What's Best For Kids

Had he (a parent) sought out and hired a teacher for his child, that teacher might well say: Having chosen me for this work, you will either have to trust that I know better than you how to accomplish it, or go and find some other teacher for your child. But an agent of government can not afford to commend the competition.

That quote is from one Richard Mitchell, the self styled Underground Grammarian from years past and someone from whom I learned more about teaching and government authority (I'm willing to argue abuse of authority) than any professor of Education whilst earning my teaching certificate. I can't truthfully call it a degree because that implies the aforementioned professors gave me real direction on what an actual education should involve. I jumped through the hoops, was handed a piece of paper, and then taught as I thought best under what circumstances I faced. Believe me, anybody can become certified to teach (I may well be proof of that), much more so today than when I was in college in 1982. It is not an impressive accomplishment.

But that idea goes farther than what I intend to for today. What the late Dr. Mitchell (he passed in 2007) meant here was that (a) we should respect true teachers, folks actually trying to make our children better people and who, indeed, work along with us as parents and members of society towards that most important goal, as opposed to (b) public school teachers who, by and large, as agents of government, tend to work against worthwhile improvement in their charges. That's because they're interested in what the government thinks best rather than what actually is best.

This is a primary reason why as I age I become increasingly libertarian. Governments rarely care about what's best for your child; they care about keeping themselves in authority. They care about holding, and wielding, power. Our liberal friends seem to recognize that when it's Donald Trump yet can't see it in Joe Biden. Ditto, conversely, our conservative pals.

But once more I digress. Parents are by their nature (yes, I realize there are bad ones, and it is of course okay for society to get involved in those situations) more concerned with what's truly best for their children than public authorities. Government needs to get out of the way and let parents do what they do best: raise their kids well. That involves mom and dad actively, even almost exclusively, choosing who teaches their offspring and letting the true professional teach as they ought. It's a simple concept, and hardly radical. Yet that's also exactly why it's a threat to government schools.

Why I'm conservative, reason number 1,362

I had to make a bank deposit yesterday which included cash among the few checks I had. In chatting with the teller she informed me, just in conversation as I wasn't putting anywhere near those kinds of greenbacks into my account, that every cash deposit of over $10,000 must be reported to the IRS. The justification is that it helps them spot illegal activity, drug runners and money launderers and such.

That galls me. To cut to the chase, it ain't the government's business how much money or in what manner I put it in the bank. It's presumption of guilt, plain and simple. If they believe I'm committing a crime they need to get warrants after they discover just cause. Period.

A large cash deposit in and of itself isn't just cause. Perhaps a fellow had been sticking money in a mattress for years and decided it would be safer in a bank. Yet the particulars don't matter. If the IRS believes I'm doing ill it needs to prove it through due process, not by legally requiring notifications without cause. It's immoral.

The last time I looked we're innocent until proven guilty. We're not supposed to be compelled to testify against ourselves, as such laws force us to do. And that's another reason, really two, why I'm a conservative with strong libertarian feelings.

Short political statement

I can't be leftist or liberal because they trust government too much. They're far too statist.

I can't be libertarian because the trust the individual too much. They're far too relativist.

That leaves me as a traditional thinker, a conservative. We might quibble that what I'm calling conservative is the classic liberalism of the American Revolution. But, whatever. It's conservatism in today's United States.

Just my quick philosophical thoughts on a cold, snowy Friday in February. Does that warm your heart at all?

Your rights and my rights

I'm becoming more libertarian as I get older, although I doubt I can ever be fully libertarian: the individual is no more the arbiter of rights than the state. Our rights come from a higher power than ourselves, Lansing or Washington or the European Union or anybody. Further, our true rights are absolute against outside forces: I have the right to life until natural death unless I myself abrogate it of my own volition. If I'm trying to kill you you thus have a right to kill me, if that's what it takes to stop me. 

Rights also imply duties. If you're going to argue, oh, um, say, that people have a right to health care the proper first question is, who has the responsibility to deliver it? If you answer society or government, what you're really saying is me. At that point I have the right to ask why am I responsible for your health care? I'm not responsible for getting your food, clothes, or housing. What makes your health care (and I could add many other things to this question, such as education) my job?

Further questions include, what is health care? Is abortion or a sex change procedure health care? Should people who don't believe in the propriety of such things be made to pay for them? Morally, absolutely not.

A very interesting article on these and other issues related to the supposed health care right can be found here: Is Health Care a Right?

The article does allow that true health care, health care truly necessary for people to live rightly, is important, because of course it is. I will even argue that we do indeed as individuals have a moral obligation to help those in any kind of real need to obtain proper health care (among other things). As such, I believe that demanding society or government fund certain admitted needs amounts to passing the buck and neglecting your own duty towards others. God, if you care to be seriously religious about it, tells you to help your fellow man, not make someone else see to it. Any way you slice it, once you start saying that such and such admitted need is a right, you are in a quagmire with no easy escape outside of violating the true rights of others.

