Force and Violence: How the Left Blurs Terms
In a recent New York Times column, Frank Rich attacked and smeared the nascent tea party movement. While most of his diatribe received the fiskings it deserved, one significant fallacy went unchallenged. Perhaps it was overlooked because the left has committed it for so long now that it seems unquestionable. All the more reason to bring it to light.
The fallacy is the equation of violence with force. The error and its consequences are manifest in what the left condemns and condones. For example, the central complaint of Rich’s column is that tea party supporters are (allegedly) lovers of violence:
Such violent imagery and invective, once largely confined to blogs and talk radio, is now spreading among Republicans in public office or aspiring to it.
This evil, Rich contends, is to be contrasted with the left’s “non-violent” ways:
In the heyday of 1960s left-wing radicalism, no liberal Democratic politicians in Washington could be found endorsing groups preaching violent revolution.
It’s telling that Rich harkens back to the “good old days” of the 1960s. Not merely because its drug-addicted, anti-reason hippies are his intellectual mentors, but because they’re the ones who popularized the idea that overt violence resulting in bodily harm is the only true form of crime.
Rich’s “radicals” proudly engaged in rock-throwing student riots, forcible sit-ins, and other expropriation and destruction of private property. More importantly, they actively suppressed evidence of Stalin’s horrors, materially supported the reigning Soviet dictators, and unabashedly exhorted Mao Zedong to continue his “experiments” with the “Great Leap Forward” and “Cultural Revolution.”
Clearly their actions involved — and sanctioned — various degrees of force; small but still significant in the case of sit-ins, of historic proportions in the case of Communism. Yet none of this concerned them because, in their view, attacking property or compelling someone to act under threat of force is not “violence” and thus not objectionable. You can take a man’s property, oust him from the cities, order him onto collective farms, and force him into hard labor, but as long as the threat of force is so overwhelming that he can’t resist, there’s no “violence” and no foul. Lives are shattered and destroyed, but the left approves because there’s either no actual blood spilt or, in the case of Communism, the rivers of blood are carefully kept off camera. (Clearly leftists will countenance anything in the name of making men slaves to the State.)
The left’s modus operandi then, is to denounce the open use of “violence,” while promoting and condoning every other form of force.
Indeed, under the left’s influence and urging, government now exerts force against its own citizens in myriad and ubiquitous ways. It forcibly takes our tax dollars to fund public schools — leaving us with little choice or means to give our children the education we consider best. It decides which drugs can and can’t be tested; how approved drugs are to be marketed; and which patients, no matter how willing they are to take a risk, qualify for experimental drugs, etc. It regulates commerce and trade in issues ranging from trivial to critical. Just ask any businessman how many arbitrary rules he must heed every single day — under punishment of fine, closure or even jail. Everything from the placement of signs, to interview questions, to campaign contribution limits — even pricing! — is dictated to businessmen.
The reasons the Left likes to use force, and uses violence when it believes it can get away with it are: force = control; violence = control; control = rule; control = govern; govern = rule. Q. E. D.
How do you know when a leftist lies? His lips move! Seriously, if they say it, they won’t do it. Count on that.
“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master.” (George Washington)
Government pushes us around a little more every day. A little more taxes out of my check (is it half yet? maybe next year) A few more rules, a couple more felony laws we don’t even know about until ambushed, more activities I have to hire a lawyer for, a little more paperwork and fees to buy a gun, fly on a plane, insulate my house, dig a well…
All with the threat of jail-time and property confiscation. Now what we own and what we can keep is only at the discretion of the state.
Push the calm quiet kid in the schoolyard enough times and eventually he will start swinging fists.
In one important sense you have bought into the left’s shaping of the issues: you use the term “freedom” instead of the term “liberty” which Locke, Burke, Smith and Mill (among many others) used and which was the term used primarily by the Founders.
The distinction is significant, just as the difference between “democracy” and a “republican form of government” is significant.
At least in theory one can be coerced to be “free” – think of Rousseau’s notion of the General Will, whereas the meaning of liberty – the absence of external restraint – is less subject to Orwellian and Rousseauean (and Marxist….) manipulation. And, of course, “democracy” historically has been subject to majoritarian abuse and demagogy in almost every instance from the Athens of the 5th century BC to the present.
I seriously doubt that the left would even recognize- or admit – the evil of “a thug shooting an innocent person dead”.
First of all, they would blame the gun, not the thug. Once they had outlawed the gun, and the thug continued to use it anyway or found some other way to kill (like a 2×4 upside the victim’s head), they would blame society for its “mistreatment” of the thug. If that failed, they would say the victim had done something to “anger” the thug. And if all else failed, they would claim the victim was in fact the aggressor, and so therefore the thug was in fact the hero of the incident. (See “Mumia Abu-Jemal.”)
