The Strawman Illusion

[Joe Hillshoist]

Just for the record this thread is a goldmine of info and worthy thoughts. What a surprise....


Well no of course it isn't.

Jack (this may be getting ot but maybe not), I think its worth keeping in mind your interpretation of the French revolution, cos its easy to fall for the scarlet pimpernel bullshit aristocratic propaganda (no matter how much fun the original novels are to read) that the masses are bloodthirsty brutes needing a "civilised" leadership.

[Cedars of Overburden]

there's a story i'd like to hear once you've spoken to him.

*

Will do. Be patient. I have irrational fear of posting syndrome.

[barracuda]

There seems to be some relationship between the "strawman illusion" and the so-called second constitution, which was mentioned by Jared Loughner in one of his YouTube videos. The are actually two significant interpretations of the idea, the first of which is that the Articles of Confederation denote the true law of the land. Loughner says:

The majority of citizens in the United States of America have never read the United States of America’s Constitution.

You don’t have to accept the federalist laws.

Nonetheless, read the United States of America’s Constitution to apprehend all of the current treasonous laws.
...
In conclusion, reading the second United States constitution I can’t trust the current government because of the ratifications: the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar.

So Loughner considers that the Constitution (capital "C") is a false document. And really, there is a difference between the capital "C" Constitution and the lowercase constitution:

Q142. "What was the first constitution of the United States?"

A. Some teachers, thinking they can be tricky with their students, will ask this question. Don't get me wrong, it is a good one, but you have to be careful how you answer.

If the question says "What was the first Constitution of the United States?" (note the capital C), then the answer is that there has been one and only one Constitution of the United States, and it is the same one currently in effect.

If, however, the question is posed as above, with "constitution" spelled with a lowercase C, then the answer is more tricky. The Articles of Confederation would qualify as the first constitution of the United States, where a constitution is defined as the most basic document of the law. But the trick is that the Articles were never called a constitution, at least not in the document itself, so you have to know enough about the Constitution to know that it replaced something, and that that "something" could be considered a constitution.

Loughner's reference was discussed by Amy Goodman and Chip Berlet on Democracy Now in terms of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and how the Patriot right views these late Amendments as changing the nature of constitutional democracy, and essentially estabishing a new, fully federalised "United States".

AMY GOODMAN: The reference to a second American Constitution in his writings?

CHIP BERLET: Well, the second American Constitution or the second United States Constitution, as he called it, is a reference to the post-Civil War Reconstruction amendments—the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. And this is part and parcel of the Patriot movement and the militia movement and the Posse Comitatus movement—racist movements, in this case, who believe that this completely overturned the pre-existing constitution, so it became a second American Constitution, based on this false notion of equality. And so, the second American Constitution then begs the question of the need for a second American Revolution to overthrow the bogus government in Washington and restore the natural rights to white citizens and replace the original Constitution, which has been superseded by this fake equality Constitution.

And this interpretation echoes the sentiments which are expounded upon by Thomas J. DiLorenzo on the Lew Rockwell site:

To neo-cons like Keyes, the Constitution supposedly prohibits the interpretation of federal law by anyone but the federal government itself because the people of individual states are supposedly incapable of doing so; only “the people of the whole nation” are “competent” to perform this task. But his makes no sense, for there is no such thing as “the people as a whole” acting on this or any other issue. The fact that a small percentage of us votes every four years or so does not imply that we are acting with competence as “a whole people” on this or any other issue. A state referendum on a specific issue, on the other hand, is much more meaningful in terms of citizen participation.

Keyes barely ever makes a speech or writes a column anymore where he does not invoke the Declaration and make a not-too-subtle comparison between himself and Abraham Lincoln. Indeed, he frequently states that his main passion, the pro-life movement of today, is the equivalent of the abolition movement of the nineteenth century. (This comparison is not entirely accurate, however, if one acknowledges Pulitzer Prize winning Lincoln biographer David Donald's statement that “Lincoln was not an abolitionist”).

The link between Lincoln and neo-con ideology is clear: Lincoln falsely claimed that the Union preceded the states, and was therefore not subject to their sovereignty. The neo-cons make the exact same argument in advancing whatever policy cause they happen to be involved in, whether it is drug regulation, abortion, censoring of television, waging war, etc. This is why so many neo-cons, such as the ones associated with Keyes and the Claremont Institute, are such slavish idol worshippers when it comes to Lincoln. They use his martyred “sainthood” to promote their political agenda through an ever more powerful federal government. That's why they're described as “neo-cons” and are not a part of the Old Right tradition: They are comfortable with Big Government, as long as it fights their wars and enacts their social and regulatory programs. This is one reason why there is such a large “Lincoln Cult” among conservative (but mostly left/liberal) academics and think tank employees.

