This is the second of a set of emails, which included WORD attachments. This written critical exchange was arranged with libertarian writer George H. Smith in the summer of 2003 as a paid critique service for the purpose of obtaining logical analysis of the philosophical basis of the Self-Sovereign Individual Project by a knowledgeable libertarian thinker. (See Link Note)
Paul's inline response follows George's intact email and incorporated WORD attachment.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Part One
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 11:53:08 -0500
From: George H. Smith
To: Paul Antonik Wakfer
Paul,
This is the first of two parts. I will get the second part
to you asap, by early tomorrow at the latest. This is
frankly taking me longer than I expected, but I'm rather
enjoying it and am more than willing to put a few extra
hours into another email, especially since this first
installment tends to wander over a range of subjects, some
of them historical. The second installment will take up
your annotations in a more systematic fashion, though it
will be impossible for me to cover everything.
Best,
George
[Given how much I need to write today, I haven't taken the time to proof anything. My emails tend to be rich in typos whenever I write quickly, so please overlook them. Most of them will consist of omitting prepositions and indefinite articles.]
Paul,
I spent a good deal of time last night and early this morning going over not only the annotated DOII once again but also some related items, especially your comments on the Declaration. I have a lot to say, but I will necessarily have to scale down some of my remarks. I think it would be best if I were to send you two installments rather than one very long piece. This latter option might be late in coming, given how complex some of these issues are. As things stand now, I should be able to send you both emails today, though it's possible that I may not be able to get the second to you until early tomorrow. This installment will begin with some general observations.
In your last email, you wrote: "I am most interested in holes in my logic. I have little interest in whether I am historically complete or even fully accurate."
I realize that you are talking about this specific project rather than generally, but in some cases it is very difficult to separate your theoretical remarks from your historical observations, especially given the fact that your various articles are obviously meant to constitute different parts of an integrated whole. I shall deal with some of these issues as we proceed. (For the sake of convenience, I shall refer to your annotated DOII as "AD.")
I want to be clear on how my comments are written. Much of what I say is obviously a matter of opinion and personal preference. Indeed, in some cases my remarks amount to little more than saying, "This is how I would have written it." Nevertheless, I usually don't preface my remarks with "I think" or "In my opinion." This may sometimes infuse a sense of bluntness in my comments, making them appear sharper than I intend. Please keep this in mind.
Moreover, given the volume of material, I must often confine myself to general observations. We can discuss some of these issues in more detail this weekend, if you wish.
You place undue emphasis on the use of plural pronouns and collective nouns, and this detracts from more essential points. This problem appears, if in somewhat different forms, in both the AD and in your comments on the Declaration of Independence. For example, in the latter we find::
The use of the phrase "one people" is based on collectivist rather than individualist thinking. [Quotations from your writing are in italics.]
The use of "one people["] in the Declaration does not reflect collectivist thinking. This was a legalistic document, one intended to justify a political separation that would have otherwise been condemned as treasonous. From a legal point of view, the colonists were "one people," inasmuch as they were subject to common system of British colonial law -- one that in many respects made them second-class British subjects.
An essential aspect of human nature is that each person has a mind a) uniquely different, and b) almost completely separated from that of each and every other person. With respect to b), one individual is only "connected" to another individual by means of the very limited conduit comprising their senses. The amounts, types and rates of information transferable between individuals are enormously less than that within the brain of any one individual.
This isn't really a legitimate correction, since it doesn't differ in essentials from Jefferson's own philosophy. Let me give you just one example.
One of Jefferson's favorite philosophers was the Frenchman Antoine Destutt de Tracy. (Jefferson assisted in translating at least two of his books into English.) Destutt talks incessantly about individuality as the foundation of morality, including the notion of property. Here is a typical passage from A Treatise on Political Economy, which was one of Jefferson's favorite books, which he personally arranged to have published in an English translation:
"[A]s soon as this individual knows accurately itself, or its moral person, and its capacity to enjoy and to suffer…it sees clearly also that this self is the exclusive proprietor of the body which it animates, or the organs which it moves, of all their passions and their actions; for all this finishes and commences with this self, exists by it, is not moved but by its acts, and no other moral person can employ the same instruments nor be affected in the same manner by their effects. The idea of property and of exclusive property arises then necessarily in a sensible being from this alone, that it is susceptible of passion and action; and it rises in such a being because nature has endowed it with an inevitable and inalienable property, that of its individuality." [There are actually better passages than this in Destutt, but this is the first one I happened across.]
I know you didn't want me to dwell on historical issues, but I feel this is an important problem (one far more serious than any theoretical disagreements we may have). It unfortunately runs throughout your comments on the Declaration, even though your prefatory remarks do acknowledge its brilliance. You generally present highly unsympathetic interpretations of words and passages, which in some cases rest on historical inaccuracies and misunderstandings. You continue:
"Thus, there never has been, is not and will likely never be such an entity as "one people" - a collection of humans which jointly thinks and acts as one simply does not exist (humans are not "Borg")."
Nothing in the Declaration implies this. Jefferson and his colleagues were methodological individualists; none was a methodological holist. Their shared viewed of society and social relationships was beautifully expressed by Destutt:
"Society is purely and solely a continual series of exchanges. It is never anything else, in any epoch of its duration, from its commencement the most unformed, to its greatest perfection. And this is the greatest eulogy we can give to it, for exchange is an admirable transaction, in which the two contracting parties always both gain; consequently society is an uninterrupted succession of advantages, unceasingly renewed for all its members."
