Bad Arguments Come From Bad Thought Process and Parroting

My friend Adam Adkins shared with me a conversation he had with someone; I don't know who, but it may well have been any of millions of 19- or 20-year-old college students. His friend's arguments are interesting because:

(a) They are the same arguments you hear supporters of Big Government make every day. And when I say 'the same arguments' I don't mean merely that they're similar; I mean that almost every sentence contains at least one phrase that is repeated verbatim everywhere. Most of these people reflect perfectly, like a mirror, what they're told. And

(b) This is important because they aren't thinking about it. The use of language, and especially whole phrases, that you see in print or hear on television all the time is a sure symbol that the speaker is repeating what he has heard, not really caring what he is saying except so far as it is disagreeing as loudly as possible with whoever he is arguing against. This is exactly what Orwell was talking about in Politics and the English Language.

I will present the text as it was written, with comments in between.

If racism is not the whole of the Tea Party, it is in its heart, along with blind hatred, a total disinterest in the welfare of others, and a full-flowered, self-rationalizing refusal to accept the outcomes of elections, or the reality of Democracy, or of the narrowness of their minds and the equal narrowness of their public support.

This entire paragraph is made of flowery language and clichéd phrases that don't mean anything--certainly the writer is not concerned with what it means.

'Blind hatred'? Of whom? By whom? The writer ascribes 'blind hatred'--a very grievous charge to lay against any fellow man--to everyone involved with the Tea Party, and substantiates it not at all. This is the spirit of the 'hate speech' legislation that is ever being pushed by the left in the face of the First Amendment: the presumption that all dissent constitutes hate. Indeed, the word hate is losing its meaning; reading most leftist doctrine, hate may be used interchangeably with dissent. That is notable because when a person advocates punishing people--almost always conservatives--for 'hate speech', what he means is dissenting speech.

Now observe the phrase total disinterest in the welfare of others. In what way is the speaker positioned to make such a judgment on another person, knowing only that he opposes socialism?

The speaker does not know, and very likely does not care, the implications of what he is saying. He is implying that (a) Big Government is the only way to care for others, (b) that any person who opposes Big Government is selfish and unfeeling, and (c) that it is right and proper for government take by force the property of selfish people and redistribute it however it wants. That leads, actually, to implication (d), that government is automatically and by definition both selfless and efficient; or at any rate, more efficient than an individual can be.

Next, observe the reality of Democracy. That phrase asserts that the minority must submit to the majority's will, and the majority is by right empowered to force such submission, even if the majority says, for instance, you will teach your children this or that, or we will forcibly take them from you.

That sounds more like thuggery than proper or caring government. And should an individual take upon himself to do such a thing, we call it kidnapping.

Next, the narrowness of their minds. That should read their narrow minds, but the 'the ___ of ____' construction is very common in the political arena, probably because of its close kindred to the law arena, where wordiness and density is for some reason equated with intelligence.

Particularly, the narrowness of their minds, or narrow-mindedness, is a common stock phrase people say without thinking about what it means; ironically, usually the person using the phrase is himself narrow-minded, unwilling to tolerate anyone believing differently from himself. Such is exactly the underpinning of socialism, or even the quasi-socialism now prevalent in the United States: intolerance of dissent, which leads, once again, to applying force to hamper a dissenter's ability to teach his children, or any children, his inconvenient beliefs.

As an aside, this line also appeared in the conversation:

What's wrong with Socialism? Why is it bad?

Many who claim to oppose socialism seem to struggle to answer this question, so I will share the answer: It is bad because it violates the unalienable human right to liberty.

Okay, Socialism is nothing like what is happening in America today, nothing. Government control is necessary in today's world. Yeah, it would be great if no control worked. No one wants laws and police and regulation in their lives. But, it has to happen.