What they will never do, however, is openly admit that they secretly admire, and root for, the thug. Because he is striking out, in concrete (and lethal) terms, against a representative of our society- which they loathe with every fiber of their beings.
If you are a law-abiding citizen, make no mistake- the Left hates, fears, and despises you. Because they see you as part of the “power structure” which is “keeping them down”, i.e., not allowing them to have power and use it for wanton destruction in their never-ending quest for “Utopia”- more accurately defined as “absolute obliteration of civilization”.
The Left has move past seeking “Heaven on Earth” by means of revolutionary socialism. They now seek utter destruction of civilization by means of totalitarianism. The reason? Essentially, they are nihilists who believe in nothing except their own secret desire for self-destruction, and their determination that no one will survive them.
Remember that the next time somebody uses the “Criminals are victims of society” line. What it really means is, “Don’t you understand that you have a duty to die when I want you to?”
With the endgame being that only they remain- until, that is, they finally work up the nerve to do away with themselves. After the rest of us have preceded them into oblivion, of course.
By their standards, that counts as a win.
clear ether
eon
It’s really not that complicated. The left can and does use violence because it can. And it has to since, most of what the left does and thinks is anathema to America and the American public.
As long as they have control of the MSM, they have cover. If the MSM does not report any violence, there was no violence.
Mr Ghate has focused on another paradoxical behavior of the left: they always accuse the other side of doing what they do, when, in fact, the other side is not doing it at all, or at least not as a widespread practice (each side has its crazies). Excellent piece, Mr. Ghate.
Thank you
(Now that I’ve said that, I’m sure one of their crazies will attack it, using the example of the horrible and malicious force exerted by the Patriot Act, and other such things, like how capitalism “forces” everyone to be part of the starving poor except, of course, for those greedy swine the capitalists, themselves. And, I’m sure the writer, who lives exclusively off government assistance, will have taken the time to do it, while breaking from playing his latest in a hundred computer games, on one of his three HD TVs, and while sitting in his air-conditioned apartment, overlooking his garage containing two cars, a Moped, a couple of kayaks, and enough outdoor gear to fill a Cabela’s showroom.)
They support out right violence as well make no mistake about it. Every time I see a group of lefties get together to protest something it seems that when viewing pictures I almost always see riot police have been invited to the party as well …..Why. I have attended several of the violent Tea Parties and everyone of them could have been policed by a lazy meter maid …..from home
Amit,
great article but you focused on the left’s more passive agressive use of force to the exclusion of mentioning lefty organizations like SDS, Black Panthers, ELF, ALF, PETA, SEIU, Green Peace, etc where they manifest their more violent means to their totalitarian ends.
The article is excellent, but the next step is to understand the enemy and determine why the left does this. They publicly blur essential distinctions such as ‘force’ and ‘violence’ because it disingenuously promotes their agenda, and because their thought processes abhor anything that smacks of “discrimination” or framing hierarchies. Their use of force is justified because it fits a postmodernist meta-narrative; the conflating of force with violence makes the opposition intellectually paralyzed; and the semantic games it engenders provides the Old Left Media with ample ammunition with which to confuse the sheeple.
It is a win-win situation for the left, which can be countered only if Conservatives somehow regain control of the language, including especially the memes, slogans, definitions and labels of political discourse. He who controls the language, controls the debate.
Amit Ghate is completely correct, especially in discussing the importance of not conflating “violence” with “force”. If 199 men in a town of 200 use the power of the vote for strip the 200th person of his basic rights (say by taking his property for eminent domain), it may be nonviolent. But it’s just as much of a use of force as if they broke into his house, tied up him, and took away his possessions.
When one group of citizens uses the government as its intermediary to violate another citizen’s rights, it’s still force — because it is ultimately backed up by the power of the government’s guns.
Hence it’s critically important that government be limited to its proper functions of protecting individual rights, and that its use of force be confined to retaliatory force via objective means to protect against those who would initiate force against honest men and women.
For more on this, I highly recommend “The Nature of Government” by Ayn Rand:
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=arc_ayn_rand_the_nature_of_government
Thank you Amit, for another splendid essay!
Great article Amit!
Force against individual rights takes many forms. Government is great at finding new ways to mask its true actions; most violate the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Well reasoned article with great flow.
–TK
This doctrine of force is clearly discernible in the case of rape. It is no defense to say that the victim consented if you were holding a knife to her neck when she did so, even if you had no intention of actually killing her if she refused. The presence of a weapon and the threat of its use constitute duress, nullifying the validity of any consenting words.