I don't know of any modern writer who has done a better job of defining "society." So what is the point of all this? Although I know it is not your intention to write a scholarly dissertation on the Declaration, I think you would be much better served -- not only in terms of accuracy but also in terms of PR value -- to take a different slant on the Declaration. By this I don't mean some kind of flowery, unconditional praise, but rather a perspective that says, in effect: "Look, folks -- you may think you learned about this document in school, but there is a lot more here than meets the eye. The ideological foundation of the Declaration is incredibly radical by today's standard. For example, the doctrine of tyrannicide, which was an integral part of the Radical Whig ideology that animated Jefferson's thinking, would be equivalent in modern terms to defending the assassination of a president."
What you do instead, in various ways, is to criticize the Declaration because it is not a defense of anarchism, voluntaryism, or whatever. There are a number of problems with this approach. One is that it tends to become repetitive and predictable. Another is that it obscures much of the value that can be gleaned from the Declaration. Another is that it may have an adverse effect on more intelligent and knowledgeable visitors to your website.
Permit me to be blunt. You obviously know your stuff. This is evident, for instance, in your comments on the Articles of Confederation, which I liked much better than your comments on the Declaration. But given that the average surfer may not stick around long enough on your webpage to discover that you know your stuff, and given that (like me) you can't flash instant credentials in the field in which you are writing, much of this boils down to a matter of fleeting impressions. And I'm afraid some of your more extreme comments don't give a very good impression. For instance:
"This same philosophically flawed collectivist thinking and pompous language, by which the Framers presume to represent the views of all, continues throughout TDOI (and, of course, has now become a characteristic of politicians, "leaders" and "public" officials - not to mention social philosophers - everywhere)."
Now, I know what you are getting at here, and your criticism is not entirely without merit from a radical libertarian perspective -- but it is overstated. The Declaration does not exhibit "collectivist thinking" in any meaningful sense. Rather, it summarizes Lockean, or Radical Whig, political philosophy, while making no attempt to justify it. Hence a fair appraisal would require at least some analysis of Lockean social contract theory, the meaning of "consent," etc., etc. We may disagree with these theories, but they are by no means unreasonable. Even modern libertarians haven't dealt adequately with many of the same problems that vexed our ideological ancestors, such as tacit or implied consent, etc.
Btw, it is misleading at best to refer to the "framers" of the Declaration. Although a committee was assigned to draft the document, it was written entirely by Jefferson. True, some changes were made in a session of the Second Continental Congress, but these (except for deleting Jefferson's condemnation of the slave trade) were relatively minor. I don't ever recall seeing the word "framers" used in regard to the Declaration. It is used almost exclusively to refer to the drafting of the Constitution, which was a truly collective enterprise (and shows it).
I also had a number of problems with your interpretation of the list of grievances, many of which refer to specific events and problems in colonial history and cannot be understood out of context. But I've already gone on way too long on this topic, so I will wind up with one final observation.
Although the grievances hold the least interest for most readers today, at the time they were regarded as the most important part. Jefferson was right when he later observed that the philosophical summary largely reflected the "American mind," i.e., the Radical Whig doctrines that many Americans, including those who opposed independence, accepted as a matter of course. It is impossible to understand the Declaration in its historical context without an appreciation of propagandistic value.
Jefferson saw no need to argue for principles that most Americans already endorsed. His primary problem was to convince the many fence sitters who were not yet convinced that the facts warranted a violent rebellion, even by Radical Whig standards. He needed to convince Americans that more was involved in conflicts with the British than honest misunderstandings and incidental violations of liberty. In order to justify revolution, he needed to prove a concerted design on the part of the British government to subvert the fundamental liberties of Americans. This was the point of Jefferson's stress on "unalienable rights," the natural reluctance of a people to rebel, the nature of evidence for a conspiracy, why he didn't include property in his trinity of inalienable rights -- and virtually everything else in the document. I have long regarded the Declaration as the most focused, succinct, brilliantly written, and successful short essay in the history of philosophy.
The preceding points to a fundamental difference between Jefferson's Declaration and your DOII. Jefferson was summarizing a political philosophy that was already well-known and accepted by many of his potential readers. He wasn't attempting to convince anyone that his philosophical principles were valid; instead, these were taken as a "self-evident" given, as a place from which to start. His purpose was to rouse people to action who already accepted his philosophical principles, and he hoped to accomplish this by marshaling factual evidence of a British conspiracy. Jefferson didn't even need to convince most of his American readers that the grievances, considered individually, were legitimate -- for many opponents of independence agreed on this score as well. What Jefferson needed to do was convince skeptics to take a look at the big picture.
In short, Jefferson's task was basically one of integration. He said, in effect: "Look, here are the principle we agree upon. We all agree that at a certain point, after a government has become tyrannical, revolution is justified. What we don't agree on is whether we have reached that point. We don't agree on whether the injustices of the British government are sustained and systematic enough to constitute a conspiracy to subvert our liberty. So, after summarizing our common principles, I will submit the relevant facts to a candid world."
What I am getting at here, Paul, is that your task, philosophically speaking, is far more difficult than the one Jefferson faced. His limited purpose was more suited to a short Declaration than the purpose you wish to achieve, since you cannot take for granted nearly as much as Jefferson did. Judging from some of your remarks, I suspect you may provide a remedy for some of these problems in your annotated Social Contract , and if so my observation may be a bit superfluous. But I will say a few more things about this anyway, since it would be futile for me to speculate about something I haven't seen.
You present your DOII as a statement of your personal beliefs, which are elaborated upon in the AD, and you then invite others "of like mind to sign this Declaration." This is fine, but a problem arises with the degree of specificity. For example, at one point you protest laws that "restrict the liberty of adults" by "mandating the wearing of clothing." Even if people agreed with absolutely everything else in the DOII and AD, you risk losing many people with clauses like this, especially when it is not at all clear what you mean. Some people may think you are protesting laws that prevent people from walking around nude in a shopping mall or when picking their kids up from school. Granted, libertarians deal with this sort of issue in terms of private property rights and contracts, whether implied or express, about the conditions for venturing onto someone else's land. But since none of this is clear, the clause sounds a bit nutty.
