John C. Wright's Journal

Well, someone answered the right answer to the hypothetical, which is that there cannot possibly be a right answer to any question about the legality of anarchy.

Anarchy is an absence of sovereign law. If there is no supreme law of the land, there is no subordinate law. If there is no supreme nor subordinate law, then there is no law at all, and so legal scheme for how the laws in an anarchist commonwealth should be arranged is mere paradox. If it is anarchist, there is no commonwealth. The question is not just stupid, it is fit only to serve as the butt of a jest (as I have here treated it).

Arguing the nuances of how various branches of the anarchist government or various recognized and accredited yet competing justice provision agencies would lawfully conduct their legal business is absurd, because the hypothesis is that there is no law, hence no lawful means to restrict the law providers from doing whatsoever they willed — including decreeing themselves a monopoly, and taking on the other necessary aspects of sovereignty. There is no point in discussing the exact provisions to be included in the constitution of a nation whose law is that there shall be no constitution and hence no law. It is like discussing the provision of a contract whose terms include a provision that all contracts are null and void.

These anarchist and hyperlibertarians schemes are like hearing a proposal by Cyrano de Bergerac on how to reach the moon by strapping flasks of dew to your legs.

Hear me, thou delirious anarchists — what you propose for a method of competing justice systems has been tried and is being tried. The results of the experiment are all around you.

The various sovereigns of the world have determined, due to overwhelming demands by their customers, citizens and subjects, that the payment of user fees, hereafter called taxes, shall be non-voluntary (this is done to halt the free rider problem).

The sovereign justice providers have determined that they shall each enjoy a monopoly each sovereign in his own territory, and they have all tacitly agreed to a non-competition agreement to that effect, and this was done in order to minimize the disorders incumbent upon having two justice providers operating in the same territory. When this compact is broken, a state of war exists.

You may switch justice providers between any two justice providers whose laws allow for this as an emigrant, or if the receiver justice provider’s law allows for this, as a refugee. You must however leave the territory of operations, called a national boundary, and go to another. (The one exception is the United States, which does not enforce her borders with any regularity, and so tacitly welcomes workers and moochers from anywhere.) This was done due to overwhelming popular demand by the customers, citizens and subjects of the justice providers, who do not want persons immune from their laws living among them. (One special exception is offered to embassy grounds — again, this is done only at the express agreement between two justice providers.)

As for competition, you, dear anarchist, are still free at any time to hang out your shingle and declare yourself your own justice provider.

You may design and raise a flag, put on a crown, publish a declaration of independence, and blow a trumpet on the mountain.

Certain persons in compounds in the midwestern and western states, as I recall, have done so.

However, the laws and agreements of our justice provider, the US of A, in response to overwhelming popular demand, says we will surround your stupid compound and gas you and burn you out and shoot you when you attempt to flee, since declaring yourself to be a justice provider within our boundaries is an act of war or rebellion, and our customers have asked, nay, have demanded we treat all competition to our laws and all disturbers of our peace like the rebels and crackpots that they are. Capice?

If you are so afraid of the corruption of the police or the height of taxes in America, you are free at any time to build a houseboat and set sail for the high seas. No nation claims the middle of the ocean. I am sure you will find a way to sustain yourself by fishing. Also, the conflicting claims on Antarctica have met with stalemate: I am confident the various justice providers of the world would allow you to go there and live however you wish unhindered by our laws.

But if you want to stay HERE, behind our walls, within our borders, and protected by our laws and troops, you must realize we have no imaginable method of protecting ourselves from crime within or invasion without without also willy-nilly protecting you.

Sorry, we did not invent reality, we just live in it.

Here are the professors notes. Consult The Case of the Thorns, Y.B. 6 Edw. 4, 7, pl. 18 (1466) for the relevant law.

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9700 words so far this week, and its only wednesday. But I promised I would go to be early today, and its 2451 hours. I grimace in despair.

Free sample! I had to put the Swiss Guard in my books. Damn, but I love those guys. Tough as nails, sharp dressers, guard the Pope.

When they came to the end of the carpet, the flower-festooned electric car was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was Yorvel was looking plump and ridiculous in the Gold-Purple-Scarlet livery of the Pope’s Swiss Guard, pole-arm in one hand, bridle in the other. He was trying to restrain a nervous, stamping steed, a red horse the hue of blood.

