How does the left have any perceived credibility among reasonable people?

The American left today is dialectically estranged from the American mainstream and America's founding principles, although it still has the run of the education (sic) system (while missing the best tree to bark up, the philosophy one).  Almost surely the very best minds among the public-intellectuals have gravitated over time to the Right (while the very best minds among the academic, non-public-intellectual population contains a mixture of increasingly-libertarian Rawls-ish liberals and the libertarians, with Tomasi representating a state-of-the-art attempt at synthesis of the two). [*]

So what sustains any impression among reasonable, decent people that the left has quality ideas and intellectual and moral credibility any longer?  Some ideas:

(1) See above about the left's control of the bulk of the education (sic) institutions, a great many of them funded in whole or part by taxpayers.  (Before one rationalizes like a leftist that this points to the intellectual superiority of leftism/leftists, see Nozick for a alternative explanation.)  Lots of narrative-shaping going on there for many a captive audience, many of whom go out into the real world afterward rather than pursue (e.g.) state-of-the-art debates between Rawlsians and libertarians, so they don't have all that good an idea of how Rawlsians might not have any clear upper-hand despite left-wing dominance of the academy.

(2) The left is riding past successes in the areas of civil rights and LGBT+ equality.  Even until very recently the American cultural Right has been hostile to progress in the latter idea, much to its motherfucking shame.  The Blue States (not synonymous with the left, but a close approximation) have been making progress in the area of cannabis legalization, while outlets such as the otherwise-respectable Wall Street Journal continue to this very day to peddle bullshitted-up numbers and narratives supposedly showing how destructive cannabis and its legalization are.  (The fucking least they could do is acknowledge the testimony of cannabis-users like Carl Sagan, which they don't.)  What's not at all clear to me is that the Blue States are legalizing weed on the grounds of individual freedom as distinct from equitable treatment of minorities (who suffer disproportionately from the failed big-government War on Drugs) or the Blue States' greed for always-more tax revenues.  And even there, the state of CA has been shitting the bed in its efforts to reconcile its big-government ethos with a free-market one.

But weed legalization is a present-day trend with the merits still to be assessed over time by the American mainstream.  I don't fault the WSJ and other conservatives for having suspicions about its wisdom/merits when it's the Blue States (by and large - see Alaska for an exception) spearheading the effort.

Back to LGBT+ equality: The Civil Rights movement was over half a century ago now; the LGBT+ equality movement has been a recent thing where we can get a better sense of where the left has gone in more recent times.  The usually faulty and often downright awful arguments by the cultural Right (such as illogically linking acceptance of homosexuality to the questionable aspects of the Sexual Revolution generally and their implications for (namely) widespread abandonment of the nuclear family) would lend credence to the impression that the left has the upper hand intellectually.  (Note that on this and other issues the libertarians, who by default tend to end up on the "Right" side of the spectrum - especially nowadays - haven't usually been in the business of offering shitty arguments on this, cannabis, or other issues.)

(Note also that leading proponents of marriage equality include conservatives like Andrew Sullivan and Ted Olson.  What would really be nice is a well-publicized debate between Olson and Princeton's Robert George, but national intellectual bankruptcy seems to preclude interest in and calls for such.  No reasonable person respects the nincompoopery of the slippery-slope arguments from politicians like Santorum, after all.)

So far I've been pointing to what are broadly termed "cultural" and "personal freedoms" issues, not economic issues.  This ties into the next point:

(3) The placement of figures like Rawls and Keynes somewhere near the center-left of American opinion lends credence to the notion that there are still quality ideas on "the left" generally speaking, in the smeary ways many people often think of these things (my differentiation here is one of a continuum starting with the likes of Rawls on one end and the total commies on the other, with egalitarian commitments of varying strengths uniting them under the "left" umbrella).  But as with the lively Rawlsians vs. libertarians debates, there is a lively dialectic between Keynesians and more staunchly free-market positions (e.g., Hayek and Friedman, with Mises still regarded as more out on the "fringes" of free-market thought despite all his vastly learned/sage insights - a situation similar to that of Rand).  With the likes of Keynes and Rawls pushing sophisticated arguments for government interventions or a large public sector generally, further-left folks like Elizabeth Warren and Obama (who's definitely well to the left ideologically despite his more pragmatic-realpolitik presidency) feel more of a license to take this further with notions about the overwhelming role of state-provided infrastructure in individual success (for which see Krauthammer's rebuttal).

Points (1-3) may not individually explain how the left maintains such a degree of (real or perceived) cultural and political respectability today, but together they may explain quite a lot.  There may be other factors I can't think of right off.  The values-priorities that Haidt's research points to may also explain quite a lot.  Values are fundamental and prior to debates about whether this or that economic/fiscal policy is desirable; people's policy preferences are basically shaped by the values over and above whether they achieve some outcome (about which there are plenty of social-science disagreements, besides - measurement issues, replicability issues, causal understandings, etc.).  This would help explain why conservatives tend to oppose efforts at drug legalization irrespective of the awful outcomes: "do we want to send the wrong message (to young people)?"  (What if they applied this reasoning consistently across all policy issues?  Don't lefties say that tax cuts for the wealthy "send the message" that a fifth mansion for the wealthy is preferable to ringworm medication for the destitute, whatever the actual marginal propensity to consume at the high end?)  Much of political discourse comes down to signaling of virtues considered high-priority by one's favored group/party.

(There also, perceptions of value-priorities also come into play.  Lots of folks - left and right - seem to get a bunch of mileage out of caricaturing libertarians as being focused on only one moral value - individual liberty - and Haidt's categorizing of libertarians in these terms plays right into this perception.  Of course, libertarians are very minimalistic about the role of the state which severely constrains what they think political institutions ought to be doing to putatively achieve moral aims.  I don't think you'd have much difficulty getting a shit-ton of libertarians - if there even are that many - to sign on explicitly to the principle of subsidiarity which nearly everyone ought to know more about.  Anyway, caricaturing libertarians as being only freedom-focused just because their political priorities are so narrowly freedom-focused looks like a way for many non-libertarians to lazily avoid confronting the core libertarian 'self-ownership' thesis or discovering more about virtue-based libertarian thought, e.g., the Dougs or LeBar.)

Guess I might go smoke a bowl and see what else comes to mind?

[*] - Further differentiation: those I'll call the 'self-ownership' or hardcore rights-based libertarians on the one hand - Rand, Hospers and Nozick being leading examples - and the more consequences-oriented ones (Mises, Hayek, Friedman) on the other.  Tomasi seeks a synthesis between these two strains of libertarian thought as well as the broader synthesis.  Broadly speaking I like the idea of synthesis or dialectic, although my context (ahem) here is much more Sciabarra than Tomasi and hence probably more 'radical' in its libertarian sensibilities (within an 'Aristotelian/Randian-intellectualist' epistemological-ethical totality).

Big Govt Refucklicans vs. cannabis common sense

[Details to come; I just wanted to get that post title and images in as soon as I could.  Republicans qua Refucklicans selectively entrust (all of a sudden) and empower an insultingly paternalistic and always-increasingly bloated government bureaucracy to generate supposedly desirable outcomes; all of a sudden they rush toward Wickard-style federal overreach; how's that been working out for them? Should be fun lol ^_^ ]

"The Blue States are legalizing it and they're always wrong about everything. Also it's a gateway drug to opioid overdose, or something." -Scumbag GOP

A pretty smart and common sense guy, probably while saganized

At least one nice thing about Democrats

(My oft-repeated disclaimer for newbies about my political-polemical posts: People can be fine people in their non-political lives while being complete nitwits in politics.  Or vice versa.)

Unlike leftist nitwits like AOC who seems to know only about what was bad and nothing about what went right during the Reagan years - i.e., knowing only one side of a case, like she apparently does in regard to the workings of capitalism among other things - I make an effort to know both sides of a case before issuing a verdict (and short of having done that homework I refrain from issuing a verdict and admit to lack of relevant expertise).  By doing so, I open myself up to acknowledging where an opponent gets it right even if they get it wrong about (most) other things.

I am a staunch libertarian, which (probably for reasons largely shared by Rand) puts me more in alignment with Republican ideas/policies on the whole than Democrat ones, especially the Democrats after about 2010 when they made a marked shift to the left.  (See the "swing left" graph by Prof. Adam Bonica here.)  My basic view about government is that it's there to be a protector of liberty-rights and not to contravene that role by (e.g.) assuming the role of provider of goods funded by compulsory taxation.  This leads me to oppose the big-government fiscal agenda typically favored by Democrats.  I also tend to share an affinity for culturally "bourgeois" values espoused by conservatives.