Moreover, this clause is included in the same list as conscription, the right of self-defense, and other fundamental principles. The result is that you have a strange brew in which fundamental rights are mixed in with derivative rights and relatively minor issues, such as "stealing the time of people crossing at borders." It's not even clear what you mean by this latter clause. If you mean the time it takes to go through checkpoints, customs, etc., then this is surely a subsidiary issue when compared to those checkpoints themselves. Lastly, most readers will find it strange to speak of "stealing time." This relies, not on the idea of "property" that is now in common use (e.g., a thing that is owned), but on the older notion (current in the 17th and 18th centuries) of "property in," or rightful dominion over, something, such as one's person, labor, and time. (Btw, c. 1800 James Madison wrote a very interesting piece on these two meanings of "property." He seemed to prefer the older notion of "property in," for he condemns Sabbatarian laws that restrict activities on Sunday as a violation of "property in one's time." This might make for an interesting footnote.)
But I digress, as I often do. (It would take me longer to edit these rambling remarks down to a more reasonable length; and I prefer to give you more rather than less in any case.) My original point was this: I think you should consider deleting the less important clauses, especially those on which libertarians might reasonably disagree. An example of this is your protest against the judicial exclusion of "evidence wrongfully obtained." Many libertarians, myself included, would view this as a safeguard (of sorts) against abuses by overly-zealous police and prosecutors. These sorts of issues are legitimate subjects of disagreement and debates among libertarians. They pertain not so much to fundamental principles per se as to the application of principles, about which there can be honest disagreement. In short, I think the DOII should be restricted to statements of fundamental principles only. Otherwise, with the exception of you and Kitty, you are unlikely to find people who are willing to endorse everything in DOII.
One last point before I take a break and begin work on a more systematic analysis of AD. It has to do with your recommendation of the tag "SSI" for those who sign the DOII. In the United States this is a standard abbreviation for those on Social Security who fill out credit applications and other financial documents. It literally stands (I think) for "Social Security Insurance." In any event, it indicates someone who has never worked, owing to a severe mental or physical disability, and who is therefore totally dependent on welfare. (The abbreviation "SSA," in contrast, indicates someone who is on partial disability.) This is FYI, in case you were unaware of it. I don't know whether it is important enough to influence your choice of a tag.
[To be continued]
Best,
George
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Part One
Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2003 19:56:03 -0400
From: Paul Antonik Wakfer
Organization: MoreLife
To: George H. Smith
George,
It is TDOI [the original US Declaration of Independence] as viewed
from the present that I am criticising not as viewed in 1776.
See my response to part one appended.
--Paul
George,
Here is my response to your comments.
Your original is in blue and indented
Note: Since this response was never replied to, it has been somewhat modified to make corrections, to make the arguments stronger or clearer and to take into account changes which have been made to the documents since it was written. With these few exceptions, however, it still remains very close to what was sent.
[Given how much I need to write today, I haven't taken the time to proof anything. My emails tend to be rich in typos whenever I write quickly, so please overlook them. Most of them will consist of omitting prepositions and indefinite articles.]
Not a problem. I used to do the same all the time on various newsgroups and forums. But now Kitty always reads, checks and edits my work. To me the information content and clarity of writing is everything and beauty is unimportant.
In your last email, you wrote: "I am most interested in holes in my logic. I have little interest in whether I am historically complete or even fully accurate."
I realize that you are talking about this specific project rather than generally, but in some cases it is very difficult to separate your theoretical remarks from your historical observations, especially given the fact that your various articles are obviously meant to constitute different parts of an integrated whole.
Actually I do mean this more generally. My view is that truth and logic is what counts and what will win the day. Any arguments based on an extensive reading and knowledge of history tend to be tantamount to arguments from authority. Certainly perpetrating patent falsehoods of history is always wrong, but an innocent mistake of such knowledge which is inconsequential to an argument is not a show stopper. I expect that as someone steeped in history, that you will totally disagree with this. But my reply is: "We are not living in the 18th century! We are living right here and now, and must do the best we can to persuade those who know little of what went on then, are not really interested, and will not take the time to find out."
but in some cases it is very difficult to separate your theoretical remarks from your historical observations, especially given the fact that your various articles are obviously meant to constitute different parts of an integrated whole.
The difficulty of separation is precisely because I don't really care about whether some writing is historical or not. I only care about it as read by someone today who is trying to apply it to today using today's word and phrase meanings.
I want to be clear on how my comments are written. Much of what I say is obviously a matter of opinion and personal preference. Indeed, in some cases my remarks amount to little more than saying, "This is how I would have written it." Nevertheless, I usually don't preface my remarks with "I think" or "In my opinion." This may sometimes infuse a sense of bluntness in my comments, making them appear sharper than I intend. Please keep this in mind.
Not a problem. I usually do the same. I only occasionally use "IMO" when it really is only an opinion (but I almost never give them) and never "IMHO". Who needs "humble"?
Moreover, given the volume of material, I must often confine myself to general observations. We can discuss some of these issues in more detail this weekend, if you wish.
My major criticism is your unqualified defense of TDOI [the original US Declaration of Independence] and your unwillingness to comment at all on some of my most solid criticisms of it. I did not know that you were such a "worshiper" of TDOI and Jefferson. Sorry to have to say that, but it is the way it appears. There is a difference between admiration and appreciation for the documents of the past (which I am and do also) and being not able to objectively see that they had flaws. Besides, if TDOI and its authors and signers were so great then how did the US get to its present mess and why did the revolutionary leaders allow such atrocities (see: http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1273) even during the execution of the very revolutionary war which was fought to end such things?