Wasn’t it Rahm Emanuel, 5ft ballet dancer, who was stabbing a table with a knife and shouting “dead” over some Dems who disagreed with him? Isn’t it the left that is advocating a health care plan founded on coercion and ultimately force?
Frank Rich is only somewhat more insane than the mass of other hate driven leftists, only somewhat. The filth hate us for resisting, we’re supposed to roll over & obey.
And to think it was leftist scum who raved for eight years about the fascism of Bush.
If the Left does it, it is right;
Dialectical Materialism, anyone ?
Great article!
I just finished watching Wafa Sultan, interviewed by Bill Whittle, in which she stated with her characteristic passion that she would rather live one day as a free woman and then be killed by those who threaten her life daily, than live a lifetime as a non-free Muslim woman, subjected to the kind of insidious force identified in this essay. Lovers of individual freedom – those who really get it, have had this attitude for centuries. As Mr. Ghate states, it is not at all the same as the thuggish leftist mobs I remember in the 1960s. Many tea partiers also understand this attitude, and this is what scares the left so much.
Amit Ghate has clarified the issues of force and violence beautifully in his essay. This should be read by all lovers of individual freedom! I also highly recommend Ayn Rand on “The Nature of Government,” linked above.
“It’s telling that Rich harkens back to the “good old days” of the 1960s. Not merely because its drug-addicted, anti-reason hippies are his intellectual mentors, but because they’re the ones who popularized the idea that overt violence resulting in bodily harm is the only true form of crime.”
No doubt as with me, you could list numerous discharged Vietnam Veterans who experienced this when landing in the US. In fact, I know (knew) someone who had to break someone’s arm when they assaulted him as he departed his ETS flight to San Francisco.
An excellent analysis of the Left’s pretense at civility by Amit Ghate. The success of the use of force, rather than violence depends largely on the failure of the victims to recognize the initiation of force as evil in all its forms and therefore an unwillingness to respond with moral certitude. It’s high time we morally condemned the Left for all its initiations of force, whether violent or not.
I think pulling one sentence from a Frank Rich column and claiming it represents the entire of ‘the left’ over the last century defines stupid.
To conflate anti-death penalty hippies on the left with Stalin apologists ‘on the left’, for example, is delusional ranting worthy of Glenn Beck.
whew.
have you ever heard of logic?
A good, thoughtful essay that makes a number of sound points. But I think — by defining violence too narrowly — the writer is overly generous to the left.
The narrative of the 20th Century is instructive. Today, I believe, the statist left eschews violence only because it has not yet accumulated sufficient power to carry the day with its use. Tomorrow, if left unchecked, it will inflict violence (of the bloody sort) without apology or concealment.
With public opposition now growing in the form of Tea Party organizations and Tenth Amendment initiatives, we can imagine a time of conflict between the people and the general government that cannot be resolved politically. What then? It is a question we should entertain. The blurring of terms may become moot.
Leftist do not merely blur concepts. They do not care about the concepts they use. And because they do not, in any confrontation their position is significantly weakened. If, on the other hand, you do understand the meaning of concepts your position is significantly strenthened. Name exactly what a Leftist is saying and/or doing. Nine times out of ten, he is rendered speechless with anger. Lefitists are at root emotionalists.
So, too, is their intent emotional rather than intellectual. To illustrate: Several months ago I watched Leftists perform a street skit in which “collectivism” in a mock physical fight beat up “individualism” (the words were printed on their costumes)to claim victory. Afterwards, I asked the announcer who orally described the actions for the crowd, what she meant by individualism and collectivism. For a moment she looked at me blankly, clearly confused. I waited. At last she replied: “I don’t understand such big words.”
Most street Leftists are like that girl. They literally do not grasp that government health care, for example, is a violation of individual rights. They simply don’t get it. But “community organizers” like Saul Alinsky and Obama do. As does Karl Marx. I would assume that Frank Rich does, too. Such men are not talking to Objectivists such as myself or others who disagree with them. They are talking to their group-thinks. What is needed is more such articles as Mr. Ghate’s to state exactly what Leftists are saying.
19. Steve Jones:
To conflate anti-death penalty hippies on the left with Stalin apologists ‘on
the left’
To not conflate anti-death penatly hippies with the same anti-war, anti-military, anti-American, Stalin apologist, big-govt utopian hippies that are all cut from the same cloth is delusional ranting worthy of Maddow and Olbermann. Whew.
have you ever heard of reality?
Acutally, the left is very violent. From it’s support for communist and Islamic vilolence, to it’s own violence exmplefied by riots, demonstrations, threats (no justice no peace), and terrorism (SDS, Weathermen, Symbonese Liberation Army, Black Panthers, etc.)
I agree with many points in the article, however, although I particularly have a gripe with a few blatant misrepresentations in which the author essentially refers to the functions of government as, inherently, “leftist” or intrusive.