These are only general tendencies.  But, as noted, given the shift of the Dems toward the far left, along with an intellectually infantile Dem/left shrillness about the Trump presidency, capitalism, and other topics, along with a hubris that leads them ever more to eschew dialogue with opponents, it makes it a lot easier for me to tend toward the GOP these days.  I'd much rather have a Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush, John Kasich or (even) Chris Christie (or even a Donald Trump!) in elected office than a Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or Kirsten Gillibrand.  (See here for one reason why I gladly refer to this crop of Democrats as Demon Rats.)

As a consequence of my libertarian principles, I advocate for the legalization of cannabis.

On this issue, I side with the Democrats over the Republicans.  It's an issue on which I think the Republicans in particular have gotten it dreadfully wrong for far too long now.  Recreational drug prohibition means a big-government program aimed at social improvement that has been a monumental (dare I say catastrophic?) failure, just as any so-described big government program could be predicted to be.  What's more, prohibition violates the basic "your life is own and not the state's to dispose of" libertarian political norm, and is immoral on that basis alone.  Even when it comes to the more addictive and harmful drugs (including even fentanyl, ffs), placing trust in the state to prevent these harmful and addictive substances from reaching the citizenry has proven a failure; there are almost surely any number of better ways to combat the problem here than supply-focused enforcement.

But with cannabis, it's really a no-brainer.  (I say "even" Chris Christie above, because on this issue he's been a complete dickhead.)

Democrat-majority states have been on the side of progress on this issue.  The Red States, or at least a good number of them, might never get around to legalizing it, much like a good number of them might never have gotten around to doing the right thing in legally recognizing same-sex unions.  Republicans seem to be trapped in an ideological rut on this issue (the ever-venerated Reagan being such a staunch drug warrior and whatnot).  Exacerbating this problem is a cognitive bias that assigns credence to almost invariably shoddy use of statistics to "establish" that cannabis leads to this or that social problem.  (See the commentary on the latest prominent example of anti-pot scaremongering.)  Perhaps the most idiotic rationale for prohibition commonly peddled by the prohibitionists is "drugs are bad for kids, mmkay" . . . and therefore adults shouldn't be allowed to consume them, either.  (The state thereby assumes the role of parent for all adults.  Great.)

This is not to say that Democrats have carried out legalization the way libertarians would.  In the People's Republic of California, the Dems seem to have decided to tax and regulate the shit out of the cannabis industry so much that black markets are still flourishing there.

And besides, libertarians have been in favor of cannabis legalization for as long as libertarians have been around (and the big-L Libertarian Party has been around nearly half a century now).  Why are Democrat presidential candidates only now getting around to doing the same?  What changed between then and now, exactly?  Why weren't they promoting doing the right thing, when it was unpopular?  Why did only their well-connected Hollywood-elite allies/supporters and the like get access to weed with impunity while poor minorities get victimized by drug-war policies?

Nonetheless, enough common sense has gotten through to Dems and Blue States, and not enough of it has gotten through to the GOP and Red States, on this particular issue.  And so, for simply exercising some common sense, the Dems deserve some credit, while the GOP deserves ridicule (both for selective lack of common sense and for being so two-faced about their views on failed big-government policies).

Now, how long does it have to take for both parties to come around to the superior libertarian option on all political issues?

A (p)review

So, today's the day.  As I announced a few months in advance, 4/20/2013 would be the day I go on strike unless some eminently reasonable conditions were met.  (I've made some revisions to them since then.)  I'll get to those in a moment, but first, consider a hypothetical:

Say that today, I wanted to "wake and bake" in the privacy of my abode, saganize my cognition, and set myself to the task of thinking about a Platonic-Aristotelian-Kantian-Hegelian-Nietzschean-Randian-Rawlsian-Nozickian-Chomskian "synthesis" and see what I could come up with so as to "go out with a bang" for my 4/20 blog posting . . . but, oh darn, I was out of cannabis and just couldn't get my hands on some all that readily.  And so no edutainment in that regard today.

Instead, some fucks, somewhere, without my consent, had decided to exercise physical force and power over my life to prevent me from engaging in such peaceful, productive activity, in violation of my not-specfically-enumerated natural rights (which are at the core of the "live and let live" ethos that grounds the best modern Lockean-liberal theories of government).

In the United States of America.  In the year 2013.

You might begin to see the problem here.

This is unacceptable.

If you were to poll Americans on what the Ninth Amendment of the Constitution said, a pitifully low percentage would know the answer . . . and that's how creeping statism became a fact of American political life.  I'm sure that the Framers would be most dismayed at this state of affairs.  Ignorance is the problem, and only education can be the solution.

My posting yesterday posed the question, "Is it 'later than we think'?" and went through a number of items that indicated that we may well be nearer the cultural and technological singularities than we think.  A fitting title for today's entry might well have been, "Is it earlier than we think?" - that is, there seems to be a large amount of evidence that we still have a long way to go before humanity achieves the state of enlightenment necessary to reach "maturity" as a species.  As I noted yesterday, humanity entered what might be termed an "adolescent" phase some 2,500ish years ago.  Some time in the not-too-distant-future, if the human race doesn't wipe itself out first, it can and will enter an "adult" phase.  (The so-called new atheists think this means an end to religion.  None of them seems to possess the intellectual prowess of a Plato, Aquinas, Hegel, or Whitehead.  Just sayin'.  Hell, Antony Flew owns them already; they've had no answer to him as of yet.  Quelle ignorance!)

That said, here are the nine eminently reasonable "no-brainer" conditions, in bare essentials, which I have set down in order for me to end the strike which I am starting at 4:20 today:

1. Cannabis becoming as legal as alcohol for all adults age 21 and over living in America.

2. Accountability for CIA acts of torture, sodomy and killing of detainees.

3. Marriage equality.  (At least this one appears to be close to a done deal.  Yay, one out of nine!)

4. Good-faith effort by America's elected representatives to broker a mideast peace deal in the spirit of Taba, which even both Dershowitz and Chomsky agree on.

5. A quality program implemented by educators for educating the nation's youth in the humanities in an age-appropriate fashion.

6. A move toward outlawing factory-farming and other cruel and inhumane practices toward animals.  (This alone would help to reduce net carbon emissions a shit-ton, not to mention improve diets.  A win-win-win!)

7. An overhaul of corporate-cultural norms that presently have the effect of dehumanizing and demoralizing stakeholders, which also has the effect of stunting productivity.  (In a perfective world, people would be much less dependent upon employment by others for their livelihoods.  In the meantime, ... .)

8. A serious move by political, business, and other leaders to get leading intellectuals (like this guy for instance, or this lady) much more involved in the presently-impoverished national dialogue.

9. A serious move by the leading ideas-merchants in academia and elsewhere to do a much better job of connecting with the concerns of ordinary folks (and this emphatically includes taking Ayn Rand more seriously than they are at present; the Ayn Rand Society can serve to provide many promising, uh, leads).

Being that this is 2013 already, it seems to me to be quite a shame that these haven't all happened already.  They are no-brainers.

For anyone who's been paying attention, item #1 is particularly galling considering that no one has any good arguments for keeping the status quo on drug policy.  There is a constant chorus by now that "the drug war is a massive failure," and yet the vast majority of congresscritters aren't doing jackshit to fix the problem.  How did we ever come to this state of affairs?  The only answer I can think of is: ignorance.  The congresscritters aren't doing jackshit because the people to whom they're supposed to be accountable aren't doing enough to light a fire under their asses.  Education is the only solution.

Here's a hint to good aspects of both Rand and Chomsky that can be synthesized: how the abuse of language, a dichotomy between territory and mental map, corrupts any dialogue.  If there's one key lesson I gleaned from Chomsky's Understanding Power, it's this one.  The muddling of language is caused by, and causes, the muddling of thought.  Abuses of power-relations are just one of the results.  Both the pioneer of linguistics and a leading proponent of a neo-Aristotelian, objective approach to concepts can agree on that.

I said in my original strike-announcement that my blog would "shut off" after today.  I'm not ready to do that just yet; at minimum I'll have a grace period, perhaps 90 days.  (What I am doing for sure is withholding, indefiitely, future mental products from public circulation.)  I think the probability is somewhere around 50/50 that there are roughly 420 pages worth of page-turner material in this here blog, and it would be kind of a shame to delete it immediately from public view, though I think it's only a preview of what could be to come.  As of now, though, it's arguably roughly 420 pages worth of page-turner material available for free, which is really about all I'm willing to just give out up to this point in time, without my stated conditions being met.  This does leave me with one monetizing option I may well use to help support my future work: making the existing contents of my blog available (perhaps in eBook form) only for paying customers, probably at $4.20 a shot.  Maybe it will be available only to members of an online Ultimate Gulch I might be setting up.  (Now taking applications; there's one entrant so far....) Would that be "cheating" on my "strike" commitment?  I don't think so, but I don't give too much of a shit about that; it's the product of my mind to do with as I please, and it's future production that non-Gulchers would be missing out on.

