bkmarcus.com : quotes : longer

* The problem is of course that 'consistent with order' seems to have had a very different definition for Ronald Reagan than it does for me. Remember: it was Governor Reagan who oversaw stricter gun-control laws in California because The Black Panthers had started arming themselves and monitoring the police ...

* In the 1990s, we got to see this same perception game with the roles reversed.

Interviewer: If you had to rewrite "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" today, what would you say?

Noam Chomsky: In retrospect, it seems to me there were unclarities and omissions. One has to do with the category of intellectuals. Who are they? Suppose that we take the term "intellectual" to refer to people who think seriously about issues of general human concern, seek and evaluate evidence, and try to articulate their judgments and conclusions clearly and honestly. Then some of the most impressive intellectuals I have known had little formal education, and many of those who are granted great respect as leading intellectuals do not deserve the name. If we adopt this conception, there is no special "responsibility of intellectuals" other than the responsibility of people generally to act with integrity and decency, but there is a responsibility of all of us to work for a society in which everyone is encouraged and helped to become an intellectual, in this sense.

1. That every man who puts money into the hands of a "government" (so called) puts into its hands a sword which will be used against himself, to extort more money from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its arbitrary will.
2. That those who will take his money, without his consent, in the first place, will use it for his further robbery and enslavement, if he presumes to resist their demands in the future.
3. That it is a perfect absurdity to suppose that any body of men would ever take a man's money without his consent, for any such object as they profess to take it for, viz., that of protecting him; for why should they wish to protect him, if he does not wish them to do so?...
4. If a man wants "protection," he is competent to make his own bargains for it; and nobody has any occasion to rob him, in order to "protect" him against his will.
5. That the only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in their keeping their money in their own pockets, until they have assurances, perfectly satisfactory to themselves, that it will be used as they wish it to be used, for their benefit, and not for their injury.
6. That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted for a moment, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support.

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

... the universe is the inside without any outside, the sound made by one eye opening. In fact, I don't even know that there is a universe. More likely, there are many multiverses, each with its own dimensions, times, spaces, laws and eccentricities. We wander between and among these multiverses, trying to convince others and ourselves that we all walk together in a single public universe that we can share. For to deny that axiom leads to what is called schizophrenia.

Yeah, that's it: every man's skin is his own private multiverse, just like every man's home is supposed to be his castle. But all the multiverses are trying to merge, to create a true universe such as we have only imagined previously. Maybe it will be spiritual, like Zen or telepathy, or maybe it will be physical, one great big gang-fuck, but it has to happen: the creation of the universe and the one great eye opening to see itself at last. Aum Shiva!

--Oh man, you're stoned out of your gourd. You're writing gibberish.

No, I'm writing with absolute clarity, for the first time in my life.

--Yeah? Well what was that business about the universe being the sound of one eye opening?

Never mind that. Who the hell are you and how did you get into my head?"

"Objectivity is presumably the opposite of schizophrenia. Which means that it is nothing but acceptance of everybody else's notion of reality. But nobody's perception of reality is the same as everybody's notion of it, which means that the most objective person is the real schizophrenic."

"Who did you say was looting this temple? he asked Hagbard.

The Illuminati. The real force behind all communist and fascist movements. Whether you're aware of it or not, they're also already in control of United States government."

"I thought everybody in your crowd was a right-winger--"

"And I told you spacial metaphors are inadequate in discussing politics today," Hagbard interrupted."

Reichians, disciples of Dr. Spock and the Summerhill School, etc. have called attention, with some impatience, to the brutality and stupidity of many of our traditional child-rearing methods. These methods are "brutal" and "stupid" only if, like the above-mentioned heretics, one regards the goal of child-rearing as the production of a sane, balanced, creative human being. THIS HAS NEVER BEEN THE GOAL OF ANY SOCIETY IN THE REAL WORLD. The traditional childrearing methods are quite logical, pragmatic and sound in fulfilling the REAL purpose of society, which is NOT to create an ideal person, but to create a semi-robot who mimics the society as closely as possible -- both in its rational and its irrational aspects, both as the repository of the wisdom of the past and as the sum total of all the cruelties and stupidities of the past. Very simply, a totally aware, alert, AWAKENED (unbrainwashed) person would not fit very well into any of the standard roles society offers; the damaged, robotized products of traditional child-rearing DO fit into those slots.