“It forcibly takes our tax dollars to fund public schools — leaving us with little choice or means to give our children the education we consider best. It decides which drugs can and can’t be tested; how approved drugs are to be marketed; and which patients, no matter how willing they are to take a risk, qualify for experimental drugs, etc. It regulates commerce and trade in issues ranging from trivial to critical. Just ask any businessman how many arbitrary rules he must heed every single day — under punishment of fine, closure or even jail. Everything from the placement of signs, to interview questions, to campaign contribution limits — even pricing! — is dictated to businessmen.”
The constitution is a document that was primarily intended to limit the size and scope of the Federal Government, although the provisions within apply to all government. Public schooling, signing, and business regulations, are often specific to the particular state. The constitution doesn’t mandate, encourage, or dissuade public financing and regulation of schools by states any more than it does give a business owner the right to hang a 50 foot wide neon sign form the top of a building shared with multiple clients. Commerce can be regulated by the federal government, as per the constitution, as can Pharmaceutical companies, since their distribution is international and across state boundaries.
Mr. Ghate is simply taking practices which he disagrees with, rightly regulated by the government under the Constitution, and calling them “leftist”.
I’m a Conservative, but many Conservative writers tend to equate the words “government” and “leftist”, while in turn dismissing their own governmental preferences.
The Conservative rarely gripes about roads, policemen, firemen, military, clean water, or public libraries, yet all are funded by the government forcibly extracting taxes from the shivering masses.
If authors like Mr. Ghate wants to be taken more seriously when waxing rhetoric about government, he should separate which programs he’s supports, based on merit, rather than trying to sandbag the opposition with petty generalizations and shallow criticisms.
Excellent article and great comments but a point needs to be made: Violence, however unpalatable it might be to contemplate, is going to be needed to solve our collective problem.
We’ve tried reason but the left is unreasonable. We’ve tried logic but they’re illogical. We’ve tried the ballot box but they count the ballots. We are rapidly running out of peaceful options. Whether these “United States” become Balkanized into several smaller countries or whether we descend into a guerilla-type civil war similar ro Northern Ireland, we will eventually have to grow spines and stand against the tyranny that is slowly enveloping us.
History is replete with object lessons in this field. America, like countless other great nations, will die. What rises to take its place is the question we must answer.
I fully agree that Mr. Ghate should be able to buy all the dangerous, ineffective and defective drugs he cares to buy. No one should apply force against drug manufacturers to ensure that drugs are safe or effective. That truly is no different than the Cultural Revolution!
Amit – This is a horrible article. You base several hundred words in response to a quote in the Times, and you don’t even understand it in context.
“In the heyday of 1960s left-wing radicalism, no liberal Democratic politicians in Washington could be found endorsing groups preaching violent revolution.”
If you read the article, it is clear that the disturbing behavior is not simply the existence of violent language, it is that the violence is being echoed by Republican politicians. Michelle Bachmann’s “Armed and Dangerous” quote and Tim Pawlenty’s “nine iron to government” quote are given as examples.
“liberal Democratic politicians” as used in this quote refers to seated political leaders on par with given as examples i.e. House Reps and Senators. There is no denial of “left wing radicalism”, nor the fact that there were left wing groups “preaching violent revolution”. To Rich’s recollection, while this occurred, members of Congress in the 1960′s did not make appeals to violence in their rhetoric.
What follows from you are a series of groundless accusations you associate with Rich. Suddenly Rich is a drug taking hippie radical. Where are your facts? What are you basing this assumption on? When journalists slander and libel people they have to defend themselves in court. You on the other hand feel inclined to shoot your mouth off with impunity.
Other than that, the article is shoddy through and through showing little understanding of the respective roles of State and Federal Government. A look at the Violence which is ascribed to the Left by the author displays a variety of regulations and programs that draw such a broad support from Left and Right wings as to be meaningless.
The Violence of Government
Creating school systems to educate children.
Making sure drugs are safe.
Making sure our foods are safe.
Protecting investors from fraud and market manipulation
I could go on, but it becomes clearer that either the author is an anarchist who wants no government or assumes that he should be able to pick and choose the parts of government that should apply to him. The former is at least honest, the latter is juvenile.
Liberalism is a mental disorder
Re Daniel B:
Mr. Ghate’s assertions seem eminently clear to me. I DO gripe about all the examples you cited.
If people under local government voluntarily decide to fund a police force (for example), then they can voluntarily decide to defund it, privatize it, or even do away with it altogether and rely on their own neighborhood watch and gun ownership. If this is currently unlikely, it is only due to the lack of appropriate sunshine provisions for each and every such program.