All this does raise a question: am I setting up some kind of Catch-22 situation?  That is to say, don't the conditions I've set forth require a fairly rapid progress in the direction of the cultural singularity, whereas publication of future products of my mind would supposedly speed up that very progress?  Hell, I think leaving that as an exercise to this blog's readers should make things a bit more interesting for all concerned.

Anyway, if a dedicated reader were to mentally integrate all my existing blog postings into a single unit, I'm roughly 100% confident that he or she would come away with the essentials necessary to grasp that perfectivism is the philosophy of the future, which is to say that Ayn Rand's ideas are the wave of the future, which is to say that America's intellectual status quo is unacceptable.  (And, as advanced students of Objectivism are well aware, it's all about method - integration - and only derivatively about individualism and capitalism which the cowardly and/or ignorant preservers of the status quo are so fearful of.)  My future mental products will only build upon the essentials set forth in this blog, which is to say, they should be pretty fucking awesome.  But a shit-ton of promising leads are already contained herein; all one has to do is pursue them, and to think.

I, for one, am optimistic about what is to come, whatever it may be and however it happens.  I think it'll end up being a lot of fun for a great many concerned.  As far as I can tell, my going on strike will be for the best when all is said and done.  If there's anything my perfectivist mindset has taught me, it's how seemingly unfortunate circumstances can be turned into a positive; I notice parallels in the martial arts tradition, when it comes to using an opponent's strength to one's advantage.  Sure, I set a goal some months back for today, and fell short.  But it's like Jordan said, you use that as an opportunity to improve and, ultimately, to succeed.

In connection with this blog posting's title: In briefest essentials, the past, present and future of true and correct ethical philosophy is contained right there in "Perfectivism: an Introduction."

And so, with that, I can't think of anything more of importance to add to what I've said already.  Catch y'all on the flip side?

(and obligatory musical accompaniment :-p)

ULTIMATE CLIFFHANGER: Will UP write his entire book on Perfectivism while stoned?

Problem, America? ;-)

Today's items: Hospers on Rand; Rand on IQ; drug policy

(Your task: mentally integrate, i.e., draw the connections between, these items.)

Item 1:

A real philosopher assesses Ayn Rand based on extensive first-hand interaction:

John Hospers: Conversations with Ayn Rand, Part 1.  Part 2.

Now, a portrait emerges of Rand that is . . . not so simple to sum up briefly.  ("It's complicated.")  On the one hand, Hospers speaks of her as having a wealth of insight ("life-changing") while at the same time being, um, difficult to explain many concepts in "academic-analytic philosophy" to.  It's most apparent that Rand's temperament and style of "doing philosophy" was at variance with those "in the mainstream."

So much the worse for the other, each might say.  Actually, how much does Rand differ from the "continental" tradition in this regard?  Rand was big on the whole meaning-of-life part of philosophy; she had a theory of aesthetics, for example, to which Hospers, an aesthetician par excellance (Exhibit A: see the Music section here), was quite receptive to.  In this regard, she was much more in line with the continental tradition of that time; the (academic) "mainstream" of American philosophy was grappling with its own problems, still in the process of recovering from positivism while at the same time doing hardly any grappling with Aristotle.

(Keep in mind that Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy," which urged a return to Aristotle to remedy the ills of modern moral philosophy, had come out at the same time as Atlas.  Besides, the name "Anscombe" was more likely to prompt associations with Wittgenstein at the time, thereby helping to nudge those paying attention to Anscombe off the Aristotelian scent.  Only ca. 1960 did a new wave of Aristotle literature - Randall; Veatch - begin to hit the scene, which had hardly given the "mainstream philosophers" of the period a chance to assess it within their own [ahem] context.)  Rand's discussions with Hospers also occurred right around the time that Peikoff was finishing up his Ph.D. in Philosophy (under NYU's Sidney Hook), and Peikoff in The Art of Thinking (1992 lecture course) recounts in lecture 1 how he grappled tortuously with shuffling back and forth between the "pragmatist" academic context and the neo-Aristotelian context he was getting via Rand.  (He describes this as a problem of "clashing contexts" and it ties in with the phenomenon of mental automatization.)  So this is the context of the period.  Looking back, and armed with all the relevant integrated-information, there were ways in which Rand was well ahead of her academic competition; for example, the essential thrust of her ethics, irrespective of the logic-chopping treatment her argument receives at the hands of academic critics, gets it as right as the most extensive academic treatment to date of her normative ethics shows it to be right.  This doesn't even get us to the subject of Randian methodology, which may contain her most revolutionary insights of all.  (The search results in this link are a bit of evidence that I'm way ahead of the curve on at least some crucial issues in philosophy.  How long before a critical mass of others catch up?  Months?  Years?  Decades?)  And we also have a forthcoming volume on Rand's epistemology, edited by another serious philosopher, which is sure to have the neo-Aristotelian take on the epistemological issues Hospers discusses in Part 2 of "Conversations.")

Anyway, to cut to the chase: How is it that the one "outsider" professional philosopher who had extensive interaction with Ayn Rand managed not to come away thinking of her as a hack, or a lightweight, or a pea-brain, or a narcissistic megalomaniac, or a cunt, or a hypocrite, or a childish imbecile, or a worshipper of murderers, or an opponent of empathy, or a cult-leader, or . . . (fill in alternet/thinkprogress/salon smear of the day here, approvingly linked to by Prof. Bozo at the University of Chicago while being cheered on by his nasty little crony-type intellectual thugs who somehow "educate" the young'uns, who in turn blindly spread the smears around, mob-rule-like, on reddiot.com - all of which exemplifies, needlessly-tragically, today's mainstream intellectual state).

Supplemental links re Hospers and Rand:

Binswanger on Rand's break with Hospers

The Maverick Philosopher with a slanted, not-very-wise take on the entire contents of Hospers's two-part article.  Seems that the essential, to him, was the second part, out of context from the first.  This may be "maverick" philosophizing, but it ain't no ultimate philosophizing that I ever heard of.

Item 2:

Rand on IQ.  First, a link.  Damn, would you look at the first result there?!  Anyway, it's the quote of the day to chew on:  Wait, hold up again.  Would you look at the fourth result there?!  Does Google in conjunction with adept blogging facilitate the integration of information into knowledge, or what?  Okay, the quote:

In response to the question posed at the 1967 Ford Hall Forum, "Could you write a revised edition of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology for people with an IQ of 110, or will it remain available [accessible? -UP] only to people with an IQ of 150?"

Rand responds: "I'd prefer that people raise their IQ from 110 to 150.  It can be done."

Gee, I wonder how?  Anyone have any promising, uh, leads?

Leads?  Yeah.  Let me just check with the boys down at the psych lab.

Item 3:

(R-rated language to follow.  Proceed at your own risk of being entertained.)

The coward-in-chief hides behind his drug czar.  This drug-policy situation has gotten completely insane.  You can quote me on that.  "Ultimate Philosopher, ultra-careful assessor of evidence, says U.S. drug policy situation is completely insane."  I'll say again what I said in a recent posting: There is no intellectually-credible case whatsoever even so much as on offer at this point in time for keeping drug policy the way it is.  This leaves only three possible explanations for why the status quo is at it is: (1) ignorance; (2) malice (including willful ignorance); (3) some combination of (1) and (2).  The coward-in-chief-who-hides-behind-his-drug-czar isn't ignorant (well, he does take pride in being ignorant of some things, the cocksucker), so that tells you about that entity's case.  That still leaves a bunch of other entities who are complicit in the drug-war insanity.  At least some elected House representatives have been coming to their senses with bills that should pass yesterday at the very latest.

Note the parallels between the state of the drug-war debate and the state of the marriage-equality debate.  One side totally wiping the floor with the other.  Actually, the parallel ends there: there's a basic minimum of a debate going on regarding marriage equality, happening in the courts; there's not even a debate going on about the need to radically dismantle the current drug policy.  It's one honest, well-informed side with all the supportable-by-reason ideas, up against a pro-status-quo monolith of ignorance and/or malice that has defaulted in the realm of ideas, with no arguments on offer at all.  There's no other explanation for this present status quo, there's no excuse for it, and Jefferson would be so disgusted at this outright insanity, as to fucking puke his guts out.

What about you, reader?  Are you, too, disgusted at this state of affairs enough to fucking puke your guts out?

