Immanentize the Eschaton

I saw an ad in the Charlotte Observer yesterday concerning how some believe we should spend our time today. It had a portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the slogan “Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service/Make it a day on, not a day off.”

Well, good luck to them, I thought. I don’t have the day off, and if I did I would spend it as I see fit. I’ll throw together a snarky post and be done.

When I Googled “national day of service January 19″, to find the graphic, I was led to this site:

www.MKLDay.gov

Yup, this is an initiative of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT! What the hell are they doing? From the website:

Initiated by Congress in 1994, King Day of Service builds on that that legacy by transforming the federal holiday honoring Dr. King into a national day of community service grounded in his teachings of nonviolence and social justice. The aim is to make the holiday a day ON, where people of all ages and backgrounds come together to improve lives, bridge social barriers, and move our nation closer to the “Beloved Community” that Dr. King envisioned. With thousands of projects planned across the country, the 2009 King Day of Service on January 19 promises to be the biggest and best ever!

So let me get this straight: Congress wants to transform MLK’s birthday observance into a “National Day of Service,” and spends Federal monies promoting it, but has no problem with Washington’s birthday be transmuted into “President’s Day”, observed mainly by sales? What the fuck?

Over the weekend, there was a bit of discussion on Twitter about the size of the Supreme Court. Some folks think the democratic-controlled Congress will increase the size of the Court by two seats. allowing President Obama to ensure a leftist majority on the Court. One question concerned whether the Constitution specified the size of the Court.

(DISCLAIMER: I am not a Constitutional lawyer, nor any other kind of lawyer. I believe, however, that the Founders expected the Constitution to be understood by any reasonably educated and informed person. No “emanations and penumbras” for them! Bear that in mind as you read the following.)

Article III of the Constitution establishes the Judicial branch. It is the shortest of the articles establishing the co-equal branches of government. The first section states:

Section 1. The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office

That’s it. It creates the supreme Court, allows Congress to create federal courts inferior to the Supreme Court, grants federal Judges lifetime tenure (“…shall hold their Offices during good Behavior…”), and authorizes Congress to pay them. Nothing about the size of the Supreme Court or its organization. That is left to Congress.

The next section defines the jurisdiction of the federal courts:

Section 2. The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls; to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States; between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.

It also requires trial by jury in criminal case, except for impeachment. It states where the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction, and where it has appellate jurisdiction.

Section 3 defines the crime of treason and how is may be punished:

Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

And that’s all the Constitution has to say about the judicial branch. Nothing about judicial review. Nothing about the Supreme Court being the final arbiter of our rights. Compare this to Articles I and II, where the Legislative and Executive powers are strictly defined and limited. It appears to me that the Founders did not see the judiciary as a likely source of tyranny. In Federalist No. 78, Publius writes:

“…Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from
each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.”

The Founders would be dismayed to see how wrong they were!

Blagoevich selling the Senate seat held by Obama.  Caroline Kennedy seeking the seat held by Mrs. Clinton.  Joe Biden having his Senate “kept warm” for his son.  These make me consider the wisdom of the 17th amendment.

Uder the original Constituion, senators were selected by the legislature of each state.  This was to have the upper chamber of the Federal gummint be able to legislate without direct pressure from the electorate in his or her state.  Scandals (similar to what goes on in Illinois) and deadlocks in the state legislatures kept some states from appointing senators.  A growing populist movement in the late 19th century pushed for direct election of senators.  The 17th amendment was ratified in 1913.

Are we better off?  It’s hard to say.  We still have scandals (see Blagoevich) and inexperienced, politically connected folks angling for appointment (see Caroline Kennedy).  Would the legislatures do worse?  We would also be able to restore some of the federal aspects to our government.

I’ve been reading Cory Doctorow’s Eastern Standard Tribes. Very enjoyable book. Not through with it yet, so no summary. There are hints of the Bitchun Society in the book (e.g., Whuffie), but it’s obviously set before Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. More when I’m done; in the meantime, download it from Feedbooks and enjoy!