But the alleged supremacy of the federal government over the states is a lie. It was established by the most violent means, a war that killed the equivalent of more than 5 million Americans (standardizing for today's population), not logic, argumentation, or even legal precedent. It is a lie because:

Each American colony declared sovereignty from Great Britain on its own;

After the Revolution each state was individually recognized as sovereign by the defeated British government;

The Articles of Confederation said, “each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence”;

The states then decided to secede from the Articles and dropped the words “Perpetual Union” from the title;

Virginia's constitutional ratifying convention stated that “the powers granted resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.” This right was also asserted for all other states;

In The Federalist #39 James Madison wrote that ratification of the Constitution would be achieved by the people “not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong,” flatly contradicting the contrary assertions of Keyes and other neo-cons;

The Constitution always speaks of “the United States” in the plural, signifying that the individual states were united in forming the federal government as their agent while maintaining their sovereignty over it;

The Constitution can only be amended with the authority of the states;

Until 1914 U.S. Senators were appointed by state legislatures so that the states could retain a degree of sovereignty over federal “officials,” who now have carte blanche to rule over us as they wish.

Only by endlessly repeating what Emory University philosopher Donald Livingston calls Lincoln's “spectacular lie” that the federal government created the states (and not the other way around), and that the nation was supposedly founded by “the whole people” and not the people of the states in political conventions can the neo-cons continue to champion the further centralization of governmental power to serve their own political ends, whatever they may be.

Of course most of this interpretation exists in order to allow post-bellum racists to distance themselves from laws which equate their citizenship with that of the freed slaves, or any other individual of their disdain. These days that would include illegal immigrants, a crucial issue in Arizona, as we know. In a similar way, the strawman illusion allows one to supersede the manumission on dubious precedents, for dubious purposes.

More on Loughner here:

http://www.theconstitutional.org/2011/0 ... te-of-the-“second-united-states-constitution”-he-very-probably-meant-the-second-us-constitution-the-one-following-the-articles-of-confederation/

Also, the post by 2012 Countdown on the Giffords thread is relevant:

viewtopic.php?p=377659#p377659

...which contains a reposting of this article:

Explained: Jared Loughner’s Grammar Obsession
The alleged shooter’s statements closely echo the teachings of a popular far-right tax-resister movement.

[23]

Tangentially (yet relatedly) speaking:

http://www.examiner.com/muslim-in-san-f ... -hypocrisy

(excerpted, with bolds added )

Joris Lammers, from Tilburg University, and Adam Galinsky of Kellogg School of Management have conducted a battery of experiments designed to test how having a sense of power influenced a person’s moral standards, specifically whether or not they were likely to behave immorally while espousing intolerance for the behavior of others. In each of five experiments the method of inducing a powerful feeling, and the method of determining these double standards was different, but in every one the results were the same. Powerful people judge others more harshly but cheat more themselves. But what’s especially interesting is his last experiment where distinguishing between legitimate power and illegitimate power garnered the opposite results.

The first experiment was meant to determine the discrepancy between the subject’s expressed standards and their actual behavior. As in previous experiments subjects were randomly assigned to a high-power or low-power class. To induce these feelings “high-power” subjects were asked by experimenters to recall an experience where they felt a sense of power. Meanwhile, “low-power” subjects were asked by experimenters to recall an experience where they felt powerless. Then each subject was asked to rate how egregious a moral infraction they considered cheating, and they were given an opportunity to cheat at dice. They were promised some number of lottery tickets equal to the roll of two dice, and then allowed to self report their roll. The high-power subjects reported considering cheating a higher moral infraction than low-power subjects, but were also more likely to cheat themselves.

In the second experiment participants were made to conduct a mock-government with half randomly given high-power roles which give orders and half randomly given low-power roles which take orders. Then each group was asked about their feelings about minor common traffic violations, such as speeding, or rolling through stop signs. As expected, high-power subjects were more likely to give themselves permission to the bend the rules if they were running late for an important meeting, but less likely to afford other drivers the same leniency.

In the third experiment participants were divided as in the first experiment, by either recalling a personal experience where they felt powerful or powerless. Then each group was asked about their feelings about minor common tax evasions, such as not declaring freelance income on your taxes. As expected, high-power subjects were more likely to bend the rules for themselves, but less likely to afford others the same leniency.

In the fourth experiment the sense of power was manipulated in a very unusual way. All participants were asked to fill out a series of word puzzles. Half the participants were randomly given word searches that contained high-power words, such as “authority” and half were randomly given word searches that contained low-power words, such as “subjugation.” Then all participants were asked about their feelings about keeping a stolen bike that was found abandoned in the road. As in all experiments, even with such a minor insignificant power disparity, those in the high-power group were more likely to say they would keep the bike, but also that others had an obligation to seek out the rightful owner, or turn the bike over to the police.

The fifth and final experiment yielded, by far, the most interesting results of all the experiments we’ve discussed, and it is my hope that this is the direction that this type or research takes in the future. The feeling of power was induced the same as the first and third experiment, where participants were asked to describe their own experience of power in their own life, with one important distinction. In this experiment the “high-power” class was divided into two, one group which was asked to describe an experience where they felt their power was legitimate and deserved, and one group which was asked to describe an experience where they felt their power was illegitimate and undeserved.