(How, I wonder, did this situation come to exemplify, needlessly-tragically, today's mainstream intellectual state?  Whatever you do, Private Pyle, don't fail to integrate, that would break my fucking heart!  Oh that's right, Private Pyle, don't make any fucking effort to get to the top of the fucking obstacle.  If God would have wanted you up there he would have miracled your ass up there by now, wouldn't he?  Come on, Pyle, move it!  Up and over, up and over!  Are you quitting on me?  Well, are you?  Then quit, you slimy fucking walrus-looking piece of shit!  Get the fuck off of my obstacle!  Get the fuck down off of my obstacle!)

Also, as UP-blog-regulars know, the clock's ticking on that 4/20 thingy.

How does one declare "Checkmate, asshole," when the opponent has left the table, or never came to play at all?  How can one even say that it isn't worthy fucking adversaries we're up against, when no adversary has even shown up?  I declare for any and all with wisdom-loving ears to hear: This is fucking ridiculous!

A call to pro-freedom lawyers

Okayyyy....

The evidence and case for legalizing cannabis (marijuana, ganja, chronic, pot, weed, dank, bud) is at least as overwhelming as the case for marriage equality, which is soon to become the law of the land faster than any of us may even realize.  So what I am seeking is the services of a libertarian attorney in the mold of Thomas Jefferson and Lysander Spooner to bring suit against the United States Department of Justice (or suitable defendant-party) on Ninth Amendment and/or other grounds, to end cannabis prohibition.  (I think that if the DOJ wants to maintain any shred of intellectual and legal credibility, it would decide not to defend cannabis-prohibition laws just as it declined to defend DOMA.)  I don't know all the legal ins and outs and whys and wherefores of how to make this happen most expeditiously, but the basic philosophical case lies right there in the Lockean "live-and-let-live" principle underlying our natural, inalienable individual rights.  The empirical cognitive benefits of cannabis are discussed in Carl Sagan's famous essay written some 40 years ago, and attested to by countless others.  This should be a no-brainer.  I would appreciate any promising, uh, leads in this area; thanks in advance!

EDIT: Obligatory addendum: I want a fucking lawyer, man.  Bill Kunstler orrrr Ron Kuby.

4/20/2013: Time for Plan B

(The Ultimate Cliff - has a nice ring to it, dunnit?)

Aw, fuck it.  Seeing as I'm getting nothing as of yet from the President or his carpet-pissing goons in response to my open violation and defiance of this country's insane drug laws ("The little prick is stonewalling me"), and seeing as I can exercise the "virtue of patience" for only so long given the needlessly fucking ridiculous state of things, I'm moving forward with a new deal, take it or leave it (and pray I don't alter the deal any further).

Here's what's gonna happen:

On 4/20/2013 I go on strike.  This blog shuts off indefinitely.  The river of gold ceases to flow.  Unless . . . the following demands are met:

(1) That cannabis be legalized for all adults 21 and over in the United States, accompanied by a sensible cannabis-education program outlining the benefits and hazards of cannabis use and discouraging its use among still-cognitively-developing minors (with fact-informed parental supervision and discretion for its use, etc. etc. etc.).  Anything short of this will make the Baby Sagan cry.

(2) On the condition that demand 1 isn't met by April 1: That all government tax forms save for filing extension forms are removed from all government buildings, websites, etc.  I don't care if the government itself does this or a band of guerilla activists does so; I really just don't give a shit.

(3) That a credible 'Occupy 4/20' movement is organized if the first two demands are not met.  'Occupy' gathering places shall smell to high heaven either of fresh dank bud in the possession of all those attending (thereby violating applicable federal and state laws en masse and overwhelming enforcement resources), or of billowing clouds from the smoked product.  I really don't give a shit which it smells like, though the latter would be really cool.  Legendary toker Bob Marley said to stand up for your rights; well, fucking do it, then!

(4) A seriously credible process of accountability for CIA acts of torture is underway.

(5) "If you will it, it is no dream": Serious and credible efforts by our government to encourage an endgame for the mideast peace process in the spirit of the Taba Summit.  The rest of us are fucking sick and tired of hearing about this pointless craziness on the news.  If this is too unacceptable for the right-wing fundamentalists here or over there, tough shit; it's time they got reasonable along with everyone else.  The only "end times" that are a'coming are the cultural and technological singularities, so deal with it, assholes.

(6) A serious and credible plan in place for instituting age-appropriate neo-Aristotelian and neo-Enlightenment philosophy curricula at all levels K-12 and beyond in our public schools beginning fall semester 2013, including Peikoff-lecture-course-aided study of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism.  It's fucking ridiculous that this isn't happening already, seeing as how Ayn Rand is becoming a significant part of the national discourse (the power of ideas, just as she said) and yet the public is mind-boggingly ignorant (no thanks to key figures in the Philosophy Profession) of what Rand and Objectivism are all about.  Unless or until people realize what caliber of heroic intellectual efficacy it takes to compose something like "This is John Galt Speaking," our work is not done here.  (That would take actually reading and comprehending the goddamn thing rather than skipping over it like our President among many others did.)  There are plenty of promising, uh, leads toward such a curriculum in this blog, on the sidebar, and in my Blogger profile.

Such a curriculum shall be aimed at the primary task of critical thinking and lifelong, independent learning with the explicit emphasis on maximally actualizing individuals' intellectual potentialities.  The cultural and technological progress that would ensue from such an enhancement of the human ethos would be fucking mind-blowing.  The school environments for the students (remember all the downsides of the K-12 experience? the bullying? the cliques? the popularity contests at the expense of truth and justice? etc.) would also dramatically improve almost overnight.

Also, there should be a solid program of economic education in place in the very near future so that people can understand the dynamics of globalization, and how we have to adapt and be resilient in the face of such rather than be stagnant and complacent.  People may then understand why the jobs got off-shored (to more needy peoples, BTW) and seemingly "won't be coming back," while the corporations and rich U.S. residents continue more or less on their pre-1973 path.  That would help to clear up a lot of misunderstandings and confusions (no thanks to Marxist idiots) about the nature and evolution of capitalism in the present age, and get the Occupy crowd focused more on things like self-empowerment rather than (domestic) wealth-redistribution.  You'd think that, 237 years after Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, people would at long last be well-versed in thinking like an economist (or businessman!), but obviously there is work to be done.

(7) Serious and credible discussions in place for establishing world peace and using nuclear technology only for peaceful purposes.  Since Iran is known to lie to infidels and sponsor terrorism it cannot be trusted to go forward with its enrichment program without full no-bullshit access and supervision by qualified nuclear inspectors. The world should be fully behind the West's decisions on how to make this access and supervision happen, including a military option to target suspected weapons facilities for termination.

All plain common sense so far, ain't it?  Let's continue in that vein:

(8) The following individuals are offered full tenured Professorships in Philosophy at prestigious institutions of higher learning: Brad Aisa, Robert H. Bass, Miles Benham, Roger Bissell, Harry Binswanger, Chris Cathcart, Allan Gotthelf, R. Kevin Hill, Diana Hsieh, James S. Klein, Richard Lawrence, Roderick T. Long, Robert and Amy Nasir, David Rych, Leonard Peikoff, Gregory Salmieri, William Stearns, Joseph Tucker, Don Watkins, and (last but not least) rateyourmusic's UlyssesRex (a true sage, he), and any others of my choosing as and when they come to mind.  I personally vouch ("my highest possible recommendation") for their ability to communicate philosophical ideas and ideals effectively to students of philosophy.  (Some of them may need some polishing but they're pretty much already there and are very fast learners.)  Consider this an Ultimate Letter of Recommendation.  What's more, these individuals are all very well-versed in Rand and Rand-interpretation, and that will prove to be hugely important in the months and years to come.  The politics involved in getting tenured in philosophy these days is fucking ridiculous and clearly biased against non-left-liberals.

(9) A full and unequivocal mea culpa from Brian Leiter and various and sundry other academic "philosophers" for their outrageous and unjust treatment of Ayn Rand and Rand-scholars over the years.  Call this Accountability for Evasion.

(10) A serious and credible national discussion well underway to eliminate manifestly inhumane factory-farming practices for raising food animals.  Rights under a Lockean interpretation do not license humans to abuse other creatures in such a fashion; moreover, humans have a right to intervene on behalf of animals' welfare when others are abusing them.  Wholesome and organic - the "classic" way - of raising food animals may still be permitted though that should most definitely be on the table for discussion as well.

(11) Serious and credible proactive action plans on the part of corporate entities for improving the work environment and morale of employees.  (I do believe that in an eminently realistically achievable neo-Aristotelian utopia people will learn all about self-empowerment so that they don't have to depend on corporations for a job.)  The prevailing politics of backstabbing, lackeying, and rewarded-mediocrity in corporations should be fully and explicitly repudiated, in favor of honesty, justice, rewarded-ability, etc.