That is, there is a neurosociological "logic" to the illogical. Are traditional schools very much like mini-prisons? Do they stifle imagination, cramp the child physically and mentally, and run on various forms of overt or covert terrorism? Of course, the answer is an unambiguous YES; but such schools are necessary to train people for roles in the ordinary office or factory or profession, which are also very much like mini-prisons, stifle imagination, cramp the person physically and mentally and run on terror (threat of loss of bio-survival tickets, in the form of pay-checks or tenure).

Democracy has been less than a total success -- and the intellectual's half-shamed cynicism about democracy is justified -- to the extent that traditional society did not need, could not use, and in many ways discouraged the development of high verbal ("rational") skills in the majority of the population. That is, concretely, most people are not encouraged to be very smart, and are rather heavily programmed to be comparatively stupid. Such programming is what is needed to fit them into most traditional jobs. Their bio-survival circuitry works as well as that of most animals, their emotional-territorial circuitry is typically primate, and they have little third-circuit "mind" to verbalize (rationalize) with. Naturally, they usually vote for the charlatan who can activate primitive bio-survival fears and territorial ("patriotic") pugnacity. The intellectual looks at the dismal results and continues to believe in "democracy" only by an act of Blind Faith similar to the way beliefs in Catholicism or Communism or snake-worship are maintained.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

These nations have progressed through the following sequence:

• From Bondage to Spiritual Faith
• From Spiritual Faith to Great Courage
• From Courage to Liberty
• From Liberty to Abundance
• From Abundance to Selfishness
• From Selfishness to Complacency
• From Complacency to Apathy
• From Apathy to Dependency
• From Dependency back into Bondage

Let's imagine, as the Lincoln-louts claim, that the Constitution ratified in 1788 forbade peaceful secession and authorized the federal government, which was supposed to have limited powers delegated to it by the people, to invade and occupy any seceding state, declare martial law, subdue the secessionists by force, burn and ransack entire cities, and then establish a military dictatorship over those states for a dozen years.

Let's pretend that it was constitutional to intentionally wage war on civilians -- blacks included -- to imprison without trial thousands of Northern citizens, jail even execute -- people who refused to take a loyalty oath to Lord Lincoln, shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers, incarcerating editors and owners, and generally suspend the Bill of Rights, the writ of habeas corpus and international law.

If it endorsed -- or even accommodated -- what Lincoln did, including his ignoring of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, and his violating of the Second, then the Constitution is categorically evil and self-contradictory.

THE MEANING OF LAISSEZ FAIRE

There is a story that the famous French mercantilist minister, Colbert, once asked a group of businessmen what he could do for them. One of the men, Legendre, is supposed to have replied, Laissez nous faire -- leave us alone.

Several French authors in the earlier part of the 18th century, including the Marquis d'Argenson, used the slogan laissez faire. The great Turgot attributed the rule laissez faire, laissez passer -- leave things alone, let goods pass through -- to Gournay.

Sometimes a phrase was added suggesting the social theory behind the slogan: le monde va de lui même -- the world goes by itself.

Today the term laissez faire has come to mean: leave the people alone, let them be, in their economic activities, in their religious affairs, in thought and culture, in the pursuit of fulfillment in their own lives.

Even today, the term "laissez-faire" is apt to bring forth images of eighteenth century English factory towns engulfed in smoke and grimy with soot. The early capitalists agreed with the courts that smoke and soot were the "price" that must be paid for the benefits of industry.... Yet laissez-faire without rights is a contradiction in terms; the laissez-faire position is based on and derived from man's rights, and can endure only when rights are held inviolable.... A laissez-faire polluter is a contradiction in terms and must be identified as such. A libertarian society would be a full-liability society, where everyone is fully responsible for his actions and any harmful consequences they might cause.

The right-conservative Republicans believe that the state-sponsored monopolies on capital resources should be manipulated to the advantage of capitalists, corporations, big business, and the military-industrial complex -- all in the name of a free market.

The left-liberal Democrats believe that the state-sponsored monopolies on capital resources should be manipulated to the advantage of large labor unions, the compulory education industry, regulators, and social service bureaucrats -- all in the name of fighting exploitation and championing the disadvantaged.

The libertarians believe that there should be no state-sponsored monopolies on capital resources in the first place. The rejection of coercion, the abolition of privilege, the battle against exploitation and the promotion of a free market are all the same project.

"But if 'our side' can't use coercion for justice, then 'the other side' will use coercion for injustice!"

The principled rejection of coercion seems like the pipe dream of utopians -- or the cynical rhetoric of would-be aggressors.

The pursuit of ethical, voluntary systems of cooperation and exchange is rejected as idealistic, impractical, unrealistic, naive, optimistic, cold-hearted, immoral, cynical and selfish all at the same time.