You may fairly ask, Marty, who is responsible for health care then? Well, the same person primarily responsible for your food, housing, clothing, education, and myriad other things.

You.

Freedom isn't necessarily just

Libertarians and conservatives seem so very close on several issues that it may at times be difficult to distinguish between the two. Yet certain distinctions can be made, and they may be all the difference in the world between the camps.

Perhaps the most serious difference lies in the areas of freedom and justice. Libertarians occasionally talk as though justice is the most important thing which human society ought to strive towards yet almost unfailingly insist that the measure of an act is the amount of freedom it allows. The problem is that freedom ultimately is a means rather than an end, and while it is easy to think that the society with the most freedom may (and the word may cannot be stressed enough) produce the most justice, that surely cannot be a given. A hedonistic society such as what the Western world sometimes appears hell bent for leather determined to make of itself surely welcomes a great (one is tempted to say an absurd) amount of freedom among the people. Do libertarians sufficiently address what that must mean?

Seeing as they are only seriously opposed to areas of direct and physical violence against persons, it is easy to say no. This isn't to say they oppose any and all nonviolent yet repugnant actions; we presume they are against libel and slander, for example. But do they take it far enough? Are there areas where, even though there may appear a lack of real violence against the person or society, there is a nonphysical violence which may yet hurt individuals and nations?

The conservative says yes. When society allows repugnant actions to be legal then it had begun teaching individuals and nations that the immoral is in fact moral. It begins to tear the fabric of civil society into little more than strands, each strand being each person, each person being free to do what they want, outside of overt violence, of course, without censure. When that happens, how long may it be before the strands cannot support even themselves? Likely as not, the moment they become too individual, too little concerned with the larger society. What will happen then? The strands that get together by whatever means will dominate the rest. That probably won't mean much for freedom, let alone justice.

Without a sense of true justice, physically non violent yet unjust actions will be seen as mere aspects of personal freedom. If it doesn't harm anyone directly and immediately it must, in the libertarian view, be allowed.

Such is a shallow definition of justice. But when a creed is based on mere freedom rather than on actual right and wrong, what can we expect in the long run but decay? If the libertarians wish to be taken seriously then they must accept that freedom isn't the end all be all of human actions. Until that happens, they will always be on the margin of political society. Or, worse, they will lead all of society to its destruction.

Right is Right. Wrong isn't

There are times where you just don't know where to start. When dealing with something so obviously wrong that everyone, every single one of us, should see what is wrong yet a good many of us insist is still somehow right, whaddya say to those who support the errant view? What can you do besides shake your head while trying to clear the errant thoughts, besides shaking your head trying to understand how otherwise rational human beings can support the insipid if not downright stupid? What can you say but ask, 'How can you think that?'.

The whole Bruce (we will not call him by any other name) Jenner plane crash illustrates this conundrum. You're a guy, Bruce. Science says so. And it's the same science which Christians are told every single day should guide their beliefs. Your DNA says you're a guy. Cut, snip, alter, and take all the meds you want. You're still a guy, Bruce. Science says so, and quite definitively. Accept that, if science is your god.

Yet he, and perhaps more interestingly those libertarian libertines who support him, solely because he fits their bill of individual rights, say the individual is who he or she says he or she is. When the person wants what is eminently stupid, well, that's on him. Or her, lest we offend those who personally select their feminine gender without regard for biological (read that scientific) truth. Well, maybe that's on him (or her). But if it is, then we must wonder how truly sentient and rational he (or she) is.

The rest of us, let's rest on our reason. We will be crucified. But at least we'll be in good company.

What Libertarians Really Are

Have you ever noticed that libertarian and liberal both begin with the same five letters? Is it a coincidence, or not?

There are indeed folks who have begun to call themselves 'liberaltarians'. It is as though libertarians are seeing the light.

Somewhat, anyway. The precise nature of the change in heart isn't really important. The fact is that libertarians are a bit of a schizophrenic bunch: liberal on social issues while conservative on fiscal matters. It is fair to ask if you can have it both ways and maintain any philosophic consistency.

Can one really be fiscally responsible in public policy while essentially arguing that social responsibility is a radically different question? Why do we have the freedom to do almost anything we want personally (provided it does not violate that vague and rather self-serving platitude: so long as it doesn't harm anyone else) yet have no such similar freedom if a bureaucrat or politician? Indeed, how can one reasonably argue that financial discipline and personal discipline do not go hand in hand? If you are no good at the one it is doubtful you can be particularly effective at the other.

