David Gross of The Picket Line submits an exploration of ethical reductionism in the context of political theory: Does political philosophy reduce to ethical philosophy?

[This] is what makes the liberal political theories and their justifications difficult for me to swallow. They seem to have this backwards. According to them, some behavior at the ethical level switches from unethical to ethical based on the description it is given at the political level, rather than its description at the political level being based on an analysis of it at the ethical level. Whereas it seems to me that whether a particular action is ethical or not should not depend on what political system you’re operating under or what role the people involved play in that system; rather, whether the system is reasonable and coherent should depend on whether the individuals enacting their roles in that system behave ethically in so doing.

With his submission, he says: “Some anarchists and libertarians seem to believe that political philosophy reduces to ethical philosophy, the same way some scientists believe that chemistry ultimately reduces to physics. Is this part of the appeal of anarchism, and does it make sense?” I for one do believe that the political ought to reduce to the ethical, that this does make sense and that it is part of anarchism’s appeal. My own posting on the clown suit defense makes this point, though a bit obliquely.

Mike Billy of Reflections from a Rotting Nation writes of another incident in what seems to be a new trend driven by both advances in technology and some rather insane law in Teen Girl Charged With Sex Offense For Sending Nude Pictures of Herself.

The girl may receive a punishment of several years in a juvenile detention center and forced registration as a sex offender. This new status could prevent her from living within a specified radius of any school, church, or park for the rest of her life. It may also force her to inform all of her neighbors that she is a sex offender when she moves.

So now, not only does she have nude pictures of herself floating around, but she also has the stigma of being labeled a sex offender hanging over her head. But hey, that is the law and ignorance is no excuse.

The ABC News story linked to in the post has comments attached which present both many defenses of the girl’s action as well as a catalogue of what passes for sexual “morality” in America, especially as connected to children: “Satan on the loose”, “She doesn’t need jail, she needs therapy”, “What the hell are kids thinking these days!”

The blog post I never wrote reacting to this incident and to some of the ABC News commenters was going to bear the title, “Shocking news! Teen girls enjoy fucking”.

Mike also brings us The Financial Crisis is Not a Market Failure:

No, the financial crisis is not a failure of the free market, it is a failure of fascism. Allowing one unchecked overarching organization known as the Federal Reserve to control the money supply and thus the interest rates has caused the failure.

And how do they propose to fix it? By having that same organization create even more money to bail out these banks.

Like a fly repeatedly striking a glass window, more of the same will not solve our problems. It is time to end the Fed.

The economics lemurs at nostate.com agree wholeheartedly.

Commenting on a resurgence of the Taliban and the displacement of the anemic, imperialist-funded state in Afghanistan, Darian Worden, author of Bring a Gun to School Day (worth reading, and promoting!), says, “Revolutionaries, Take Note“:

When desired goods and services are provided in a revolutionary context, the consumers then join entrepreneurs in building revolution. A revolution based on libertarian principles ought to build liberty outside of the system. It is not enough simply to tell people that the free market can do things better. They must be shown that we will make it do things better. Agorism and other left libertarian philosophies provide ideas for such action.

Pity the Taliban aren’t agorists, or anarchists of any stripe.

Francois Tremblay of the Check Your Premises blog submits a controversial article entitled “Why hierarchies are immoral“. He writes:

Anarchy, as a position on social organization, forces us to rethink the purpose of society itself. What is the goal of social action? While mainstream political ideologies disagree on various issues, there is one thing they all agree on: they universally elevate economic and technological progress as an ultimate, unimpeachable goal, and that the only disagreement is how to effect it and how fast. But this goal is driven by hierarchies that concentrate power and seek to expand that power by all means necessary. Anarchists are the only people who pipe up and say “hey, maybe this whole idea of limitless progress at all costs isn’t so great- maybe the costs are greater than we’re ready to accept.”

This post provoked a great deal of response, in my view, some of which can be found here, here, here, here and here, as well as in the comments to all those posts. One needn’t agree with Tremblay’s definition of hierarchy or with what he derives from it in order to find valuable explorations of social theory here.

Francois continues to push boundaries in his second submission, “I know what’s best for people”:

The Anarchist view is that our institutions and rules must be grounded in the individual’s values: that social morality, like everything else in society, must be a bottom-up system. In contrast, the ruling class imposes the concept of “law” in order to justify its coercive control over society.