Rania said in a voice of limpid surprise, "But where is our car?"

Menelaus petted the nose of the huge horse, who gently nuzzled him, sniffing with large, delicate nostrils the gold and ebony costume, the wide lace collar, wherein bridegrooms of this era andrank were clad. "What? Pope arrives with forty-nine white horses and one red charger that I’ve owned for a year now, and you don’t recognize him?" He petted the long nose carefully. "There, my hayburning poop-factory. What does she know? She didn’t mean it. Born in a tin can in space, she was. No, no, don’t be wroth. Now, upsy daisy."

"What? Husband mine, your delirium is to have me, in all my fine and delicate satin, balance atop the spine of this outsized uncouth mammal? Am I an acrobat? Am I cavegirl, to be juggled and bounced atop a zoo creature? Where are the brakes? Where is the safety setting? The whole system of muscles and veins—I speak now as a lady who has more than dabbled in engineering—seems to be directly controlled by the organic brain of a horse, with no manual override or direct interface. As a motile arrangement, ungainly, and less responsive than having the caterers carry me in a punchbowl."

"My strong right arm is your safely, my horsemanship your control."

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I thought this merited its own post. It is a comment in the midst of a discussion about legitimate versus illegitimate uses of force. Mr. Kinsella maintains, with admirable consistency, that only self-defense or retaliation legitimizes the use of force, and says that all states howsoever constituted must and do use force beyond this limit (as when they collect taxes), and concludes that ergo no state is legitimate. My comment is as follows:

A libertarian is someone who cannot tell the difference between a taxman and a thief, or between a pirate and a policeman.

Let me state the basics:

The difference is that one has authority and the other does not.

You are supposed to pay your taxes — you are under a moral obligation to do so.

You are supposed to resist a thief, and either in your own person, as a vigilante, or by proxy, as a citizen of a republic or subject of a prince, you are supposed to hunt down the thief imprison, maim or hang him. If you cannot join the vigilante committee yourself, your obligation to the public peace requires you support (both moral support and monetary support) the officer’s of the king’s peace or the agents of the public will who act in your stead.

The reason to pay your taxes is that to maintain the public weal costs tax money.

You cannot hang thieves if no one pays for the rope and no one pays the hangman.

To maintain the public weal also demands that thieves be punished, or otherwise men are not secure in their goods.

(1) Letting a thief take your good unpunished renders men insecure in their property and liberty.

(2) Not paying your taxes is tantamount to letting a thief take your goods, because if you do not pay the hangman, you have no one to hang the thief.

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Montechristo writes: 

Do you want to see someone who came to the exact opposite political view as yours seems to be while following the same spiritual/philosophical path? Read Joeseph Sobran’s essay: The Reluctant Anarchist

My comment: 

I find the article of only limited interest, not because it is not well written, nor because the gentleman does not seem thoughtful, but only because in my youth I encountered these thoughts and arguments before, and found answers that seem to me not only clear, but obvious.

When Murray Rothbard, for example, says he sees no difference between an elected government hemmed in by Constitutional limits founded on natural law principles, and a Mafia Gang (except perhaps that the Mafia gang provides a service the local population wants) Mr. Rothbard is merely pretending to be an idiot to start an interesting discussion. If the discussion were serious, the discussion would turn on the difference between "authority" which is the legitimate use of power, and power, with is merely power.

The definition of a state as being "a monopoly on the use of force in a region" is an inadequate and misleading definition. As in geometry, so in philosophy, if you define your terms wrong, you come to a wrong conclusion.

A state is the legitimate authority in a region, whether it has the power to back its claim or not. Aragorn is King of Arnor and Gondor because he is the legitimate heir to the crown which,by the laws and traditions of Arnor and Gondor (not to mention the will of the Valar) the sovereignty passes by primogeniture. Even if he were thrown into the dungeons of Dol Guldur by The Necromancer, he would posses the authority to give commands, and a person lawfully his subject would be morally wrong and in violation of oath, fealty and honor, to disobey. On the other hand, when a Captain Hook holds a blunderbuss to your head, and orders (in song) you join his crew, there is no moral authority behind his command, and you may actually be under a positive duty to resist at the cost of your life.

