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The Inevitability of Appropriation

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I spent my childhood watching my father struggle to make himself understood. It was not that he was handicapped in a fundamental way, but rather that he recognized that most people were terribly imprecise in their use of words. To ensure that he was able to describe precisely his methods of software design, he invented his own notation and terminology. In the end, he spoke a foreign language.

Of course, that also brought a certain power. In working with him years later, his resistance to my innovation was to assert that I hadn’t spent enough time sitting at his feet to really understand what he was doing.

Although I shared his concerns regarding imprecision in the use of words, I had no intention of following in his footsteps. Most of the creative intellectual energy of my twenties was devoted to an attempt to facilitate moral discourse by reclaiming terms of common usage. That thinking eventually surfaced back in 2005 at my first web site. There I laid out definitions for ‘love’, ‘power’ and ‘maturity’ (among others). The goal was to ensure that the use of such terms was based in clearly defined and shared expectations for the behavior of the speaker. Having faith in love and good will, I believed that the power accruing to subscribers to the philosophy would eventually manifest in the spread of its wisdom to the rest of society.

This work of reclamation was incredibly difficult. It was inspired, growing up in the ’70s, by my sense that the world was teetering on the brink of destruction, along with the shocking realization that when offering “I love you” most people actually meant “I feel good when I am around you. Let me bind you to me with this token.” In other words “I love myself.”

The corruption of the link between meaning and behavior is philosophical appropriation. In normal usage, appropriation is defined as:

the action of taking something for one’s own use, typically without the owner’s permission (Oxford)

In this case, we are concerned with manipulation of the consensus regarding the meaning of words to convince others that they should contribute to our benefit. The “owner” in this case is society as a whole. The “taking” is of resources meant to preserve the common good.

A topical manifestation of the struggle against philosophical appropriation is in the debate in the Democratic Party over the legitimacy of claims to a “progressive” agenda. A thorough exploration of the ambiguity in the usage of the term is offered at the Electric Agora. The nuances of the analysis rapidly evaporated into a deep cognitive dissonance as I thought back to the explanation offered in my childhood that progressives believe that “all boats rise with the tide.” This simple precept was the engine of the post-WWII Veterans Acts, the wealth generated by and for the American middle class in the ’50s and ’60s, and the Civil Rights movement. It also informs equally the choices of the partisans across the Sanders/Clinton divide – although they might dispute it.

Philosphical appropriation is driven by two forces. The first, suggested above, is simple hypocrisy. The second is more difficult to resist: it is the divergence between the original meaning of a term of social and political discourse and the mechanisms of its implementation. In religion, an early schism evolved from just such a critique. The Donatists, perceiving that priests were sometimes sinners, rejected the legitimacy of “sacraments” as administered by the Catholic Church. St. Augustine’s rebuttal was that the purpose of the Church was to reform and heal, which meant admission of sinners among the laity, and inevitably sinners among the priesthood. Augustine was concerned with the purpose of the Church as commissioned by Jesus of Nazareth; the Donatists were concerned consumers of its services.

Of course, neither the Church nor the Donatists disputed the value of the sacraments. Rather, both sides laid claim to legitimacy based upon the mechanisms of their transmission: the Church based upon the authority of Christ’s commission, which (at least in theory) established a gateway to grace that no priest could corrupt; the Donatists based upon the immediacy of Christ’s presence in the person of the administering saint. Obviously, the experience and forms of sacramental administration were different in the two societies. Eventually, those practical differences led to differences in their understanding of what was and was not a sacrament.

This is also apparent in the disputatious claims to the term “progressive.” The discussion at the Electric Agora focuses on the tension between inclusion and diversity, both  considered touch stones of the progressive program. Among some, this leads to claims of hypocrisy: how can you maintain diversity while attempting to homogenize opportunity?

Obviously, we’d like to see unity and respect in the dialog between people of good will. This seems like an ideal place for philosophical intervention.

