lately. Yet there are some people, even here, who argue that such is not happening. And he made it stick by force of arms. Political power flows from the barrel of a gun. Freedom is not free. Once granted, state power naturally becomes absolute. Negative. The tendency is there. And with our system, it can EASILY be reversed. All we have to do is VOTE. On the other hand, it can EASILY be started again. By voting for people who would do so. Notionally, "We the People" create a government and specify the powers it is allowed to exercise over us; our rulers swear before God that they will respect the limits we impose on them; but when they trample down those limits, our duty to obey them remains. Even in the army, we were told that we were OBLIGATED to REFUSE illegal orders. Freedom is not free. My fellow Christians have argued that the state's authority is divinely given. They cite Christ's injunction "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" and St. Paul's words "The powers that be are ordained of God." He was speaking of taxes. Pay your taxes. At first sight, St. Paul seems to be more positive in affirming the authority of the state. But he himself, like the other martyrs, died for defying the state, and we honor him for it; to which we may add that he was on one occasion a jailbreaker as well. And many normal, average, church-going Germans joined the army and fought and DIED to keep the Allies from conquering them. If you oppose one state, that does not mean you oppose all states or even all temporal rules. He may have meant that the state and slavery were here for the foreseeable future, and that Christians must abide them for the sake of peace. Never does he say that either is here forever. Cool. The guy who is arguing about not "interpreting" the Constitution is now "interpreting" what is in the Bible. It's "bad" when other people do it and the results aren't what I like. It's "good" when I do it to achieve the results I want. "But what would you replace the state with?" The question reveals an inability to imagine human society without the state. Yet it would seem that an institution that can take 200,000,000 lives within a century hardly needs to be "replaced." Which presumes that there would be LESS loss of life if there wasn't a state. Since the conversion of Rome, most Western rulers have been more or less inhibited by Christian morality (though, often enough, not so's you'd notice), and even warfare became somewhat civilized for centuries; and this has bred the assumption that the state isn't necessarily an evil at all. What history have YOU been reading? "Christian morality"? Like only kill people you don't like? That seems to be the "morality" of most of the rulers of the past 1500 years. Dude, check into the history of the Popes. Raise your eyes. But, as St. Paul says, there comes a time to put away childish things. Check the Crusades, the witch hunts, the Pope's actions during WWII, the Church's stand on slavery and so forth. You are NOT an anarchist. You are a wannabe theocrat. You're already "interpreting" the Bible to fit YOUR viewpoint.
Post #77,108 by mhuber 1/26/03 9:18:52 PM Reply	abortion, pornography, etc. What the Right is upset about is that the Feds are preventing the States from banning things. They aren't about what we consider rights, namely individual rights, they are about collective rights - the right to pass whatever laws you want. That's also how they reconcile themselves to the unfreedom of the War on Whatever Annoys Bush Today: they are defending the collective right to foreign policy. I had a saying back in the day: "An Anti is no better than any other kind of Communist." ---- Whatever
Post #77,112 by Brandioch 1/26/03 9:49:34 PM Reply	Okay. I see. What the Right is upset about is that the Feds are preventing the States from banning things. Okay. I understand now. Thanks.
Post #77,129 by mhuber 1/26/03 11:30:40 PM Reply	I hope not too clearly This is one of those "freedom is slavery" things, I hope it doesn't make too much sense. OK, bad metaphor, slavery is, in fact, one of the freedoms lost to liberalism. Another thing that sort of makes sense is that section about the right to secced. The civil war did fundimentaly change the relationship between the Fed and the States. And it doesn't take a nut to be of the opinion that those changes are contrary to the intent of the Founders in writing the Constitution. The Republicans (bit of irony there) were out to turn a federation of at least theoreticaly independant States (and at the time, that meant what we call "countries" now) into a single Republic. A rather blatant piece of unconstitutional nation-building, which the Federalists rightly opposed. But I'm glad the Federalists failed, for a couple of reasons. One is that as a Wisconsonian, I probably would have been drafted to invade Illinois over the air pollution that drifts from Chicago to Milwaukee by way of Lake Michigan. Wouldn't have taken an occupation or regime change, just removing Chicago and convincing them not to rebuild it in that spot. A cow did it once, we have lots of cows. Hmm, Mrs. O'Leary's Cow as a WMD... The other is that very oppression that our author is talking about. In a strict reading of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights is basicaly meaningless. The liberties it describes would only restrict the Feds, leaving the States to do whatever they wanted to their citizens and residents, as long as it didn't interfere in interstate commerce. So the USA couldn't tell you you have to worship KThulu, but your home State could tell you "convert or die". Your home State would be free to demolish unathorized churches, and prevent you from complaining abut it. But your State would have to allow heathens from other States to engage in commerce. Yep, the Civil War, by force and not law, allows the Fed to walk all over the rights of the States, and impose civil liberties on States that consider them inconvenient or even immoral. And as one of those evil Liberals, I actually think that's a good thing. I wish it had been accomplished in a more civilized manner, and I see that it goes too far on a regular basis. But all in all, I prefer being an American to being a Wisconsonian, or Saint's preserve us, an Illinoisan. (Yes, I'm aware that the story of the Chicago Fire being started by Mrs. O'Leary's Cow is now considered questionable at best, but still...) ---- Whatever
Post #77,318 by Ashton 1/27/03 6:16:25 PM Reply	Damn, Mike.. Local paper ought to hire you for Op Ed column(s). Apparently your writing abilities are not confined to manuals for The Idiot's Guide to the Turboencabulator in Industry. Seriously (!) - the level of newspaper calyumnists is, as we see - deplorable. They need to galvanize circulation, and many of the youger applicants for that job - suffer from a too recent experience of our edufuscation establishment, and from terminal regionalism. You could write subtly enough to include a bit larger scale to many of the potboiler idiocies du jour, eschewing the rote straw women. Screw the 'journalism degree' -- your work stands on its own. (Nobody ever asked Studs terkel for a resum\ufffd - 'cept maybe a HR drone :( Send in a few samples? Just a ~~thot~~thought.. Ashton
Post #77,528 by drewk 1/28/03 9:48:07 AM Reply	What, Ashton, no brevity award? For this: Yep, the Civil War, by force and not law, allows the Fed to walk all over the rights of the States, and impose civil liberties on States that consider them inconvenient or even immoral. === Microsoft offers them the one thing most business people will pay any price for - the ability to say "we had no choice - everyone's doing it that way." -- [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=38978\|Andrew Grygus]
Post #77,671 by Ashton 1/28/03 9:52:23 PM Reply	Er.. LRPD material there! Mike's already earned several BAs - all I could add might be the Thin Mint Cluster for suh-weet :-\ufffd

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