You place undue emphasis on the use of plural pronouns and collective nouns, and this detracts from more essential points. This problem appears, if in somewhat different forms, in both the AD and in your comments on the Declaration of Independence.
I disagree entirely that it is "undue". Have you really read and tried to understand what I wrote in various places about this? I fear not.
For example, in the latter we find:
The use of the phrase "one people" is based on collectivist rather than individualist thinking. [Quotations from your writing are in italics.]
The use of "one people["] in the Declaration does not reflect collectivist thinking.
It certainly does! for the reasons I give below.
This was a legalistic document, one intended to justify a political separation that would have otherwise been condemned as treasonous. From a legal point of view, the colonists were "one people," inasmuch as they were subject to common system of British colonial law -- one that in many respects made them second-class British subjects.
If the authors of TDOI were simply differentiating between the human beings geographically residing in the colonies and the human beings residing in England that would have been fine. However, they went on to state: "they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation"! This is imputing thought and volitional action to a collective and that is what is always wrong and should in every case be roundly condemned! Furthermore, by using such phrases as "one people" they were fraudulently implying that every colonist was in agreement with them, which as you know is far from the truth. However, as a result of your comment, I have now expanded that sentence into a full paragraph:
The use of the phrase "one people" is based on collectivist rather than individualist thinking. It is just this kind of "us" versus "them" approach which has led to and continues to foment all the horrors of religious bigotry, racial discrimination, super patriotism, wars between nations and genocide. In TDOI, it sets the stage for that document to later declare that all non-colonist Englishmen are enemies of all the colonists (everyone not for me, must be against me), again a highly collectivist and thoroughly false idea. The action of any group of people thinking of themselves as different, as a group, from any other group, rather than each individual knowing that he is unique and different from every other individual, must be denounced in every occurrence and must be eradicated from everyone's thinking, if mankind is ever to mature to full rationality and responsibility.
An essential aspect of human nature is that each person has a mind a) uniquely different, and b) almost completely separated from that of each and every other person. With respect to b), one individual is only "connected" to another individual by means of the very limited conduit comprising their senses. The amounts, types and rates of information transferable between individuals are enormously less than that within the brain of any one individual.
This isn't really a legitimate correction, since it doesn't differ in essentials from Jefferson's own philosophy. Let me give you just one example.
I don't really care what Jefferson's philosophy was! I care about the import of the words of TDOI on the intelligent thinking person of today! That is who I am addressing. It is him that I am trying to persuade that TDOI is flawed and that we must find much better thinking, logic and ordering documents. These are what I am producing.
One of Jefferson's favorite philosophers was the Frenchman Antoine Destutt de Tracy. (Jefferson assisted in translating at least two of his books into English.) Destutt talks incessantly about individuality as the foundation of morality, including the notion of property. Here is a typical passage from A Treatise on Political Economy, which was one of Jefferson's favorite books, which he personally arranged to have published in an English translation:
"[A]s soon as this individual knows accurately itself, or its moral person, and its capacity to enjoy and to suffer…it sees clearly also that this self is the exclusive proprietor of the body which it animates, or the organs which it moves, of all their passions and their actions; for all this finishes and commences with this self, exists by it, is not moved but by its acts, and no other moral person can employ the same instruments nor be affected in the same manner by their effects. The idea of property and of exclusive property arises then necessarily in a sensible being from this alone, that it is susceptible of passion and action; and it rises in such a being because nature has endowed it with an inevitable and inalienable property, that of its individuality." [There are actually better passages than this in Destutt, but this is the first one I happened across.]
This is interesting to know. However, what I have said goes further. I provide the scientific basis for the individual uniqueness and significant unknowability of one human by another. This is not something which was or even could be done in Jefferson's day. That is why my argument is much more powerful and has much more chance to convince the more scientifically minded person of today. George, we come from a very different background. I am convinced that my formal schooling in mathematics, physics and other hard sciences and my self-learned knowledge of neuroscience and human physiology gives me an advantage that most libertarian freedom writers and thinkers does not have. Besides, once again as before I must ask if all these people knew so well how the world of interpersonal relations should work, how is it that that US ever arrived at the mess of today? Another major problem here is the exact meanings which they applied to such terms as "proprietor", "property", etc which are very different than those understood today. But frankly, since I am talking to people in the language of meanings in the 21st century, I don't really care what they meant 250 years ago. I am interested in how people are interpreting the historical writings today!
Finally, in regard to the above passage, I think it makes a grave error in talking about self-proprietorship, since this suggests that it is even possible (and therefore thinkable) for a person to be owned by another. My argument is that because the mind and body is intimate only to the individual who inhabits it, only he can possess and control it. Therefore, it is simply not possible for someone else to own another's person in any existential sense. I therefore think that each of us harms the strength of his relationship to himself by referring to it as self-ownership, and that a higher more powerful term would better be used for this property. That is partly why I have used Self-Sovereignty. But I still wish there was a better one which includes all that the identity of the individual and his person, and his essential separation from others implies. [Note that within the annotations of the annotated version of my Natural Social Contract, I introduce the term "self-master" for this purpose.] [Later note: I have since in the revised Natural Social Contract somewhat reversed this view and again use Self-Owner with Self-Master also used differently and separately.]
I know you didn't want me to dwell on historical issues, but I feel this is an important problem (one far more serious than any theoretical disagreements we may have).
I cannot see the logic in this at all! How can understanding and accurately reporting history be more important than understanding the truth of reality?