One approach in this program of intervention is to seek to elucidate the meaning of terms in use. In both cases under discussion, unfortunately, this leads to a fracturing of meanings, with philosophical tolerance allowing legitimacy to be claimed by both sides, creating opportunities for hypocrites to profit from the divide.

The other approach is to successively refine the principle behind the term, and to elucidate the connection between that principle and implementation. This serves both to conserve and strengthen the consensus so essential to constructive social engagement, while simultaneously defending the community against hypocrites.

I find it interesting to relate this back to the original split between idealism and empiricism. The empiricist Aristotle thought that observation of the qualities of things would allow us to group them into categories. Plato, conversely, held that only in ideas could firm meaning be established, and so concrete instances in the world must be derived from ideas. The success of science leads us in the modern era to prefer the empirical approach. In sociology and politics, however, it is the ideas in our minds that determine the subject of study – which is the aggregate behavior of citizens. Here it seems that idealism – the defense of the meaning of words – is the more powerful approach. Implicitly, it is the approach that I offer to philosophers seeking to mediate political and social discourse. First defend the coherence of the statement of principle. Only then turn your attention to the practical issues of implementation.

Internet Autocracy

Article at The Conversation on the internet as a centralized form of media that can be exploited by authoritarian regimes, particularly among citizens using it primarily for entertainment.

My comment:

I believe that the jury is still out on this one. One of the factors that fueled international respect for authoritarian regimes was external propaganda. Leaders of developing nations were beguiled by the perception that state-run economies and militaries were equally effective as those managed by decentralized cultures. The internet completely skewers that façade.

Most authoritarian regimes are sustained by revenues obtained through labor and resource exploitation by the developed world. As the consumer nations shift to automated and sustainable alternatives (respectively), those revenues will dry up. The old Roman dictum “bread and circuses” fails when there is no bread. When there is no bread, people will be forced to organize in a decentralized fashion to obtain basic goods. The internet will be the mechanism that facilitates that organization.

And there is still the lesson of the Cold War: if the international community can avoid creating external conflicts to justify the fear-mongering, the investment in lies eventually divorces the leadership from reality. The internet only provides the appearance of greater efficacy. The people learn to go about their business independently by pushing responsibility upwards. The retort is always “I’ll do it, boss, if you show me exactly how.” It’s like that scene in Life of Brian where the two prison guards stutter and garble words until the interrogator leaves, then start speaking coherently.

In the meanwhile, liberal societies will rocket ahead using the benefits of network effects (the value of a communications network goes up as the factorial of the number of participants). In the era of rapid change driven by global climate stress, that facility will be essential to survival.

A Question of Loyalty

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Chris Matthews had a Sanders campaign grandee on last night, and directly raised the question of the legitimacy of the Democratic Party nominating process. In the response, the outlines of Sanders’s charge against the party were apparent. Phrasing them as questions, we have:

  • Sanders polls better against Trump than does Clinton, so given the fact that Sanders has momentum going into the convention, why doesn’t the party prefer him as their presidential candidate?
  • Sanders polls better among young people. How can the super-delegates ignore that constituency, the future of their party?
  • Sanders polls better among independents, and independents are a growing part of the American electorate. How can the party ignore those voices?

The conclusion drawn starkly by the Sanders grandee was that the preference for Clinton was evidence of old-fogey prejudice.

Matthews was sympathetic, not necessarily to the charge that the party had been unfair to Sanders, but to the goal of making the nominating process more a reflection of the will of the voters. So the question is: do super-delegates represent the will of the voters? On the face of it, the answer is “No!” Sanders has the support of a far smaller percentage of super-delegates than is reflecting in the overall campaign standings.

But to be fair, you have to ask “Which voters?” The voters that were able to show up for a ten-hour caucus, a requirement that biases against the working poor? Superdelegates are not a random collection. They are party “big-wigs” – often candidates elected to state or national office. They were selected by the voters in an actual election. Many have held office over the long term, and so can be considered to have faithfully implemented the will of the voters. Is including the voice of the larger electorate (which includes independents, obviously) through super-delegates truly a form of bias, or a means of including those that cannot participate in a primary?