The wife invited some friends and their kids over last night for the premiere of American Idol. It seemed to me that way too much was made of the fact that “we have a new judge!” It was too long. And Idol committed the (to me) unpardonable offense: they only showed a handful of the horrible/hilarious auditions! If one is not a fan of modern pop music, those auditions are the only reason to watch (at least as far as the show itself is concerned; hanging with the family is another reason to watch, but that has nothing to do with the show). One of the joys of the show is watching the kids who have obviously been told they sing like angels (lest the truth damage their fragile self-esteem) get kicked in the nuts by reality. Bring this back!

I was annoyed by the treatment of the “crying rock star” (can’t remember his name) who had never performed in public or worked with a band. He did not have a great voice (he was merely adequate), did not have much stage presence, chose to sing a bad Bon Jovi song, AND cried and begged, but to get on him because he “hasn’t put in the hard work,” to quote Abdul the Fool and Kara not Kahrah, is absurd. Very few of the kids they send to “Hollywood” have out in the kind of work they’re talking about. Furthermore, they didn’t hold that against one of the final contestants they showed, the nerdy guy who “taught himself to sing in his closet.” His lack of “the hard work” didn’t prevent the judges from sending him on, and his voice was not that much better than CRS’s. Maybe it was because el nerdo allowed Cowell to make a crack about “coming out of the closet.”

Which brings up another disappointment: the producers have reined in Cowell. His acid comments during the auditions are worth the price of admission (in this case, 2 hours of over-hyped TV). Ever since Cowell treated that retarded Special Olympian just like he treats everyone else, and Rosie O’Donnell got her knickers in a twist about Simon being “mean”, he’s toned down his comments. We need the old Cowell for the audition shows to work!

One other comment: why doesn’t anyone ever sing “Renegade” (the old Styx song? If you can pull it off, you’ll be in! Or someone could try an old Sam Cooke tune, or something by Southside Johnny (“The Fever” or “Wait in Vain” will work). Anything where the emphasis is on a clear, heartfelt melody and not on vocal gymnastics!

I don’t look forward to the rest of the series, but if I want to see my family on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I’ll watch with them. Pray for me.

During the late campaign, there was some talk on the conservative blogosphere about the fact that some 40% of the population does not pay federal income tax. Sure, they have tax withheld, but when they file their 1040s, tax credits, etc., reduce their tax liability to zero. (I know this can happen. When I was a lowly college student working to help pay my tuition, I never paid income tax. I was always able to reduce my tax liability to zero. Can’t do that now, I’m afraid.)

There was discussion of how Lord Obama’s tax plan would eventually ensure that those who pay federal income tax (“FIT” from now on) will be a minority. The majority of people would pay no FIT. Any tax increases would be guaranteed to only hit a minority on the population (and you can bet that there would be ONE minority the libs wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about).

It seems to me we’ve turned the Revolutionary complaint on it’s head. Instead of demanding “No taxation without representation!”, we need to agitate for and demand “No representation Without Taxation!” If you don’t pay tax, you don’t get to vote.

Now, I know this cannot be squared with the modern view of “one man. one vote, and don’t you dare ‘disenfranchise’ me (even if I’m dead, or too careless to mark my ballot properly, or I don’t know anything about the person I’m voting for, or…)!” But we must do something, or we will end up being modern Helots for those who see no problem in taking our hard-earned money and property. After all, they will have 50% +1, so they have to be right!

UPDATE:  I am wee todd did.  I should have looked at the Constitution.  The 24th amendment prohibits governments from requiring the payment of any tax to vote.  Time to call for a Constitutional Convention! (Not really…a Const. Conv will cause much more harm than any good it will do.)

I was searching for conservative organizations in southern Mecklenburg and Union counties, and found a link to CarolinaConservatives.org.

Great! Sound like what I was searching for! Well. if you’ve clicked the above link, you already know that it’s a site for NC Sate Senator Eddie Goodall. Nothing wrong with that; just not what one would guess by the name of the site. (Gee, you mean you can’t trust what you see on the internet?).

