The Maverick Way

6-2010: The Iron Curtain

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It is well-documented that totalitarian nations effectively strive to and are able to shut their citizens off from any outside news, contacts or points of view. However wretched is their internal situation, these people are mind-controlled that it is worse elsewhere, out there. Outsiders are evil, inferior, hostile and miserable not to be part of the privileged elite enjoying this paradise guided by the beneficence and ministrations of majestic Big Brother.

People believe what their officials and reporters tell them is so. News is not reported. It is propaganda to sway the masses to believe what they are expected to accept as gospel. Black is white and white is black. Down is up and up is down. Eric H. reports that they learn to love what they hate, and hate what they love.

It is frightening how easy it is to get people to submit to authorities. It is staggering how easy it is get people to surrender and accept their lot as slaves. It is heart-wrenching how easy it is to tell people what to think. Our depravity links us to mass kowtowing to whoever is in charge.

Nothing so decentralizes sources of information, viewpoint and independent thinking as constituting a society of anarchist individuators. There no elite, no leader can persuade the masses what to think; they instruct and direct their leaders. They are constantly, intelligently, politically active. They are in charge.

6-2010: Bringing Democracy to the Arabs

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George Bush wanted to bring democracy to the Arab peoples. It may have been naive on his part but it was not the wrong state of things to wish upon them, The Arabs cannot modernize and cannot leave their bourgeoning mass movement behind, or be rid of their obsession with destroying Israel behind, until they do so.

Talk about the law of unintended consequences, It was obvious that the Gazans that put Hamas in office in that democracy were not ready to run a democracy. It is not a democracy but a political state that is a mass movement dedicated to murdering their Israeli neighbor. One day they will have power, will and means to succeed in their objective.

6-2010: Endorse Only Nonviolent Revolution Within the System

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No reformer ever really loves others collectively or singularly unless he is a keeper of the peace. What does this mean? It entails fretting endlessly to prepare each member of the audience to be awakened slowly, gently nudged from her group cocoon out into the open, fresh, bracing air of liberation and discovery without her being transformed into the classical, negative kind of Hofferian misfit.

Most unprepared unfortunates inevitably will de-individuate, seeking a guru or mass movement to immerse the loathed self into. That is enormously perilous for social well-being and stability.

The reformer must move forward, He must be conservative, humble and an educator. People must be trained before he heedless hands them gifts from Pandora’s box. He must endorse only nonviolent revolution within the system. The people will acculturate themselves to it on their own time schedule when it works for them.

6-2010: Set People Free

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The effective, successful anarchist would not be a wild-eyed, impractical idealist. He would deregulate and deinstitutionalize society to pave the way for maximum individuating freedom. How people voluntarily limit themselves and work together to cobble rules and run their communities would work out smoothly and efficiently. Trust people. Set them free. They will compromise. They are ingenious and endlessly creative. They will make it work. If they try it, they will like it.

6-2010: Bourgeois Anarchists

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Anarchism is what bourgeois democracy needs to evolve into. 86% of the citizens in any polity must be Mavellonalists to make anarchies work.

Working out laws, political relations and interconnections in an anarchist community would be practical, workable, and yet very complex or laborious to arrive at, to maintain and to update. Such a decentralized unit of government would allow for efficient, fast-tracked, and practical transactions between government and citizens. The laws and constitution instantly updated by intuition, judgment, discussion and compromise, versatile, creative thinking and common sense. It would be logical but flexible. The interpretations would be reported later back to the voters for their review and approval or disapproval.

To set up this polity and its constitution and laws would be tricky. No substitute would be allowed for the painstaking, arduous but careful groundwork for devising the useful, helpful social contract. A lot of thought, hard work and preparation would pay off down the road, modified as needed to keep things humming along, prosperous, inclusive and humane.

7-8-2010: Legally, Peacefully Fire the Political Class

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The federalist ruling class dominates the nation. It is disgusting to detect how much the average politician in Congress lies, cheats, grows rich, abandons her professed values where expedient to do so, betrays the people’s trust, and is so available to special interests.

This political class wants to stay in power. These elites do not promote legislation that will improve the country. They do not block bad legislation that is wasteful and unnecessary. They do not restrict legislation proposed by the government-growth crowd that grows the state at the expense of the individual. They do not work to pass what is good for the nation.