The speaker asserts 'government control is necessary in today's world' but never explains why. That is likely because she does not know why; she just approves of government control because at some point someone she trusted told her it was a Good Thing. The entire phrase, is necessary in today's world, you will see often; but you will almost never see it explained further, except sometimes by an anecdote or two.

Was government control not necessary in, say, 1925, or 1850, or 200 B.C.? What's different about today? I don't know; neither does the speaker.

The speaker similarly asserts 'Socialism is nothing like what is happening in America today' with no further qualification. She doesn't understand the concept of socialism; but she is betting her hearer doesn't, either, and will usually win her bet.

If the government didn't control the education system, parents wouldn't have to send the kids... See More to school, leaving those kids uneducated and that just doesn't cut it.

Many of the best educated children and young adults in the United States never set foot inside an institutionalized school. Home-schooled students consistently score nearly an order of magnitude higher than government-schooled students on any objective test you would care to use to measure. On subjective matters like belief-system programming--usually called by antiseptic names like social awareness--the government students score better, of course. If you think about the differences between government schools and being taught at home, it is easy to understand why these things are.

The line in the sand between education and indoctrination has been kicked nearly into invisibility. That is a subject for a different essay.

By the way, the regulation of the financial system you are talking about? There isn't any and that has been the reason of the recession today. The Wall Street Bankers were making bets on bets on bets and it was bound to fail. There still hasn't been any regulation put on these people, so hold tight, we'll be in this boat again.

The word bet is grossly misused by Junior Economists on practically every television channel. The entire phrase 'The Wall Street Bankers were making bets on bets on bets' is itself clichéd and parroted, and the speaker cannot be troubled to look up bet in a dictionary and see what it means. The financial system was not bound to fail not because of anyone betting on anything--a bet is always made between two parties, and when one party loses another wins, and it makes no difference to the currency being bet.

The United States' financial system is near ruination because far too many people, then businesses, and finally government, have lived and operated far beyond their means, year after year spending more money than they earn. That always catches up; when you're floating on an ever-expanding bubble, the bubble will inevitably burst. When it does, the damage will be catastrophic. This is a fundamental precept of economics; it could be explained to an eight year old.

The biggest reason for foreclosure in this country is medical bills, there is a foreclosure filing every 7.5 seconds, and a home is actually foreclosed every 17 seconds. So no government control wouldn't make sense.

Again the speaker is repeating some data she at some point heard, but cannot be troubled to think about what it means or how to apply it. The biggest reason for foreclosure--it is not far wrong to say the only reason for foreclosure--is that a person has bought something, on credit, he cannot afford. He is living paycheck to paycheck, with no margin in his budget for unexpected expenses. The first time a large unexpected expense hits him, he is bankrupt.

One might assert that medical bills are the most common unexpected major expense that causes bankruptcy, and one would likely be correct. That the speaker does not acknowledges this betrays either her ignorance or her unconcern for her subject matter.

Then the speaker leaps from her data to a conclusion--no government control wouldn't make sense--that is in no apparent way connected to the data, and she offers no reason for the association. In fact, an important reason why 'Wall Street Bankers' have played fast and loose with lending is because government has offered them a safety net.

These people are in dire need of help and no ... corporation, private company, would ever even think of helping any of them.

Here is bad argument in its basest form, an opinion presented as fact, where it is obviously false. It is patently false, so false it should be laughed to scorn, that no private company thinks of helping people. Private companies donate massively to nonprofit charities even today, and community organizations--largely churches, in the United States, which is why so many hospitals are still named X Presbyterian or Y Lutheran or Saint Z's--have always, back to long before Big Government got involved, cared for those in dire need of help. Relative to the medical standards of their time, poor Americans in 1850 were medically cared for at least as well as they are today, quite probably better--and for a fraction of the cost.

The language the speaker is now using signifies her drift away from argument and toward personally charged rant.

The government is by the people, for the people. It is not here to hurt anyone.