An extremely important point, and one which ought to be shouted constantly at those who would seize control of whatever illegitimate coercive apparatus is at hand in order to try to impose their own vision of a “shining city on a hill” upon the rest of us. Looking at this from an agorist perspective, we might say that there is a tendency where if the values forced upon people do not comport with those of the individuals subjected to them, then the power of black and gray markets will increase. Or, as Princess Leia told the Governor: “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

Hosting the carnival gives me a little bit of power, which of course begs to be abused. In that spirit, I present also two things that I wrote this past month: Agorism and ancap panarchy – a response to an Obama voter, and The Golden Rule is insufficient.

Enjoy, and thanks for visiting!

From CBS News, 6 October 2006:

Terry Gilliam Sounds Off

Director Of ‘Brazil’ Says Current Events Parallel His Cult Movie

Visionary director Terry Gilliam, whose 1985 film “Brazil” was a classic tale of terrorized citizens crushed by an authoritarian government, is miffed.

“I’m thinking of suing George Bush and Dick Cheney for making the remake of ‘Brazil’ without my approval,” he told a New York screening audience this week. “Their version isn’t as funny, though.”

The 65-year-old native of Minnesota who emigrated to England in the 1960s and helped form the legendary comedy group Monty Python, held dual citizenship for three decades. (He married a British citizen and has three children.) This past year, though, he renounced his U.S. citizenship. He sees the current political scene in America – and its extension into the world – to be scarily similar to the Orwellian nightmare of his cult film.

In the film, government agents arrest suspects in hordes, going so far as to charge them for their interrogation, including the electricity applied to their bodies. Detainees who couldn’t afford the costs of their torture could apply for loans (at favorable interest rates). The machinery of government-sanctioned torture and data collection became a self-sustaining apparatus.

“It is absolutely frightening,” he said of the current political scene. “Homeland Security is just like [the film's] Ministry of Information, because if your job is counter-terrorism, what do you need to keep in business? You need terrorists, and even if they aren’t there, we may have to create new ones. It works very well.”

From The Onion’s AV Club, 11 October 2006:

AVC: Why did you renounce your American citizenship earlier this year?

TG: I thought I’d just simplify my life. I’m getting old. I’m gonna die. I’m not at all happy with what America has been in the last 10 years. [Laughs.] The reality is, when I kick the bucket, American tax authorities assess everything I own in the world—everything I own is outside of America—and then tax me on it, and that would mean my wife would probably have to sell our house to pay the taxes. I didn’t think that was fair on my wife and children.

From the name Abraham we get the term “Abrahamic religion“, a catch-all for all those faiths which trace their historicity to Abraham. Abrahamic religion is one of the cornerstones of the dominant social and psychological paradigm across great expanses of the globe and among billions of human beings today.

The story of Abraham and Isaac always really bothered me. Let’s take a look at Genesis 22 (yes, all of it, from the New American Bible translation):

Some time after these events, God put Abraham to the test. He called to him, “Abraham!”

“Ready!” he replied.

Then God said: “Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you.”

Early the next morning Abraham saddled his donkey, took with him his son Isaac, and two of his servants as well, and with the wood that he had cut for the holocaust, set out for the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham got sight of the place from afar. Then he said to his servants: “Both of you stay here with the donkey, while the boy and I go on over yonder. We will worship and then come back to you.” Thereupon Abraham took the wood for the holocaust and laid it on his son Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife.

As the two walked on together, Isaac spoke to his father Abraham. “Father!” he said.

“Yes, son,” he replied.

Isaac continued, “Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the holocaust?”

“Son,” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the sheep for the holocaust.” Then the two continued going forward.

When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. Next he tied up his son Isaac, and put him on top of the wood on the altar. Then he reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the LORD’S messenger called to him from heaven, “Abraham, Abraham!”

“Yes, Lord,” he answered.

“Do not lay your hand on the boy,” said the messenger. “Do not do the least thing to him. I know now how devoted you are to God, since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.“

As Abraham looked about, he spied a ram caught by its horns in the thicket. So he went and took the ram and offered it up as a holocaust in place of his son. Abraham named the site Yahweh-yireh; hence people now say, “On the mountain the LORD will see.”

