Wednesday, May 30, 2018

The Authoritarian Playbook

Trump is following an Old playbook.

The Dictator's playbook is old. This list is inspired by an article in "Raw Story," but it is a list I already had so this is my version. I've been writing on this for a long time. So this post is a place to put related posts.

  1. Lie Often, Lie Big.
  2. Target, Challenge and Coopt Institutions that Enforce Accountability.
  3. Consolidate power by putting sychophants in key positions (military and law enforcement).
  4. Target, Attack and Control the Press.
  5. Target & Scapegoat minority groups, rivals and foreigners.
  6. Target, Vilify as Enemies and bad people, protesters, minorities and scapegoats.
  7. Find and Recruit the Angry, dogmatic, disaffected, ignorant and fearful.
  8. Rile up the Mob, but exclude anyone not onboard.
  9. Play on Religious, Ethnic, Racial and cultural prejudice.
  10. Enforce identity of the movement and leader.
  11. Enforce Personal loyalty in key institutions.
  12. Indoctrinate thru Repetition belief in alternative facts over facts.
  13. Relentlessly go after disloyalty and criticism.
  14. Instigate and use violence to beat down opposition verbally and physically.

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

That "Muddle Head [Marx]" David Ellerman and Henry George on Marx

One thing that both David Ellerman in the present age and Henry George in the 19th Century, both have cogent criticisms of Marxism from the left, from a Human Rights/fundamental rights point of view. Henry George Considered Marx a "muddle-head". Ernst Wigforss made corrections to Marxism that made it effective in Scandinavia based on similar critiques to those of George. Ellerman explans why. These critiques explain both why Marxism doesn't work as advertised, and why even when it works as promised it fails.

This post follows on the post titled "The Fraud of Rented Labor"

http://www.cooperative-individualism.org/holmes-john_henry-george-and-karl-marx-1947-159.pdf

Ellerman explains how Marx, Lenin, and the Russian Revolution have set back the Left for over a century. More like a century and a half.

“As if the central question was whether people should be publicly or privately rented–with the Great Capitalism-Communism Debate and Cold War being like a ‘Peloponnesian War’ over whether slaves should be publicly owned (Sparta) or privately owned (Athens).”

To summarize:

Marx:
“brought a knife to a gun fight.”[Ellerman]
“He brought a value theory to a property-theoretic fight.”[Ellerman]
Both Ellerman and Henry George believed that:
“His “labor theory of value and exploitation” is inherently superficial” and Ellerman adds "and thus the favorite foil in economics.”[Ellerman]
“But that is not worst of it.”[Ellerman]
“By misunderstanding the basis for the employer’s appropriation (i.e., the human rental contract), he ended up attacking the idea of private property!”[Ellerman]
“This allowed the employers (“capitalists”), who are the beneficiaries of the whole fraudulent human rental system, to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of other people’s labor by “renting” them; and to parade as the defenders of private property that is supposed to rest on the principle of people getting the fruits of their labor!”[Ellerman]
Thus: “How screwed up is a so-called “critique”” that:
“allows those who violate human rights (to the fruits of your labor or to self-government)”
“to parade as the “defenders of human rights”!” [Ellerman]
“The conclusions of these arguments is that, contrary to Marx”
the Left should be arguing for the abolition (not nationalization) of the whole system of renting human beings:”[Ellerman]
“In the name of inalienable rights (no renting of human beings);”[Ellerman]
“In the name of private property (getting the fruits of one’s labor);”
and In the name of democracy (in the workplace).”[Ellerman]

This argument draws on the Swedish thinker Ernst Wiggforss for much of it's inspiration. But it also, unconsciously draws on Henry George.

For a Detailed discussion continue:

The Fraud of "Renting Labor."

Some currently "legal" tropes are in-fact logically unjust. With things like exploiting labor, "renting" labor, and binding laborers to abusive contracts, most folks recognize their innate injustice. Unfortunately, as displayed in the corrupt SCOTUS decision announced just 12 days after I first drafted this post (5/21/2018), stealing wages is perfectly legal under the sophist arguments of "right to contract" having primacy over a right to own oneself, the fraud of "renting labor" is a perfectly legal fraud.

See:Supreme Court upholds Employers Right to Require Arbitration

David Ellerman and related historians and economists offers better arguments than the raw emotional ones offered by many activists. His arguments, founded in the arguments of the enlightenment and the abolitionist movement apply the logic of inalienable human rights. Listening to them could drive a paradigm shift in understanding the legal rights and wrongs of our system; and a framework for righting them. But of course only if we can upend the corruption in our electoral and legal system.

This post is intended to be a follow on to the post: “Justice, Injustice And "Legal Fictions" = Fraud Ellerman explains why the "rental of labor" is a legal fraud and a tool for wage slavery and inequality.