In short, libertarians are essentially liberals who happen to like fiscal discipline. Yet such is like getting blood from the proverbial turnip. If folks are not personally disciplined they are not likely to be publicly disciplined. After all, we reap what we sow. Sow freedom, reap freedom, with all the errors that must grow from that field. But sow justice, the idea that some things are really right and others really wrong on their own merit, and we improve society by having bettered ourselves.

Modern Hedonism

A popular viewpoint in modern culture is that our lives are not leading somewhere but are instead simply a journey. We might be searching for ourselves, whatever that means, or seeking meaning, whatever that means, or seeking enlightenment. Yes, whatever that means. But there's one glaring problem with each of these approaches.

What do they mean?

The answer is, on their own accounts, not much, really.

If the point of our lives is only that life is nothing more than a journey, well, then, won't any old journey foot the bill? And as we're all surely going somewhere whether by accident or design it appears we've all accomplished that. There you go, the mystery of life solved. Sixpence, please, and tell your psychologist to shove off.

The trouble is that a journey really doesn't mean anything at all without a destination. And a destination really doesn't mean anything at all unless the destination is worth the trouble of traveling towards. Yet having a destination means judgment; it requires us to ask, should we be heading that way?

And what is judgment? It means considering the well from the ill and consciously accepting that we should travel towards the well. But ouch; that means introspection, and introspection might lead us to condemn what other folks do or, horror of horrors, condemn what we do or want to do.

That really is the major problem in today's world. We want to do whatever we want (on whatever grounds, but the grounds don't mean anything either without introspection, do they?) yet we don't want to make judgments. So we develop an opinion which tells us we can't judge the actions of others, simply and conveniently so that we may assert that they can't judge what we do. We call it freedom.

Yet at one time that attitude was called hedonism. Civilization may not be developing; it may be regressing.

Freedom is a Means, Not an End

There is a certain allure to libertarianism within the conservative community. The stress on individual freedom definitely has its merits. Human freedom, personal liberty; these are terms which are deeply embedded in the American psyche, perhaps more so than anywhere else on Earth these days. So why aren't American conservatives more overtly libertarian seeing as so much of their rhetoric employs libertarian phraseology? The irony involved in answering that question lies in the very same ideal of freedom which is at the heart of the libertarian movement.

Libertarians preach freedom. But the trouble is that freedom is a means, and not an end, as libertarians assert.

When someone says that they are for freedom, can we ever really drop the subject at that? Might anyone actually say: Oh, he's for freedom, so we know where he stands? If we do, we are pretty close to talking nonsense, don't you think? In order to really understand what our libertarian friend supports, isn't it necessary to ask: Freedom from whom? Freedom from what? Freedom to do what, and why? How might this freedom be attained and secured? Indeed, why should we think we are entitled to any sort of freedom and liberty at all? When we ask these questions, there appears one important point which sort of encompasses them all (and a great many others), a critical point which few people rarely consider.

Once we begin asking these questions, we aren't really talking about freedom, are we? Aren't we actually saying that we can only support freedom in the context of the question involved?

We're in fact talking about what might be called doing justice; it might be called The Golden Rule; it might be called ethics and morals or plain old right and wrong. But whatever we call it, we cannot call it freedom. Freedom of action, so far as it goes, must be seen as valuable only insofar as the action in question is right and just, or encourages rightness and justice. For it goes without saying (even though we are about to say it; don't you hate that?) that freedom as freedom simply means doing what you want because you want to do it. Freedom as freedom does not necessitate reflection upon whether we ought or ought not do something. It means nothing at all, on its own terms, except that Joe Smith wants such and such done and has the ability to do it, so he does it.

But when asking whether are free to do something, or whether society should sanction or prohibit a given action, well, isn't it implied that we are only truly free to do it if it's just? Isn't it in fact putting restrictions and qualifiers on our freedom? In this light, when our libertarian friends say they're for freedom, well, it's hard to take them at their word, for in the very act of making that assertion they themselves must mean they support something beyond mere freedom. When they protest torture, are they really protesting the lack of freedom of the persons tortured or the fact that torture is wrong, even if part part of the affront is denying him his freedom? When they clamor for homosexual rights, they must mean that such rights are worth support in themselves, or what's their point? Indeed, when they protest oppressive taxes and regulations, something which we right wingers can agree with them about, they must be claiming that the government is wrong to aggressively tax and regulate citizens and businesses and not, ahem, that the government is free to do so. For if freedom is our measuring stick, who's to say that the government isn't free to overtax and overspend?

We don't see how anyone can be for 'freedom' any more than they can be for 'education' or 'civil liberties' or 'peace'. But we can see how people can want to support what is right and disdain the wrong; we can understand why they would want to encourage good and discourage evil. We understand that doing good and avoiding bad is precisely what the individual and the broader society needs. That, perhaps, is the key difference between libertarians and conservatives. And it's all the difference in the world.