Sanders also needs to recognize that his success in influencing that national debate was dependent in large part upon the existence of the party. Without it, there would be no persistent voice to counter the irrational and self-serving ranting of the Republican big-money donors. Isn’t it the job of the Democratic Party to represent the will of those that choose the Democratic Party? Sanders, as an independent, sees a vote as a vote. But this is a nominating process for a general election, not the general election itself. If independents really wanted permanent influence in the formation of national policy, they’d form or join a party. Why should they be allowed to come in and pirate the institution nurtured for more than a century with the time, money and passion invested by actual Democrats?

Get a clue, independents: the Democratic Party is the Democratic Party. It represents Democrats.

As a Democrat, my counter to the charge of bias by the Sanders campaign would run like this:

  • If Sanders is so popular among self-proclaimed independents, shouldn’t his campaign motivate more of them to register as Democrats?
  • Why shouldn’t the voice of the working poor be heard in the primary process through the institution of the super-delegate?

And there is a last point, not so fundamentally democratic: our Constitution enshrines a bicameral legislature: a House that represents the will of the people, and a Senate that represents the voice of experience. I see a similar structure in the Democratic nominating process, with the passion of the voters leavened by the seasoned voices of the super delegates. These are people that know how to get things done. They are office-holders that need to be led into the future by the President, and that must support the President if the party’s platform is to have any chance at implementation.

The unanimity of the super delegate support for Clinton indicates that the Democratic Party’s elected office-holders trust Clinton. They have seen her under fire, and admire her tenacity and principle. They have campaigned with her, and trust her commitment to Democratic principles. Clinton has earned their loyalty.

The Sanders campaign, echoing the hippies, characterizes this loyalty as “the Establishment” that must be overthrown by revolution. That is not only uncharitable, but actually, in undermining faith in the Democratic Party, threatens the party’s survival.

As a man that campaigned against the party for more than thirty years, however, you wouldn’t expect Sanders to care.

Trump v. Jesus

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As I watched the footage of Donald Trump screaming “Get them out of here! Get them out of here!” and “Try not to hurt him – but if you do I’ll defend you in court,” I had this image of Jesus standing in the center of the crowd, trying to calm the hatred, just falling to his knees as a great shouted heart-cry arose from him.

This is not what I died for!

Rachel Maddow’s backdrop to her coverage of violence in the Trump campaign sported a picture of a Trump in full bombast, underlined with “De-Nomination.” Rachel sees Trump as a fascist, and drew parallels with the behavior of his followers and those of Hitler. Indeed, one of those caught on film pushing a black attendee at a Trump rally proudly proclaimed his affiliation with a white supremacist group. Maddow believes that through his incitement of violence Trump is disqualifying himself for nomination to be the leader of a free nation.

I see this as being a far more complex phenomenon, recognizing that the anti-Trump media has tended to feed the paranoia by casting his off-the-cuff comments in the least charitable light. Trump’s retort to Megan Kelly that “blood [was] coming from…wherever” was probably an unfinished reference to her nose or mouth, not her vagina.

My own visceral reaction to Trump comes from another source. After I finished playing with electrons and muons, I left particle physics because I realized that it would never have practical applications. It wouldn’t create jobs for the people that need them most. My first “real” job involved rescuing a project built by technologists to monitor waste discharges from a facility that employed 10,000 people. The system was required by the local treatment facility because prior discharges had disrupted their operations. Working eighteen hour days under enormous pressure, I brought the system under control, investigated patterns of radiation releases that violated the terms of our discharge license, and participated in tours to calm public fears. I protected those jobs.

After leaving government employment, I began work as a software developer. In my three major engagements, I worked in companies run by people who hated government, seeing it as merely an impediment to job creation. But the ethic of their operations was shocking to me. The organizations were dominated by fear – fear largely originating from the realization that the software used to control the expensive machines they built was so incomprehensible that engineers could no longer configure the installations. In each case, I refactored the code, fixing bugs and adding features as I went. I saved jobs.