Here is another assertion founded in neither logic nor evidence; it is nothing more than a personal belief. If I assert that the United States government as it exists today is by big money and for big money, and will hurt anyone and everyone if it advances big money's interests--that is, on its own merits, no more or less true a belief than the speaker's. It is merely a statement of opinion; and I think that nearly everything the United States government has done for the past fifty years supports my theory above the speaker's.

At any rate, the speaker is now trying to persuade you to believe the government loves you and cares for you; she is now removed from any logical or factual defense of socialism.

The Socialist things that you hate so much are fantastic and I hope to see more of them. I hope there are more and more libraries, sidewalks, parks, and schools.

Observe that once again the speaker uses hate when she plainly means dissent with. She also is either unaware of uncaring that libraries, sidewalks, parks and schools existed long before socialism came along. I am a radical Libertarian indeed, but I too am in favor of libraries, sidewalks, parks and schools, and I am even in favor of government collecting taxes to pay for the sidewalks and parks--but this has nothing to do with whether socialism is a good thing.

Being someone who has been poor, been on Welfare, received Social Security, I have nothing but great things to say about these programs. They helped me in my time of need and without them, I'd be begging for change on the street.

Again note the disconnect between the anecdote and the conclusion; the speaker strings together clichéd phrases (helped me in my time of need, begging for change on the street) to create the presumption that all poor or troubled people need Big Government to survive, and repeating an earlier argument, that one who opposes Big Government therefore must hate poor people.

I don't know the speaker's predicament, of course, but in most cases, without Big Govnerment, you wouldn't be 'begging for change on the street'. You would be working at McDonald's, sleeping in a warm room, and eating. You would not have a cell phone or satellite TV, but these are not unalienable human rights, and working at McDonald's is not beneath you.

There are some people in truly bad straits--crippled, unable to work, who need help to survive. The vast majority of individuals will do what they can to help these people in a heartbeat, and do not need Big Government's assistance, much less force, to do so. The vast majority of individuals will not observe an able-bodied person unwilling to work at McDonald's or live without a 28 inch television and be inclined at all to help him. The majority of those Big Government confiscates property to 'help' fall in that latter category.

Perception or Truth?

"I don't think another Howard Cosell will ever be allowed in the industry, because they don't want the truth. I mean, the public really doesn't give a damn about the truth." -Howard Cosell

As much as I want to see this world as it ought to be, what I want is what it will never be. No matter what I do in life, if there is one thing I want it's the truth. But we live in a world that doesn't want it at all. We just witnessed one of the greatest financial collapses in this country as a result of the housing market and I can tell you one obvious fact in respect to this as well as virtually every other issue: every one has someone to blame and virtually no one has any idea how it really happened.

This world thrives on scapegoats or just blaming someone, especially not themselves, and usually it's one person or a group of people, but one person is preferable. Case in point, every one blames Hitler for the murder of millions of Jews, but do you forget that it took millions of Nazis to carry out that extermination? If we continue to simply place all blame on who we choose to be the "most blameworthy," then we will ignore all those who also participated in the wrongdoing. Responsibility is what we must enforce, accountability for all actions of an individual.

For some reason, though we have known for quite some time about the housing bubble and many of the problems that contributed to our current situation, people don't actually care about something until it happens and when it does they create some fictional world to help cope. I hear all the time people saying the phrase "you need to get a real life" to people, or we "live in a real world," but I submit to you that the world they speak of isn't real at all, it's the ignorant bliss we have created. A world where stronger voices make right, where responsibility does not exist in most situations, where victims who have no voice are trodden under foot of men and those who complain usually get what they want.

To support this fictional world is how when anyone dies, it's always the good things people remember, because bad things are only remembered in a world that holds people responsible for who they are and what they did.

What am I saying?

This is the top-down society we have created, we have choosen, and that we refuse to change. The only people blamed are those at the top, which is incidentally choosen through politics and not truth, leading everyone into a realm of comfortability through which sleep can be attained in the constant daily reminder that we have someone to blame.

