Part one: America Has Become Too European.

Part two: A Return to Traditional American Virtues.

In Der Spiegel.

As far as Meas’ politics, he self-identifies as a Reagan Republican, because (in his words) “I owe my life to him; he allowed me to come here and he fought Communism.” Fair enough. He’s not a fan of government involvement in health care, appears to hate socialism only slightly less than communism, and thinks America is “heaven on Earth.” From his campaign page:

I am not a career politician or country club candidate. I believe that America is the greatest country on earth. I am Sam Meas and I am running for Congress. I ask for your vote on September 14th. I approve of this message and I approve of the American Dream.

Gosh, I like this guy (and typically I don’t care for Boston fans – I’m assuming he cheers for Red Sox / Patriots). Yet, the Reason article mentions – but doesn’t go into specifics about – Meas’ tendency towards standard Republican social conservatism (you know, legislating morals, mores, and traditions, that are inconsistent with individual liberty). Since Meas also self-describes as the new face of the GOP, I hope he realizes that social conservatism is inconsistent with the individual liberty we all cherish, himself perhaps most of all since he “lived under a totalitarian regime . . . [and] knows what it is like to have lost all of your freedom.” After looking Meas up on the Internet and reading his website, I don’t see any social issues discussed on his “home,” “values & pledge,” or “issue,” pages. In fact, he provides the motto “live and let live.” I’m down with that.

What I’m not down for is Newt Gingrich, whose definition of freedom of expression (particularly religious liberty) is inconsistent with individual liberty. Reason sums it up well:

Jews, Christians, or Hindus are free to build whatever they want at 51 Park Place. But not Muslims. Why? Because the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks were Muslims. Once you strip away the Orwellian rhetoric equating peaceful religious activity with violence, Gingrich’s position really is as simple, and appalling, as that.

But Gingrich doesn’t limit expression only for Muslims, Nazi’s too: “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington.” Here’s the problem with Newt Gingrich and individual liberty: the very criticism I have for the Democrat Party is true about Gingrich. Consider what I wrote about Democrats:

“My issue with the Democratic Party is its lack of concrete limiting principles.  Democrat party values are issue and identity group specific, waxing or waning with the polls.  They are insufficiently rigid.  This is inconsistent with equal treatment and incapable of conserving individual freedom.

Rewritten for Gingrich:

“My issue with the Democratic Party Newt Gingrich is its his lack of concrete limiting principles.  Democrat party Gingrich’s values are issue and identity group specific, waxing or waning with the polls.  They His values are insufficiently rigid.  This is inconsistent with equal treatment and incapable of conserving individual freedom.

Basically, individual freedom serves as Newt Gingrich’s limiting principle only to the extent that he agrees with you. That’s not freedom, Newt, and I won’t vote for you.

By the way, I haven’t written about the NYC Mosque yet. I was busy studying for the bar, then taking it, then traveling, and I’ve been at the bar (Stout) basically ever since. Here’s my view. There is absolutely no room for the force of government to deprive any member of the American community of freedom of expression or religion, no matter how rude their expression may be. Reasonable people can disagree as to whether the Mosque is or isn’t rude, in light of the people building the mosque, the money behind it, the selection of the location, the name Cordoba center, etc.. Personally, I think it’s pretty damn rude. I have my doubts as to the sincerity of the people building it, the intentions of the sources of money for it, and the symbolism of the name Cordoba. And if the intent truly is to build bridges with the American people, they should consider relocating since nearly 70% of the country (including Harry Reid) thinks it’s rude (inappropriate is the term the poll used), and building it there will likely prove counterproductive to their professed intentions.

The bottom line, however, is that this is America and we shouldn’t even be discussing using the immutable force of government to suppress anyone’s religion no matter how rude or inappropriate we may individually perceive it. Shit, Newt, even Palin gets that. If you profess to believe in individual freedom – economic, civil, and political liberty – then you must accept the consequences of freedom, one of which is that we often may be offended by one another. There is no right not to be offended. Your recourse to being offended is not suppression of another’s expression but exercise of your right to expression. Wtf is so hard about this?

Consider Judaism. It told a group of people they were more special than the natural order, and proved it by enslaving them in Egypt, bringing them out of Egypt, insulating them from the natural order for forty years, and then reintroduced them to the natural order of things, which is fighting to sustain their collective conception of natural order, which, like many other religions, offer interesting possibilities at what the natural order could be if it were the natural order, which it could be if it implemented its conception of natural order on everyone else.