By what principle do you distinguish the market in goods and services from the marketplace of ideas? Why is it OK to regulate one while you believe any interference in the other is the ultimate violation?

How do you distinguish the separation of Church and State from the separation of School and State? What logic do you use to support one and oppose the other?

"A granfalloon is any large bureaucratic figment of people's imagination. For instance, there's really no such thing as the Feds or the General Veeblefeltzer Corporation. There are a bunch of people out there that relate to each other, and there's some structures, and some paper. In fact, there's lots and lots of paper. The people sit in the structures and pass paper back and forth to each other and charge you to do so.

All these people, structures, and paper are real. But nowhere can you point to the larger concept of "government" or "corporation" and say, "There it is, kiddies!" The monolithic, big "they" is all in your mind."

The constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. It purports at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago... we know, historically, that only a small portion of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those people, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now... and the constitution, so far as it was their contract, died with them. They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children... they did not even attempt to bind them. That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement between anybody but "the people" then existing; nor does it... assert any right, power, or disposition, on their part, to bind anybody but themselves...

The constitution itself, then, being of no authority, on what authority does our government practically rest? On what ground can those who pretend to administer it, claim the right to seize men's property, to restrain them in their natural liberty of action, industry and trade, and to kill all those who deny their authority to dispose of men's properties, liberties and lives at their pleasure or discretion?

GUNS AND DOPE PARTY POSITION PAPER #23

Little Tony was sitting on a park bench munching on one candy bar after another. After the 6th candy bar, a man on the bench across from him said, "Son, you know eating all that candy isn't good for you. It will give you acne, rot your teeth, and make you fat."

"Little Tony replied, "My grandfather lived to be 107 years old."

The man asked, "Did your grandfather eat 6 candy bars at a time?"

Little Tony answered, "No, he minded his own fucking business."

To keep the idea of growth from becoming the modern equivalent of the holy grail, the supporter of the free market is forced to add certain key qualifications to the general demand for expansion.

• First, that all costs of the growth process be paid for by those who by virtue of their ownership of the means of production gain access to the fruits of production. This implies that society has the right to protect itself from unwanted "spill over" effects like pollution, i.e., that the so-called social costs be converted into private costs whenever possible.
• Second, that economic growth be induced by the voluntary activities of men cooperating on a private market. The state-sponsored projects of "growthmanship," especially growth induced through inflationary deficit budgets, are to be avoided.
• Third, that growth not be viewed as a potentially unlimited process over time, as if resources were in unlimited supply.

The Goldwater Doctrine

"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' interests, I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can."

The private property principle integrates the seemingly contrary notions of individual liberty and social order. Thanks to physicist Niels Bohr's "complementarity principle," it is more appropriate to regard such qualities as reciprocal, symmetrical expressions of the wholeness, rather than divisiveness, in nature. When I am at liberty to do anything I choose with what is mine, I am, at the same time, restricted to acting only with respect to my own property interests. My authority ends at my boundary line. If I want to make decisions regarding your property, I must enter into a contract with you to do so.

It is respect for the boundary line separating your and my property interests that fosters both individual liberty and social order. This is why property, liberty, and social order, are simply different ways of talking about the same thing. We enjoy liberty only to the degree we have unrestrained decision-making over our lives -- including the resources we require (e.g., space to occupy; food, air, water to consume; tools to employ; etc.) in order to live as we choose.

"The Rule of Law, in complex times,
has proved itself deficient.
We much prefer the Rule of Men,
it's vastly more efficient!"

"Now let me state the present rules,"
the lawyer then went on,
"These very simple guidelines,
you can rely upon:"

"You're gouging on your prices if
you charge more than the rest.
But it's unfair competition if
you think you can charge less!"

"A second point that we would make
to help avoid confusion...
Don't try to charge the same amount,
that would be Collusion!"

"You must compete. But not too much,
for if you do you see,
then the market would be yours -
and that's Monopoly!" 
		

As the pseudonymous free-market economist "Angus Black" admonished liberals at the time of the grape boycott: if you really want to improve the lot of grape workers, don't boycott grapes; on the contrary, eat as many grapes as you can stand, and tell your friends to do the same. This will raise the consumer demand for grapes, and increase both the employment and the wages of grape workers.

But this lesson, of course, never sunk in. It was and still is easier for liberals to enjoy a pseudo-religious "sense of belonging" to a [p. 142] movement, and to "feel good about themselves" by getting a vicarious thrill of sanctification by not eating grapes, than actually to learn about economic realities and what will really help the supposed objects of their concern.