Concerning federal regulatory laws, I would rather support government acting as a neutral arbiter using truth-in-labeling that advised me of potential consequences in taking a pharmaceutical drug. (Just for the record, I am not a libertarian, I am a traditionalist conservative, and therefore personally support at my state level all laws that reflect my culture, including the immorality of so-called illegal drugs).
“I could go on, but it becomes clearer that either the author is an anarchist who wants no government or assumes that he should be able to pick and choose the parts of government that should apply to him. The former is at least honest, the latter is juvenile.”
Ignorant and absurd.
Mr. Ghate is an Objectivist well versed in political theory and history, and an advocate of limited government. Hence, no anarchist.
To the more serious charge that he embraces a kind of subjectivism who wants his whims to dictate which laws to follow – which is equivalent to having no objective laws at all – the article itself makes plain how absurd is this assertion. He clearly advocates principles of the sort found in the U.S. Constitution – note his discussion of Locke and the Founders, which he is plainly happy to follow, as evidence by the simple fact that this is what he advocates.
Another near substance-less, thinly veiled ad hominem attack from a leftist who clearly has made no attempt to understand his opponent’s argument, ironically the very thing he begins by chastising Mr. Ghate over.
Mr. Ghate is simply taking practices which he disagrees with, rightly regulated by the government under the Constitution, and calling them “leftist”.
Mr. Ghate is operating from the context of those moral principles which gave rise to the Constitution, upon which it logically depends, and without which is a meaningless document.
Invoking it in that out-of-context fashion is the hallmark of pragmatism, a sort of intellectual cargo cult who insist on venerating artifacts of a more advanced philosophical technology while blanking out its origins.
Like an automobile in the hands of a primitive tribe, the Constitution cannot last in the hands of those who do not comprehend its nature, its ideological origins, or *why* it is right. It will simply rust until it falls away, amid the wailings of those who know they have lost something important, but know not what, or why.
I’m a Conservative,
I knew that before I read this line.
Other than that, the article is shoddy through and through showing little understanding of the respective roles of State and Federal Government.
See my above comment, pragmatist. You, as with the conservative, are utterly blind to the principle that Mr. Ghate invokes (the principle of individual rights), and thusly cannot recognize how he uses it to identify the things that government does that violates this principle.
A look at the Violence which is ascribed to the Left by the author displays a variety of regulations and programs that draw such a broad support from Left and Right wings as to be meaningless.
Actually, what is being revealed as “meaningless” is your insistence that “Left” and “right” are exhaustive, and distinct. They are neither… they plainly share the intellectual primitivism of pragmatism, for one.
I could go on, but it becomes clearer that either the author is an anarchist who wants no government or assumes that he should be able to pick and choose the parts of government that should apply to him. The former is at least honest, the latter is juvenile.
So our choice is between tyranny, or anarchy. Liberty need not apply, eh?
Liberty is not anarchy; it just does not work that way. The option that Lefty is evading is the idea that government is a solution to a specific problem — the problem of force, which is the possibility that one man may forcibly negate another man’s choice of action — and that it should be sharply and rigidly constrained to that sole purpose.
In a somewhat more intellectually advanced era, this was known (though not properly defended, alas) as the “night watchman” view of government.
I fully agree that Mr. Ghate should be able to buy all the dangerous, ineffective and defective drugs he cares to buy.
Of course. After all, killing off one’s customers is just so profitable… and it’s not an instance of the use of force, either.
/sarc
The cargo cultists are all over the place today.
It is a win-win situation for the left, which can be countered only if Conservatives somehow regain control of the language, including especially the memes, slogans, definitions and labels of political discourse. He who controls the language, controls the debate.
The philosophical technology by means of which that is done, is called “epistemology”. There is a reason why the Left has enjoyed an unchallenged monopoly on epistemology: the conservatives, mistrustful of reason, refuse to touch such things.
As John Derbyshire once wrote:
“Does it not occur to you…that by purging all sacred images,
references, and words from our public life, you are leaving us with nothing
but a cold temple presided over by the Goddess of Reason — that counterfeit
deity who, as history has proved time and time and time again, inspires no
affection, retains no loyalties, soothes no grief, justifies no sacrifice,
gives no comfort, extends no charity, displays no pity, and offers no hope,
except to the tiny cliques of fanatical ideologues who tend her cold blue
flame?”
The day conservatives learn to wield such a weapon as epistemology is the day they will cease to be conservatives.
” … the conservatives, mistrustful of reason, …”
Were that even partially true the left would have no cause to redefine words in order to substitute the unreasonable group think that passes for leftist “reason”. Indeed, it is the very fact that conservatives value the true meaning of reason that causes the type of lies and redefinitions that gave us Climategate and a raft of other as yet to be made public group consensus lies from the left.