Sure, a bottom-up society of responsibility on all people is much harder to achieve, but it yields a populace of people who are better than those in a top-down system.

I'm not sure how to finish this but this world is headed for a disaster, any logical level-headed person can see it, how dire it is I don't know, only time will tell, but know this:

We do not hold people resonsible for their mistakes.
Our education is failing to teach basic math skills to even the teachers who teach our children(gee maybe that's why we're failing)
A society built on a system of extrinsic rewards only, yields a more selfish inconsiderate culture.
A political system that time after time does not fix problems and only applies band aids or temporary fixes will eventually lead to total and complete collapse.

We all have a hope that someday we will fix these problems, but in the words of CCR "Someday never comes."

'Teenagers Being Teenagers' is NOT Normal

It really isn't, folks. A 16 year old is supposed to resemble an inexperienced but real adult, not an overgrown child with unrestrained urges.

Anyway, this isn't directly related to Libertarianism or freedom issues, but I have access to the blog so I'm going to share my opinion. :) This is something I think I had an apostrophe about (Ed. Note: Epiphany. I assume.) and wanted to submit for consideration here.

The sneering, haughty, contemptuous attitude of teenagers/young adults--I speak primarily of boys, but it often applies to girls also--is the direct result of organized, age-segregated schools. Among any gathering of adults of various ages where the few late teens are the youngest in the room, they will starkly stand out, because their attitude is easily markable as silly and juvenile. They're idiots, knowing nothing, yet each sincerely believes he is the wisest person in the room.

How does this happen? It's the inevitable product of the school culture. Yes, schools have their own culture, where the teachers are outside oppressors, and the ruling class, the people at the top of the social pyramid, are the high school juniors and seniors, the oldest/biggest kids. A 17 year old regards himself as the pinnacle of human development because in his world, he IS.

This should be no surprise. From age 5 forward a child's primary culture is the school culture, with all of its own cultural nuances. Every child spends the vast majority of his time surrounded by other children, primarly those of the same age, and rarely are adults around at all except to swoop down and try to impose undesired and cumbersome rules.

Consider: Within the standard family unit, a child's ruling class, life guides and role models are adults--primarily parents, who not only instruct them and rule over them but also live with them, and by that I mean perform the daily activities of life day by day with them*, and also parents' adult friends and acquaintances. All but the firstborn have older siblings in a similar role.

* This is something we've lost in modern excessively-busy society and sorely miss.

But within the school culture, a child doesn't participate in the daily activities of life alongside ANYONE older than himself! For a child growing up in a family, the ancillary people generally surrounding him are predominantly adults, with only younger siblings and their friends being younger than himself.

But for a teenager, in the school culture, his world is predominantly populated by younger children--so he's already mature by those standards (and he grew up believing that teenagers were the most mature people in the world). How is one supposed to learn to be an adult in that setting?

Therefore it's easy to understand why homeschooled teenagers tend to behave like inexperienced but recognizable adults, whereas school-cultured teenagers tend to behave like children with adult desires and passions.

Wickard vs. Filburn

Wickard vs. Filburn is a court case involving a farmer who went over a quota of what he could grow and harvest of wheat. His argument was that the excess was for his farm and family and therefore shouldn't be considered under the commerce clause, or rather that if there was an effect it was trivial. I can understand the want or need for legislation that brought order to an otherwise chaotic situation, but can we, as Americans not see the importance of this situation? If interpreted as so, that food grown for our family and farm be considered as something that can be regulated by the government, then we are wholly in subject to that government.

Indeed this court case was one of many that has opened the door for all liberty in this country to be stolen away in any situation, deemed by a small percentage of the population, as "necessary and proper." In fact I actually would have agreed with the court had they specifically stated that as long as you don't sell any wheat you can grow and do whatever with it as long as it doesn't leave your farm. That is not what the case said though. According to the case, if the amount allotted to him for how much wheat he could grow was not enough to sustain his farm, then he would have to purchase the rest. There is a big difference. In what I have said, the government could have regulated commerce and preserved liberty, in what the Court said, liberty was taken away.