The response in every case was to beat me down, because I exposed the fact that, at root, it was the behaviors of executives that made it impossible to achieve success. It was the lies and anger managers projected at their employees that destroyed their capacity to think. I came in and restructured those relationships, building a core of rationality and blame-free problem solving that enabled people to grasp at hope. I ministered to my peers as a Christian, and that terrified those that terrified them.

So this is what I see when I see Trump: a screaming blaggart who builds casinos designed to take advantage of people of weak will, and exclusive communities that protect the rich from rubbing elbows with the poor. I see a destroyer of families and social cohesion, and a diverter of energy that could be employed to heal the infirm and sustain the poor.

In Daniel’s Dream of the Four Beasts [Dan. 7], Daniel sees the coming of “the Ancient of Days” on a “flaming throne” with “wheels of fire.” This is the imagery that accompanies Apollo, god of the sun, in Greek religion. Daniel sees the fourth beast being consumed by flame, even as the last of its horns continues with its “boastful words.” So we have Trump, distracting us with his boasting (“When I’m elected, we’ll win so much that you get tired of winning.”) from the necessary work of healing the world of the mess we’ve made of it, and most specifically the effects of global warming.

I think that Rachel had the wrong word on her backdrop last night. I think that it should have been “Domination,” that great enemy of Christian truth and freedom that seeks to force others to comply with its will. As foretold in Daniel, the fiery destruction of domination is an unfortunate prerequisite to the coming of the Age of Christ. As Jesus suffers the “birthing pains” of His return, try not to be taken in by the enemy’s vainglorious self-promotion.

About Superdelegates

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So the news is out that Bernie Sander’s supporters, who won the New Hampshire primaries by 22% but collected only a split on the delegates, want super delegates to conform to the popular vote.

Super delegates are Democratic Party members who have worked over many years to create the infrastructure that the Socialist from Vermont is using to fuel his presidential candidacy. They exist to prevent hot-heads and late-comers from hijacking that infrastructure to undermine the Party’s principles.

So, Sanders supporters, if you want to amend the rules to facilitate an outsider’s candidacy, I suggest that you start your own party. Otherwise, dig in for the long haul and vote Democratic – not just when a fashionable Messiah shows up that you abandon when he can’t deliver against your unreasonable expectations.

As occurred with Obama in 2010, a debacle that we’re going to spend decades digging out from under.

Be a Mom, Hillary

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“You know, Senator Sanders, my biggest concern for you is that if you win office, the same thing will happen to you that happened to President Obama. You make promises that you can’t keep to a young sector of the electorate. When President Obama did that, he stepped into the White House with every intention of delivering on his promises. He fought every day of his two terms to accomplish them, investing the energy of his Cabinet in determining what leeway there was to take executive action when the Congress refused to act on climate change and fair pay, and using his veto to frustrate Boehner and McConnell in their attempts to claw back our gains in health care, social justice and taxation.

“But despite all of his efforts – and I believe that history will show that Barack has been one of the great American presidents – when the chips were down in 2010, the people that elected him chose to stay home. Rather than doubling down for President Obama, they handed control of the House, Senate and many state legislatures to a party that has gerrymandered to protect their tenure, that has attacked public and private sector unions to drive down wages, that delayed action on global warming in service to private oil interests, and that held the entire government hostage to secure tax breaks for their wealthy taskmasters.

“You talk about moneyed interests and their power in politics, but the fact remains that President Obama was elected twice against those interests. The American system with its voter protection laws makes it extremely difficult for an informed and active electorate to be cheated of their rights. What my experience with President Obama has shown to me is that your youthful supporters need to get out and vote. They need to walk out of the factories and restaurants and schools on election day and support those that fight for them.