The hypocrisy results found in the previous four experiments emerged only when high-power subjects viewed their power as legitimate. Those who viewed their power as illegitimate actually gave the opposite results, a sort of anti-hypocrisy, which researches dubbed, “hypercrisy.” They were harsher about their own transgressions, and more lenient toward others.

This discovery could be the silver bullet that society has been searching for to put down the werewolf of political corruption. The researches speculate that the vicious cycle of power and hypocrisy could be broken by attacking the legitimacy of power, rather than the power itself. As they write in their conclusion:

A question that lies at the heart of the social sciences is how this status-quo (power inequality) is defended and how the powerless come to accept their disadvantaged position. The typical answer is that the state and its rules, regulations, and monopoly on violence coerce the powerless to do so. But this cannot be the whole answer...

Our last experiment found that the spiral of inequality can be broken, if the illegitimacy of the power-distribution is revealed. One way to undermine the legitimacy of authority is open revolt, but a more subtle way in which the powerless might curb selfenrichment by the powerful is by tainting their reputation, for example by gossiping. If the powerful sense that their unrestrained selfenrichment leads to gossiping, derision, and the undermining of their reputation as conscientious leaders, then they may be inspired to bring their behavior back to their espoused standards. If they fail to do so, they may quickly lose their authority, reputation, and— eventually—their power.

In this series we have seen that those given power are more likely to lie, cheat and steal with impunity while also being harsher in their judgements of others for doing these things. We have seen that those given power feel less compassion for the suffering of others, and are even capable of the torture and murder of innocent people. What’s perhaps most disturbing is that we have seen that these sociopathic tendencies have been fostered in otherwise psychelogically healthy people. In other words, the problem is not only that sociopaths are drawn to positions of authority, but that positions of authority draw out the sociopath in everyone. But this final experiment offers some hope that authoritarian sociopathy can not only be stopped, but driven into reverse, not by violence or revolution, but simply by undermining their sense of legitimacy.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Wow 23 thanks for that.

[nathan28]

Of course most of this interpretation exists in order to allow post-bellum racists to distance themselves from laws which equate their citizenship with that of the freed slaves, or any other individual of their disdain. These days that would include illegal immigrants, a crucial issue in Arizona, as we know. In a similar way, the strawman illusion allows one to supersede the manumission on dubious precedents, for dubious purposes.

Thanks for that.

I'm going to tackle this after I go have a drink and maybe get a little more tweaked out, but in summary this "sovereign individual" nonsense hails from some very suspect, if not outright toxic, soil.

[vanlose kid]

Law And The State
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/16/2011 16:14 -0500


The next in a continuing series (most recently: Money and the State). Law and the State. Submitted by Free Radical.

The more corrupt the State, the more numerous the laws. – Cornelius Tacitus


It has been said, albeit in jest, that the five most important words in the United States Constitution are “Congress shall make no law...”i It is all but impossible for Congress not to make law, however, for Congress is the legislative – the lawmaking – branch of government. As obvious as this is on its face, what is not obvious, but nonetheless true, is that legislated law is inherently in conflict with the very reason that Congress was created: namely, to represent the people. Why? Because

… the more numerous the people are whom one tries to “represent” through the legislative process and the more numerous the matters in which one tries to represent them, the less the word “representation” has a meaning referable to the actual will of actual people other than that of the persons named as their “representatives.” ii

Since the matters to be dealt with are limitless, so is the legislation required to resolve them, which is why

… a legal system centered on legislation resembles … a centralized economy in which all the relevant decisions are made by a handful of directors, whose knowledge of the whole situation is fatally limited and whose respect, if any, for the people’s wishes is subject to that limitation.iii

A cursory examination of the numbers, from a historical perspective, drives the point home:

The Constitution was framed for 3 million people in thirteen sovereign states. When the first Congress met in 1790, there was one representative for every 30,000 [people]. Since only property-holding white males could vote, [this comes to] around 5,000 voting citizens per [representative]. By 1920, the U.S. population was 90 million, and Congress capped representation in the house at 435, where it remains today. Now, however [2002, when this article was published], there are 287 million Americans, yielding a ratio of one representative for every 655,000. If we apply this ratio to 1790, there would have been only five members in the House of Representatives. Or, to put it another way, if the ratio of the framers existed today, there would be around 9,000 members in the House. iv

Clearly, the notion that but those with what are now commonly known as “special interests” – i.e., those with the money to pay for the requisite access – are represented in any meaningful way in the U.S. today is ludicrous:

All special-interest groups seeking a share of federal largesse work diligently, day in and day out, to urge the government to abandon or ignore constitutional limits and award them subsidies. In contrast, the general public is widely dispersed and rarely ever well organized politically.v

And insofar as special interests are at odds with those of the people as a whole – i.e., insofar as they merely reflect the fact that the state is “the fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else” – it is equally clear that what is represented in the end, is the interests of the state itself, since the state has no other means of living at all:

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore, every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.vi

This being so, the growth of state power demonstrates beyond all doubt the trend away from representation and toward centralization. At the time of its founding, the combined civil and military employment of the United States’ then-federal government was perhaps 2,500 peoplevii, or roughly one federal worker for every 1,600 citizens, while its now-central government employs some 14.6 million people, or more than one central worker for every 21 of the nation’s present population. Amounting to a growth rate of nearly 7,600%, it is little wonder, then, that Americans’ tax burden has grown even more. For while the average U.S. citizen paid a paltry $20 a year in federal taxes at the time of the nation’s founding, today the average citizen pays over $10,000 a year in inflation-adjusted terms, amounting to a growth rate of fully 50,000%.