I was flipping through the Charlotte Observer today at lunch, and I saw a headline about food labels. Seems that there will be “front-of-package” nutritional information on packaged food, starting this year. I rolled my eyes and went to the important part of the paper.

The headline kept nagging at me, so when I got back to my desk I did a quick search on the Observer website. I couldn’t find a link that works properly, so I Googled for more info. This is what I found: smartchoicesprogram.com.

Good Lord, just how much more crap do they think they need to put on the labels? Do they really think we’re too damn lazy to turn over the box or can and read what’s already there? For fuck’s sake, we’re adults! We can figure this out! If we’re obese, it’s not because we don’t know how to read a damn food label!

It least it’s not the feddle gummint mandating this (I’ll take whatever small comfort I can).

I just finished reading Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, a sci-fi novel set in the “Bitchun Society” of the near-ish future, a society that has solved the problems of scarcity and death. Indeed, death seems to be treated like an engineering problem, and the solution is to literally “refresh from backup”; people in the Bitchun Society backup their consciousness and memories to the Net. If someone suffers a fatal accident, a clone of the person is “force-grown” and the backup restored.

Our narrator is Julius, a composer/sociologist/operations researcher who is over 100 years old. He lives at Walt Disney World with his girlfriend Lil, who is 15% of his age. Living in the Magic Kingdom has been a lifelong dream for Julius (even in the future we have snowbirds). We also meet his best friend Dan (at first via flashbacks). Dan was a “missionary” for the Bitchun Society, but had no work after the whole planet was converted to the Bitchun Society. His Whuffie, which was astronomical, is now down to zero. He wants to crash with Julius and Lil while he brings it back up, after which he will kill himself.

(Whuffie is the currency of the Bitchun Society. It is completely based on reputation. If one’s Whuffie goes to zero, one can still eat, find shelter, etc., but it will be of the meanest kind.)

Dan joins Julius’s and Lil’s adhocracy, which is responsible for Liberty Square and the Haunted Mansion. Another adhocracy, run by Debra, revamps the Hall of Presidents. Julius is murdered, refreshed from backup, and believes Debra’s ad-hoc murdered him so they can take over the Mansion. There are too many spoilers to recount much more; suffice it to say that Julius believes he is slowly going mad.

Doctorow has a good read here. I was disappointed that he did not go into more detail on the Society and some of the questions that arise. For example, what does it mean to be murdered when death has been overcome? How does one dispense justice? How was the problem of scarcity solved? Doctorow doesn’t fill in these details. The book would be better if he had.

Download the book from www.feedbooks.com. You’ll be glad you did.

I regularly read Fred Reed’s columns on his website “Fred on Everything“.  I find his outlook unique, and I particularly appreciate his take on education in America (or the lack of it).  I disagree as often as I agree with his writings on politics and government, but he has always argued in good faith (taking into account his style).

Not this time.

Fred’s latest column (#411 “Conservatives”) set up a straw-man of conservatism, which he thens tears down while insulting those he deems to be “conservatives”.  Let’s take a look at some of his points.

First, Fred offers what he claims is his understanding of a conservative (tossing in a gratuitous insult, which I don’t think old Granddad would have done):

For years I thought it meant someone like my grandfather, a professor of mathematics at a small college in the South. He embodied courtesy, respect for learning, personal responsibility, compassion for those in the town who found themselves in distress, dignity, a love of the language, a morality opposed to promiscuity and bastardy, and a quiet Christianity having nothing in common with the cruelty and hostility of today’s unlettered evangelicals. I thought it a pretty decent package…

His grandfather sounds like a wonderful man, the embodiment of the old Southern upper-middle class.  In fact, he sounds like quite a few men I know, all of whom call themselves conservatives.  Fred then offers this disclaimer:

Over my years of writing this column, I have received a great deal of mail from people, entirely male so far as I can remember, calling themselves “conservatives,” yet having nothing in common with granddad. (I use quotation marks, though I will omit them in what follows as being annoying, because there are many people who regard themselves as conservatives but are decent people.)