Too many politicians say anything and promise anything to get reelected, and then vote differently once they get into office. Over time, they turn on their voters and worry more about being Washington insiders than representing their home district. Nothing ever really changes.

The system cannot be superficially reformed for lasting benefit. The following are a few simple proposals for effecting deep, lasting reform. There are many partial cures like term limits. I propose three permanent, efficacious cures.

First, and most important, functioning democracy requires principled, informed, logical, involved citizens who refuse to be lied to and coddled. They will not reelect liars, traitors, cheats, spendthrifts and mediocrities. They will only send and resend to Washington politicians that have an official, laid-out program of governing. The politician means what he says, says what he means and will do what he says. The voters want what is good for the country. They will only elect and support politicians that share these values.

Second, the highest quality candidates will be selected and elected as long as they do not grow stale or stray from the program. Better quality candidates foreshadows improved political health for the nation.

Third, elected politicians must be Fabian-anarchists. Slowly, carefully and irrevocably they will work to nudge democracy towards a major emphasis on deinstitutionalizing society and keeping it that way. Anarchist republicanism, with a new constitution as the proposed future contract, must be brought forth. It must grow out of our bourgeois industrial democracy. The transition must be solid, slow, carefully wrought (but quickly and decisively modified as unforeseeable but predictable). The transition must be voluntary, peaceful, rational, nonviolent and sensible.

7-8-2010: Freedom

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To be free is not just a matter of not being compelled to act a certain way against one’s will, not controlled by external or internal compulsion. Freedom is this. Freedom is also the pure liberty of choosing to do whatever one desires. There is a certain lawless condition to this pure liberty. Freedom is also lawful, in that the agent chooses to act in accordance with a patterned set of principles that he lives by, and which applies to all situations that he enters into. He is self-legislating.

Freedom, in the sense of being at liberty to choose and live according to one’s choices best proceeds where a community is run by rules, law and order. There prevail reasonable laws, as enacted under the umbrella of a social contract to prevent criminals from imposing the law of the jungle upon citizens, filling them with fear, dread and deprived of the basic freedom to live unmolested. Life, liberty and happiness are thus preserved.

Freedom also is enjoyed where nature and her laws do not constrain the individual from committing certain acts.

7-8-2010: Enslaved

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Being enslaved can result from being controlled from without by laws and rules that one did not devise and does not approve of, but obeys out of fear of social and legal punishment meted out for noncompliance. These laws are crafted and administered by authoritarian functionaries of society.

Lawlessness and pure chance can render the agent non-free as she is coerced to deal with forces that she would just as soon ignore but is bound by.

8-29-2010: Deinstitutionalization

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For Mavellonialism to take hold, proportionately society must be deinstitutionalized. That is not as scary as it sounds. I am not out to destroy society but to help it evolve by devolving down and away from its bureaucracies.

I am not advocating that institutions be eliminated. It would not happen anyway. To eradicate them all at once would lead to the collapse of civilization. The landscape could look like something out of one of the Terminator movies. To wipe out institutions might well create a panic with the ensuing construction of totally centralized government and economy of some communist or fascist sort. Nothing gained there and much that is salvageable would be irrevocably lost.

The trick is to gradually downsize institutions, not get rid of them totally. Where we need them, to what extent, which ones and how many must be gingerly investigated, implemented, experimented with, and revised after some experiments or some part of them are abject failures.

8-29-2010: Those Unnatural and Unnaturally Effective Natural Rights

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Jason Lewis, recently on talk radio, explained to a caller that John Locke (thinker of great influence during the Age of Reason) posited that man has natural rights. He is born free by nature and in nature. Let me lay out Lewis’s argument as best I can. Man or humans exist in a free state, a gift from nature and God. Government is to defend these freedoms, not repress them as our statist government does today.

Lewis describes individual rights and natural rights as similar. By contrast, collective rights are a modern, artificial invention growing out of applying the utilitarian principle (what is good brings happiness to the greatest number of people) to our Constitution and laws. Such an unconstitutional rewrite and reinterpretation of the Constitution has fueled the imposition of collective rights and artificial rights on the Constitution and the whole of society. All this revisionism of the laws of the land had justified radical government expansion. The activist interpretation of the Constitution has allowed for the enormous growth of federalism and collective rights.

