A few brief thoughts on the Old Testament

I like to read over breakfast. I have a habit of reading the daily devotion from Oswald Chambers's My Utmost for His Highest (link goes to an online version, but I bought a hard copy years ago, noticing that my boss at the time -- a heck of a guy, and I owe him a phone call -- had a beat-up, extensively marked-up copy), followed in the last couple of months by selected chapters from the New Jerusalem Bible (my copy is small, and travels well).

(Believe me, the preceding is not intended to be an applause line. Srsly.)

So since late January, I've read all of Isaiah, the first six chapters of Jeremiah, and the first 16 chapters of Acts (always one of my favorite books of the New Testament, for some reason). I think it perilous to use the Bible in a fortune-telling way, or to draw too many parallels with current events or circumstances, but there are a couple of passages from my recent reading that resonate, if they don't exactly rhyme.

The first two I want to share are from Jeremiah:

This is because my people are stupid,
they do not know me,
they are slow-witted children,
they have no understanding,
they are clever enough in doing wrong,
but do not know how to do right.
(Jeremiah 4:22)

(I dare say we all know that guy, and further dare speculate that many of us have been that guy. I know I have.) Next:

And when you ask, "why has Y_hw_h my G_d done all this to us?" you will give them this answer, "As you abandon me to serve alien gods in your own country, so you must serve aliens in a country not your own.
(Jeremiah 5:19)

Finally, and perhaps the most rhymey: the following passage from Isaiah came to mind, in regard to the propensity of politicians (and maybe a lot of us) to kick the can down the road, when we can do it without breaking a toe:

Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, 'Listen to the word of Yahweh Sabaoth, "The days are coming when everything in your palace, everything that your ancestors have amassed until now, will be carried off to Babylon. Not a thing will be left," Yahweh says. "Sons sprung from you, sons begotten by you, will be abducted to be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon." '    Hezekiah said to Isaiah, 'This word of Yahweh that you announce is reassuring,' for he was thinking, 'There is going to be peace and security during my lifetime.'
(Isaiah 39:5-8)

Further affiant saith not.

Quelle surprise

Sustainability and subsidy may be fairly close together in the dictionary, but out here where performance matters they're worlds apart.

To be fair, it is possible to argue that many businesses of many kinds are directly or indirectly subsidized by the state to a greater or lesser degree.

Why bring this up? The dictionary definition of "sustainable" is here. Of particular interest are the second and third entries:

2. pertaining to a system that maintains its own viability by using techniques that allow for continual reuse: sustainable agriculture. Aquaculture is a sustainable alternative to overfishing.

3. able to be maintained or kept going, as an action or process: a sustainable negotiation between the two countries.

 In business the first rule of sustainability is: "I have to be able to open the doors tomorrow." I know farming the government is a time-honored tradition and all, but at some point the field is no longer fertile, the turnips bled dry.

Better than the real thing

Earlier this afternoon...

The New York Giants carried a 35-14 lead into the fourth quarter against the visiting Cleveland Browns, on the strength of a couple of bombs from Eli Manning to Mario Manningham and a defense that stymied Peyton Hillis and Colt McCoy, limiting the Browns to one score and no sustained drives (the Browns got one score on a pick-six on a flat pass).

But McCoy got the Browns up off the mat and led them on a 78-yard drive to make the score 35-21 with about seven minutes left; after a defensive stop, McCoy ended another drive by finding tight end Ben Watson in the end zone to make it 35-28. A bit later the Browns punted with just under four minutes to play, banking on getting one more stop on defense and one more opportunity on offense. They got it, taking over at their own 32 with 1:30 the clock and two time outs. McCoy moved the Browns to the 49 with 45 seconds left, prompting the Giants' coach to remark, "I've got butterflies in my stomach."

Three deep passes to Mohamed Massaquoi came up empty, though, and the Giants got out with the 35-28 win. The Giants' coach was my elder son (the Browns' coach was your correspondent), and the game was Strat-O-Matic Pro Football (2010 season player cards). I've been playing the game off and on since the 1974 season set, when I played with my dad and my brothers.

Football at its best can be a great game.

Six! Five! Four! Three! It's the De-on-to-lo-gy!

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: [dreaming] I am not a Frankenstein. I'm a Fronkensteen. Don't give me that. I don't believe in fate. And I won't say it.
[pauses]
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: All right, you win. You win. I give. I'll say it. I'll say it. I'll say it. DESTINY! DESTINY! NO ESCAPING THAT FOR ME! DESTINY! DESTINY! NO ESCAPING THAT FOR ME!

Got the preceding from IMDB, quoting one of my favorite movies, Young Frankenstein (many thanks to my parents for turning me on to Mel Brooks in my youth).

Sometimes I find myself in much the same circumstance, having arrived at liberty via deontology. I recognize the consequentialist arguments for liberty, because I think liberty does produce better outcomes for all (including the poor). However...

...the end no more justifies the means in this case than it does in any other. Even if liberty were consequence-independent, I would be obliged to argue for liberty as the only possible moral arrangement.

Here's how it goes: We are, whether one believes (as I do) that one is made in the image of G_d, or at any rate inherent to one's nature as a human being, each of us endowed with the right to our own lives. More to the point, perhaps, there is no reliable or incontrovertible basis (none that I can find, at any rate) for saying, "This one is born to rule, that one born to serve."