And little wonder, as well, that the legal apparatus that propels the process is equally out of control. After all, the laws on the books in the United States have long been beyond counting, and Congress has no interest in capping them for the simple reason that by doing so it would put its members out of their jobs. What Congress does instead – with the full support of the other two branches of government – is to secure the jobs of its members through the passage of one positivist law after another, ad infinitum.

And thus do we confront a fundamental difference between negative and positivist law: While negative law is inherently parsimonious, positivist law is inherently profligate, the latter endlessly violating what the former naturally embraces, doing so with predictable results. For legal positivism not only creates new laws but, in the process, new “rights.” And as distinct from the few and very real rights upon which civil society is based – i.e., as distinct from the non-intervention of the negative golden rule – positivist rights are inherently interventionist in that, as grants of privilege, they impose obligations on some for the benefit of others. Be it food, housing, healthcare, employment, education, retirement, or some other “entitlement,” others – namely, taxpayers – are forced to pay for them, meaning that individuals’ legitimate rights are ipso facto violated.

Moreover, because ignorantia juris non excusat – “ignorance of the law is no excuse” – it is inevitable that as the legal apparatus expands, certainty of the law – which “is probably the most important requirement for the economic activities of society”viii – becomes impossible. And thus is the social enterprise set adrift upon a sea of uncertainty, its compass useless amid the perfect storm of legal positivism; thus does the legislative process result not in law but in lawlessness; and thus is society subjected to the nullification of the complex by the of the institutionalization of the complicated. For even though the words are generally considered to be synonymous, a subtle but vitally important distinction can be made between the complex and the complicated vis-à-vis the unintended consequences of the one versus those of the other.

We are all familiar, of course, with Adam Smith’s famous passage in The Wealth of Nations regarding the invisible hand, whereby the individual, in pursuit of his own interests, “frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it,” doing so in recognition of the fact that “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest.” Thus do we “address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”

And simply put, this is how the market functions – i.e., as an endeavor in which individuals cooperate in recognition one another’s self-interest – the result of which, with the introduction of money, is complexity on a scale that would be unattainable – indeed, unimaginable – on the level of subsistence or barter. And we have but to consider an age-old board game to understand this. For its simple and certain rules, which virtually anyone can comprehend, provide for a permutation of moves in an all but infinite variety, the elegance of which has attracted humanity’s finest minds since the game’s invention, more recently pitting high-powered computers against them. In other words, what makes chess so elegant is precisely what makes the market so elegant, their respective rules being so few, certain, and understandable that each is all but unlimited in the complexity it can generate, said complexity adding commensurately to the enjoyment of life.

Not so for, say, the U.S. tax code, which was only a few pages long at the time of its introduction in 1913 but is now nearly seven times the length of the Bible, requiring some 7.6 billion work-hours of tax compliance each year at a cost that is projected to rise from over a quarter trillion dollars today to nearly half a trillion dollars by 2015. So incomprehensible that not even one of the world’s most renowned geniuses could understand it, the U.S. tax code constitutes drudgery on a stupendous scale, detracting in like proportion from the quality of life and doing so solely to transfer power from society to the state.

Thus do we arrive at the vital distinction between the rule of law and its ruin: Society, being ruled by law that is common to it, is inherently complex and accordingly unlimited in the amount of order it can generate, while the state, being law unto itself, is inherently complicated and accordingly unlimited in the amount of disorder it can generate.

And in light of the rampant disorder with which we are now confronted, it is clear that in positivizing society’s money and its law, the state has not only toppled The Twin Pillars of Civilization; it has shattered the foundation upon which they stand.

For it has destroyed the freedom that is society’s sine qua non and thus imperiled society’s very existence.

But how has the state done so? And why has it done so? Why, in fact , does the state even exist? We address these all-important questions in my next submission: “The Nature and Origin of the State.”