I thought about putting possible things that government could tell you what to do under this clause, but I think I should let you imagine possible interpretations. And if I have interpreted anything wrong from this case please enlighten me.

A Cold Halelujah

"I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah" -Leonard Cohen

I find daily the hardest thing is accepting to live in a world where inspiration is met with depression, where enlightenment is met with ignorance and a heightened zeal for doing good is met with cynical pessimism built from self righteous smugness around a philosophy that no one can change this "three ring circus side show of freaks,"(Tool lyric from Aenima) so why even try?

Despite some nonsense that such a question is rhetorical when I believe it is not, to meet good with blame upon those who do good by pointing out the things they have missed along the way or that you believe their time could be better spent doing something else when in fact you yourself have done nothing, is most irritating. Somehow this world has born, out of some terrible illogic, that to denigrate a man whose actions makes you feel like a lesser person, somehow justifies your useless existence in this system; somehow makes you sleep better at night; somehow makes you think that you aren't as bad as the person you see in the mirror every morning; somehow you aren't part of the problem; somehow you hold all the answers and yet solve nothing.

As I grow older I see more frequently the shortcomings of men. When we are younger we are given images of heroes in our lives, take David for instance. We are told about his battle with Goliath, but it is not until later in our lives that we learn of his failures as a person; how could he have committed such terrible acts that I could never live with, having done? This appears to be a common theme with virtually every person I have ever learned about and I'm not sure what to take from it. Some might say that it shows we are all human, but if being human is giving in to the things which we know to be wrong, I am not content just yet to simply lay down in such a pit of failure.

Coming up is the day of remembering Dr. King. A man who up until recently was a great hero in my mind. No one can take the importance of what he did away, nor has the impact of his words found detriment in my heart, but he himself has lost reverence in my eyes. Now I am not certain there is absolute proof that Dr. King was an adulterer/womanizer, but when the government documents become unlocked in 2027, I expect to be met with something which will confirm just that, because I have become use to being disappointed with people.

I must say something though. I am not judgmental. I do not enjoy seeing faults of any kind in any man. But I am tired of failure. I am tired of seeing all of my heroes destroyed by some weakness they could not overcome in life.

I do not know how to put all of this together, but I wrote a poem over a year ago that I think addresses this aspect in relation to my life. I only hope that somehow it can convey what I cant describe at this moment. It addresses perfectionism, failure and the feeling that every time someone in this world fails, a burden is placed upon you to succeed where they have failed.

I wish I could be that son you never had
I wish I could replace that friend who left, when things were getting bad
I wish I could become everything you never had
I wish I could become…
But I can't keep thinking that all this weight belongs...
on me, it sits like a well, toss in a coin make a...
wish you could feel what it's like to have to be...
perfect, in every way like a light from heaven shining down...
on me this weight found peace, but I can't have peace… I can't...
sleep, my escape from everything that doesn’t allow me to be free when I'm...
awake and dreaming one day I might become what I was meant to be.
I don't want to look back and see that what this hate is, was me
But I look in the mirror
and it's not me
there's no self image
who could I be?
A world of visions
It’s like I’m lost at sea
no bearings for hope
right in front of me
I'm deprived
Cerebration unsatisfied
I have looked for a savior
In a race filled with failure
And all I see are these
Vacant spots, where leaders once stood
That now has become an occupation of false truth
Failures of those who came before
I’ve inherited their burden, to open the door
I’m left alone; they don’t have faith in me
How can I, make them believe?
B r o k e n h o p e
For a b r o k en d re am
Nothing left, no self esteem
Misplaced thoughts
Begin to drop
A once peaceful state
That begins to erase
An age of serenity
Now fades away
A mess of confusion
Now fills my days
I sit and wait and contemplate
I think I believe that I might not be
Everything I thought I could possibly be
But you got to try, you fucking try
To become that which you wished you would be
Maybe a thought, maybe a dream
You can’t just give up; it’s all we’ve got.

