House of Eratosthenes

Throughout all of human civilization sufficiently advanced to allow for arguing-about-politics, there have been three forces at work. Depending on the culture, one or two of these may be in recession, and may appear to have vanished altogether, but the three “primary colors” are in fact always there. Just like — and I’ve used this metaphor before — the three colors in a pixel on your monitor. Some may not register anything, but all three are always available, the red the green and the blue.

In politics, until we have better ways to describe them, let us envision these three primaries as: those who seek to preserve order; those who seek to incite chaos; those who cherish liberty.

The order-people are motivated by many things, anything that relies on order. So this primary is found in many composites, even some composites that are opposed to other composites similarly related to this. Capitalists and collectivists alike champion some kind of order. Anyone who wants to build anything has to rely on order. The big-government types and the “Tea Party” types believe in order.

The chaos-people are motivated by a resentment against the existing order. This is an impulse of pure anarchy, but it is hard to trace because the first step toward enacting a new order, is to raze the old one. Anyone who was ever a revolutionary, was a chaos-person, at least in the moment. So many will act on this for a short time, but few will act on it permanently. Yet the few are there. They are pure-anarchists. They do not recognize themselves. I’ve said it before many times and I’ll say it again here: We’ve got a lot of people walking around laboring under the delusion that they’re working to build something great and grand, but cannot define what exactly that thing is that they’re building, because the reality is they’re not building anything. They are destroyers. No one wants to admit he’s a destroyer, but see, there is another thing going on that makes this more common: It’s fun. It’s easy, too. Takes a year to build the barn, and a day to knock it down.

The liberty-people are motivated by a desire to be left alone. Quite understandable, especially when order-people and chaos-people are having a fight, and others around them who are just minding their own business get swept up in the fight, against their will. A lot of people, I see, are motivated by the opposite: They seem to despise liberty. Their own, as well as any liberty enjoyed by anyone else.

We could think of the discourse about which ideological direction to take, as a sort of circular periphery, with all the frenzied debate being about what point on that periphery is the best to pursue. It is a direction and not a distance, so the periphery is virtual, possessing no clearly defined radius. Like the “celestial sphere” in astronomy, it is at least large enough that all of its points are beyond any earthly point approachable by anyone mortal. In simpler terms: It is less a geometric shape, than merely a set of definable directions.

Around this periphery we have these three primaries, the order, the chaos and the liberty. Where they are, relative to one another, is something that changes from one issue to the next. Libertarians and “Paul-bots” hate having this pointed out, but it’s true, and it’s proven easily. Let’s ponder an issue. Gay marriage. The order-people say no, the chaos-people and the liberty-people say hell yes. So chaos is aligned with what seems to be liberty, both of them are in favor of gay marriage. The liberty-people don’t want to see anyone stopped from doing something they want to do, and the chaos-people want to destroy definitions so they can destroy structure. Their motives may be different, but their interests are in alignment.

We shift issues, now. Gun control. The chaos people say yes, the liberty people say no of course, and the order people also say no. They recognize that burglary & home invasion lose a lot of appeal as chosen vocations, when every homeowner can be reasonably expected to possess and know how to use a gun. There are many other examples to offer. Order, chaos and liberty act like three boxcars on a purely-circular railroad track. They slip and slide around relative to one another. Change the issue, and the boxcars change position.

However, there is one constant here: Order and chaos. They are opposites, by definition. However, they are political ambitions: Order seeks to build something, chaos seeks to destroy. See, liberty is more primitive even than that: It has to do with “If I start doing this thing over here, are you going to walk up like some strutting martinet, say ‘excuse me, sir’ and tell me to stop doing it?” So the wild stallion in this corral is: liberty. It exists on a different, lower, more primitive level than the chaos and the order.

The three points are like the two ends of a baton, or a stick, and then one detached ball, all spinning around in a circle together. The two stick-ends must be opposite from one another at all times because they refer to opposite things. I can’t find the issue that puts chaos and order on the same side; neither can you. But liberty is the wild-card here.

It is very often seduced into siding with chaos. That pain-in-the-ass order thing, after all…it just means a bunch of rules.

But the liberty relies on the order. Without any order, the law remains, but it becomes a law of brute force. Whoever is stronger, makes the rules. Where’s the liberty in that?

With all that in mind: Why are things so complicated in the here-and-now? I blame the Baby Boomer Generation. No seriously, I really do. It’s their fault.

They are at the age right now where people are expected to be running everything. White, straight, male, tall, and sixty-something. Or, man-hating shrew…but still sixty-something, like Hillary Clinton. We still live in a time in which sixty-something means you have power. But the sixty-somethings, now, grew up rebelling against authority — and they’ve never stopped. Even now, when they are the authority, they’re still rebelling.

And as a result, our laws are a complete mess. We have these written laws that are in direct conflict with the “laws that really count” in that these are cultural laws, unwritten laws, that find sympathy in the people who are at the top of the command structure. “Marijuana is illegal” is one such law. The written law says that’s a real law, the people who enforce the laws don’t like that law. And so we have this no-mans-land of infractions, prosecutions, indictments, convictions, and penalties that don’t really count.

“Tobacco, on the other hand, is quite alright” is yet another. It’s legal, but not really. Here in California we’re targeting the last places where you can smoke it, banning it without banning it. That which is really banned, you can smoke, and that which is not banned, you’re not really allowed to.

The stick and the ball are spinning wildly. Like balls in a roulette wheel. Where is order? Where is chaos? Where is liberty? Here & there, they’re aligned this way, and then that other way.