Lewis asserts that no individual rights exist in the Constitution beyond the Bill of Rights. The classical responsibility of our government is to defend individual rights, not promote the introduction and takeover legally of nonexistent, collective rights. Federalists pushing collective rights through the courts and legislatures have led to the government’s failure to meet its primary function, the protection of individual rights.

In reply to Lewis main argument, first I hope that I captured the gist of his defense of individual rights. Second, I agree with his framing of the problem. Third, I would only add that collective rights and individual rights, as laid out in his analysis, are close to how the Founding Fathers saw things.

In terms of human nature and the way of the universe, I would define them differently than Lewis and the thinkers of the 18th century did. Individual rights are less a natural right than artificial, unnatural rights, angelic gifts to us from God. But the protection of and bestowal of these heavenly, unnatural rights upon humans are legislated and encoded in God’s natural law, so I do not mind if they are referred to as natural lights, laid out in natural law.

Collective rights are natural rights, derived from nature. They are instinctive, herding rights, a chain connecting us to Satan and Lera. Collective rights are indeed a historical, man-made invention, but the impetus for them was the human herding instinct, as old as Adam and Eve. These natural rights, these biological and social rights are still regulated under natural law, stemming from God.

This does not change the fact that Locke was defending individual rights, and that the conservative, originalist point of view about protecting individual rights under our Constitution is our primary duty.

This does not change the fact that the liberal wing of American politics from FDR forward has read collectivist rights (actually existing, natural rights) into the Constitution where mostly they do not belong.

9-27-2010: There Are No Good Centralized Institutions

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This is no prelude to Libertarian political philosophy. I am not that deeply versed in it. From the little that I do know about it, I approve of many of their concepts. A political philosopher likely would admire their consistency, their clear statements of principles and their black and white description of how things work. Are they logically coherent in their reasoning, and factually accurate in their assertions? I don’t know but I dislike their over-consistency and fanatical beliefs. They are mostly right like Ayn Rand is, but, like her, their wrong-thinking, if it becomes popular finally, could be very dangerous.

Let me try be more specific. Libertarians believe that big government deprives the individual of life, liberty and the pursuit of property and happiness. So good so far. They advocate downsizing big government, back to the state level and even farther, to the local level. They are still correct.

They desire to see big government deinstitutionalized, but cartels, monopolies and wealth accumulation by the super-rich does not faze them. Their reluctance here is immoderate and shortsighted.

My political and social vision is one embracing the deinstitutionalizing of big business as well as big government (and all other huge, centralized institutions). This is the moderate, humane approach against all institutions.

Groupism is a biological drive supported linked to and furthered by institutional back up. Individualism is made possible and is linked to a small, decentralized set of social institutions.

10-21-2010: Islamic Plans for World Conquest

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Mike Gallagher the other day opined that Islam is more than just a religion. It is also an imperialistic, political and cultural movement whose followers seek to invade, convert or overthrow the West, eventually taking over the entire world. Gallagher does not believe that this aggressive, diabolical plan is just the fringe mumbling of a few Islamists of little consequence. He believes they speak for a much wider, deeper Muslim audience.

This being so, Gallagher suggests that opposing mosques being built in certain places, and a refusal to grant public school holidays off for Muslim religious days is legitimate because the political portion of this attack upon America makes it not part of excuse pleading for religious freedom. Americans opposing the spread of Islam are not religious bigots or haters of Islam; rather, they are mainly, openly, admirably withstanding the imperialistic, spread here of Islamic, theocratic fascism. This organizing opposition is honorable, legal and obligatory. As citizens in the past pushed the government to oppose European attempts to conquer us by their menacing communists and fascists, so opposing Islamism (political fascism) is acceptable.

As peaceful religious worshippers, let American Muslims be left to worship in peace. As cultural, militaristic, political and terroristic aggressors against our bourgeois civilization we will defend ourselves against them. For in Islam church and state are blended, so the political, militaristic aspects are harder to detect, but they are there and must be bracketed and categorized for targeting and opposition. Allowing the commandeering, by radical Islamic fundamentalists, of our doctrine of separation of church and state, to introduce dominant sharia law cannot go unopposed by Americans. We must retain and strengthen the wall separating church and state in the public arena. Disallowing their dismantling of this wall of protection is to thwart their scheme to take over our country.