“Senator Sanders, we have fought for the people of America for decades. You describe that as a struggle against moneyed interests, while I highlight the goal of empowering each person. But we can’t do it alone. The American people need to support us in turn. The key to accomplishing our shared goals is not to whip them up in anger, because that hot emotion will just turn to frustration as the road gets steeper. The American people need to make a strong and reasoned commitment to stay the course. They need the wisdom and understanding to confront injustice themselves in city halls and state houses across the nation. But most of all, they need to make their voices heard on election day!”

Climbing the Mountain of Healing

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After eight years of fear-mongering and greed under the Bush Administration, on the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, I stood in the conference room at work to watch the proceedings. Breathing more easily, I felt the will of Christ stretch itself across the nation to join with that of our new president.

I caught a clip of the Tea Party responder to this year’s State of the Union (a motivational speaker named Root) warming up the crowd at a Trump rally. While I can’t call it a message, the energetic peak of his oration was the statement “This is war!” That is one way to look at society, as a struggle to the death of factions in a world where there is just never enough. To survive, we have to find that mythical figure epitomized in our history by Washington, Lincoln or FDR: a great general and leader to whom we can entrust our lives.

The problem is that fear is a deeply ingrained physiological habit. It is a way of relating to the world that destroys reason. When the enemy is gone, the habit remains and turns inwards. For some, the escape is into substance abuse, but for others it finds release in seeking enemies among their fellows.

Again and again, our society has raised up representatives to heal those divides, and those representatives suffer terribly for our sins. Jackie Robinson and the Central High Nine were all abused for the privilege of entering the lily-white citadels of baseball and education, and understood that they could not respond in kind. I heard one of the Central High Nine speak on his experience, and while my first reaction was outrage, it was closely followed by awe at the strength and discipline he had demonstrated.

Barack Obama spoke about this problem in his confrontation with the bigots in the federal legislature who declared early on their intention to oppose him at every step. His response was of the type. It was captured for me in a photo: During one of the budget stand-offs with the House, he invited the Speaker to play golf. The event was memorialized on one of the greens with Obama crouched low over his ball, pointing to lay out the line to the hole while looking over his shoulder at Boehner for agreement.

I write this today because I find myself dumbfounded by the political analysis of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Obviously among the Republican front-runners we find those parroting the legacies of FDR (Trump) and Washington (Cruz). Their are bombastic and shallow, but raise fervor in their frightened partisans. There is much to be alarmed by in this phenomenon – it was the root of fascism in Europe. I consider it to be a cancer in the body politic.

On the Democratic side, we were promised a different dynamic, a dialog informed by reason. After the first Democratic debate, one headline characterized it as “The Adults Take the Stage.” But there are significant differences between the candidates, and these are not just in substance but in tone. The pundits have tried to characterize these differences, and now tend to settle “forward thinking” and “heart” on Sanders while saddling Clinton with “hanging on to the past” and “head.”

Sanders earns these designations for his fiery railing against the monied class. This appeals to the youth of our nation, those whose disdain for politics has allowed the establishment to secure its privilege by buying the House and Senate in off-term elections. Sanders promises a radical departure from the past, a storming of the castle to take back the wealth of the nation. He yells and gesticulates, demonstrating a strong emotional connection to his program that promises dedication to its achievement.

I have already expressed my discomfort with the similarities with the Republican front-runners.

I see Hillary struggling with her characterization. The body politic does seem to want passion, but when she projects it in her campaign stops, it rings false. That is picked on by the pundits, who have now taken to comparing her to Bush. But I believe that comparison reflects a deep and systemic misunderstanding of the disease facing our nation, and the fact that the temperament that makes Clinton so attractive to me at this time is simply incompatible with the politics of the males in the field.

Consider this: if you had liver cancer, would you feel encouraged by an oncologist who said “This is war! Your liver is evil! I’m going to take it out and stomp on it! And – oh yeah – thanks for putting my daughter through college.” Or would you like to be given sympathy and encouragement with specific options for treatment along with a description of side-effects and costs.

In other words, would you want a warrior or a healer?

In Hillary, I see the latter. Although I see it in Obama, it’s typically a feminine proclivity. Have some sympathy for her as she struggles against the burden of the pressures that have kept women from full and equal participation in our body politic.