Again the LORD’S messenger called to Abraham from heaven and said: “I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you acted as you did in not withholding from me your beloved son, I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore; your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies, and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing–all this because you obeyed my command.”

Abraham then returned to his servants, and they set out together for Beer-sheba, where Abraham made his home. Some time afterward, the news came to Abraham: “Milcah too has borne sons, to your brother Nahor: Uz, his first-born, his brother Buz, Kemuel (the father of Aram), Chesed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph, and Bethuel.” Bethuel became the father of Rebekah. These eight Milcah bore to Abraham’s brother Nahor. His concubine, whose name was Reumah, also bore children: Tebah, Gaham, Tahash, and Maacah.

What lessons shall the child absorb and internalize, hearing this story retold in solemn tones by those he trusts, loves or depends on?

Invisible ghost speaks addresses man, and man responds “Ready!” — thou shalt obey the invisible

Invisible ghost commands man to commit atrocity against his own family, to violate not only Isaac’s nature but his own. Does Abraham question? Hardly. Abraham speaks nary a word, but sets out meekly in compliance with his invisible master’s order. — submit

Abraham lies to his servants by allowing the collective pronoun “we” was in “we will come back to you”, nevermind the horrors implicit in the idea that a man shall have servants. — servitude is fine for some

Next, Abraham lies to his trusting child, and points to an invisible ghost as the solution to his questioning. — lying for your invisible ghosts is okay

Next, Isaac submits to being bound by his father and condemned to death. A clearer expression of the horror contained in the commandment “honor thy father and thy mother” would be difficult to find. — ’nuff said

Then the invisible ghost comes along and says: “Just kidding!” Does Abraham object or rebel? Hardly, he waits for the next command. Does Isaac, the sacrificial lamb, say anything? Nary a word. — honor thy masters even when they deceive you

Invisible ghost, now playing good cop, praises Abraham for his blind obedience, and REWARDS him! — the ends justify the means?

Never mind its ahistoricity, anyone of conscience ought to burn their Bible after finishing Genesis 22, and condemn the behavior found therein.

Continuing on some themes I’ve set out before: Damn your holy books, damn your obedience, damn your culture. And fuck Jehovah.

And we haven’t even mentioned how this sick fucker sent his own son to be killed by his own agents to prove a point… maybe we’ll come back to that later.

From What Really Happened via disinter:

Confused? Having difficulty telling the good guys from the bad guys? Use this handy guide to differences between Terrorists and the U.S. Government:

TERRORISTS: Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful politician, from extremely wealthy oil family
US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful politician, from extremely wealthy oil family

TERRORISTS: Leader has declared a holy war (‘Jihad’) against his ‘enemies’; believes any nation not with him is against him; believes god is on his side, and that any means are justified.
US GOVERNMENT: Leader has declared a holy war (‘Crusade’) against his ‘enemies’; believes any nation not with him is against him; believes god is on his side, and that any means are justified.

TERRORISTS: Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders who preach hatred, intolerance, subjugation of women, and persecution of non-believers
US GOVERNMENT: Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders who preach hatred, intolerance, subjugation of women, and persecution of non-believers

TERRORISTS: Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people in a free and fair democratic election*
US GOVERNMENT: Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people in a free and fair democratic election*

TERRORISTS: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them children, in cold blooded bombings
US GOVERNMENT: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them children, in cold blooded bombings

TERRORISTS: Operates through clandestine organization (al Qaeda) with agents in many countries; uses bombing, assassination, other terrorist tactics
US GOVERNMENT: Operates through clandestine organization (CIA) with agents in many countries; uses bombing, assassination, other terrorist tactics

TERRORISTS: Supposed leader has extensive financial ties to Supposed leader of US GOVERNMENT
US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader has extensive financial ties to Supposed leader of TERRORIST

TERRORISTS: Supposed leader invested heavily in US bio-chemical companies
US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader invested heavily in US bio-chemical companies

TERRORISTS: Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and undermine civil liberties
US GOVERNMENT: Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and undermine civil liberties

* And that’s right, dear, if they were properly elected, everything would be just fine. Go back to sleep now.

Scientology's own Xenu, according to South Park

This just in: Scientology is a cult.

I repeat, Scientology is a cult.

Ah, but it’s a State-protected cult, so don’t get too mouthy about it in the UK.

As you were.