The real legacy of Cesar Chavez is negative: forget the charisma and the hype and learn some economics.

It might be objected that, after all, a politician who urges higher taxes is not only imposing suffering on other people; he himself as a taxpayer will also have to bear the same deprivations as other citizens. Isn't there, then, a kind of nobility, even if misguided, in his plea for "belt-tightening" common sacrifice?

To meet this question, we must realize a vital truth that has long remained discreetly veiled to the tax-burdened citizenry. And that is: contrary to carefully instilled myth, politicians and bureaucrats pay no taxes. Take, for example, a politician who receives a salary of, say, $80,000; assume he duly files his income tax return, and pays $20,000. We must realize that he does not in reality pay $20,000 in taxes; instead, he is simply a net tax-receiver of $60,000. The notion that he pays taxes is simply an accounting fiction, designed to bamboozle the citizenry into believing that he and the rest of us are on the same moral and financial footing before the law. He pays nothing; he simply is extracting $60,000 per annum from our pockets. The only virtue of United Nations' employees is that they are frankly and openly exempt from all taxes levied by any nation-state--which simply makes their position the same as other national bureaucrats, except uncamouflaged and unadorned.

The Poles ranged from libertarian to middle-of-the-road to dissident Marxist, but it was markedly evident that not one of them had any use whatsoever for the Communist regime. In addition to being opposed to Communism, none of the Polish scholars at the meeting had much use for any government. One told me, "of course, any act of government is done for the power and wealth of the government officials, and not for the public interest, common good, general welfare, or any other reasons offered."

"Yes," I said, "but the government's propaganda always says that they perform these actions for the common good, etc." The Polish professor looked at me quizzically: "Who believes government propaganda?" I replied that, "unfortunately, in the United States, many people believe government propaganda." He was incredulous.

First the government is a tyrant living by theft, and therefore has no business to engage in any business.

Second, the government has none of the characteristics of a successful businessman, being wasteful, careless, clumsy, and short-sighted in the extreme.

Third, the government is thoroughly irresponsible, having it in its power to effectively repudiate its obligations at any time.

To economists, economics is a powerful tool for understanding why armies run away, voters are ignorant, and divorce rates rise, as well as solving practical problems such as how not to get mugged. Its theme is not money but reason -- the implications, especially the nonobvious implications, of the fact that humans act rationally. Or to put it more formally:

Economics is that way of understanding behavior that starts from the assumption that individuals have objectives and tend to choose the correct way to achieve them.

"Economic rationality" summons up an image of a cold-blooded calculator -- perhaps Mr. Spock. But economics is not just for Vulcans; the assumption describes our actions, not our thoughts.

One summer, a colleague asked me why I had not bought a parking permit. I replied that not having a convenient place to park made me more likely to ride my bike. He accused me of inconsistency: As a believer in rationality, I should be able to make the correct choice between sloth and exercise without first rigging the game. My response was that rationality is an assumption I make about other people. I know myself well enough to allow for the consequences of my own irrationality. But for the vast mass of my fellow humans, about whom I know very little, rationality is the best predictive assumption available.

You are one of a line of men on foot with spears, being charged by a mass of men on horseback, also with spears. If you all stand, you will probably break their charge and only a few of you will die; if you run, most of you will be ridden down and killed. Obviously you should stand.

Obvious -- and wrong. You only control you, not the whole line. If the rest of them stand and you run, you run almost no risk of being killed -- at least by the enemy. If all of them run, your only chance is to start running first. So whatever the rest are going to do, you are better off running. Everyone figures that out, everyone runs, and most of you die. Welcome to the dark side of rationality.

But how can a human life, embodied in access to a kidney dialysis machine or the chance to have an essential heart operation, be weighed on the same scale as the pleasure of eating a candy bar or watching a television program?

The answer is that value, at least as economists use the term, is observed in choice. If we look at how people behave with regard to their own lives, we find that they make trade-offs between life and quite minor values. Many smoke even though they believe that smoking reduces life expectancy. I am willing to accept a (very slightly) increased chance of a heart attack in exchange for a chocolate sundae.

If using the word 'value' to refer equally to a crust of bread in the hands of a starving man and a syringe of heroin in the hands of an addict makes you uncomfortable, substitute 'economic value' instead. But remember that the addition of "economic" does not mean "having monetary value," "being material," "capable of producing profit for someone," or anything similar. Economic value is simply value to individuals as judged by them and revealed in their actions.