Despite what the famous pirate said to Alexander the Great, there is a difference between legitimate authority and mere power. In some ways, they are exact opposite.

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I suppose I can still be mistaken for a libertarian in a dim light, and I would certainly be proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with them against the various outrageous encroachments of our now-certifiably-insane federal government (the mere fact that the political classes are not even discussing abolishing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, nor overturning the laws that forced banks at gunpoint to make bad loans to insolvent borrowers, but instead discuss sovietizing the banking, motorcar, and medical industry as a cure for state-caused economic depression, not to mention borrowing our way out of debt, shows Uncle Sam belongs in Bedlam, if not Arkham, asylum).

But on certain matters, despite my deep respect for the Libertarians, we disagree.

One reason (of a growing list of) why I am no longer a libertarian is that I noticed a blind spot in libertarian thinking: They can talk clearly about isolated individuals and their rights, and they can talk clearly about overbearing governments and their dangers, but when the talk turns to the culture, that part of human existence which is not merely John Galt defying encroachments by Franklin Roosevelt, suddenly the Libertarians cannot talk at all, or cannot stay on topic.

Suppose the talk turns to marriage. It is an institution older than the nation-state, older indeed than the Roman Catholic Church, older than the Covenant of the Jews which reaches back to the Bronze Age, older than written language. It is not an example of an isolated individual defending his personal property rights against intrusion by Clement Attlee. 

Marriage is not a contractual arrangement, even if there are elements of mutuality and an exchange of oaths. There is a mystical aspect to marriage, a sacrament, that makes it different from merely hiring a courtesan for her sexual companionship, or hiring a maid to keep house, or hiring a nurse and nanny to raise your children. Even to list as if they were services for hire some of the duties and joys of a wifeis a grave insult to womanhood: the divine ire that Juno bent on Aeneas should lower as if from thunderheads on any fellow fool enough to analyze marriage as if it were contract of mutual self-serving mutual exploitation.

Libertarians should understand that people can and do get along very well with a weak central government, but only when they have a strong community bond, which means, I hate to say it, one language, one shared faith, one shared culture, extended blood relations and a distinctly non-individualistic sense of extended family and local loyalty. A strong community can tolerate a peaceful nonconformist minority, but a community cannot be comprised of nonconformity and nothing but.

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4000 word today, and it is only Monday. Here is a free sample.

While haunting the internet, trying to find writers who wrote on Tolkien and Catholicism, I found an interesting quote from a site called Singulare-Ingenium.

http://singulare-ingenium.blogspot.com/2010/01/sexual-morality.html

The writer there (He identifies himself as Patricius of Kent, a hobbit–I would condemn this as an odd conceit, but since my profile identifies me as a dark-cloaked vigilante of the Night who can cloud men’s minds, and tireless fighter against gangland, I am in no position to criticize) was commenting on Anglican reservations touching Catholic sexual self-discipline, and wondering whence it arose that our modern society regards sexual incontinence not only as tolerable, but normal and desirable. He goes on to quote JRR Tolkien.

A quote from Patricius:

I overheard this quote as part of a conversation on another journal. A leftist was criticizing the Republicans for derailing the sovietization of the medical industry, and the words he used were: "The GOP has been as unreasonable and subversive of the spirit of the process as any dictator you should name, and the Democrats should stop pretending they have a good faith partner in government."

I will not discuss the pith of the comment, which is mere lunacy and hyperbole. Instead I will express pleasure that he used a word correctly rather than politically correctly. He intends its indeed as a criticism to use the word "subversive" in reference to the Dumbo Elephant Party.

Well! Maybe it is just me, but this is the first time I have ever heard a Homo semisapiens statidolaterus (to use the Linnaeus classification for the farleftwing subspecies of our race) use the word "subversive" in any but a complimentary way.

I remember sitting on a panel at a science fiction convention, and they were all complimenting some book (I think it was Heinlein’s STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND) for being "subversive" and wondering if, for example, Cory Doctorow’s LITTLE BROTHER would be as "subversive"–all in tones of glowing admiration.