Rather, religions together accurately depict natural order because the global concert of each religion’s actors all acting simultaneously and at once is precisely nature’s order. This is true even of Atheists who collectively function as a single religion. As do Voluntaryists, however non-coercively. And wouldn’t natural order be interesting if people, whom for so long have done nothing but coerce each other, just stopped it already? Then people could get on with figuring out whom they are, and being that person. What I’m saying is the great Greek aphorism – know thyself – is potentially unfulfilled.

Perhaps it requires a moment to understand that natural order is as natural order does. Whatever natural order may be, it always abides by the laws of physics, markets, and providence. So what all religions – and cultures, which like any collective group of people trying to achieve their conception of the natural order play a substantial role in shaping the natural order – have in common is a good indicator of what’s true about the human experience. For instance, no religion I’m aware of promises that the rain will fall only on the righteous, because clearly that’s not true. All religions that promise the return of its particular prophet or deity disclaim that the precise date or time is unknown. The exceptions to this all prove the rule, such as the Seventh Day Adventists who were so sure Jesus was returning in 1844 they didn’t bother to bring in the crops that year.

That’s why it’s important to consider how accurately a particular religion depicts the immutable laws by which all actors in the concert of natural order must obey, such as gravity and probability. Consequently, I’m particularly tolerant of religions that articulate and are consistent with the natural rights (see Locke, John; Hobbes, Thomas) that shape my conception of the natural order, which is freedom. I suppose that explains a lot about why some people think man made God in man’s image.

For instance, if God was made in my image he’d love freedom, hate coercion, but be a bit of a fatalist, being a big believer in providence and that the best we can do is to do the best we can. Of course, you can say the same of gazelles on African savannah.

Nature, then, provides the natural order with which the human experience is ultimately consistent. The obvious implication is that humans evolved directly from nature, which is scientifically true. Yet common to almost every human is belief in God or religion, befuddling Atheists. Perhaps gazelles marvel at the stars, thanking providence for sparing them from the day’s lions. That doesn’t account beyond nature’s order, however, for the gazelles the lions ate.

The fact is that natural life is short and brutal. Since humans are uniquely capable of attempting to recreate natural order in their conception of what natural order should be it should be no surprise that humans endeavor precisely that. Perhaps left to our own devices in a world devoid of government or religion – like in The Book of Eli, where the natural order of humankind was truly short and brutal – religion would be a most logical conclusion, as a preferable alternative to nature’s brute order. The logical end of that, though, is the same concert of religions, cultures, and individuals, as exist now, all fighting, one way or another, to assert their conception of natural order upon others. The common human experience, then, may be cyclical and never learns from its mistakes, something to which most religions stipulate. As does Cosmology (universe expanding, contracting, and over again).

If in a world devoid of government or religion life is short and brutal, rather than libertopia, one wonders how voluntaryism might take hold if not by force. Consider Ghengis Khan, the original neocon, who sincerely believed the only way to live at peace was to conquer potentially (and often actually) quarrelsome neighbors, and enforce a culture of peace with the hardest of iron fists – which he did. His only mandate to all within his ever-expanding territory was be peaceful. But it took many millions of lives to achieve that peace, and it lasted only as long as he could enforce it. George Bush might say that Khan violated his peaceful principles to implement his peaceful principles. Successfully, too, for a time.

Then again, hundreds of millions of lives have been wasted throughout history for reasons much less noble than creating a culture of relative peace. As a result I’m often convinced that neoconism is the lesser of the evils. The obvious counterargument to neoconism is that Alfred Nobel thought dynamite – his invention and at that time the world’s greatest weapon – would end large-scale warfare. And look how well that turned out. But as a friend pointed out the other day, Nobel may have actually been correct in principle, and his flaw one of scale. Perhaps hydrogen bombs are weapons great enough in global scale to end large-scale warfare, making irritating regional conflicts the norm rather than greater global upheaval.

Of course, regional conflicts involving nuclear weapons may quickly progress to global upheaval, which makes the neoconservative point about the importance of stopping unstable regimes such as Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. By contrast, neoconservatives tolerate Israel’s nuclear arsenal because they don’t think it’d be used for anything but self-preservation. Self-preservation is a natural right, and one superior to the right of coercion asserted by every invader – even those who claim the right of invasion to create a peaceful order. Human’s collective appreciation for the right of self-preservation may be precisely why implementing an aggressive neoconservative strategy effectively frightens the majority of us into inaction on the matter, leading then to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in unstable regions (e.g. Pakistan), the presence of which makes more likely the prospect of global warfare, which is ultimately much worse than irritating regional conflicts.