Friday, April 20, 2018

Justice, Injustice And "Legal Fictions" = Fraud

Professor David Ellerman wrote some things that really, really impressed me and I want to summarize some of what he's saying that is relative to me. Starting with the Following Table, which expresses the truth table of what constitutes justice and injustice:

http://www.ellerman.org/the-case-against-the-employment-system-based-on-the-norms-of-ordinary-jurisprudence/

In talking about slavery, Ellerman points out how slaves were held legally liable as persons for their individual acts, even if coerced, while were denied personhood in all the ways that a human deserves to be treated as a human. When seeking freedom or rights they were not persons. When they violated any law, they were suddenly persons. Slaves were in a Catch 22 situation.

The Catch 22 of Unjust Legal Systems

In the book "Catch 22", Joseph Heller, built his story around a plausible provision in the General Orders for the Air Force stationed in Southern Italy and bombing the Germans from there. This provision was known as the "Catch 22".

“by applying for exemption from highly dangerous bombing missions on the grounds of insanity, the applicant proved himself to be sane”

Joseph Heller was setting up a situation where the insanity of war was no bar to being sent out on bombing runs. He went on the book to describe a whole series of "Catch 22" situations that soldiers were put into while fighting in Europe.

The Truth Table of Catch 22 Situations

The term has become a regular expression in modern English. A Catch 22, generally, is any provision of law or policy that sets up no-win situation for those trying to comply with them. No win Situations are by definition unjust.

Any Law is only just when the person who is held responsible is actually in fact responsible. Catch 22's are by definition unjust and therefore an instrument of oppression and repression. That ought to be tautological, but in our corrupted times, both type one and type two injustice are common, sometimes due to failures in the discovery process for seeking the truth, but also because modern governments employ oppressive and/or Fraudulent legal theories.

If a decision is coerced, the claim that it is truly consensual is a fraud

David explains the table as:

“analogous to Type I and Type II error in statistics”

But it really is also a logical truth table. Injustice is also illogical. Sophisticated arguments may give the arguments a patina of truthiness, but sophism is merely an ancient greek word for making a con. If a person is blackmailed into doing something, only a sophist of a lawyer would insist that his decision was not coerced or was truly consensual.

Ellerson Notes that:

“Historically, the sophisticated arguments for slavery and autocratic government were consent-based in terms of implicit or explicit contracts. And the legalized oppression of married women was based on the coverture marriage contract.” [Ellerson-Case]

Natural Rights Arguments on behalf of Genuine Liberty

Moderns forget that the cases against Abolition of Slavery, worker rights, even women's rights, all were framed on the argument that somehow those forms of oppression were actually (despite the facts) oppressive.

“the critiques developed in the abolitionist, democratic, and feminist movements were not simply arguments for consent as opposed to coercion, but arguments against certain voluntary contracts, e.g., in the form of inalienable rights arguments.”

Legal Fiction of Consent = Fraud

These inalienable rights arguments focus on the fact that labor cannot be divorced from either personhood or capital. The abolitionists argued successfully that labor cannot be alienated from personhood but is inseparable from it. Thus Alienating a persons labor from his personhood degrades the person and is oppression, infringing on the very basic rights of the persons enslaved. Moreover, this is true even if the person agreed to the sale. The basis of that argument starts with recognizing the fraud of catch 22s, no-win contracts and of holding innocent parties guilty where they are not and guilty parties innocent were they are in fact guilty.

The Fraud continues

As illustrated by the spread of terms like "newspeak", "catch 22" and modern legal frauds, the job of the enlightenment isn't over. After Racist Permanent Bondage slavery was abolished. Other legal frauds were invented to justify "renting labor" wage slavery and other forms of legalized theft, oppression and injustice. All of which start with "legal fictions" which are in fact legalized Frauds. To stop such frauds from propagating we need lawyers and politicians to understand and adamantly argue that they are frauds. They've had, some of them, hundreds of years of normalization so they've gone from outright lies, to myths that are actually lies.

I have a lot more to say, but for the sake of clarity I cut this post down to a shorter version. And am writing out the case in separate posts.

The Type I and Type II Frauds of Corporate Personhood

Corporate Personhood legalizes both type I injustice by shifting fictional liability from guilty parties to a fictional entity, the Corporation, and type II injustice by (usually) letting the corporation get a criminal law pass when the people within a corporation kill, defraud or commit felonies. As Ellerman says:

“In the case at hand, both errors occur. The factually responsible party or association, the people working within a firm, do not get the legal responsibility for the whole product (the Type I injustice with X = whole product), and the party or association that does get the legal responsibility, such as the corporate shareholders in the employing corporation, do not have the factual responsibility (the Type II injustice with X = whole product). ”

By reviewing the arguments of the Abolitionists and pre-Marxist activists we can correct the mistakes of 150 years of sophism and neo-liberal arguments.