The fact that leftist in this country agree to spread the same lie does not make that lie something that was arrived at by reason. The left appeals to reason only after carefully redefining terms so as to avoid actual reason, especially facts rather than emotion. The goal of the left is to redefine terms sufficiently and then appeal to their distortion of reason as guise for their attempts to blind the majority.
have a nice day
Words>Meanings>Distinctions
Liberty>Freedom>License
Emotion>Reason
and just when one thinks one has broken free
of the stereotype, someSpotlighted Patriot
sends an eMail ad: Gun+training, Free!
Guys, Gals: We keep guns around so we won’t need them.
Like the military, they are a deterrent to violence;
The only way to win the game is not to play.
Leftism itself is nothing but a collection of unconscionable intellectual crimes. Their hypocrisy in regard to coercion is fairly typical of them.
34. I must concede, though, that the FDA was created in response to the problem of people marketing dangerous and/or ineffective food and drugs and getting away with it. The progressive movement never would have gotten off the ground but for the irresponsibility of robber barons who cut corners to save money at the expense of the safety of both their employees and their customers, and the public being none the wiser until years after the fact. Liberty cannot survive except among a moral people willing to restrain their own base desires so as not to harm others.
#24
My point wasn’t that the Left is the exclusive cause of these intrusions, after all antitrust was implemented under Teddy Roosevelt (though the Sherman act was passed before his presidency). But that said, the Left is a central cause of the government’s increased — and increasing — use of force against its own populace. And the Left is able to impose its agenda in part because it obfuscates the issue of force by turning everyone’s eyes exclusively towards “violence”. So I think the issue is germane and disagree that I’m “re-writing” history to suit my views. (I will concede that, as with all these subjects, there’s much more to say than can be said in 1,100 words.)
As an example supporting my interpretation, consider that at the time of the Founding there was a strong appreciation for how force is antithetical to life. Among the specific examples they used was the issue of health, i.e. that the government had no business telling individuals what they could and couldn’t do with respect to maintaining their own health and bodies. So I don’t think that the FDA could in any way be considered to be in the spirit of the ideas animating the Constitution.
The issue of schools is more nuanced. Some of the founders thought that you need an educated public to maintain a Republic, and that public schools were required to accomplish this. But it still contradicted other positions they held, all pertaining to what they at the time called freedom of conscience (what we would now call freedom of thought or intellectual freedom as I put it in the article). In matters of conscience they saw clearly that government had no role, indeed it had to been banned from the field if that freedom was to be protected. So while they may have supported public schools, they were adamant that you couldn’t force ideas on people. That’s an implicit contradiction which would ultimately have to be worked out.
Now if — as we do — they had the benefit of the last century’s experience with public schools, including the inherent conflicts in setting curricula, as well as the schools’ generally terrible results, I think the contradiction would have been reconciled in favor of intellectual freedom (and against public schools).
I’d also add that I agree that you need an educated public to maintain a Republic, but that that doesn’t imply the need for public schools. What is required is for people to value education, based on what it provides, and such valuing requires the freedom to judge for oneself. Once people see the benefits of education, free markets would be far, far better at providing it. (And in so doing would give more evidence of why education really is a value.) For a related point, see my next comment.
#26 and #27
I think there are some fallacies and straw men in your criticisms. Governments don’t just wave a magic wand and somehow protect us from making mistakes. That requires knowledge — and knowledge is discovered, interpreted and applied by individuals. The precondition for doing so? Individual freedom.
Absent government regulation, knowledge would emerge and be valued, just as it does in unregulated fields. People don’t and wouldn’t say: “Oh there’s no nanny state to tell me if I should or shouldn’t take this drug, so I’ll just experiment on myself!” Instead they’d consult doctors and other experts, they’d read forums and interact with other patients, there might be independent evaluation and testing services, etc. Moreover, as in most fields, the bar would be set by the most knowledgeable consumers, not the least. That’s why my grandmother can walk into a computer store and buy a computer off the shelf without getting ripped off—even though she herself may not know much about the product.
There’s a lot more to say on the subject, but for start you can see a previous editorial of mine: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/questioning-the-value-of-regulation/?singlepage=true
Which includes this passage:
As to me being an anarchist, that’s the furthest thing from the truth. I abhor anarchism (life would be easy if I were actually an anarchist— I’d simply move to Somalia!). As evidence, here’s another of my articles that shows my view on the necessity of (strictly limited) government.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/we-need-a-return-to-principled-government/?singlepage=true
The left is weak on defense, their bleeding hearts don’t understand that sometimes torture is necessary, yet they are a threat to you?
Bwaa Haa Haa Haa Haa.
Get your story straight idiots. Do you fools even realize how weak your ability to use logic is?