(12) That the ideas of public intellectuals such as the legendary Noam Chomsky are front-and-center in the national discussion rather than (mind-boggingly) relegated to the periphery in favor of mediots like Hannity.  Fox should at least offer Chomsky a one-hour prime-time slot in place of Hannity; its intellectual credibility would skyrocket overnight.  Or maybe MSNBC would sweep in first....

(13) Marriage equality.

I might think up more demands as time goes on, but I think you get the basic picture here.

If America leads and sets the examples in all these areas, I think the rest of the world will be sure to follow.

We have over three months - exactly three months from the president's second Inauguration Day - to set all this in motion; I think that should be plenty of time for people to get their shit together on such no-brainer issues.  I've grown weary of trying to spread these ideas all on my own, so some of you fine readers will have to do your part as well, since I presume you would love to see self- and world-improvement also.

I'll finish for now with this:

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/benevolent_universe_premise.html

Best premises! :-)

In the queue: "Cannabis and cognition"

:-D ^_^

Teaser: Imagine the School of Athens painting, only all of 'em are baked.

heeee

This is your Captain speaking: This is where it gets really mind-blowing, folks.  Fasten your cognitive seatbelts.

So, uh, welcome to the party.   Where ya been all this time?  :-D

Now let's make The Ultimate Cliff. :-D

Am I wrong?

Am I wrong?

ALERT: I am presently in violation of federal law :-PNeener neener neeeeener!

[UPDATED below.]

I have nice stinky cannabis in my posession (and am also currently under the influence of it, for what that's worth). I believe this is in violation of federal law pertaining to Schedule-something controlled substances.  I am, however, standing my ground on the basis of my Ninth Amendment rights (although not exclusively said enumerated right, although it would suffice in itself per the founding intentions of Jefferson and Paine, and classic Aristotelian common sense).  Someone from the feds, please come detain me, serve me papers, or what have you (Lebowski reference there, you federal FUCKS!).  So come get me.  Show me what ya got.  I fucking dare ya.  I fucking double dog dare you.  I fucking TRIPLE DOG DARE YOU!)  I've got a whole ocean of movie quotes to throw at you, too.  Semantic hyper-priming or some shit.  And if you enforce the current monumentally stupid/wasteful/etc.etc.etc.etc. federal drug laws relating to this schedule-fuckyou controlled substance, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.  (Another movie reference you philistine fucks might actually get this time.)  Dear President Obama, this is an open letter.  Come get me, or send your goons in your stead.  Ninth Amendment, motherfucker.

Shouldn't this shit be legal, like, right NOW?  Why sit around on our (well, your) lazy stoned asses waiting for 4/20 of this year?  That's like a whole three months away and my stash is running out. *reddit glare*

Also, on that semantically-related subject, reddit/r/philosophy sucks.  Details to follow....  I am giving /r/philosophy one more chance to exercise some intellectual fortitude and prudence, lest they be smashed like an ignobly vicious pancake under the unstoppable neo-Aristotelian steamroller presently in its infancy.  Well, nope.  Fuck 'em, then.  I await the outcome of all this with giddy anticipation! :-)

P.S. Also, same-sex marriage marriage equality, and a two-state solution in the spirit of Taba.  This shit should be done, like, yesterday.  [EDIT: Also, accountability for the CIA torture and sodomy.  I would think at least the right-wing Christianist Repugs would care about sodomy being conducted by agents of their government?  I thought they wanted a government based on Scriptures?  Hmmm, am I the asshole here?  No, I'm not wrong, I'm just an asshole.]  Now get to it, assholes, chop-chop!

P.P.S. I can tell already this is going to be a perfectively fun year. :-)

P.P.S. Obama you gonna be my nigga or are we gonna have problems?  Still waiting for those mechanized goons to come on by as I type this.  Better not be while I'm sleeping, though, or we gonna have problems.  Look at the spectacle of this, Yours Truly making a mockery of our otherwise-fine nation's appallingly fascistic drug laws, and what can you really do about it in the end, when you really think about it?  Jack shit, that's what. :-P  So you just send those goons on over any time I'm awake and at my convenience and maybe I'll get 'em high and they'll put those hands in the air and keep 'em high just like Yeezy prophesized and which some fucks in authority are all ultra-hypocritical not to mention all Nazi/Hitlery about.  (Say what you will, though, about the tenets of National Socialism; at least it's an ethos.  Let's also not forget about the fucking marmot.)

I forgot what else I was gonna say.  For now.

(Oh yeah, I was gonna say, the goons should have no problems finding me, just push that Patriot Act button of yours next to that red one and find out all about me, as seems to be the (sickeningly pathological) fashion in politics these days; just ask Good Guy Glenn Greenwald and he'll fill you in on all the details of your sick, sick act if you don't know all about it already.  NDAA?  You think for one split fucking second that you'd have secured the '08 Dem nomination pulling that kind of shit, motherfucker?  YGBFKM!  Andrew Sullivan doesn't seem to mind all that much, though; go read him for aid and comfort.  Hillary's gotta be hopping mad about all that Alinskyite Machiavellianism paying off for you, though, don't you think?  I was gonna throw out another nugget of verbal gold but it might be wasted on you so I'll just keep it for myself for now, as I have the natural right to do because you fucks don't own me.  So there.  Checkmate, asshole. :-D )

Anyone else enjoying the ride yet? :-)

You can't refute, etc. etc. etc. ad side-splittingam

Well, my mind's blown.  Amen, and hallelujah!  Holy shit!  Where's the Tylenol Marinol?

(Well?  Where is it?  I want it right away.  You really should buy me a shitload of it or I might go on strike or some shit.  As soon as you get this memo, hop to it and thanks for choosing Ultimate for your philosophical enjoyment.  [That's used material already over there on some reddit sub; you're well behind the curve already!  Also, "Peripatetic Pothead" is used material over in /r/StonerPhilosophy but I might re-use it, a lot.  And you're gonna take it, and like it.]  To quote from another of my reddit comments: "Now just relax and let the neo-Aristotelian perfectivist Cultural Singularity logically engulf you from all directions." [slight edit])

UPDATE: President to ACLU and media (and the American People) regarding their FOIA requests to the Administration to provide any documentary support for its unaccountable, extrajudicial program of targeted assassinations: "Bite me!"  This isn't a worthy fucking adversary.  Jefferson, now there was a worthy fucking adversary.  He'd philosophize circles around this sorry excuse for a political leader, too.

Can you even fucking believe how surreal this situation would look to TJ?  Read that again: judicially-unaccountable targeted assassination of American citizens.  WTF country is this anymore?  Do I have to pinch myself or is our political system really that dysfunctional and dystopian?  No wonder the people don't trust the fucks in D.C. to solve the nation's problems.

One of the most disgusting aspects of this story has to do with the hypocritical sacks of shit known as the Democratic machine.  Where the fuck is Olbermann foaming at the mouth like he did at W?  Where are the political operatives and their networks of soulless hacks within the Dem Party when it comes to a President asserting this sort of executive power and telling the ACLU to piss off?  How do these fucking schmucks look at themselves in the mirror?  And why the fuck does Good Guy Glenn have a national audience - certainly much larger than mine at this point - and still there's this inertia, this endless parade of cowards, weaklings, bums and fools who turn a blind eye to Good Guy Glenn's spot-on-accurate (perfectively accurate?) assessments of this thoroughly scandalous and shameful situation.  When they're not going out of their way to misconstrue everything Good Guy Glenn writes, that is....

Mr. President, if you or your underlings are reading this (as you damn well should be if your intelligence-gathering skills are worth a goddamn - and we can't even rely on that anymore): you are conducting yourself like a slimy little pragmatistic piece of shit with no genuine leadership skills whatsoever.  It's amazing that even Sullivan puts up with this insult to everyone's intelligence on a daily basis, it's so brazen and unprincipled.  If you had any courage and conviction at all, you'd walk right into the office of Noam Chomsky before he passes from the scene, and explain yourself in the face of the most effective bullshit-detectors around.  Jefferson would be conversant with Chomsky, after all, being that he was an actual intellectual and not a sorry-ass pretender to such a distinction, you FUCK!

Go on, now, git.  Go get on your knees and kiss Noam's ass and say you're sorry if you want any tiny shred of credibility as leader.  You're just fucking lucky Mr. Moneybags run such a shitty campaign, because the only thing you had on offer was, "Well, at least I'm not this out-of-touch douche-bag over here."  Just as long as you get that 50%+1 of the vote and don't fuck up too badly (e.g., "You didn't build that").  No wonder the business community hates your fucking guts.  If your party-faithful knob-polishers have any bit of integrity left, they'll come around to hating your fucking guts, too.  That's where spineless, intellectually-vacuous pragmatism gets you, Mr. Thompson, you intellectually-clueless and ineffective captain of a sinking national ship!  Now, git.  And send those fucking goons over ASAP (at my convenience, etc.) so we can settle this weed shit once and for all.