10-27-2010: The Obtuse Ruling Class

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Rush Limbaugh was quarreling on air with the ruling class recently. He scoffed at their amazement that the political instincts of the Tea Party activists were keen and unerring. These political amateurs detected the nature and direction of the brand-new political and conservative push in this country, while more liberal, polished, educated and connected Washington insiders totally lacked the insight to predict the nature of this uprising or its durability.

Rush, an outsider himself, is a conservative more than a Republican is. He early sensed their intensity, originality and importance.

What does this recurring inability, of popular, empowered, influential and affluent insiders to be the first to uncover and publicize new trends, tell us? Why are the insiders who fit in, the last ones to know what is going on, and recognize a groundswell of intention from the masses?

The answers in part are offered by Eric H. The misfit, the outsider, is more in tune with the new, the offbeat thesis.

I believe it can be further explained as but another example of the superior lifestyle of being a decentralized individualist. The misfit and the outsider in their generation, even where they move in packs, are more individualist and outsider than are the insiders. The insiders are blinded by their social need to be accepted and remain accepted by thinking, talking and acting in ways that closely mirror and correspond to group expectations and perceptions. This existential conformity kills innovative thinking. It kills the individual’s affinity to truth-embracing. It lulls the psyche into sinking down into a quagmire of delusional reasoning.

It is lonely and cold out there by oneself, but there one is exhilarated by the freedom and responsibility to think for oneself and do original mental work. The more misfitted and alone the individual becomes (provided he loves himself, remains confident and is sane), proportionately the more illusions will he shed.

The intelligent, creative amateur is a great resource for society to tap into and employ. Her capacity for generating fresh, accurate ideas is unparalleled. She is relatively receptive to the offerings of Being. New ideas and the latest trends will be discerned and described by her for she is not prejudiced against accepting that new and maybe better ideas which are out there for the taking should the recipient be open to receiving them.

This is why the Tea Party amateurs and activists are so politically astute: they are too new and green to have shut themselves off from incoming truth sent to all of us by the universe. Given time, success, acceptance and insider status, inevitably their need and talent for discovering new ideas will fade and diminish. Only those few that remain outside and decentralized remain open to receiving fresh ideas for a lifetime. It is a lonely, harsh, grueling lifestyle that only a few can stand up to. When all of society is trained to individuate, so existing will become commonplace and more accepted, making it easier to engage in. Then what a wondrous, high civilization will come about.

11-8-2010: Individuator-Citizens Must Keep All Politicians Muzzled and Leashed

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Right away or over time the brush with power corrupts most politicians. They come to lie, cheat, steal, hate, betray, boss around, exploit and oppress the masses that they started out to serve.

This reality need not dismay the public. A public of individuators would expect no more that being bombarded by the above-listed litany of offenses committed by the average politician, but it would not faze them one whit.

They would let the politicians know that the voters are in charge. They would postulate that the politicians are on a short leash and that is how it will remain. They will cynically regard the politicians as mere servants to be used, watched, monitored and ordered what to do. If the politician remains relatively honest, obedient and efficient at carrying out the will of the public, he can be retained or promoted. Should he turn on his masters or ignore them, he will be quickly and summarily fired.

The politician is a tool. She is a means to an end—good governance. The voters must never trust them or expect very much from them. The voters can and must force them to do what they are told. Once politicians accept that voters are in charge, engaged, empowered, informed and utterly involved in running the country, then they will settle down, behave and do as they are told, usually doing the right thing. Then the politicians know they have no alternative way to go.

Where every citizen could serve as President or Senator, the great advantage of decentralized power structuring becomes evident. Each citizen is participating. Each citizen is a politician creature of advanced training, skill and acumen. Each citizen is a leader not a follower. A united consensus will be clear, reached and focused, and the program will be laid out for the politicians to implement. The state will be well run.

Individuator-Citizens are Super-Citizens. Only they can keep us free and democratic for generations to come.