A Matter of Character

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In his final State of the Union address, Barack Obama eschewed partisan politics and stretched for the heights of statesmanship. Frustrated in his most heart-felt passions by the institutions that foment mistrust of government, his program of political renewal is built around appeals to cherished notions of our national character. While composed of practical steps – among them redistricting and campaign finance reform, voting rights, and extension of public education by two years – its illustrations were drawn not from  isolated instances of specific lives transformed by those benefits, but from abstract descriptions of relationships transformed when we act from hope and trust.

Obama supported the authority of his prescription by outlining the results of seven years of quietly doing what was possible while his opponents trumpeted doom. This includes enhanced international cooperation to isolate and weaken the agents of violence, improved terms of trade to protect workers and the environment, enhancement of personal security with health care reform, and revitalization of America’s manufacturing and energy sectors.

His restrained rhetoric is set against a collection of voices that trumpet conflict. This is not limited to the field of Republican presidential nominees – the growing strength of the Sanders campaign is fueled by harsh rhetoric targeting the financial elite. I believe that the popularity of those voices reflects the sense that for the average American, security is precarious. This is supported by polling that reveals that as regards their condition, 49% of Americans have become more angry over the last year.

As wages stagnate and costs rise, inevitably every choice faced by a working family is fraught with consequence. Any single error can set us on the hard road to poverty. In that state, our natural desire is to make our choosing less difficult – in much popular political rhetoric, to remove the impediments imposed by the state. Unfortunately, this logic appeals to the interests of those that siphon financial energy from the system. One of the Koch brothers, after the federal investigation of climate science racketeering by Mobil-Exxon, appeared in public to state that in many ways he is a liberal – he believes that businesses are most successful when the individual worker is free to make his own choices. As “success” to Mr. Koch translates to “higher profits,” what history has shown is that a family man will accept lower wages when facing competition from a younger, unburdened candidate. “Freedom” as understood by Koch translates to a lack of security that eventually pits every man against his neighbor for the benefit of owners.

In his book The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment, Geoffrey Kabaservice argued that the American century was birthed on the battlefields of WWII. For the first time, the American elite went to war, and came back appreciating the strength of the brotherhood that leads men to sacrifice their lives in service. It was this brotherhood that motivated the Veterans’ Acts that opened college and home ownership to the lower classes. And it was the clawing back of those gifts by that generation’s children that steadily weakened the lower classes as we entered the 21st century.

The fragility of the post-war Golden Age must lead us to ask: is Obama right? Is our national character one of quiet service, or a narcissistic struggle for privilege that slowly grinds down the weak?

Against the cynicism of the realist, Obama marshaled the words of the man that prophesied his presidency. In his last public address, Martin Luther King, Jr. promised his audience that they as a people would see the Promised Land. Obama borrowed not from that speech but from King’s Nobel Peace Prize address, in which the prophet heralded the ultimate victory of “unarmed truth and unconditional love.”

That may sound like another flimsy basis for policy prescriptions, but it actually leads to an analysis that shows the inevitability of our exit from this era of untrammeled selfishness. Throughout history, when economic activity expands into a new scale (from the city to the state, from state to nation, from nation to globe), those managing the expansion are able to erode the rights of those that created the technologies and products that allow the expansion. They do that by transferring knowledge to impoverished labor markets (or by importing cheaper labor). By selling goods back into the originating society, owners are able to reap enormous profits.

What ultimately happens, however, is that as wages equalize, poor workers motivated by the hope that they, too, would achieve the rights of their richer cousins gain the courage to organize to secure those rights. Having played out the cheap trick of producing in cheaper labor markets, the elite is brought under ever increasing pressure to actually increase the value of labor through organizational strategy. They then confront the truth that a competent and creative worker is the best source of operational improvements, and that personal security is essential to avoid fear that distracts her attention.

This has been played out again and again through history, in each of the transitions listed above. We now face the last transition to the global stage, and growing economic instability in  China suggests that the cheap trick has just about played itself out.