It unfortunately runs throughout your comments on the Declaration, even though your prefatory remarks do acknowledge its brilliance. You generally present highly unsympathetic interpretations of words and passages, which in some cases rest on historical inaccuracies and misunderstandings.
Again you appear to show bias by using a phrase such as "unsympathetic interpretations". I already stated in my preface: "TDOI was written with the best of intentions and with all the knowledge and wisdom which was reasonably possible to be held by the best of men at that time in history." Pray tell me how much more sympathetic can one get, while remaining true to the facts and logic of the situation! My interpretations are based on the way people of today will read that document. They are not based on how those learned readers in 1776 understood it. Moreover, I do not believe that all this background acceptance of interpersonal rights and responsibilities was nearly as widespread in the populace as you seem to think, otherwise once again how did things go so wrong so quickly? However, I have now expanded my prefatory remarks as follows:
"Published July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence (TDOI) was a quite magnificent statement for its time and place. It was one of the few times in the history of mankind that a group of intelligent, well-read and wise men had assembled to rationally and passionately frame a statement of principles and explanation as an integral part of a revolution involving the extreme use of physical force. TDOI was written with the best of intentions and with all the knowledge and wisdom which was reasonably possible to be held by the best of men at that time in history. However, TDOI is not today generally viewed from the perspective of those living in the 18th century who wrote it, signed it, and agreed with it! Instead, it is often view as a "bible" like text that all US citizens should revere and look to as an exposition of principles on which to base their society. The purpose of the analysis presented here is to clearly show that as written TDOI contained fatal flaws which ultimately led to the subversion of its principles, and to the gross distortion of its intentions that exists in the United States of America today - a process which history shows started soon after the conflict, relating to its creation, was over. It is my contention that TDOI should therefore not be deemed to be any kind of optimal statement of the principles to which the government and its citizens should "return", but be revered as strictly and simply one highly significant document in the history of the freedom."
You continue:
"Thus, there never has been, is not and will likely never be such an entity as "one people" - a collection of humans which jointly thinks and acts as one simply does not exist (humans are not "Borg")."
Nothing in the Declaration implies this. Jefferson and his colleagues were methodological individualists; none was a methodological holist.
Nonsense! They may have thought they were and you may be fooled into thinking they were because you cannot see outside the box you are in, but if they actually were such methodological individualists, then why on earth did they use collectivist terms and talk about states rights and conflicts between different governments rather than strictly individual rights and conflicts between all governments and individual decisions?
Their shared viewed of society and social relationships was beautifully expressed by Destutt:
"Society is purely and solely a continual series of exchanges. It is never anything else, in any epoch of its duration, from its commencement the most unformed, to its greatest perfection. And this is the greatest eulogy we can give to it, for exchange is an admirable transaction, in which the two contracting parties always both gain; consequently society is an uninterrupted succession of advantages, unceasingly renewed for all its members."
I don't know of any modern writer who has done a better job of defining "society." So what is the point of all this?
The point is that most people today do not appreciate this! I am not writing for freedom scholars or even general libertarians. I do not care whether anyone who agrees with me thinks of himself as a libertarian or not. There are far, far more people who are scientifically trained, intelligent, humanist thinkers than there are scholars of the history of freedom and those who call themselves libertarians, objectivists or whatever! It is these people who must be convinced if society is to be changed and enhanced.
Although I know it is not your intention to write a scholarly dissertation on the Declaration, I think you would be much better served -- not only in terms of accuracy but also in terms of PR value -- to take a different slant on the Declaration. By this I don't mean some kind of flowery, unconditional praise, but rather a perspective that says, in effect: "Look, folks -- you may think you learned about this document in school, but there is a lot more here than meets the eye. The ideological foundation of the Declaration is incredibly radical by today's standard. For example, the doctrine of tyrannicide, which was an integral part of the Radical Whig ideology that animated Jefferson's thinking, would be equivalent in modern terms to defending the assassination of a president."
I do not adopt this "slant" because it is not at all related to my purpose. And because whatever its authors actually thought, they errored by both not stating those thoughts in sufficient detail in TDOI and in not seeing that they were strictly carried out and adhered to. However, tyrannicide (execution of a tyrant) is not nearly as radical a viewpoint as you seem to think. Most people have always supported attempts to assassinate the dictators of the world. The only difference is that most people (certainly those in the US) do not think that any US President is sufficiently like a dictator. And I expect even most of the revolutionaries did not think King George was sufficiently like a dictator that he should be assassinated. They also likely knew that would not have helped anyway, just as the assassination of a US President would almost certainly not help liberty.
What you do instead, in various ways, is to criticize the Declaration because it is not a defense of anarchism, voluntaryism, or whatever. There are a number of problems with this approach. One is that it tends to become repetitive and predictable.
Maybe for you, but for most people such repetition relating to different areas and from different viewpoints cannot be repeated enough. However yes, TDOI was flawed because the authors did not fully understand what their individualism really meant and to where it really led. Yes, given the times and the preceding history of thought, they probably did the best that anyone could expect them to do (as I stated already) but that does not mean that their thinking and writing was unflawed, incomplete and not the source of the problems which followed.
Another is that it obscures much of the value that can be gleaned from the Declaration.
My whole point is there is very little of value to be gleaned from it any longer! Many writers of today are far advanced from that thinking! You are one of them. It is those writers and their ideas which should be read, studied and revered!
Another is that it may have an adverse effect on more intelligent and knowledgeable visitors to your website.
Only on those freedom scholars who are immersed in the past. And not even them, if they understand what I am trying to accomplish and are willing and able to think outside their box.
Permit me to be blunt.
No "permission" is ever needed. I want nothing less.