Further Reading

To Read Professor David Ellerman's draft paper:

http://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/case-based-on-ordinary-norms.pdf
https://cosmosandtaxis.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/ellerman_ct_vol5_iss3_4.pdf
Neoabolitionism: http://www.ellerman.org/neo-abolitionism-and-marxism/

Thursday, April 5, 2018

The Second Amendment is an Auxiliary and Subordinate Right

Implementing the Second Amendment

I take the constitution seriously, and the second amendment, But the second amendment makes no sense without the context of, and reference to, Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. The Second amendment really refers to a requirement of good Government, that we preserve the “Security” of our “Free State,” therefore the SEcond amendment refers to the:

  • Duty of all Citizens to participate in protecting our security
  • Effort to avoid having a Standing Army or forces separate from the citizenry
  • This implies that functions that emanate from the militia functions are also a common duty:
    1. Emergency Services
    2. Police
    3. Fire and Rescue
    4. Health Services

The Right to Bear Arms is Auxiliary and subordinate to the right to own oneself, to liberty and security.

Individual security requires collective security

National security requires State Security which requires local security.

If people don't feel secure in their persons and possessions, the country isn't secure. If some people are secure (Oligarchy), the majority are less secure. The "Right to Bear Arms" is auxiliary, but necessary to, the right to participate in governing ourselves. Samuel Adams referred to the Right to “have and use arms” as Auxiliary and Subordinate to the rights to personal security, liberty and property.

In ancient times the greatest power of common people was that the Government had to ask them to fight for them.

Auxiliary and Subordinate Rights

As I've said elsewhere owning and using weaponry for self defense is an "auxiliary and subordinate" right. Samuel Adams quoted Blackstone and Parliament when he wrote, referring to the Glorious Revolution when English Parliament overthrew the Stuarts:

“At the Revolution, the British Constitution was restored to its original principles, declared in the bill of rights; which was afterwards passed into a law”

Note the wording "restored" and "afterwards passed into a law", is expressing the principle that these human rights existed all the while in their denial, which is the reason that any right to own and use arms other than in the military is actually linked to the 9th and 10th Amendments and the product of hundreds of years of resistance by Citizens against Government Oppression. The right to bear arms is the right to participate in the defense, and by logical extension, the governance of the country.

This was a principle that dated back to "Old England." Samuel Adams in an essay published in the Boston Gazette during the early stages of the rebellion in New England that became our Revolution referred to the right to “have and use” arms as part of a list of "auxiliary and subordinate" rights that only apply;

  • “When actually attacked”

Which are rights that people have auxiliary, to resisting oppression:

  1. “first to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law”
  2. “the right of petitioning the King and parliament”
  3. having and using arms for self-preservation and defense

These are only rights in a context of protecting the primary rights of:

  1. “personal security”
  2. “personal liberty”
  3. “private property”

In Britain, only those with real estate property, "the gentry" were permitted to bear arms in the Militia. The Gentry were afraid of "the rabble" being permitted to bear arms, and as a result, Sam Adams said that:

“having arms for their defense” ... “a public allowance under due restrictions of the natural rights of resistance and self preservation, when the sanction of society and society are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.

This right to bear arms is an auxiliary right necessary to resist "the violence of oppression", not a right of mere disaffection, or to engage in oppression or ethnic cleansing. If there is no oppression and no occupying military, there is no need to possess and sue arms. Hence the word "auxilliary."

Second Amendment

Fear of Standing Armies

To the nascent Rebellion, it also was a response to the presence of “Military Troops” due to the fear that;

“Violence is always to be apprehended from Military Troops”

If you talk to any gun nut, they know full well this history, and that the great fear of "Standing Armies" was what drove the founders of this country to create a second Amendment. But they interpret that fear the way Southerners did in the antebellum period before 1865. They saw it as a right for the Free Men (they expanded the franchise from the Gentry) and Gentry to defend their property, which included other people. They didn't see slaves, peasants, indentured servants and the property-less worker, as full equals in society. But their arguments saying "All Mankind" meant that this was a deluded attitude towards their own universal principles. The struggle to make universal universal principles continues.

More to Come

On Standing Armies:
http://files.libertyfund.org/pll/quotes/192.html
Most quotes from “Armed In America,” by Patrick J. Charles:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y56WFY6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Friday, March 30, 2018

How the Militia Of the Whole Concept failed in the 19th Century

How Militia of the Whole Failed

The Concept of the Militia of the Whole Gave way to National Guard

The Founders of this country had faith in the "Militia of the Whole" as the guarantor of our civilization. As long as the Frontier was near most citizens or we had credible outside enemies, this faith was justified. The Second Amendment was originally the "Palladium of Liberty" of this country because the notion of being able to force the entire populace of a county or Town to muster and defend their homes was noble, virtuous and made sense, until most of the country was relatively peaceful and there was no longer any immediate threat. At that point the concept began to seem absurd. By the end of the 19th century the underlying concepts behind the second amendment and Article One Section 8 militia had to change. For the further context here I'd recommend reading these posts:

  1. Thoughts on Defending Democracy
  2. Why DC Versus Heller was Badly Decided,
  3. On Militia and the Founders
  4. Militia Second Amendment and Democracy
  5. Select Militia National Guard and Second Amendment
  6. The Palladium of Liberty