I pointed out (gently and politely, but firmly) that whether or not being a subversive was laudable or not depended on (1) what the current social order supported, good or evil, and (2) what institution in the current social order, a good one or an evil one, one was trying to subvert, and (3)  whether the candidate for a new institution would indeed (and not just intention) be better or worse. Being a "revolutionary" in the sense of John Adams and George Washington is not the same thing as being a "revolutionary" in terms of Napoleon and Lenin and Mao and Che and Castro (not to mention "revolutionary" in the sense of Joyce or Picasso).

I was greeting with blank looks. The cosmopolitans of the Left, being so well read and widely traveled (even in a science fiction convention) could imagine no social order but their own, and no social revolution but their own. Ergo I assume they could not picture in their brains the idea that the current social order (which I assume they imagine to be a cross between the Jim Crow south, the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany, and the Spanish Inquisition of Torquemada) was not universal, and that overthrowing it might not lead to the Better Social Order (which I assume they imagine to be across between some world out of an Ursula K. LeGuin novel, the lyrics to a John Lennon song, the Land of Oz, and the Land of Cockaigne where pastries and cooked chickens fall from the sky.) They could not picture that the Revolution, having dynamited the Cathedrals and Castles, burned the rich and starved the Kulaks, torched the fields and scuttled the fleets, and thrown out the Czar, Batista and W Bush, might leave nothing but cratered rubble in its wake.

The sexual revolution (to use an example at random), having subverted the institutions, habits, and manners which once defended young women from sexual predation and defended children from being abandoned, has created, not new institutions to replace what was lost, but instead created an industry in sexual harassment lawsuits for the benefit of trial lawyers: The science fiction panel did not know or recall what things had once been like, and could not picture they had ever been better in the past or could ever be worse in the future. It was as if they could not imagine any situation different from the myth of eternal golden revolution that they told themselves about the current situation.

Subversion for the sake of subversion, like revolution for the sake of revolution, is admirable only if you assume a Hegelian (or Marxist) metaphysic that proposes that all change in and of itself is a good thing because it accelerates the culling of the weak and the rise of the superman or the socialist commonwealth, or whatever you take to be the next stage of an ever-improving ever-rising evolution.

Since I have it on good authority from a Time Traveler of my acquaintance that the human race of the year A.D. 802,701 will consist of cannibal troglodytes called Morlocks rather than Nietzschean posthumans; so I have never been a fan of natural selection for its own sake, nor for revolution for its own sake, nor for subversion for its own sake.

I had thought the mainstream of Leftist opinion disagreed: that the current social order was so bad that any subversion of it was good. I am pleasantly surprised to find out I am wrong, and that there is at least one Progressive who uses the word to mean a thing that happens to be bad if what is being subverted is good. 

The Supreme Court (agreeing with me, thank you very much) strikes down certain provisions of the Orwellian-named ‘Campaign Finance Reform Act’ in the name of the First Amendment. Corporations and Union are now allowed to spend money to say what they want about candidates before elections.

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

It is a pleasure when the confused, ideologically-corrupted mess of the American court system does something right. The last time I recall the courts getting an opinion right was back when they struck down D.C.’s gun ban as contrary to the Second Amendment.

It is apparently the practice at some publishing houses, when the main character is Black or Brown skinned, to put a Caucasian on the cover. I had noticed this back in the 1970’s, when I would see pictures of Sparrowhawk of Roke or Mr. Rico of the Mobile Infantry or even Podkayne of Mars (if her uncle is a Maori, she is at least a octoroon, right?) — and they would be white, I thought it was because the cover artist hadn’t read the book. When not one but two versions of Ursula K LeGuin’s Earthsea came out (a made-for-TV Sci-Fi channel version, and a Studeo Ghibli version) neither one made Sparrowhawk look like a Pacific Islander.

It is almost impossible to rouse my ire on this issue. Not only am I insensitive to these issues, I actually think people should suffer a certain amount of mockery and insult, just to learn the stoicism necessary for living in a Democratic society with relatively unpleasant creatures like Homo Sapiens for neighbors. I don’t like complainers, I don’t think people should listen to complaints, and I don’t think professional greivence mongers should exploit the softheartedness of those who do listen to complaints.