You obviously know your stuff. This is evident, for instance, in your comments on the Articles of Confederation, which I liked much better than your comments on the Declaration.
Actually, I don't "know my stuff", in the sense of having done any great reading of history nor of other philosophical works. I have found that I can always do more original thinking by working in terms of empirical observations of the world around me and applying critical logical analysis to decipher the essences of the patterns that I see. In this sense I take a purely scientific approach to the world. It is generally only after I have come to my own conclusions (sometimes now talking them over with Kitty) that I read what others have to say on the subject. Kitty has in the past often suggested that I read more works on a subject before I start thinking about it, but I strongly resist this, otherwise I will tend to fall into the same rut as others have. In addition, if I come up with a new way of looking at something, it is truly my creation and my accomplishment even if after checking I find someone else has already said something similar. But note that I only say "similar". The advantage of my method is that I don't simply read and accept their way of looking at it. Instead my creation, while similar, is often sufficiently distinct to be of major utility and often advantage to that somewhat similar thought as it is expressed elsewhere. All my comments on TDOI and AOC were original with me and created as I read these documents, which I had never done before in such analytical detail since I am not a US citizen or resident.
But given that the average surfer may not stick around long enough on your webpage to discover that you know your stuff, and given that (like me) you can't flash instant credentials in the field in which you are writing, much of this boils down to a matter of fleeting impressions. And I'm afraid some of your more extreme comments don't give a very good impression.
I think you are confusing two very different types of reader here. The average surfer cares much more about the information provided than about credentials. In addition, I have built up a large following of people in the health and life-extension fields who know that I can be trusted to provide an integrated, rational approach to a wide variety of subjects. However, it is true that I will have a hard time attracting scholarly credentialed people (at least in the libertarian and/or political philosophy fields) to critically examine my writings. That is partly why I came to you. OTOH, I am not willing to dilute my message to attract these people. They will be forced to acknowledge me eventually and I will just have to be patient. Besides there are others who are actually more important with respect to the promotion and implementation of my system, since most of these scholarly authors are not men of action and/or practical implementers. Rather most of them are quite distanced from the reality of the day to day world of interpersonal relations. I know this well from many experiences in both worlds.
For instance:
"This same philosophically flawed collectivist thinking and pompous language, by which the Framers presume to represent the views of all, continues throughout TDOI (and, of course, has now become a characteristic of politicians, "leaders" and "public" officials - not to mention social philosophers - everywhere)."
Now, I know what you are getting at here, and your criticism is not entirely without merit from a radical libertarian perspective -- but it is overstated. The Declaration does not exhibit "collectivist thinking" in any meaningful sense.
Yes it does. You just can't seem to see it. Read all my points of criticism again carefully and without bias towards your beloved document. Hell, even though Patrick Henry made complaints about the use of the phrase "We the people" in the preamble to the Constitution (see:http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/preambles14.html), he still did not see that the more fundamental error was that it implied that every individual was behind the Constitution. It implied a collectivist, representative, democratic way of thinking which has led to all our modern problems, rather than a fully individualist way of thinking which is the solution.
Rather, it summarizes Lockean, or Radical Whig, political philosophy, while making no attempt to justify it. Hence a fair appraisal would require at least some analysis of Lockean social contract theory, the meaning of "consent," etc., etc. We may disagree with these theories, but they are by no means unreasonable. Even modern libertarians haven't dealt adequately with many of the same problems that vexed our ideological ancestors, such as tacit or implied consent, etc.
This is because most modern libertarian thinkers are largely mired in the past and/or the thinking of others. The answer is to be found by seeing that many of these old concepts are invalid and do not need to be "dealt with", but rather to be dispensed with in favor of ideas which are far more in tune with human reality. While many of these theories are not unreasonable when seen from the viewpoint of their time, they are unreasonable when viewed in the light of critical logical modern analysis. As for tacit or implied consent, my viewpoint is that there isn't any!
Btw, it is misleading at best to refer to the "framers" of the Declaration. Although a committee was assigned to draft the document, it was written entirely by Jefferson. True, some changes were made in a session of the Second Continental Congress, but these (except for deleting Jefferson's condemnation of the slave trade) were relatively minor. I don't ever recall seeing the word "framers" used in regard to the Declaration. It is used almost exclusively to refer to the drafting of the Constitution, which was a truly collective enterprise (and shows it).
In spite of what you say, a google search with "framers of the Declaration of Independence" does yield a large number of hits. Still, I have now changed my text to remove "Framers" since your pointing it out alerted me to the fact of my own illogic since "Framers" is a collective term which I should not have been using.
I also had a number of problems with your interpretation of the list of grievances, many of which refer to specific events and problems in colonial history and cannot be understood out of context. But I've already gone on way too long on this topic, so I will wind up with one final observation.
It does not matter what the history was. My major criticism was that they were largely complaints of states against an overlord government rather than complaints of violation of individuals by any government anywhere. And again this is why I maintain that TDOI was collectivist and essentially flawed.
Although the grievances hold the least interest for most readers today, at the time they were regarded as the most important part.
But it is still important today to point out that they were not individualistic grievances! And to point out how they could have been easily solved without a war (which may in fact have been totally unnecessary). Rather than the Revolutionary War being an individualist rebellion of the colonists for their right to live their lives as they each saw fit, TDOI makes it clear that it was a rebellion of the elite leaders and rulers of the colonial population against the direct rule of the colonies from England. These local leaders and politicians were not really after more freedom for the general working man and farmer, they were after more power of rule for themselves. And they sucked in all the colonists to fight and die for this cause of home rule, not individual rights at all.
Note that I was not this blunt in my document criticism remarks.