–––––––––––

i The United States Constitution, Amendment 1: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
ii Bruno Leoni, Freedom and the Law, Liberty Press, 1961, p. 19.
iii Ibid., pp. 6 and 7.
iv Donald W. Livingston, “Dismantling Leviathan,” Harper’s magazine, May, 2002, p. 14.
v Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Honest Abe, Three Rivers Press (Crown Publishing Group, Random House, New York), 2006, p. 72.
vi Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy the State, Libertarian Review Foundation, 1989 (1935), Chapter 5, “Social Power vs. State Power,” p. 5.
vii Records only go back to 1816, at which time, according to TABLE Ea894–903 of Historical Statistics of the United States, there were a total of 4,837 federal employees, rising to 399,381 in 1916 and reflecting a growth rate over 8,200%. Working backwards to 1790, then, 2,500 federal employees at that time is a very generous estimate and could well have been significantly lower.
viii Ibid., Leoni, p. 70.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest- ... -and-state

*

[Bruce Dazzling]

Of course most of this interpretation exists in order to allow post-bellum racists to distance themselves from laws which equate their citizenship with that of the freed slaves, or any other individual of their disdain. These days that would include illegal immigrants, a crucial issue in Arizona, as we know. In a similar way, the strawman illusion allows one to supersede the manumission on dubious precedents, for dubious purposes.

I haven't personally spoken to every person who is claiming sovereignty, but juxtapose the above with the below and I believe you will see that the above is an incredible oversimplification, most likely crafted and promoted by people whose interests lie in protecting the status quo.

Law And The State
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/16/2011 16:14 -0500


The next in a continuing series (most recently: Money and the State). Law and the State. Submitted by Free Radical.

The more corrupt the State, the more numerous the laws. – Cornelius Tacitus


It has been said, albeit in jest, that the five most important words in the United States Constitution are “Congress shall make no law...”i It is all but impossible for Congress not to make law, however, for Congress is the legislative – the lawmaking – branch of government. As obvious as this is on its face, what is not obvious, but nonetheless true, is that legislated law is inherently in conflict with the very reason that Congress was created: namely, to represent the people. Why? Because

… the more numerous the people are whom one tries to “represent” through the legislative process and the more numerous the matters in which one tries to represent them, the less the word “representation” has a meaning referable to the actual will of actual people other than that of the persons named as their “representatives.” ii

Since the matters to be dealt with are limitless, so is the legislation required to resolve them, which is why

… a legal system centered on legislation resembles … a centralized economy in which all the relevant decisions are made by a handful of directors, whose knowledge of the whole situation is fatally limited and whose respect, if any, for the people’s wishes is subject to that limitation.iii

A cursory examination of the numbers, from a historical perspective, drives the point home:

The Constitution was framed for 3 million people in thirteen sovereign states. When the first Congress met in 1790, there was one representative for every 30,000 [people]. Since only property-holding white males could vote, [this comes to] around 5,000 voting citizens per [representative]. By 1920, the U.S. population was 90 million, and Congress capped representation in the house at 435, where it remains today. Now, however [2002, when this article was published], there are 287 million Americans, yielding a ratio of one representative for every 655,000. If we apply this ratio to 1790, there would have been only five members in the House of Representatives. Or, to put it another way, if the ratio of the framers existed today, there would be around 9,000 members in the House. iv

Clearly, the notion that but those with what are now commonly known as “special interests” – i.e., those with the money to pay for the requisite access – are represented in any meaningful way in the U.S. today is ludicrous:

All special-interest groups seeking a share of federal largesse work diligently, day in and day out, to urge the government to abandon or ignore constitutional limits and award them subsidies. In contrast, the general public is widely dispersed and rarely ever well organized politically.v

And insofar as special interests are at odds with those of the people as a whole – i.e., insofar as they merely reflect the fact that the state is “the fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else” – it is equally clear that what is represented in the end, is the interests of the state itself, since the state has no other means of living at all:

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore, every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.vi

This being so, the growth of state power demonstrates beyond all doubt the trend away from representation and toward centralization. At the time of its founding, the combined civil and military employment of the United States’ then-federal government was perhaps 2,500 peoplevii, or roughly one federal worker for every 1,600 citizens, while its now-central government employs some 14.6 million people, or more than one central worker for every 21 of the nation’s present population. Amounting to a growth rate of nearly 7,600%, it is little wonder, then, that Americans’ tax burden has grown even more. For while the average U.S. citizen paid a paltry $20 a year in federal taxes at the time of the nation’s founding, today the average citizen pays over $10,000 a year in inflation-adjusted terms, amounting to a growth rate of fully 50,000%.

And little wonder, as well, that the legal apparatus that propels the process is equally out of control. After all, the laws on the books in the United States have long been beyond counting, and Congress has no interest in capping them for the simple reason that by doing so it would put its members out of their jobs. What Congress does instead – with the full support of the other two branches of government – is to secure the jobs of its members through the passage of one positivist law after another, ad infinitum.

And thus do we confront a fundamental difference between negative and positivist law: While negative law is inherently parsimonious, positivist law is inherently profligate, the latter endlessly violating what the former naturally embraces, doing so with predictable results. For legal positivism not only creates new laws but, in the process, new “rights.” And as distinct from the few and very real rights upon which civil society is based – i.e., as distinct from the non-intervention of the negative golden rule – positivist rights are inherently interventionist in that, as grants of privilege, they impose obligations on some for the benefit of others. Be it food, housing, healthcare, employment, education, retirement, or some other “entitlement,” others – namely, taxpayers – are forced to pay for them, meaning that individuals’ legitimate rights are ipso facto violated.