Almost impossible is not impossible. This is gross. My ire is truly and duly roused.  Read the remainder of this entry »

How to use a foil. Now with more Nausicaa!

http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/104307.html

From a site called HillBuzz. The whole thing is too long to quote. This leaped out at me:

This is interesting to me on two levels.

One, on a serious level, I am fascinated by the tension between a movement’s need for unity and its own internal factions. I consider this tension to be one of the defining forces in politics. Whoever can keep their coalition together has a better chance of winning. This is why the incumbent party is always fighting an uphill battle–because the dissent between its internal factions swells if their party is successful. The Chinese have an old saying "Brothers in wartime, foes in peacetime."

Example: the Communist Revolution in Russia, for example, can prevail over the Czar provided the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks don’t turn on each other. The Nazi movement could not be successful without the (reluctant) cooperation of the Prussian aristocratic officer’s corps, who were in every way antithetical to the populist bread-and-circuses bloodlust of the Hitlerian movement. The Democratic coalition cobbled together by FDR has to persuade Catholics in Massachusetts to go along with contraception, abortion, eugenics, euthanasia, and other Frankensteinian death-cult practices Catholics should be excommunicated for supporting.

In this case, the Obama supporters turned against the Hillary supporters with fury over the Massachusetts special election. Had they maintained Party Discipline, the result might have been different.

Two, on a frivolous level, I am old enough to remember the days when grown-ups who talked about serious topics like politics did not make references to evil magician Dark Lords from kiddie books, or Urban Fantasies about vampire-hunting cheerleaders. We are not only in the mainstream now, my fellow Overlords of the Galactic Geek Empire (Overladies, too!), we ARE the mainstream! We are the future! We are the jetpack you’ve been waiting for! Go Sciffy! May the Force be With You! I grok Spock! Frodo Lives! All Your Bases Are Belong to Us!

Here is an open letter posted on the HillBuzz website. I notice that HillBuzz and I have something in common. The Troll Avalanche that fell upon me last August when I whined about the Sci-Fi channel caving to political correctness, while it clearly contained at least come real science fiction readers (and, I am sad to say, one or two professional science fiction writers) was ginned up over at the Democratic Underground: I came across the comment thread where they were boasted about putting graffiti on my Wikipedia page.

http://hillbuzz.org/2010/01/19/an-open-letter-to-our-readers/

17800 words so far this week.

My favorite passage in this week’s work. Montrose has just met (I kid you not) a space princess, and he blacks out and has another fit of momentary super-intelligence (which happens to him because he experimented on his own brain). He thinks he is possessed by another "self" that he calls "Mr. Hyde" who has him do things for reasons he cannot later recall. He comes to himself in the middle of a conversation with Princess Rania:

He was looking right at her face when it happened: her expression returned to normal. It was like watching a ghost fade out of the body of some possessed person on those old faith healer shows everyone in his family save him used to watch so raptly. Like an actress turning off a character and surfacing. But not like an actress. There was nothing fake about it.

She was not panting, but Rania was breathing a little heavily. Long, slow breaths that made her bosom rise and fall. "You’re the other one. Ah. Welcome back.”

“You are possessed too, ain’t you? You are a Mrs. Hyde!”

Rania stared at him quizzically.

“Miss Hyde, I would prefer. I am a maiden yet.” She showed dimples when she smiled. “Unless you are proposing? I warn you, I am spoken for.”

Menelaus backed up, his arm raised as if to ward off a blow. “You are not in love with Del Azarchel!”

“I don’t recall saying I was.”

“You are in love with me.”

“Define your terms,” she said, favoring him with an arch look.

“No normal girl says Define your terms when you say You are in love with me.”

She nodded judiciously. “Being normal is a goal oft sought and rarely achieved, but not unenviable for all that. Statistically speaking, it would be unusual if everyone were average.”

He spun angrily, and caught her by the shoulders. “You are trying to trick me!”

She looked thoughtful, and pouted. “Quite possibly. That is one of the things behind every man-woman relationship.” She shrugged her scented shoulders very slightly in his hands. “Do we have a relationship?”

He let go and stepped back. “Stop toying with me. I cannot trust myself. Either of me.”

“There is only one of you, silly man. And I have no need of feminine wiles, when speaking the truth, as befits a princess, will serve me better…"