I have said before and say here again that temporal authority claims are nothing more than warmed-over Filmer backed by naked force and more or less will to use it. One points to the talisman clenched in one's hand and says, "This thing in my hand, this (pedigree, patent of nobility, warrant/badge, electoral result) affirms that I am G_d's anointed, and you are morally bound to obey (again more to the point, one is bound to render up some portion of one's life, for my benefit, on pain of fine, imprisonment, door-kicking-in-at-3-am-and-dog-shooting-followed by imprisonment, or all of the above followed by death)."

If we each of us are truly endowed with the right to our own lives, then it follows that we are enjoined from aggressing against the life of anyone else. And if we each of us are enjoined from aggression, how do we delegate the right to use aggression to anyone, whatever talisman they might wave at us by way of justification?

The sole alternative to the non-aggression principle is, in the end: might makes right. It can't, in the end, be anything else.

What does this have to do with the title of the post? Because that way lies statelessness, and the unknown but potential consequences occasionally do weigh on me. I don't think statelessness necessarily leads inevitably to Somalia (and I certainly don't claim it will immanentize the Eschaton), but neither can I rule it out.

But neither can I start writing exceptions to non-aggression. All bases for exception are by definition arbitrary.

Brief thoughts on Gordon's Discourses on Tacitus

Thanks to The Liberty Fund and my Sony Reader (thanks again, honey!), I've recently had the privilege to read the following passages:

An absolute Prince is of all others the most insecure; as he proceeds by no rule of Law, he can have no rule of Safety. He acts by violence, and violence is the only remedy against him. (p. 145)

It is indeed apparent from our History, that those of our Princes who thirsted most violently after arbitrary rule, were chiefly those as were remarkable for poor spirit, and small genius, Pedants, Bigots, the timorous and effeminate. (p.148)

When men are once above fear of punishment, they soon grow to be above shame. Besides, the genius and abilities of men are limited, but their passions and vanity boundless; hence so few can be perfectly good, and so many are transcendently evil. They mistake good fortune for good merit, and are apt to rise in their own conceit as high at least as fortune can take them. (p.162)

Would a Prince live in security, ease, and credit? let him live and rule by a standard certain and fixed, that of Laws, nor grasp at more than is given him. Many by seeking too much have lost all, and forfeited their Crown through the wantonness and folly of loading it with false and invidious ornaments. While nothing would serve them but lawless Power, even their legitimate Authority grew odious, and was rent from them. (p.168)

The lessons set forth here apply equally well whether one considers the example of (in the realm of drama) Macbeth, or (in the realm of history) the Cæsars, or...more recent exemplars.

A few thoughts on Wedgwood's The Thirty Years War

I'm reading C.V. Wedgwood's The Thirty Years War (among other things, as time permits), and I was struck by the (potential, at least) timeliness of the following passages (pages 164 and 165 of the 1961 Doubleday Anchor edition):

"In Prague the gravity of the situation was increased by the necessities of the government. Frederick had begun the trouble by slightly debasing the currency during his year of rule; Ferdinand's nominee, Liechtenstein, continued the process, reduced the amount of silver in the coinage by more than seventy-five percent and attempted to fill the imperial coffers -- and his own -- with the profit which he made on the mint. In January 1622 Ferdinand, in hope of further gain, made a contract with a group of speculators for the establishment of a privately controlled mint in Prague. The currency was drastically debased while prices were forcibly stabilized; the plan failed utterly, for the people became suspicious and hoarded what good money they had, while in spite of the provision of the government, food alone rose to twelve times its normal price. External trade stopped altogether and for the ordinary exchanges of everyday life the people took to barter. To add to the damage done by this crazy scheme, the chief object of the contractors was rather their own enrichment than the payment of Ferdinand's debts.

"At this moment Ferdinand was besieged with demands to buy the confiscated lands. The local nobility and many wealthy merchants offered him what had once been fair prices in the Prague money, prices which he could not now refuse to take without repudiating his own currency. It was one thing to sell the lands and another to make use of the money; Ferdinand had accepted his own coin, but his soldiers threw it back in their officers' faces, because the local peasants would not take it in exchange for the necessities of life. Throughout Bohemia trade came almost to a standstill, the peasants would not provide the towns with food, the army was mutinous, the civil population starving, and certain contractors, of whom Liechtenstein was not least, were among the richest men in Europe. At Christmas 1623, Ferdinand devaluated the money and broke the contract. By that time the greater part of the confiscated land had been sold for an average price of less than a third its normal value. His first move towards financial security had been catastrophic, for nor only had he lost the advantage of the confiscation, but he had completed the economic ruin of Bohemia. Wealth, which had been widely distributed among an industrious peasantry and an active urban population, had become, through political persecution and the disastrous effects of the inflation, concentrated in a few unscrupulous hands. As a source of imperial revenue Bohemia had become useless."

Wedgwood here is writing of the brief tenure of Frederick, the Elector Palatine, as King of Bohemia. Ferdinand was Archduke, erstwhile King of Bohemia himself, and Holy Roman Emperor. The next thing (more or less) that happened -- at least in Wedgwood's recounting -- was Wallenstein. Oh, joy.

Smoke on the breeze

And today, I offer this:

The Concord Hymn
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1837)

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
     Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood;
     And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
     Alike the conqueror silent sleeps,
     And Time the ruined bridge has swept
     Down the dark stream that seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
     We place with joy a votive stone,
That memory may their deeds redeem,
     When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

O Thou who made those heroes dare
     To die, and leave their children free, --
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
     The shaft we raised to them and Thee.

Found here...which is sort of ironic, don't you think?