Moreover, because ignorantia juris non excusat – “ignorance of the law is no excuse” – it is inevitable that as the legal apparatus expands, certainty of the law – which “is probably the most important requirement for the economic activities of society”viii – becomes impossible. And thus is the social enterprise set adrift upon a sea of uncertainty, its compass useless amid the perfect storm of legal positivism; thus does the legislative process result not in law but in lawlessness; and thus is society subjected to the nullification of the complex by the of the institutionalization of the complicated. For even though the words are generally considered to be synonymous, a subtle but vitally important distinction can be made between the complex and the complicated vis-à-vis the unintended consequences of the one versus those of the other.

We are all familiar, of course, with Adam Smith’s famous passage in The Wealth of Nations regarding the invisible hand, whereby the individual, in pursuit of his own interests, “frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it,” doing so in recognition of the fact that “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest.” Thus do we “address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”

And simply put, this is how the market functions – i.e., as an endeavor in which individuals cooperate in recognition one another’s self-interest – the result of which, with the introduction of money, is complexity on a scale that would be unattainable – indeed, unimaginable – on the level of subsistence or barter. And we have but to consider an age-old board game to understand this. For its simple and certain rules, which virtually anyone can comprehend, provide for a permutation of moves in an all but infinite variety, the elegance of which has attracted humanity’s finest minds since the game’s invention, more recently pitting high-powered computers against them. In other words, what makes chess so elegant is precisely what makes the market so elegant, their respective rules being so few, certain, and understandable that each is all but unlimited in the complexity it can generate, said complexity adding commensurately to the enjoyment of life.

Not so for, say, the U.S. tax code, which was only a few pages long at the time of its introduction in 1913 but is now nearly seven times the length of the Bible, requiring some 7.6 billion work-hours of tax compliance each year at a cost that is projected to rise from over a quarter trillion dollars today to nearly half a trillion dollars by 2015. So incomprehensible that not even one of the world’s most renowned geniuses could understand it, the U.S. tax code constitutes drudgery on a stupendous scale, detracting in like proportion from the quality of life and doing so solely to transfer power from society to the state.

Thus do we arrive at the vital distinction between the rule of law and its ruin: Society, being ruled by law that is common to it, is inherently complex and accordingly unlimited in the amount of order it can generate, while the state, being law unto itself, is inherently complicated and accordingly unlimited in the amount of disorder it can generate.

And in light of the rampant disorder with which we are now confronted, it is clear that in positivizing society’s money and its law, the state has not only toppled The Twin Pillars of Civilization; it has shattered the foundation upon which they stand.

For it has destroyed the freedom that is society’s sine qua non and thus imperiled society’s very existence.

But how has the state done so? And why has it done so? Why, in fact , does the state even exist? We address these all-important questions in my next submission: “The Nature and Origin of the State.”

–––––––––––

i The United States Constitution, Amendment 1: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
ii Bruno Leoni, Freedom and the Law, Liberty Press, 1961, p. 19.
iii Ibid., pp. 6 and 7.
iv Donald W. Livingston, “Dismantling Leviathan,” Harper’s magazine, May, 2002, p. 14.
v Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Honest Abe, Three Rivers Press (Crown Publishing Group, Random House, New York), 2006, p. 72.
vi Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy the State, Libertarian Review Foundation, 1989 (1935), Chapter 5, “Social Power vs. State Power,” p. 5.
vii Records only go back to 1816, at which time, according to TABLE Ea894–903 of Historical Statistics of the United States, there were a total of 4,837 federal employees, rising to 399,381 in 1916 and reflecting a growth rate over 8,200%. Working backwards to 1790, then, 2,500 federal employees at that time is a very generous estimate and could well have been significantly lower.
viii Ibid., Leoni, p. 70.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest- ... -and-state

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[IanEye]

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore, every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.vi

To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;

it's like the author put in the first quote so people would mention the second quote, at which point the author could have an open door to argue as to why the Congress should shut down the Federal Reserve as a counterfeiting operation.

Which is a perfectly reasonable argument, so why not just make it in an open and honest fashion?

[vanlose kid]

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore, every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.vi

To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;

it's like the author put in the first quote so people would mention the second quote, at which point the author could have an open door to argue as to why the Congress should shut down the Federal Reserve as a counterfeiting operation.