“Don’t vote for Obama, he will weaken defense; so that he can use force against you.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You conservative posters are buffoons!!!!!!!!
You can’t only look at what proves your opinions to be true, stop being spoonfed your opinions. True patriots do research and argue with articulate points, and they listen, and they expand their understanding, or they expand others understanding. Hop into the growth of the intellectual debate with thought. Please, stop parroting talking points.
‘The philosophical technology by means of which that is done, is called “epistemology”.’ If we’re going to take a detour into philosophy, I would posit that epistemology is simplistic at the outset and therefore useless, because it depends on binary logic. Politics, religion, and belief systems in general may instead rely on a tripartite or even quadripartite logic, including the categories “that which is”, “the absence of that which is”, “that which is not”, and “the absence of that which is not”, none of which are equivalent.
Meanwhile, linguistics professor Noam Chomsky is a darling of the left because he supplies the weapons for their war against absolute value systems and traditionalist society. Conservatives, have an innate ability to use reason (thanks, rashputin comment 36). However, they never seem to agree on strategy and tactics for battles with progressivism (herding cats comes to mind). They could take control of the language of political discourse, and instead of using it for control a la the left, use it as a wedge for subsequent instruction and insight. Until then, we are losing, and losing badly.
Aside from their dreams of some distant, future utopia, what has always distinguished those on the left is their total reliance on and belief in the coercive power of the state. They appear to have no qualms at all in growing government to monumental size and turning ever more power over to it. No amount of scandal, corruption, violence, or cruelty which inevitably results seems to have the power to lessen this great love for long. The untold misery and wasted lives resulting from the leftist tyrannies of the past are forgotten or are rationalized as good ideas not properly executed. So they keep trying. In their fairytale, it is always the capitalist corporations who are the villains with insurance companies currently in the cross-hairs, and government always the white knight coming to the rescue. Lately, according to news reports, no matter how much power Obama has grabbed, it never seems to be enough to keep his left-wing base happy. Such articles are so tiresome and far from newsworthy because such would always be the case. The fact remains that government by its nature is always about the implicit threat of violence to force submission to its will, and if we value our freedom we would do well to limit it as much as possible.
Point a gun a person, order him around and don’t shoot him – no violence has been done but a heck of a lot of force.
Part of the problem here is that the essential nature of force is so poorly understood. Violence has to be direct, force does not. In fact force can often be implemented in a very indirect manner. Thus threats, conspiracy and fraud all violate rights and therefore are species of force. But force destroys our ability to act freely and therefore wipes out the utility of reason. So for example if you spike someone’s drink with a drug so they can no longer reason you have used force. As Amit Ghate said:
“Whatever its form or specific target, force is evil because it impedes or defeats man’s use of his mind and its products”
I don’t completely agree with the literal meaning here since it some cases it is appropriate if the target is a criminal but the general meaning and the particular point that force has several forms are correct.
“The left’s modus operandi then, is to denounce the open use of “violence,” while promoting and condoning every other form of force.”
Not in the case of communism though as the author notes. In my opinion whether they denounce or promote either violence or force depends mostly on its intended target and that for the left violence vs. force has relatively little meaning.
“I would posit that epistemology is simplistic at the outset and therefore useless”
If all you have is deduction that might be true. A proper epistemology must use an inductive approach to ideas and that immediately invalidates the rest of that paragraph.
If we’re going to take a detour into philosophy, I would posit that epistemology is simplistic at the outset and therefore useless, because it depends on binary logic.
My point is made. You plainly do not know what epistemology is.
Were that even partially true the left would have no cause to redefine words in order to substitute the unreasonable group think that passes for leftist “reason”.
On the contrary; conservatism’s vulnerability in the realm of ideas is precisely why the Left has been corrupting your concepts out from underneath you, unimpeded, for over a century now.
A few examples of such corrupt concepts that mainstream conservatives use routinely:
“Extremism”. Extreme what? Being perfectly healthy is an “extreme”; so is liberty. A spinoff of this little anti-concept if the veneration of “moderation” as equating to common sense. The end of that road is Charles Johnson and the veneration of hypocrisy.
The Left-Right spectrum. Fascism and communism are plainly two variants on a common theme… and yet perfectly intelligent people continue to operate on the assumption that there is some sort of fundamental difference between the two. And yet, nobody anywhere on that spectrum, knows what freedom is, let alone where it might be on that spectrum. End result: “Liberty? What’s that? And no, you can’t get there from here. It’s not about whom the State controls, it’s about who controls the State.”
Democracy. That’s a form of tyranny the Left is selling, you ought to know… and yet, ask someone what makes America great, and they’ll say it’s because we’re a democracy. End result: Obamacare.