"Oh, look at me, I read Rand when I was a teenager and feeling misunderstood, but like all people of my pedigree I grew out of that."  Ya fucking idiot.  How is it that a Harvard law grad and President of the Harvard Law Review manages to suck such a big fat dick in the reading comprehension department, when it's Ayn Rand that is being read, I wonder?

And will this fuck-up ever so much as even raise the issue of that $70 trillion Medicare trust-fund shortfall coming due?  I don't think he has the faintest clue how to address it, certainly not without a massive injection of neo-Aristotelian philosophy into the American mainstream.   This shit's financially unsustainable in a world of economic globalization and job-drain, etc., and these fucks inside the Beltway wouldn't dare admit it for fear of upsetting an economically-ignorant (and not just economically ignorant!) constituency.  Rather than fix the ignorance-problem via neo-Aristotelian cultural infusion, they'd rather play up to the ignorance for short-term partisan advantage.  Same ol' shit just like in Socrates's day, but goddamn, it's 2,400 years later already; isn't it long past time we all got with the program and took a step forward?  JFC!

(Hey, I'm just getting warmed up! :-D )

The Jerkoff-in-Chief

(and his intellectual enablers)

The stated policy of the current President on "marijuana" (cannabis) legalization can be found here.  If you want an Official Government line that uses every lawyerly (actually, outright dishonest) weasel-worded tactic available to justify the unjustifiable, it can be found there.  (The Catch-22 type of argumentation is the best part! :-)  At this point in history, a point-by-point refutation of this garbage would be kind of pointless seeing as nobody outside the beltway with a lick of common sense buys into this horseshit - certainly not as sufficient grounds to deny consenting adults their nature/God-given rights to toke up seeing as it's they as individuals (and certainly not the fuckers in D.C.) who are in the best position to decide for themselves whether cannabis use is for them.  See?  Common sense.  (The point-by-point refutations have already been done hundreds if not thousands of times already, so I won't waste my precious time reiterating them all when it's the reader's responsibility to be aware of the myriad refutations available by now.)  The President's point-by-point excuse for justifying a continued War on Weed flies right in the face of common sense by obfuscating the real issue, which is freedom, goddammit.

Now, what makes this even more infuriating is the current President's pathetic attempt to Please Everyone as usual.  (Worked out really nicely for his "look forward, not backward" approach to accountability for this government's acts of torture, hasn't it?  [Read: no accountability.])  This is his standard tactic of Leading from Behind because he doesn't have the nuts to take a clear stand at this time so that his positions and policies can be pummeled into the ground.  He has (apparently) adopted a "wait and see" approach to the new Washington and Colorado state laws aiming to end the insanity.  Well, that's only a Jerkoff move; is he going to enforce the "marijuana" policy stated on his website, or not?  Are we in some kind of postmodernist legal limbo, or what?  What the fuck is going on here, and what the fuck does the President/Jerkoff intend to do?  If he's got the nuts, why doesn't he stick to his federal enforcement powers in adherence to his oath of office, rather than send mixed signals like this?

This is a political maneuver in which the Jerkoff is trying to have it both A and not-A at the same time and in the same respect.  Legally, he's still within his ostensible constitutional authority to enforce the ridiculously insane federal drug laws.  (The term "ostensible" triggered in my mind an association with Orson Welles's adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Trial, where the court painter Titarelli (sp?) explains to Joseph K. in classic Trial fashion how an acquittal from the unknown charges leveled against him would make him only "ostensibly free," as he could come home only to be arrested and processed all over again.)  Politically, his game-playing - the result of which is that we don't really know at this time what policy he intends to enforce - has succeeded so far in distracting the public from his officially-stated policy.  Looks like a state of A-and-not-A jerkoff limbo to this here philosopher if there ever was such a thing; how about for you, reader?

What this President hasn't done, is to do the courageous thing, i.e., what a President Jefferson would have done, and that's to speak out clearly against the madness that is the drug war, and propose serious revisions if not downright legalization (for cannabis, at the very least).  That's what common sense and backbone would dictate.  Instead, we have a "leader" more in the mold of a Mr. Thompson, the Head of State in Atlas Shrugged: a pathological pragmatist engulfed in a "Heraclitean Flux" of Non-Principle.  The President pulled this same shit with his transparently dishonest "evolving views on same-sex marriage" shtick, when he could have nutted up like a real leader and stood up all along for what he knew to be right and just.  (Miss Rand's comment on the character of Mr. Thompson as described here is precious.)  Meanwhile, intellectually-deficient but influential pundits such as our fellow blogger Andrew Sullivan are reduced to groveling before the President, entreating him to "please not use your ostensibly-duly-established constitutional powers to interfere with States' Rights, and follow reason instead," or some such A-and-not-A excuse for an argument that hardly even merit the status of a fallback.  Do recall that this very same Andrew Sullivan said not more than two weeks ago that, quote, "the public has every right to legislate morals," unquote.  (That's why, apparently, he thinks cannabis policy is a matter for States' Rights rather than individual, Ninth-Amendment-style rights.)  Do keep in mind that the federal government's executive branch has the power to enforce laws enacted by Congress, to crack down on any and all pot whether it's legal under a given state's laws or not.  Is the federal government going to be treating citizens of the different states differently just because majorities in some states enacted legalization initiatives?  We just don't know right now.

Sullivan's weary and ineffectual last appeal for the President not to enforce the federal drug laws amounts to nothing more than, quote, "...if they [i.e., the current Administration] decide that opposing a near majority of Americans in continuing to prosecute the drug war on marijuana, even when the core of their own supporters want an end to Prohibition, and even when that Prohibition makes no sense ... then we will give them hell."  Say what?  You mean, the American people aren't giving them hell already?  What makes anyone think that continuing the status quo at the federal level will change anything?  Then again, maybe it would be some sort of last straw for the People.  How do we know at this point?

You begin to see the problem when objectivity and identity are replaced in the public discourse by ambiguity, obfuscation, limbo, flux and short, non-integrative attention spans.  Where are the Professional Philosophers in all this?  Why is the task of pleading before the President in the mainstream media left to some intellectually-muddled blogger who gives away the case in the very act of presenting it?

Had enough yet?  I haven't.  (This is Philosophical Boot Camp and I'm the senior drill instructor; we haven't had enough until I say we've had enough.)  In his groveling appeal to the President, Sullivan writes that "the federal War on Marijuana is racist in its enforcement."  Certainly it is de facto and substantively if not procedurally racist in its enforcement, one of the eminently sensible reasons to end this War.  One might think that this President would be responsive to this, or that he should be given his race.  (Meanwhile, Sullivan quotes another author, Pete Guither, who makes the sensible matter-of-fact observation that the President appears to have floated a "blatant political trial balloon using the New York Times."  See?  Leadership.)  Anyway, that the Drug War is de facto racist is one of the several matters of fact that Sullivan gets right, and proud we are of all of him for that, but in missing the real point and target, he essentially gives away the case to the goddamned statists.  To wit:

Let's have this debate openly and honestly. Let the government prove that marijuana is as dangerous as heroin and should be treated as such. The very process will reveal the anachronism of the provision itself and the racial and cultural panic that created it. The very discussion will point to an inevitable, scientific conclusion that the current federal policy is based on nothing. 

So do nothing, Mr president, with respect to these states and their legitimate decisions. Set the DEA's priorities so that this trivial, medically useful, pleasure is not in any way a priority for law enforcement. Let the states figure this out, as they are on marriage equality. 

Lead from behind. An entire generation is ahead of you.

Yes, the mainstream national discourse has fallen just this low, given oh-so-much intellectual bankruptcy as its background context.  (Isn't this what Miss Rand would say about the present situation were she around now?  Something tells me that were she around now and commanding national attention as she did in her prime, things would be getting shaken up a lot more.  So I can only do my best to emulate her style of cultural and political commentary in my own unique way.)  We have Andrew Sullivan, the nation's leading political blogger, asking the President to "lead from behind" and "do nothing" even though the White House's official statement of drug policy indicates that it doesn't accept that "doing nothing" is the right thing to be doing.  (To reiterate: we're getting mixed signals on this from the White House and its political trial balloons.)  In addition, Sullivan didn't waste an opportunity to leave the matter of marriage equality up to the states rather than up to sound interpretation of the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments.