11-21-2010: Being Anti-Fanatical Islam Is Being Pro-Islam And Its Believers

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I am not anti-Islam, I am anti-fanaticism in all its forms. Very fanatical, wicked and dangerous is the extreme, imperialistic, violent, terroristic brand of Islam whose adherents seek to cover the globe with, a form of theocratic fascism. They must be opposed firmly right away to keep them at bay, by force of arms if necessary. They are deadly serious, on the march and must be identified as what they are and blocked. There is no time to waste.

Islam, once reformed, will enable its followers to accept infidels without attacking them or violently converting them as they reject its doctrines. Its people are not bad, but their culture and leaders have brainwashed them. If I were raised among them, I would think like they do.

If they were raised here, they would think like liberal, tolerant Westerners do. The land of our birth is destiny for most of us as we do not freely choose our values or faith. Only a society of individuators would so choose.

Each new generation must be alert for, identify accurately and stand up against the current brand of extremism permeating society. The recognized enemy must be publicly singled out for opposing by good people that care. The young must be taught to think and choose their own value system, and then their choice must be honored.

Fanatics would deny it vehemently, but they are out to destroy the very cause they profess to serve.

11-27-2010 The Muslim Leaders Must Take Charge and Speak Out

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Mike Gallagher joked that not all Muslims were terrorists but all terrorists were Muslims. There are non-Islamic terrorists but there are not many; the great percentage of terrorists in 2010 are Muslim. That is very disturbing. Where are the great majority of Muslim intellectuals, imams and political leaders speaking out against the violent minority so that the terrorists do not any longer feel justified to murder in God’s name?

12-19-2010: The American Way

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I am 64 years old. I have finally started reading an actual copy of the United States Constitution. Many libertarians, conservatives and Tea Party backers want to see the liberal activist court replaced by federal and Supreme Court judges that do not ignore, interpret or rewrite the Constitution to match their current political agenda. They want judges in the future to read the Constitution literally. I mostly agree with them, as well as I understand this complex issue.

They exult in the fact that the Founders devised such a brilliant Constitution, the primary cultural and legal underpinning of our exceptionalist way of life. Subsequently, they do not want liberal revisionists to destroy America, what Bill Bennett refers to as humankind’s last, best hope. I wholeheartedly endorse their reservation about changing what has worked so brilliantly.

We are just regular people like anyplace else in the world. Our values, culture and Constitution are exceptional. Here there is freedom. There is fantastic opportunity. There is hope and tolerance. Go for it.

My vision is to keep the exceptional American system, but to make it work even better by raising generation after generation of individuators. Just imagine what an exceptional citizenry in an exceptional society could do as a people and personally?

The Taliban wish to blanket the world with sharia law. I repudiate that, but recognize the breathtaking range in their ambition for world conquest. Suppose we do unto them and unto the rest of the world what the radical Islamists are striving mightily to achieve? Suppose we Mavellonialisti aim for world conquest, though by peaceful, voluntary means only?

Let us export (peacefully and by persuasion only) to all people our exceptionalist way of life and its accompanying Constitution. There, their citizens (every bit as capable as any American is) too would lead exceptional lives in an exceptional country. It would revolutionize human life; wealth, health, freedom and high civilization would spread everywhere.

Let us work very hard to improve ourselves as a people and as a nation. Let our exceptional brilliance, values and vitality inspire people everywhere. What a bright and glorious future it could be for all. This is our gift to humanity—the American way of life across all seven continents, and into our space settlements one day in neighboring planets.

12-19-2010: The Nefarious Illuminati

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The other night a caller to the Jason Lewis show blamed the excessive, intimidating growth of government on the cunning Illuminati in the back ground, pulling the strings.

Jason agreed about that imminent threat from burgeoning federalism, but tried to soothe the caller by dismissing the possibility that it came about as plotted by the elusive Illuminati. Lewis blamed the rise and spread of federalism on the average citizen, not some secretive, conspiratorial elite. Lewis defined the American people as all on the take, and all having a taste for collective solutions.

It always goes back to the masses. If they would slough off any efforts to make them dependent or manipulated, they will remain independent, self-supporting and self-reliant. Their self-sufficiency would keep the growth of institutions stymied and atrophying, not growing or spreading beyond what is institutionally reasonable to erect and for us be regulated by.

The blame is given to the enslaved at the bottom. The only lasting reform must be from the bottom up, as each member of the masses rears up, and takes back control of his own life.

12-19-2010: Deprived of Liberty

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To be