So if the morality of Obama’s appeal doesn’t resonate in the pragmatic mind, I believe that it yet reflects the wisdom of historical experience. His prescriptions are the investments that we need to make now to ensure that when the burden of poverty is leveled, we as a nation are prepared to lead the charge into a future of common accomplishment safeguarded by international compacts of economic and environmental justice.

While the elite may create panic with rumors of “one world government” and “black helicopters,” the past proves that the lower classes will eventually recognize their common experience, and organize to ensure that the government that creates the rules by which power is allocated will do so in a way that ensures that power servers that greater good, rather than the whims of the elite. All the lower classes need do is to marshal the courage to believe in the commonality of their experience (which is the root of all truth) and recognize that when they invest in each others’ power (loving unconditionally), they strengthen themselves.

Shot-Sighted

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As a boy that grew up scampering through the sage brush on the hills above the school, when we stopped for a bathroom break on one of our early camping trips, my first thought was to duck under the barbed-wire fence and wander in the woods it protected. I was tame enough to check first with my mother, who drew my attention to the sign:

NO TRESPASSING

Violators will be shot on sight

 “Don’t they have to give you a warning first?”

“That is the warning,” my father observed.

Looking up and down the lonely road, I thought, “But what if their car broke down and they need help?”

It was my first collision with the thought that property ownership trumped human life, and I was a little shaken by the experience.

I don’t see the signs much in my area any more – perhaps because most of the agriculture and ranching has disappeared. But technology may also have something to do with it: with helicopters and radio trackers, it’s probably pretty hard for cattle rustlers to disappear into the wilderness, and aerial crop dusting probably dissuades most casual fruit pickers. The spread of drone aircraft will also make easier to bring thieves to justice without risk of a confrontation.

It was only later that I learned that these signs were also posted frequently by those engaged in illegal activity. The classic image is the moonshine distiller or hillbilly sending off the “revenooer.” But I was confronted by another case when working on a friend’s deck up in Redding one summer. A piercing scream of terror came from the house across the fence – but there was the sign. None of the locals so much as turned a head in concern. I guess it wasn’t the first time.

The Bundy Family now camped out at the Wildlife Refuge in Oregon says that they are “defending their way of life.” One of their number, finding himself in the minority in a discussion of violent confrontation, went out to make a stand in the cold, observing that he had grown up with the wind in his hair and the sun on his face, and he would rather die than spend a single day in jail. On hearing this, I thought of Michael Douglas in Falling Down. A defense industry engineer, laid off and denied visitation rights to his child, trades in weapons in an escalating rampage, finally being gunned down before his daughter.

The Sheriff in Oregon has asked the invaders to leave, observing that they don’t have the right to come in with their guns and tell them how to live. But I wonder if anybody has asked the Bundy’s to consider what would happen if we all chose to act as they did. Will they take cause with the older software developer, defaulting on his mortgage because ageism makes it difficult to find employment?

The scariest exhibition, however, was the Alabama legislator who avowed on national television last night that the reason we have remained a democracy is because our government is afraid to confront its armed citizens. Comparing the M-1 Abrams tank and fighter jets to the hand-held weaponry in the homes of our citizen militias, we might draw a comparison with the armed knights of the middle age and every farmer with a pitchfork. Comparable parity of weaponry in the Middle Ages did not deter tyranny, nor does it do so today.

The Founders designed an institutional system that pitted the three branches of government against each other in a federation of states with their own security services. This institutional competition was designed to prevent any one branch or level of government from being able to impose its will on citizens. That the legislator suffers from a such a deep misunderstanding of how our constitutional system safeguards our liberties is perhaps the most frightening aspect of this situation, particularly because it has often been the Federal Government that has stepped in to ensure the rights of those intimidated by state and local authorities.

Devolving coercive power down to the citizens seems to promise only that those that relish and glorify violence will be able to terrorize those that don’t. We’ve worked long and hard to escape that condition. Why give in to it now?