Liberalism = Left. The Left co-opted liberalism a long time ago with the goal of passing off its opposite — socialism — under that label for as long as they could get away with it. The goal was to slowly eliminate the knowledge of liberty from the mainstream mind, and to discredit the Enlightenment. As conservatism shares this goal, they have actively aided and abetted this Leftist lie over the years.
They could take control of the language of political discourse, and instead of using it for control a la the left, use it as a wedge for subsequent instruction and insight.
And yet they don’t. How are they supposed to do this? By means of what?
And what’s taking them so long? For over a hundred years now, the Left has held a monopoly in the intellectual realm, corrupting the very concepts that people think with. Behold the results: the knowledge of what freedom is resides in a small minority, while most of the commenters in here are hopelessly incapable of grasping the entry-level principled thinking in Ghate’s article!
I think it’s time to own up, conservatives; you are not equipped for that particular fight, by reason of your own basic premises. So long as you subscribe to the Kantian notion of reason as “limited”, and continue to mistrust it in favor of arbitrary made-up convictions (faith), conservatism will never be more than pretenders in the realm of ideas.
Amit – Staw men and falacies on my part? Lets follow your argument from the top.
As close as I can read you start by claiming there is an issue of the distinction between violence and force.
Rich condemns the Tea Party because it advocates violence.
Rich contrasts this with the “non-violent” ways of the left.
However Rich DOES say that the left had radical violent elements that advocated the overthrow of the government. These voices however did not make it to our elected representatives. In contrast, the current pandering to the Tea Party’s populist rage has led to some really questionable rhetoric from the those seeking office on the Right, i.e. the golf club quote and others he mentions.
Your musings on how much damage is caused to people due to the left’s “non-violent” methods which you expand to include some of the normal functions of the FDA, SEC, DOE, NRC etc. don’t really seem to serve a purpose since we’ve already conceded the point that the members of the left have actually called for the same kind of regime changes that some of the more militant Tea Party enthusiasts have talked about.
Oh, did you see what Palin did lately? That thing with the writing on her hand? Hilarious. Now she’s saying “God did it, so it’s good enough for me.” That makes me laugh every time I see it. Kind of like reading the blogs on this website. But by no means stop. You’re providing entertainment for the rest of us. From: Independent party member and proud of it
OK, left-wing troll. If you insist on generating useless comments, please refrain from doing it under the guise of a username that I’ve already taken. It just creates confusion.
The goal was to slowly eliminate the knowledge of liberty from the mainstream mind, and to discredit the Enlightenment. As conservatism shares this goal, they have actively aided and abetted this Leftist lie over the years.
Thanks for this excellent article. One thing that stands out is the degree to which Amit Ghate manages to bring some of the more fundamental ideas of philosophy into a discussion of current events and politics. I look forward to seeing more articles in this vein, ones that attempt to touch upon a deeper truth, as this one does about the nature of force and how it is destructive of the individual rights – the freedom to think and act – that all men require if they are to live. Looking at what underlies our ideas about politics–what facts about ethics, the nature of man, his means of knowledge, and so on–all such thinking is important and worth injecting into the discussion. Great work, Amit.
PS, mythbuster should look into _The Myth of the Robber Barons_.
It’s all part of the plan to change the meaning of words; I call it LiberalSpeak
“The Fairness Doctrine” is not fair; it says comply or pay 100% tax on profits
“Card Check” destroys a worker’s private vote
“Climate Change” and “Global Warming”: terms used to convince us that we have the power to change the weather
“Cap and Trade”: just another way to shift money around
“The US does not torture” : infers that we once did
“Major Hassan just snapped”: we must accept that he made no premeditated plans
“Healthcare reform will not add a dime to the deficit”: just MANY dimes
“You can keep your Doctor”: that is if you can find one
“The Safe School Czar”: his job is to glorify homosexuals
“Fat Cat Bankers”: they control money that govt wants to control
“Big Oil” “Big Pharma” “Big Insurance”: bad profit-making companies that need to turn over their profits to the govt
“America is just another nation”: so we must bow wherever we go
“Punished with a baby”: just get rid of it
“Re-distribute the wealth”: the govt will handle that for you
“The constitution does not say what to do on behalf of Americans”: means the govt is working on a second Bill of Rights
“We will strengthen our airport security”: means we will not profile, only look for ordinary Americans
“Illegals will not get free healthcare”: (they already do) means not until we give them amnesty
“I am a Christian”: do not ask me to show it
“America is a Muslim nation”: we are working on that
“Manmade Disaster”: we are too afraid to say terrorist
“Overseas Contingency Plan”: war? what war?
“The public option is not in the bill”: it is hidden
“You cannot continue to eat as much, keep your thermostat at 72 and drive your big cars”: but we can