Conspiracy, how much truth is there?

By now many people have heard of Lindsey Williams. There's youtube footage of him divided into about 8 parts, depending upon what version you watch and it's roughly 80 mins long, though I could have done it in 10(after all he is a Baptist minister).

I wanted to write this for a couple of reasons:
1. To clarify some things I have told people that were somewhat wrong.
2. To get people to realize that there are people powerful enough to control this world, the only question is do they?

I had told people that there were two countries that opposed joining OPEC, when in fact what I should have said was that there were two members of OPEC that opposed Kissinger's plan in the 1970's. How much of it is true I don't know but you can watch the video that Lindsey Williams discusses this aspect of here. The basic idea is that there were two countries that wouldn't denominate the sale of oil in dollars and help to pay off America's debt. Those two countries were allegedly Iraq and Iran. He also speaks of Iran wanting to flood the market with cheap oil, though this doesn't make sense according to the news that suggests it is Iran that wants to drive the price up and our friendly Saudis who want to keep it down and it is the Saudis who have claimed to flood the market in order to oppose the Iranians.

Here is what I have a problem with in regards to people:

Most people believe the government is corrupt.
Most people believe that the two parties control our country (by this I mean that if you are not by default an R or a D, you will not win anywhere without a large amount of money backing)
Most believe in the statement that absolute power corrupts absolutely
Most people believe that our justice system is based upon the idea that money buys defense and no money means you are screwed.

I could go on and on with the list which leads to one inevitable conclusion: that an elite group of people could easily run this nation; and that even if you argue that they obey the will of the masses, they can easily manipulate that will. I find it hard to believe that people can believe in everything that would allow and support the existence of something and then not believe in it because the word conspiracy is attached to it. But it seems that people are easily misled by perception and not as strongly influenced by facts.

I think I want to address fear mongering, because it has become a powerful tool, even in areas where it is not supposed to be.

Traffic Law Proposal No. 1

I've long had a cherished short list of proposed alterations to traffic laws, which I'll share with you in this very space. Time is short tonight, so I'll start off with one nice, simple change: Between the hours of midnight and 5:00 AM, in all but the most heavily trafficked urban areas, all red lights are to be regarded as flashing red lights (that is, stop signs.) If you pull up to an intersection and your light is red, you may proceed after confirming there is no right-of-way (green light) traffic you'd be impeding.

I suppose the way the country is going now, we'll be seeing mandatory curfews that will render it all moot before long anyway. But as things stand, I've sat twiddling my thumbs for upwards of five minutes* at many red lights at 1:30 AM, the only car on the road for a mile in any direction, waiting for the light to change so I can make my left turn.

* Maybe it's just wacky ol' Altoona, but there are several intersections in this city where, if you're in the left turn lane, you need a left turn arrow to proceed, but your light is red while the light to go straight through the same intersection is green... and you CANNOT GET A LEFT TURN ARROW UNTIL A CAR HAS COME FROM THE OTHER (perpendicular) DIRECTION to trip the motion sensor and make the light cycle through (green -> red -> left arrow -> green).

I've noticed in my travels there are some cities that already do this--their intersections all automatically change to flashing red lights in every direction (effectively a four way stop sign) at around midnight and change back at around 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. I don't even think it's necessary to actually make the lights change; just change the law so you can legally proceed through a red light as though it were a stop sign during low-to-no traffic hours.

Is anyone out there against this?

(On the docket for discussion in the near future: Speed limits on highways, speed limits in towns/cities, tailgating/aggressive driving laws, DUI laws, methods enforcement of traffic laws and punishments for traffic violations, and seat belt laws. At least.)