Worse, not only are we collectively unwilling to preclude the possibility of global warfare by forcibly stopping unstable regimes from obtaining nuclear weapons, we are unwilling even to destabilize those regimes by tearing down the restrictions on nuclear energy in the United States – ironically, the form of energy powering the Navy, our greatest projection of power – and instantly bankrupt unstable and unwanted regimes the world over. The mass proliferation of nuclear energy in America would reduce regional conflicts into simply national conflicts. Or at least nations in a given region couldn’t project their regional conflicts onto us, which would be outstanding.

So do we agree, then, on supporting nuclear energy? And did I mention Gov. Gary Johnson supports bustin’ down the door to nuclear energy in America? I’m on board.

The Gary Johnson’s train is leaving the station. All aboard for a common sense, business approach to Constitutionally limited, fiscally responsible government. I’m driving the train, and informing the world.

As an aside, According to J.C. (a human friend, not Jesus Christ), I’m effectively Gary Johnson’s frontman. Although, come to think of it, I’d accept Christ’s endorsement on the matter. Yo Gary, I’m your Flavor Flav.

This video reminds me of what a friend said to me at Stout: “I long thought the Second Amendment was, at least, ambiguous. Then I read it.”

Or, just think about Cartman shouting at his mother “Mah! More Pie!”

Those who advocate a reduced global American military presence are often accused by defenders of the status quo of somehow being naïve or unable to see the big picture. But the exact opposite is true — it is those who insist America must be everywhere at all times who are also all over the place in their logic, as their advocating for perpetual war continues to lead to permanent disaster.

Not to mention, as Gov. Gary Johnson would surely remind you, that 43% of every dollar the US spends is borrowed.

Take Iraq. Now that Obama has announced his own “Mission Accomplished” and is reducing troop levels, Democrats are praising the president’s leadership and Republicans are touting the Bush surge that made it all possible. But however stable or unstable Iraq becomes in the years ahead, what, exactly, did the United States get out of this war?

Did any of the reasons Americans were given for invading Iraq — that Saddam Hussein was a “threat,” that he possessed weapons of mass destruction, that he aided terrorists and was somehow connected to 9/11 — turn out to be true? When asked whether it would have been wise to oust Hussein during Operation Desert Storm, former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said in 1994 that invading Baghdad would have created a “quagmire,” destabilized the region, caused civil war, empowered Iran, and led to U.S. casualties that would have been too high. “How many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?” Cheney asked in ‘94.s

Did not everything Cheney once feared about invading Iraq come to fruition after 2003, and are these not the reasons Bush even had to surge or Obama still has to stay? Cheney was right the first time — how many dead Americans was Saddam worth? With nearly 5,000 soldiers lost, tens of thousands of civilian casualties, a more brazen Iran, and a $3 trillion price tag, what have we accomplished in Iraq that, in retrospect, was even remotely worth the cost? Those who still believe that it was necessary to invade Iraq would likely consider this critique the ramblings of a naïve fool who does not understand the big picture when it comes to fighting the War on Terror — but what has the Iraq War ever had to do in any conceivable way with actually fighting al-Qaeda, a group that did not even exist in that country until the U.S. invaded? It is not the Iraq War’s critics who have failed to see the big picture.

American foreign interventionism is like an abusive marriage — no matter how illogical or tragic it becomes, we always rationalize why we must stay. We went to Iraq to take care of the “threat” that Saddam had allegedly become — something, even if true, we created through years of aid and ammo to the Iraqi dictator in the 1980s. If Saddam ever had WMDs, we gave them to him. Why would we aid Hussein? As a bulwark against Iran, whom we perceived as a threat, and why? Because Iran took American hostages following their 1979 revolution in which they overthrew the Shah — a leader we installed and Iranians despised, engendering anti-American sentiment and sowing the seeds for revolution for decades. Today, the same people who thought the Iraq War was a good idea are clamoring for war with Iran. Why? Because with the overthrow of Saddam, Iran’s power and influence in the region has risen, making that country now also a “threat,” just as Dick Cheney once warned it might become.

And then there’s Afghanistan, where we fought the Taliban after 9/11, whose training and weapons came from the United States in the ’80s during the Cold War. The 1988 action movie “Rambo III,” in which Sylvester Stallone made new friends in Osama bin Laden’s social circle, ended with the following dedication: “This film is dedicated to the gallant people of Afghanistan.” Those gallant Afghans now make up the insurgency that persists in that country, where our current president is escalating troops for some vague reason, while simultaneously carrying out drone strikes in neighboring Pakistan, our supposed ally. Former Reagan official and foreign-policy critic Bruce Fein estimates that for every U.S. drone strike, 10 new insurgents are created — making the so-called War on Terror more a war for it.