Which is a perfectly reasonable argument, so why not just make it in an open and honest fashion?

because the point being made is a different one. the author is laying down what is necessary for the establishment of a state/society with regard to common laws and currency. – any currency agreed upon by consensus within a community as the means of payment can function as such only on the basis of said agreement: this is what gives "power" to the state and to a currency. – he's expressing a political theory of state, and basically, saying that once a community agrees on a means of payment it becomes the means of payment – it's legality is derived from that consensus.

this is also borne out empirically. Cf., Andrew Jackson, or the early American colonies on the question of money.

it's fairly straightforward, unless one is of the view that a privately owned banking cartel with a monopoly over money is necessary for the establishment of a state.

a recent example of consensus currency created by community fiat is the Wörgl scrip:

The Wörgl experiment that was conducted from July 1932 to November 1933 is a classic example of the potential efficacy of local currencies. Wörgl, a small town in Austria with 4000 inhabitants, introduced a local scrip during the Great Depression. By 1932 unemployment in Wörgl had risen to 30%. The local government had amassed debts of 1.3 million Austrian schillings (AS) against cash reserves of 40,000 AS. Local construction and civic maintenance had come to a standstill. On the initiative of the town's mayor, Michael Unterguggenberger, the local government printed 32,000 in labor certificates which carried a negative 1% monthly interest rate and could be converted into schillings at 98% of face value. An equivalent amount in schillings was deposited in the local bank as cover for the certificates in case of mass redemption and earned interest for the government. The certificates circulated so rapidly that only 12,000 were ever actually put into circulation. According to reports by the mayor and economists of the day who studied the experiment, the scrip was readily accepted by local merchants and the local population. It utilized the scrip to carry out 100,000 AS in public works projects involving construction and repair of roads, bridges, tanks, drainage systems, factories, and buildings. The scrip was also accepted as legal tender for payment of local taxes. In the one year that the currency was in circulation, it circulated 13 times faster than the official shilling[citation needed] and served as a catalyst to the local economy. The heavy arrears in local tax collection declined dramatically. Local government revenue rose from 2,400 AS in 1931 to 20,400 in 1932. Unemployment was eliminated, while it remained very high throughout the rest of the country. No increase in prices was observed. Based on the dramatic success of the Wörgl experiment, several other communities introduced similar scrips.

In spite of the tangible benefits of the program, it met with stiff opposition from the regional socialist party and from the Austrian central bank, which opposed the local currency as an infringement on its powers over the currency. As a result the program was suspended, unemployment rose, and the local economy soon degenerated to the level of other communities in the country.[1][2]

Other well-documented historical examples include:
Emperor Norton I's own currency
Prosperity Certificate
Wära (Currency) (Germany, made illegal in October 1931)
Bia Kut Chum, issued in 2000 by a Thai community, since replaced by a barter coupon called Boon Kut Chum.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_currency

*

on edit: make that relatively recent.

further on in that article there are links to contemporary functioning local currencies, one of which is the Swiss WIR:

The WIR Bank, formerly the Swiss Economic Circle (GER: Wirtschaftsring-Genossenschaft), or WIR, is an independent complementary currency system in Switzerland that serves small and medium-sized businesses. It exists only as a bookkeeping system, with no scrip, to facilitate transactions.

WIR was founded in 1934 by businessmen Werner Zimmermann and Paul Enz as a result of currency shortages after the stock market crash of 1929. Both Zimmermann and Enz had been influenced by German libertarian economist Silvio Gesell[1]; however, the WIR Bank renounced Gesell's "free money" theory in 1952, opening the door to monetary interest.[2]

"WIR" is both an abbreviation of Wirtschaftsring and the word for "we" in German, reminding participants that the economic circle is also a community.[1]

According to the cooperative's statutes, "Its purpose is to encourage participating members to put their buying power at each other's disposal and keep it circulating within their ranks, thereby providing members with additional sales volume."

Although WIR started with only 16 members, today it has grown to include 62,000 — among whom is traded approximately CHF 1.65 billion annually (as of 2004).[3] The available money supply (currency code CHW) was 839 million equivalent Swiss francs (as of 2005). [4]

The WIR bank is a not for profit bank. It serves the interest of the clients, not the bank itself. It is a very stable system, not prone to failure as the current banking system is. It remains fully operational even in times of general economic crisis. WIR may have contributed to the remarkable stability of the Swiss economy, as it dampens downturns in the business cycle.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIR

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[vanlose kid]

In Switzerland 16 entrepreneurs from Zurich found the solution to the 1929 crisis. They began to trade using a currency parallel to the Swiss Franc, the WIR money. From this experience the WIR Bank was born. WIR is a cooperative bank that today collects nearly 60.000 little and medium-sized Swiss enterprises that exchange good and services among themselves using WIR money. By this way the WIR Bank helps the middle class preserving its employment rate and it anchors the generated richness to the Swiss country. Is it also working today, during the 2010's crisis?

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[Metric Pringle]

I was going to post about this a while back as I got given a video job to film a "business conference". I left the weekend extremely confused. It turned out to be a workshop on this whole strawman thing, the workshop leader himself seemed to be quite confused about it, and the workshop goers even more so. They were all in some sort of financial desperation and had paid god knows how much money for this guy to talk to them about it all. The participants were mostly Black Christians. He made constant references to God, explained that the basics of accounting come from the crucifix, with profits (no pun intended) on the left, losses on the right. Using the crucifix as the grid. I'll try and dig out some stuff i remember from it, i have the tapes somewhere too. All the people were asking me if i believed in it, i just smiled. Most bizarre corporate video gig i've ever been on.