“Don’t come into our country and vote in our elections if you aren’t legally authorized to be here.” That’s another one. The letter of the law says that’s a crime. But our bosses want that law to be broken, the more frequently it happens, the better as far as they’re concerned. And they’re the bosses.

This is dangerous territory. To have a law that means anything at all, you have to have definitions and those definitions have to mean something.

Chaos is winning.

Update: Thought in progress…maybe it’s worth a second post, but such a post would show very little by way of a self-supporting thesis, or any kind of structural independence away from this one.

Issues on which the liberty-ball slides around on the periphery, to align more closely with the “chaos and destruction” end of the stick, against creation/preservation/order:
1. Abortion;
2. Flag burning;
3. Gay marriage;
4. Letting Saddam Hussein get away with more shenanigans;
5. Illegal immigration;
6. Pot;
7. Sex and violence on the teevee, and in music discs marketed to eight-year-olds;

Issues on which liberty is more harmoniously aligned with order, and against chaos.
1. Abortion, from the perspective of the baby;
2. Gay marriage, from the perspective of the church getting sued;
3. Minimum wage;
4. CAFE standards;
5. Religious expression around or near a school;
6. Gun control versus freedom to self-defend;
7. School vouchers;
8. Progressive income tax policy;
9. Punishing the Boy Scouts for not admitting gay scouts;
10. Sexual harassment and hostile work environment litigation;
11. ADA abuse;
12. Strange bizarre union rules;
13. Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution;
14. Environmental issues;
15. All the “little laws.”

Two things I notice about this. One, my list of “liberty sides with order and against chaos” issues is roughly twice as long as the companion; as I spent more time and energy adding to both, I expect that trend to continue. This is part of a sea change that is slowly taking place, which I also expect to continue. Here’s a great example of that: The Scopes Monkey Trial. That was a case in the 1920’s that had to do with a schoolteacher not being allowed to teach the theory of evolution. Some eighty years later, the issue was about teachers not being allowed to teach intelligent design theory, whose critics asserted was simply creationism masquerading under a new label. In both cases, the more secular viewpoint is the chaotic one — it “preaches” that we are, quite literally, products of a chaotic universe in which there are no events save for random ones. When Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan went at it, that side was aligned with liberty. In the more recent trial, that side embraced a restriction, and was thus aligned against liberty.

Second thing: When chaos aligns with liberty, there is some sort of deception taking place. I put “abortion” on both lists because two people are involved, the preservation of the one relies on a restriction against the other. If your very life is extinguished, you don’t have liberty. The same goes for gay marriage: To grant freedom to the one party, we must encroach on the freedoms of another. Those who champion the freedom of the aborting mother or of the gay couple that wants to get married, you’ll notice, address these dichotomies by restricting the information flow. They do not reply to the arguments from the opposition, they work to simply eliminate the opposition from any allowable or influential discussion taking place. They effectively cover their ears and go “can’t hear you la la la.”

What is going on here is a bad sale. There is something rather out-of-place and unnatural about liberty siding with chaos, since in political contexts chaos is, when you get right down to it, an ideology that says we as human beings are not good and we don’t belong wherever we are. That’s really at the heart of it, that we as a species are a pollutant. That goes beyond saying, we pollute and should stop polluting; the theory is that we are the litter in the otherwise-pristine universe. Since we don’t belong wherever we are, how can it possibly be fitting that we should be allowed to do anything? I mean, think about it seriously: You’re a pregnant woman who wants to abort her child. The people who support your “right” to do this are pullin’ for ya…but…your mother was thinking about aborting you, too, and your so-called supporters would have chosen that, if it were up to them. So what they’re really supporting is a “Now that you’re here, darn it all, you might as well have this sacred ‘right’ or whatever…” kind of a right. And what sort of right is that?

There’s something phony about it. There’s something phony about everything on that shorter list.

Those who champion the freedom of the aborting mother or of the gay couple that wants to get married, you’ll notice, address these dichotomies by restricting the information flow. They do not reply to the arguments from the opposition, they work to simply eliminate the opposition from any allowable or influential discussion taking place.

This is my biggest gripe with leftists. And it does seem to be strictly political — I know a lot of lefties who are as receptive to information as the next guy when it comes to decisions that affect them personally (indeed, it’s always the lefties who sue to make the fine print much larger). I know a couple who looked long and hard at a Prius, for instance — they really really reallllyyy wanted to get one, their own personal virtue-mobile — but it cost too much and did too little for their needs. So they got the gas-guzzling, environment-raping SUV, and were up-front about their reasons for doing so.

When it comes to politics, though….

It reminds me a lot of sports fans. The refs screwed us. The sun was in the batter’s eyes. The other team filmed our practices. The field was wet. Whatever. It can’t be the objective, measurable fact that our players are subpar. Stats don’t reflect things like passion and heart and playmaking ability, everybody knows that! La la la, can’t hear youuuuu……
- Severian | 12/05/2013 @ 07:59
The short list is for capital L libertarian and 18 and under libertarian. The long list is for adults with life experience in which most of their experiences were not shrouded in the fog of bad ass weed or other mind benders.
- indyjonesouthere | 12/05/2013 @ 09:43
“It reminds me a lot of sports fans. etc…”
It reminds ME of anything miraculously developing a hyphen, or “credentials”, in the last 40 years.
- CaptDMO | 12/05/2013 @ 11:01
Why the prequels suck (longish).
http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-wars/
- Zachriel | 12/05/2013 @ 17:22
Wrong thread, dipshits.

Christ but y’all suck at reading comprehension.
- Severian | 12/06/2013 @ 00:32

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The Stick and the BallWednesday, December 4th, 2013

The Stick and the Ball
Wednesday, December 4th, 2013