With "friends of freedom" like this, who needs enemies?  If this is the best critical voice out there in Mainstream Public Opinion today, this President needn't worry about truly serious challenges to his doings.  (Actually, the best critical voices in that context would be Greenwald and Chomsky, but as long as the Public remains largely ignorant of what these two are saying, the President still needn't worry.  My point is, even if/though the public isn't largely ignorant of Sullivan, the President needn't have much to worry about in the way of intellectually serious and credible opposition.  After all, the public has "every right" to legislate morals 'n' all that, and decent and intelligent Catholics and others can find only "puerile cruelty" in the works of Ayn Rand.  The President himself, in typically un-Jefferson-like, philosophically-vacant fashion, doesn't understand jackshit about Rand, either, so the circle of ignorance [EDIT: or, how about . . . epistemic closure?  Booyah, score one for the UP!] is complete.)  And as long as the public remains largely ignorant of philosophy - thanks in part to the failure of the Professional Philosophers to serve as the guardians and integrators of human knowledge - we will continue to get lousy, non-identity, Orwellian "leadership" like this.

This feels like shooting fish in a barrel, a task for which Perfectivism seems particularly well-suited, I'll point out.  (Praise due to Ayn Rand for establishing precedent in this area with her Objectivism.)  So you're welcome, or something.

Merry Fucking Christmas.

P.S. I've come to the realization that, his having put several decades of deeply-Rand-influenced thought into the subject, Leonard Peikoff is (in a just world) our current leading authority on the philosophy of history, his The DIM Hypothesis (2012) being the culmination of his investigations.  (Note that I say philosophy of history, not history of philosophy.  In the latter department, Peikoff suffers from many of the very same problems Rand had.  His latest statements about Kant in The DIM Hypothesis bear no resemblance to recent Kant scholarship, such as Korsgaard's.  You might as well have jerkoff academic "philosophy" bloggers commenting on Ayn Rand in complete obliviousness to, say, Peikoff's interpretive work, and get precisely the same embarrassing effect.  You have to have the analytical skills - as Aristotle did - to separate out the wheat from the chaff in Peikoff and Rand's expositions, or you're going to fail miserably at getting their essential core message, something about focus vs. evasion and the role of the mind in human existence [EDIT: and the vital importance of mental integration], I believe.)  Few people alive are as keenly aware as Peikoff is, of the central role of integration (or lack thereof, or misapplication thereof) in the course of human life and history.  His latest work requires serious attention from philosophers of history, if any (besides Peikoff and those on his wavelength) are even around today.  I mean, if I were asked where serious philosophy of history is being done these days, the only name that pops into mind is Peikoff's - and there's no good reason to think anyone has put in nearly the kind and level of analysis that he has put in over some 60 years of thought and study, half of them under the tutelage of a fucking grandmaster of integration.  The Professional Philosophers ignore Peikoff's work in this area (as well as his two books on Objectivism now in publication) at their own peril.  Arguably, they've done so for so long as it is that a Point of No Return has been passed, probably in the last decade or so.  They can ignore the well-researched Rand scholarship for only so long before their intellectual credibility begins swirling around toward the bottom of the shitter.  Tara Smith's 2006 book was the final litmus test of what these so-called philosophers are really made of, and of whether they could make themselves useful to the public discourse for a change; many of them failed that test miserably.  So fuck 'em.  Let their departmental funding get cut and market principles encroach further into their insulated bubble of security, and let them whine incessantly about capitalism in their blogs.  The whiners had their final opportunity in 2006 to close the massive gap between themselves and the Real World (where Ayn Rand matters - a lot), and they blew it big-time; the more ignoble bastards among them have resorted instead to vicious, savage, smears pertaining to Rand's youthful (and irrelevant, and not-admiring) comments about a serial killer, and other such intellectually-reckless or negligent tactics for which their pathological groupie-colleague-enablers hold them not at all accountable.  To see these fucks get their comeuppance - it's not a matter of if, but when - will be a particular pleasure of mine to behold.  So the current situation is that we have this national discourse where Rand looms as a major presence and influence on people's ideas, and instead of participating in that national dialogue on a level field of play the Professional Philosophers gratuitously dropped the ball and retreated ever-further into their Ivory Towers.  ("Cowards!  Weaklings!  Bums!")  So, again, until they get their act together: Fuck 'em.  In the meantime, I'll be reading DIM, and integrating, of course.

P.P.S. Sign of a/the verbal river of gold to come?  Merry Fucking Christmas. :-)

Human rights court: CIA 'tortured, sodomized' terror suspect. Also: 4/20/2013, a Cannabis Cliff?

The CIA torture-'n'-sodomizing news item.

In a society where words and ideas get twisted in Orwellian ways, the term "terror suspect" is equated in the mind of the average sheep/boob with "terrorist."  What else could explain how the American People rationalize or plainly ignore morally outrageous actions committed by their own government?  There's a cognitive bias - I forget what it's called right off-hand - in which people will condone actions by their in-group which they condemn when committed by the out-group.  The psychologists apparently have a tendency to reduce massive cognitive deficits such as this to "cognitive bias," though as a philosopher and moralist I leave open the very real possibility that this can be reduced to willful evasion or malice in many instances.  Some of the more vile right-wing nationalist types will chant "American exceptionalism" and "God bless America!" while all this goes on; a God-blessed America wouldn't dare torture, now, would it?  Hence the (willful?) cognitive blinders when the evidence pops up and stares them right in the face.  Many others would rather just not be inconvenienced with facing up to this reality and doing something about it.

However you cut it, it's fucking disgusting.  What would Jefferson think?

On a related note, Greenwald breaks down the new film directed by Katheryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) about the CIA's (Orwellian obfuscation coming) Enhanced Interrogation Program.  What an inconvenient time for this human rights court to issue its ruling!  The fucks in Washington are thinking, "Okay, how do we go into damage control?" and not "How do we hold our leaders and officials accountable for their acts of torture?"  That's just how fucks in Washington think these days.

Meanwhile, the fucks in Congress keep cannabis illegal and DOMA the law of the land, for no good reason whatsoever in both instances.  We've got crazy ignorant fucks from a gerrymandered majority (of course, the honest and common sense thing to do about drawing up congressional districts would be to assign that responsibility to an independent entity) running the House science committee.  We've got yet another stupid "fiscal cliff" coming in good part because the Republicans are being dishonest fucks about the economic effects of their preferred tax policies, and refuse to take a hint from the fact that voters rejected the plutocrats' open and unabashed efforts to buy the presidency outright.  (Can you just imagine how fucks like Hannity and the rest of the talking heads at the official propaganda outlet of the GOP would react if Dems suppressed a study like that?)  Isn't it high time the fucks were run out of town, or something?  Who the fuck keeps electing these fucks, anyway?

Reader, what do you think?  What does your conscience tell you ought to be done?

Speaking of political cliffs, should 4/20/2013 be designated as the Cannabis Cliff, I wonder?  The scenario churning in my mind for a while now has involved massive crowd of stoners showing up at all the major monuments in D.C., paying tribute to the real patriots who founded this nation, and lighting up en masse.  Wouldn't fucking matter whether the rascals in Congress got around to doing the sensible thing by then, or not.  It would just be a deadline playing upon the Cliff theme - a favorite in D.C., as we know too well - and then, on 4/20, no matter what, a shit-ton of cannabis goes up in smoke right across the street from the rascals.  Maybe the cool political leaders would join their fellow patriots out on the smoking areas.  (An alternative scenario is playing upon that same Cliff theme by setting that as the legalization deadline and then let the political brinksmanship ensue; the threat to light up en masse would be the pro-freedom side's bargaining chip in that case.  But why not light up even if it's legalized, in celebration?  Yet another alternative scenario - if this idea cannot be implemented in that time - is for various people around the country to smoke out in front of their local federal courthouses and turn it into a legal spectacle in which the outrageous drug laws are challenged on Ninth Amendment grounds.  Then the drug laws can be unequivocally exposed as the travesty that they are in the full light and court of public opinion.)  Can you just imagine the glorious spectacle of a massive billowing cloud of fragrant, aromatic dank smoke engulfing the Washington Monument?  4/20/2013 is a weekend day, by the way.  And it could be observed and celebrated as a national holiday every 4/20 weekend thereafter (perhaps as an adults-only event since a sound legalization policy would involve a responsible-cannabis-use educational program; yes, one day out of 365 the kiddies wouldn't get to access the monuments but they would learn an unbelievably valuable lesson in freedom and citizen action, and they could always plan around that day; perhaps even better yet: leave it up to the parents whether to bring their kids along?).  National Dank Day it could be called.  Free fucking country and all that.  Now the question is whether Jon Stewart, the Hollywood Crowd, true 'tea party' patriots, and sympathetic supporters could get on board with arranging this very thing to happen.  The cynical cable news networks could make a huge theatrical production out of it, don't you think?  I think the scenario would be fucking AWESOME.  Anyway, just throwing some ideas out there for the time being.  Maybe the good guys in the game of 4/20 chicken could throw in other eminently reasonable demands, like having CIA torturers and sodomizers, and their enablers, actually being held accountable for their actions.  Nice idea regardless, innit?