Okay, so you’re not really writing about conservatives, but about folks who send you e-mails (presumably disagreeing with you on one point or another) and claim to be conservatives.  You find them not to be decent, nor do they seem to be in accordance with your ideal of conservatism, but you’ll continue to refer to them as “conservatives” so you can muddy the waters.

Now Fed gives us some characteristics of these “conservatives”.  I’ll only address a few of his points.

Hostility to other groups—blacks, Mexicans, homosexuals, and Jews for example. In earlier times they would have detested the Irish, Italians, Asians, and Slavs

Hmmm…old Fred doesn’t give any details about this “hostility”, but he does get right into calling conservatives racists. I wonder if old Granddad, steeped in the traditions of the Old South, might have had some “hostility” to “uppity Negroes” and the like.  Next:

Subclinical paranoia. The (pick one) Jews, communists, Russians, Chinese, Moslems are insidious, fiendishly patient—waiting, waiting for us to falter so that they can take over and enslave us. You have doubtless heard this sort of thing: The gates of Vienna, what Lenin said about probing with a bayonet, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Well, here’s the (predictable) accusation of conservatives being McCarthyite witch-hunters.  This leaves out the inconvenient fact that for the most part, McCarthy was right.  The Soviets DID infiltrate agents into the US government.   Hiss was a Soviet spy; the Rosenbergs were traitors.  Even a cursory review of the current research (e.g., the Verona files) shows that just maybe there was a reason for the so-called “paranoia”.  Finally:

A lack of empathy. Suppose that squishy bleeding-heart do-gooders object to the employment of children of ten, for twelve hours a day in Indonesian sweatshops, making pricey running shoes for people who don’t run. This will infuriate the conservatives (again, of this type). The factory makes money, doesn’t it? Photos from war zones of children with their entrails hanging out? The communist media are trying to sap the public’s will to fight. These conservatives just don’t care, and can’t care.

Now, by the foregoing I do not suggest that they are always wrong in their prescriptions. Sometimes there are enemies abroad (chiefly because other countries also have their martial paranoids). Immigration by incompatible groups may well be inadvisable. And so on. Yet these same people will find enemies where they are and where they aren’t, oppose immigration whether it makes sense or not, because it is how they think.

Ah yes, the traditional attack on the humanity of conservatives.  Note the weaselly disclaimer that sometimes the conservatives might have a point, but that doesn’t matter because the motives of a conservative are ALWAYS wrong.  He gievs us an example:

A recurring example is the dispute over national medical care. The conservatives oppose it because they say it would become a bloated federal program, as it probably would. (They do not oppose bloated federal programs that produce profits, as for example the military, but have a deeply principled aversion to anything that might require them to pay taxes. Note that they favor private charity over public welfare, because they don’t have to pay for the former.) They simply can’t care what happens to others.

Well, Fred, where to start?  First, most conservatives do oppose the military because the maintenance of the armed forces is one of the limited and enumerated powers granted to the Federal Government, specifically in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.  That power is granted in language so clear that not even Madame Justice Ginsburg can find a way around it.  I find nothing in the Constitution granting the government power over the health care system (though some might point to the “general welfare” clause as granting this power.  If this is the case, we might as well just drop the pretense that we live in a constitutional republic of free citizens and say we are subjects of the United States).

Second, there is nothing wrong with objecting to a bloated federal program that most assuredly will NOT do anything it is claimed it will.  Most conservatives prefer private charity to public welfare programs because they produce better results much more efficiently that the government.  Furthermore, there is nothing “moral” about making someone else help others.  Morality requires free choices.

Disagreeing about the means to help others doesn’t mean we don’t care, Fred.  In fact, we might care more that those who think the gummint is the only solution, because we want to find solutions that actually work, rather than solutions that merely provide a sinecure for professional uplifters.

I may have more to say later.