That our interventionism only begets more interventionism, that our wars on terror only create more terrorists, and that virtually every military action we take in the Middle East results in further military action is the big picture that defenders of the foreign-policy status quo either cannot see or do not want us to. What do we ever “win” in the Middle East? What have we ever “won?”

Emphasis added.

There were 72 bodies found on a ranch ninety miles south of the Texas border — obvious victims of a drug cartel massacre. Bullets have been hitting public buildings in El Paso, and the Washington Post is reporting that at least $20 billion a year in cash is being smuggled across the U. S. border each year. What is it going to take to convince the federal government that current drug policies are not working? The fact is that the current drug laws are contributing to an all-out war on our southern border — all in the name of a modern-day prohibition that is no more logical or realistic than the one we abandoned 75 years ago.

. . .

How are [illegal drug cartels] able to do this? Because America’s policy for nearly 70 years has been to keep marijuana — arguably no more harmful than alcohol and used by 15 million Americans every month — confined to the illicit market, meaning we’ve given criminals a virtual monopoly on something that U.S. researcher Jon Gettman estimates is a $36 billion a year industry, greater than corn and wheat combined. We have implemented laws that are not enforceable, which has thereby created a thriving black market. By denying reality and not regulating and taxing marijuana, we are fueling not only this massive illicit economy, but a war that we are clearly losing.

In short, let’s end the war on drugs because it’s stupid. I wrote about the interplay between marijuana and liberty – and championed Gov. Johnson’s common sense, liberty-first views on the mattter – a little while back.

Gov. Johnson also favors legalizing marijuana. Why? Because [] legalization of marijuana will eliminate a substantial portion of the criminal element of drug distribution, conserve human and law enforcement resources, and permit society to deal with drug abuse as a medical, not criminal, issue. More importantly, legalization of marijuana – unlike outright prohibition – is consistent with traditional American notions of liberty, the idea that we are born free to pursue happiness in the manner we see fit but may not infringe on the freedom of others. The principle that we should be free to choose – savor that phrase, Free to Choose – extends to choices that may be harmful, wasteful, or unnecessary. Motorcycles, for instance.

Legalization and common sense regulation of marijuana (e.g. no impairment and driving) is a better public policy than prohibition, and it is consistent with liberty.  Insofar as we disagree with our fellow citizens’ choices we may advocate against them. But we should not resort to government prohibition to prevent others from choosing, while establishing our choice as law. That is not limited government, and it is not freedom. Good government preserves our freedom to choose and holds us liable when the consequences of our choices adversely impact others.

For more information on Gov. Gary Johnson I heartily recommend his official facebook page, unofficial facebook page, official twitter feed, the OUR America Initiative homepage, and assorted grassroots organizations championing Gov. Gary Johnson for president.

I’m taking the California bar exam tomorrow. And Wednesday. And Thursday. Reflecting on my experience with “higher education” I think that the fundamental problem with higher education is that rather than serving as a shortcut to gaining the skills and knowledge necessary to being productive in a particular industry it has become a prerequisite in too many industries, law included. Higher education’s economic and societal inefficiencies flow from that basic flaw.

I think short posts like this will become my norm. Rather than trying to comment on the news of the day I’ve become primarily interested in distilling key issues down to their core. I took a stab at this in July, when I wrote:

I can’t spot a difference between the legal argument against gay marriage and the now discredited argument against female suffrage. And from my view, the rationale driving the war on drugs is essentially the same rationale behind gun control. Take note, Republicans.

I’m in the process of articulating my political world view in a similar fashion to my ever-evolving manifesto on equal treatment. That should be up shortly. Until then, the Dialectical Playa has been busy. Check him out.

The Akaka bill proposes to federally recognize a Hawaiian governing entity similar to those of federally recognized Indian tribes. As the Akaka bill will institutionalize a political difference between Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians, who is Hawaiian is a timely, and controversial, issue. Also controversial is whether Congress possesses the authority to federally recognize a Hawaiian governing entity. This article addresses three questions that probe the heart of the controversy surrounding the Akaka bill: who is Hawaiian, what begets federal recognition, and how much blood matters. After analyzing relevant Indian jurisprudence, this article demonstrates that political history, not indegeneity, begets federal recognition. As such, it is the political-historical, not racial, definition of Hawaiian that is legally significant to the Akaka bill. Since, however, the Akaka bill utilizes an ethnic Hawaiian blood eligibility criterion, another important question – and one Justice Breyer raised in Rice v. Cayetano – is how much blood is necessary to distinguish ideological self-identification from legitimate racial identity. To the extent racial preferences may coexist with the equal protection components of the Constitution, this article contends that a preponderance of preferred blood is the logical quantum, but a fifty percent requirement is the most practicable.