(Obviously I have way too much time on my hands sitting around and thinking up shit like this.  The availability of trees doesn't help any, either.)

Scalia vs. principles of liberty

UPDATED below.

I was going to title this blog entry "Scalia vs. liberty," but I suppose he sometimes - incidentally - comes out in favor of liberty.  But the issue here is principle: is Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia a principled advocate of liberty?

No, he is not.

[EDIT: On second thought, the best headline for this entry might very well be "Scalia vs. rights."  Let's each of us chew on that one.]

This item came to my attention today.  Rush Limbaugh is on record for saying for saying, at least a couple times, that if he could switch out his brain with someone else's, it would be Scalia's.  Given Limbaugh's gradual, sad descent into intellectual dementia, I can see why.  One of the "best legal minds of our time" responded to a student's sensible question regarding his comparison between laws banning sodomy and laws banning bestiality and murder:

“If we cannot have moral feelings against or objections to homosexuality, can we have it against anything?” Scalia said in response to the question, according to The Daily Princetonian. “I don’t think it’s necessary, but I think it’s effective.” 

Scalia told Princeton student Duncan Hosie that he is not equating sodomy with bestiality or murder, but drawing parallels between the bans. 

Scalia added dryly, “I’m surprised you weren’t persuaded,”  the student newspaper reported.

Oh, good lord.  Does this even merit comment?

Where does this guy live, under a fucking rock?

This is the second decade of the 21st century, after all, where gay ivy-league college students aren't going to find persuasive some asinine comparison of sodomy laws to bestiality laws, and yet Scalia finds himself "surprised" by their not being so persuaded.  He's got to have been living under a fucking rock.

But, more importantly, here's the article's description of Scalia's legal reasoning (sic) used in the landmark case, Lawrence v. Texas (2003), in which the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws as unconstitutional:

Scalia had dissented in the case; in his dissent, he makes a couple of comparisons to laws against bestiality and declares, "nowhere does the Court’s opinion declare that homosexual sodomy is a 'fundamental right.'"

I'll go ahead and state it in plain, simple and blunt terms:

There is most definitely a natural right to engage in homosexual sodomy.

This comes from the reality-based observation that (a) people have the right to engage in private consensual activities with one another, and (b) private and consensual homosexual sodomy poses no credible threat to the security and well-being of society's members.  (This is also why people have a natural right to use cannabis responsibly.)  As to where one can find this right - implicitly - in the Constitution, Justice (sic) Scalia cannot fail to be unaware of the libertarian implications of the Ninth Amendment which refers to un-enumerated rights retained by the people, and of the illiberal implications of laws banning sodomy, pornography, birth control, victimless drug use, and so on.

(EDIT: Stupidity - Scalia's, for example - does in fact pose a credible threat to the security and well-being of society's members.  Maybe stupidity, intellectual laziness, ignorance, or plain old kookery should be made illegal?  I wonder why right-wing politicians, pundits and bloggers don't fanatically go after that real threat wherever it lurks (or, hell, is openly broadcast)?  Where's Michele Bachmann when we need her to protect us from this manifestly obvious threat to American Values?  Why the fuck is she spending her time focusing on a non-existent problem such as sharia law emerging in America?  Just because it's the brand of illiberal batshit-crazy theocracy-ism that she doesn't like, doesn't mean that it's anywhere near the threat that someone like, say, Antonin Scalia or his doppelganger John Yoo poses to our liberties.  Is down up in the right-wing mindset?  Good lord!  It's just so absurd, I don't know how people can endure such blatantly irrational idiocy with a straight face.... [Don't worry, proudly-ignorant left-wing socialism-embracers and Rand-haters, you're next up on my Shit List, beginning with the fact that I received not one single fucking answer in the affirmative to the question I posed here.  Just you wait till I'm in full intellectual-rampage mode, 'cause you ain't seen nuttin' yet, you fucking amateurs.])

What Justice (sic) Scalia is, is a "conservative" statist of sorts who only happens sometimes to support freedom.  What he is not, is someone whose occupancy of a Supreme Court seat should be considered a good thing for the country - especially not when he's so homophobic as to be unqualified to adjudicate the marriage-equality issue fairly or justly.  And that issue is, at this point in history, a no-brainer!  (I'll note that since the Prop 8 plaintiff's attorney Theodore Olson wrote his conservative case for gay marriage, no conservative group or publication has managed to produce anything remotely resembling a well-reasoned case against it.  Indisputable fact.  There's a reason why it is an indisputable fact: the overwhelming evidence, logic, and constitutional and natural principles of justice are on the side of marriage-equality.  Duh.)

I will also mention that the "conservative" Scalia sided with the "liberal" majority in Gonzalez v. Raich which upheld the (natural-rights-violating) federal drug laws on the grounds of the ominously-ever-expansive (under twentieth-century, post-Holmes, post-Dewey jurisprudence) Commerce Clause. These laws (wrongly) empower the government to prohibit a citizen from growing pot in his own backyard.  Meanwhile, Justice (sic) Scalia found some way to oppose the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), presumably on the grounds that it would involve an unacceptable expansion of federal power.  What principle drives all of this is some idiosyncratic Scalian jurisprudence that I haven't gotten a grip on, but given how illiberal he is on issues like sodomy and weed, it is a corrupt jurisprudence, no question.

Since I first got interested in politics some decades back, my political sensibilities have always been more or less libertarian, with civil libertarianism on the so-called personal-freedom issues being one of the biggest no-brainers in political philosophy.  Just some good ol' Aristotelian common sense on my part, I suppose.  During this period of time one of the books that readily caught my attention given my areas of study/interest was Peter McWilliams's Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity Of Consensual Crimes In A Free Society (1993).  I have not actually read this book, because it preaches to this choir.  (Given its unusually high rating by goodreads.com standards - 4.48 out of 5 stars with 285 ratings - perhaps it goes into the "must-read" category regardless.)

The story of McWilliam's own death - caused by corrupt jurisprudence (which stems ultimately from corrupt but influential philosophy) - is fucking insane.  Franklin, Paine and Jefferson would be aghast.

Thanks a lot, Justice (sic!) Scalia.

Asshole.

UPDATE: Lysander Spooner, bitches.

"The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics." -some "progressive" asshole in a black robe

"The Ninth Amendment surely enacts Mr. Lysander Spooner's Natural Law." -The Ultimate Philosopher

(I've just been getting warmed up here these past months, mofos.  BTW, did you happen to catch that one ignorantly-Rand-hating asshole who runs a leading "philosophy" blog, whining recently about hedge-fund managers making a lot more than university professors?  It's like he's never heard of the concept of rarity of talents combined with the relative economic importance of skill sets.  Sure, Derek Jeter could probably teach high school classes, but can any high school teachers play shortstop for the New York Yankees?  Does a philosophy professor have the skill set to run a hedge fund or other demanding business venture?  Arguably a hedge-fund manager could have entered the philosophy profession instead, and do a good job at it (which really isn't all that hard if you absorb Aristotelian sensibilities, as way too many philosophy professors have failed so crashingly to do - as evidenced by the quality of students Higher Ed lets loose on the world nowadays), but who would run the hedge funds, then?  Such questions and answers occur as second nature to business-types but apparently never occur to a lot of university professors, especially those in the Humanities who are supposed to be expanding their cognitive horizons for fuck's sake.  I guess Marx-inspired economic value theory never accustomed them to understanding these things?  I'll just leave this here again.  Nozick > bitter whining asshole left-wing "philosophy" prof.  Say, why did Nozick go from leftist to libertarian?  Something something conversation with Murray Rothbard and individualist anarchism, something something Rothbard and Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Mises's Human Action, something something individualist anarchism and Lysander Spooner, something something footnote three to "A Framework for Utopia," something something "On the Randian Argument," something something "Nozick on the Randian Argument," something something "How to Derive Libertarian Rights," something something eudaemonistic egoism, something something "Flourishing Egoism," something something Personal Destinies, something something Aristotle, something something Allan Gotthelf, something something epistemology workshop, something something noble soul, something something man as heroic being, something something role of the mind in human existence (Marxian value-theory and historical materialism, eh?  Something reeks about all that. Class struggles? Like that going on between the darkly-comically entrenched Theory Class and ordinary human beings, for instance?), something something rationality as the fundamental virtue, something something Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics, something something Leonard Peikoff, something something Understanding Objectivism, something something Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical . . . wait a second, it's like there's some kind of dialectical progression/convergence/integration/ perfection going on here; anyone else notice that besides moi?  If not, why the hell not?  Also, to that whiny left-wing "philosophy"-prof blogger: Go fuck yourself, asshole. [cue Spaceballs-mog finger gesture and smooching noises] Cheers, UP :-p )