[Cedars of Overburden]

Hey Vanlose, I tried to talk with Dad yesterday about his grand jury experience, but he said he couldn't really remember much, just that it was the county grand jury and he felt they were just rubber-stamping indictments for unbelievably large numbers of crimes. He felt like he was too inexperienced with the legal system to argue with the prosecutors and other grand jurors. It was more like he felt that matters of such importance deserved more time and attention than the jury gave them, but he didn't feel he had the knowledge or experience to do anything.

He got even vaguer after saying that and then he went to sleep. He's old enough that going to church and then eating Sunday dinner is enough to wear him out.

Sorry.

[IanEye]

because the point being made is a different one. the author is laying down what is necessary for the establishment of a state/society with regard to common laws and currency. – any currency agreed upon by consensus within a community as the means of payment can function as such only on the basis of said agreement: this is what gives "power" to the state and to a currency. – he's expressing a political theory of state, and basically, saying that once a community agrees on a means of payment it becomes the means of payment – it's legality is derived from that consensus.

this is also borne out empirically. Cf., Andrew Jackson, or the early American colonies on the question of money.

it's fairly straightforward, unless one is of the view that a privately owned banking cartel with a monopoly over money is necessary for the establishment of a state.

well, your Austrian and Swiss examples are interesting ones, but the author starts off quoting the Constitution of the United States and then proceeds to ignore the Constitution of the United States when it doesn't suit his argument.

The author also says this:

“For the étatist, money is a creature of the state,”  and surely one of the greatest tragedies of our time is that the people, in their unwitting acceptance of monetary positiv-ism, are statists themselves, if only as pawns in a game that has been rigged utterly and completely against them.

In your reply to me you said this:

the author is laying down what is necessary for the establishment of a state/society with regard to common laws and currency.

So, if the society is comprised of people, and those people are statists then this whole theory is starting to sound like an incredibly lame circle jerk.

I can appreciate your attempts to introduce some Euro-Porn into the playlist, but the author has yet to stray beyond a United States framework in his examples.

Put it this way, if someone wants to jerk me off, I am not going to let them if they have an "invisible hand".

.

.

[exojuridik]

Well, since I’ve been summoned from the void, I might as well proffer my 2 cents of devil currency.

Actually, I don’t have a clue what the whole strawman argument is about considering the fact that we live in a society that is defined by the nation-states which is itself governed according to laws administered by a legal system composed of courts and government agencies. No, it is not perfect or even internally consistent. Yes, we live in a fallen world where God’s law has been violated by the hubris and vanity of men. So what else is new?

Most of the issues raised here seem of a political rather than legal nature. The legitimacy of the workings of government or the laws or the economic system is entirely a question dealing with one’s allegiance to the sovereign i.e. one’s own country. Without enforcement at the point of a gun, laws have no real meaning or importance. Sure there might be philosophical or religious meaning to be found in the discussion of true higher LAW, but this has no meaning in the real world, unless, of course you are Justice Clarence Thomas and adhere to some inchoate vision of Natural Law.

IOW – there is no “cheat code” in the law. The Law is merely what the judge on the bench decides it is given the facts of the case and guided by precedent and statute. One can appeal his decision but most judges don’t like their decisions to be overturned so they adhere pretty tightly to conventional interpretations of the law. Furthermore, the courts have jurisdiction based on enabling provisions in the state or US constitution. In most countries the constitution is the highest law in the land and would trump any 17th century practice of Earls and Marquises or whomever.

Any lawyer who attempted to make a “strawman” argument in an American court would likely find himself sanctioned or subject to malpractice suit. It depends on the procedural stances of the parties – if one is going to sue then there needs to be a cause of action recognized by the courts. If one is say subject to a tax evasion charge, one can say whatever one wants but no lawyer in their right mind would suggest using laws that aren’t laws as a defense.

In my mind the whole problem with the strawman movement is that it distracts from the very real problem of there not being enough laws or access to courts. The real danger is when people are denied causes of actions to redress their injuries or enforce their rights. The cases concerning Guantanamo all rested on the ability of individuals to enforce their constitutionally protected rights in a federal court.

The strawmen have an ally with the conservative federalists and corporate defense attorneys. They too wish to limit the jurisdictions of the courts and question the legitimacy of causes of action found in the law. The best defense to corporate malfeasance is a lack of jurisdiction by the courts. Additionally, most dockets in the federal courts are woefully burdened with caseloads. It can take years before plaintiffs have an opportunity to have their case tried.

In sum, the courts are unfair and countenances injustice on a daily basis. However, short of genuine revolution, the law is our only sword/shield against the depredations of the powerful. Researching arcane theories that holds the law is not the law seems more to be a sign of mental illness than scholarship. The strawman argument according to its’ own terms has nothing to do with the law as practiced. So why bother.