Jefferson was right when he later observed that the philosophical summary largely reflected the "American mind,"
Another "collective"! Did he really go out and canvass all the farmers and tradesmen to see that this was so?
i.e., the Radical Whig doctrines that many Americans, including those who opposed independence, accepted as a matter of course. It is impossible to understand the Declaration in its historical context without an appreciation of propagandistic value.
Once again, I have no interest in seeing it in its historical context.
Jefferson saw no need to argue for principles that most Americans already endorsed.
Clearly they did not endorse them, or at least, did not understand them sufficiently, or the US would not be where it is today. Again, I would suggest that Jefferson likely did not know or even care what anyone but the local overlord class of intellectuals, rich landowners and politicians thought. If he did, then he simply had not thought deeply enough about the issues and he screwed up. Granted as I have stated, he may have done the best that he could at that time and place. Now we can see and do better!
His primary problem was to convince the many fence sitters who were not yet convinced that the facts warranted a violent rebellion, even by Radical Whig standards. He needed to convince Americans that more was involved in conflicts with the British than honest misunderstandings and incidental violations of liberty. In order to justify revolution, he needed to prove a concerted design on the part of the British government to subvert the fundamental liberties of Americans. This was the point of Jefferson's stress on "unalienable rights," the natural reluctance of a people to rebel, the nature of evidence for a conspiracy, why he didn't include property in his trinity of inalienable rights -- and virtually everything else in the document.
This sounds like you are excusing him for being a salesman who hypes, distorts and stretches the truth!!! What is the fundamental difference between that behavior and what Bush is doing today! and for that matter all the politicians at all levels, at all times! Distortion and hyperbole must never be substituted for truth and objectivity. Never under any circumstance are they acceptable since they are always equivalent to fraud.
I have long regarded the Declaration as the most focused, succinct, brilliantly written, and successful short essay in the history of philosophy.
Yes, I can see that now. I have made the mistake of attacking one of your scared cows.
The preceding points to a fundamental difference between Jefferson's Declaration and your DOII. Jefferson was summarizing a political philosophy that was already well-known and accepted by many of his potential readers. He wasn't attempting to convince anyone that his philosophical principles were valid; instead, these were taken as a "self-evident" given, as a place from which to start. His purpose was to rouse people to action who already accepted his philosophical principles, and he hoped to accomplish this by marshaling factual evidence of a British conspiracy. Jefferson didn't even need to convince most of his American readers that the grievances, considered individually, were legitimate -- for many opponents of independence agreed on this score as well. What Jefferson needed to do was convince skeptics to take a look at the big picture.
And did Jefferson actually ever fight in the war which he fomented? I think not! Again, this sounds to me just like Bush or any other politician.
In short, Jefferson's task was basically one of integration. He said, in effect: "Look, here are the principle we agree upon. We all agree that at a certain point, after a government has become tyrannical, revolution is justified.
No! Individual civil disobedience and violently strong defense of each individual is justified. Not fighting a war to allow a bunch of state governments to have a free hand at ruling!
["]What we don't agree on is whether we have reached that point. We don't agree on whether the injustices of the British government are sustained and systematic enough to constitute a conspiracy to subvert our liberty.["]
But who cares whether it is a conspiracy or not. What matters is the extent of the violation on individual lives, nothing more. This is again a collectivist view and/or one which cares about the issue of home rule rather than truly about individuals.
["]So, after summarizing our common principles, I will submit the relevant facts to a candid world."
To which I say "so what?" This strategy of Jefferson (sounds like he was a great political manipulator to me) has little relevance to the average American who reveres the document today.
What I am getting at here, Paul, is that your task, philosophically speaking, is far more difficult than the one Jefferson faced.
Probably not that much more. He did not understand the correct viewpoint and solution. Besides I am not trying to start a revolutionary war.
His limited purpose was more suited to a short Declaration than the purpose you wish to achieve, since you cannot take for granted nearly as much as Jefferson did.
That is one reason why my Declaration is longer, more foundational and is explained. The explanation which I have given is only the start. I expect to need individual essays on many of the points which I have made. And lots of discussion to boot.
Judging from some of your remarks, I suspect you may provide a remedy for some of these problems in your annotated Social Contract, and if so my observation may be a bit superfluous. But I will say a few more things about this anyway, since it would be futile for me to speculate about something I haven't seen.
You present your DOII as a statement of your personal beliefs,
I take your use of "beliefs" as somewhat of an insult, since my premise is never to believe anything! Instead, I take a scientific, skeptical view of reality and I seek evidence for certain conjectures. When I find evidence I then assign a probability of truth to these conjectures. In every deliberation I apply that probability of truth in my evaluations. I am always seeking and open to new evidence about everything which I have examined and about which I have come to a truth evaluation. What I have stated in the DOII is that of which I have found good evidence for the truth. I give that evidence in one form or another in my explanations of the statements which I make in the DOII. If you do not agree with my reasons and my evidence then please address those, but do not call these "beliefs".
which are elaborated upon in the AD [annotated DOII], and you then invite others "of like mind to sign this Declaration."
Executing the Declaration (and the Natural Social Contract) will only be done after the whole project implementation is ready. Kitty and I have not executed either yet.
This is fine, but a problem arises with the degree of specificity. For example, at one point you protest laws that "restrict the liberty of adults" by "mandating the wearing of clothing."
In looking at all the violations of governments on individuals, I wanted to both classify them in some reasonable manner and also to be complete so that nothing was omitted. I could not find any general way of describing and classifying anti-nudity laws with other things where they would not stand alone. They seem to be a peculiar kind of infringement of liberty which has no similar other kind. If you can help with the classification that would be appreciated.