[Adam] Smith argued that higher wages would mean better fed, healthier employees willing and able to work more in exchange for the higher reward. Here and elsewhere Smith argued that what was good for workers was good for England and almost as consistently that what was good for merchants and manufacturers (high tariffs and other special favors from government) was bad for England. He was a defender of capitalism -- not of capitalists.

There are two ways we can produce automobiles. We can build them in Detroit or we can grow them in Iowa. Everyone knows how we build automobiles. To grow automobiles, we first grow the raw material from which they are made -- wheat. We put the wheat on ships and send the ships out into the Pacific. They come back with Hondas on them.

From our standpoint, growing Hondas is just as much a form of production -- using American farmworkers instead of American autoworkers -- as building them. What happens on the other side of the Pacific is irrelevant; the effect would be just the same for us if there really were a gigantic machine sitting somewhere between Hawaii and Japan turning wheat into automobiles. Tariffs are indeed a way of protecting American workers -- from other American workers.

There are two ways we can produce automobiles. We can build them in Detroit or we can grow them in Iowa. Everyone knows how we build automobiles. To grow automobiles, we first grow the raw material from which they are made -- wheat. We put the wheat on ships and send the ships out into the Pacific. They come back with Hondas on them.

From our standpoint, growing Hondas is just as much a form of production -- using American farmworkers instead of American autoworkers -- as building them. What happens on the other side of the Pacific is irrelevant; the effect would be just the same for us if there really were a gigantic machine sitting somewhere between Hawaii and Japan turning wheat into automobiles. Tariffs are indeed a way of protecting American workers -- from other American workers.

There seems to be a widespread belief that if someone sells something to you for more than he could have -- if, for example, he could make a profit selling it to you for $5 but charges $15 -- he is mistreating you, "ripping you off" in current jargon. This is an oddly one-sided way of looking at such a situation. If you pay $15 for the good, it is presumably worth at least that much to you. If it costs him $5 and is worth $15 to you, then there is a $10 gain when you buy it; your claim that he ought to sell it to you for $5 amounts to claiming that you are entitled to the whole benefit. It would make just as much sense to argue that he should get all the benefit, that if you buy a good for $5 for which you would have been willing to pay $15, you are ripping him off. Yet I know very few people who, if they see a price of $5 on a new book by their favorite author for which would gladly pay $15, feel obliged to volunteer the higher price -- or even to offer to split the difference.

So, I think American troops will probably be out of Iraq by the end of next summer [2004]. Those few that remain will be adjuncts of NATO.

Why NATO would be willing to shoulder this burden is unclear to me, other than because of U.S. pressure. This new mission surely has nothing to do with the defense of Western Europe against the Soviet Union, which is why NATO was created in 1949. But the March of Dimes still marches, despite the conquest of polio after 1955. Bureaucracies don't close down just because their original justifications disappear.

Frankly, I find the "American Idol" talent competition more interesting, given the talentless losers running in the presidential race. That's why I keep switching from the cable news coverage of the primaries to this fun, but cheesy TV talent contest.

There are some similarities between both contests, in which people with little shame compete for a big prize. At least the winner of "American Idol" isn't going to steal my money, or my liberties or bomb a bunch of wogs.

As long-time readers of this column know, I subscribe to the notion that there are two kinds of socialists: Right-Wing (largely Republicans) and Left-Wing (largely Democrats). The difference between the two is simple:

• Left-Wing socialists believe that everyone is a little bit stupid, and therefore government is necessary to make decisions that they're too stupid to make correctly.
• Right-wing socialists believe that everyone is a little bit evil, and therefore government is necessary to make decisions that they're too evil to make correctly.

The reality, of course, is this:

There are stupid people and there are evil people in the world, and the consequences of both stupid and evil decisions are often self-correcting. When they're not, the rest of us are more than capable to taking care of things without some all-powerful nanny-state making decisions for us.

In World War I (just to begin in the 20th century, and as a single example out of thousands from that era) a young Hutterite -- Hutterites are a German pacifist sect who immigrated to America to avoid conscription by the Kaiser and settled principally in the Dakotas -- a young Hutterite boy who refused military service for reasons of religious conviction, neverthless agreed to do everything required of him by the Army except put on its uniform. Taken to the prison at Fort Leavenworth in the dead of Kansas winter, he was suspended for weeks by wrist-manacles from a pipe in a cellar with a foot of water on the floor. When he caught pneumonia and died, before his grief-stricken mother could arrive by train to claim her dead son's body, the Army buried it.

In a uniform.