Even if people agreed with absolutely everything else in the DOII and AD, you risk losing many people with clauses like this, especially when it is not at all clear what you mean. Some people may think you are protesting laws that prevent people from walking around nude in a shopping mall or when picking their kids up from school. Granted, libertarians deal with this sort of issue in terms of private property rights and contracts, whether implied or express, about the conditions for venturing onto someone else's land. But since none of this is clear, the clause sounds a bit nutty.
I thought it would be fully clear from other things that I say that I only meant such a prohibition is wrong as a general law! not as the rules of decorum that a private property owner wishes to promulgate for those on his property. I will make this clear by annotating that particular item. However, I have no interests in being fraudulent and appeasing and compromising by omitting things which are real violations.
[Later note: After thinking about it some more I realized that there are several other solitary non-aggressive acts of individuals which also prohibited in one way or another by various governments, so I rephrased this as: "prohibition of many solitary, non-aggressive actions in public".]
Moreover, this clause is included in the same list as conscription, the right of self-defense, and other fundamental principles.
What is fundamental and important is up to individual evaluation, George! You ought to know that! I expect there are sun worshippers who are just as concerned about laws requiring clothing as about laws against conscription (especially if they are women and/or over 30).
The result is that you have a strange brew in which fundamental rights are mixed in with derivative rights and relatively minor issues, such as "stealing the time of people crossing at borders." It's not even clear what you mean by this latter clause. If you mean the time it takes to go through checkpoints, customs, etc., then this is surely a subsidiary issue when compared to those checkpoints themselves.
I already said the latter in the preceding point. However, I will restate it since it is obviously not clear. The stealing of time was for returning Americans only who are not really stopped from entering but only greatly slowed down. In any case, just what is the problem with checkpoints which you are entitled to pass except that they steal the precious resource of time from you! What you have clearly missed is the key point of classification of each group. The first was concerned with selling services, the second with property and the third with personal liberty. I have now made this clearer by changing the text.
Lastly, most readers will find it strange to speak of "stealing time."
I don't see why at all! People complain all the time about their time being stolen (wasted) by unsolicited phone calls and spam. Time is currently a person's most precious and limited resource.
This relies, not on the idea of "property" that is now in common use (e.g., a thing that is owned), but on the older notion (current in the 17th and 18th centuries) of "property in," or rightful dominion over, something, such as one's person, labor, and time. (Btw, c. 1800 James Madison wrote a very interesting piece on these two meanings of "property." He seemed to prefer the older notion of "property in," for he condemns Sabbatarian laws that restrict activities on Sunday as a violation of "property in one's time." This might make for an interesting footnote.)
In fact, in reading lately some of what was written then it even appears that "property" is being used more often in its meaning of "characteristic" or "attribute". But practically I see little difference between "ownership" and "property in". All of physical objects, space, personal time, one's body, and one's labor (application of one's body over time for a specific purpose) are items which the individual possesses, has use and control of, and may exchange for other values.
But I digress, as I often do. (It would take me longer to edit these rambling remarks down to a more reasonable length; and I prefer to give you more rather than less in any case.) My original point was this: I think you should consider deleting the less important clauses, especially those on which libertarians might reasonably disagree. An example of this is your protest against the judicial exclusion of "evidence wrongfully obtained." Many libertarians, myself included, would view this as a safeguard (of sorts) against abuses by overly-zealous police and prosecutors. These sorts of issues are legitimate subjects of disagreement and debates among libertarians. They pertain not so much to fundamental principles per se as to the application of principles, about which there can be honest disagreement.
I am rather shocked to hear you argue against the implicit injustice of excluding wrongfully obtained evidence. It is so obvious a case of evading the truth of reality that I cannot understand how any rational thinker can support it. I am not talking of the present system! I am talking in absolute terms about what is right and wrong. It is high time that libertarian thinkers began to appreciate that "rights" do not exist apart from relationships. What meaning could my "rights" possibly have with respect to someone with whom I have never and will never interface. If they exist at all, it is only within a relationship to another individual. Each pair of connected individuals are in a what might be called a "rights relationship". The victim and the violator are in one such relationship and the victim is entitled to all possible evidence that is found in order to get his proper and justified restitution from the violator. His defense and investigative agents are in a totally separate relationship with the violator. If they violate him (the victim's violator) in doing their job, then it is they who he (the violator) should get after and seek restitution from. As I stated in my explanatory notes, these two violations are completely separable and should be viewed that way by all rational men. I make this much clearer in the Natural Social Contract to which it is fundamental.
In short, I think the DOII should be restricted to statements of fundamental principles only. Otherwise, with the exception of you and Kitty, you are unlikely to find people who are willing to endorse everything in DOII.
I disagree. I want it to be complete and clearly state why all these things are violations by governments. Only in that way will the philosophical basis be fully clear. BTW, one other person has already offered to sign it.
One last point before I take a break and begin work on a more systematic analysis of AD. It has to do with your recommendation of the tag "SSI" for those who sign the DOII. In the United States this is a standard abbreviation for those on Social Security who fill out credit applications and other financial documents. It literally stands (I think) for "Social Security Insurance." In any event, it indicates someone who has never worked, owing to a severe mental or physical disability, and who is therefore totally dependent on welfare. (The abbreviation "SSA," in contrast, indicates someone who is on partial disability.)
This is FYI, in case you were unaware of it. I don't know whether it is important enough to influence your choice of a tag.
Thanks very much for this, as a Canadian I was unaware and Kitty did not think of it having had little contact with such people. My purpose was to somehow allow this elite group of people to make themselves known to others. Perhaps it may still be good to "wear as a badge of courage". [Later note: After completion of the Natural Social Contract, I have now changed the "title" suggestion to appending the word "Freeman" to one's name.]
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