The Middle is Always Evil

You may have read my last post and– in the event that you are a Libertarian– gotten the idea that Sharia courts in the UK are acceptable because in any dispute settled by such courts, both parties are consenting to give it the power to arbitrate their case. From the Times Online article:

“The rulings of arbitration tribunals are binding in law, provided that both parties in the dispute agree to give it the power to rule on their case.”

So what if it is consensual?

I could make the argument that there is a strong possibility that men will force their wives to “consent” to a court more lenient to, say… Domestic violence. I could make the argument that if a man is beating his wife for failing to wear a scarf, it would not be very much of a stretch for him to force her to attend a particular court with him. I could make these arguments, but I will not. The proper question to ask about the Sharia court– or about anything, for that matter– is not: is it consented to or not, but rather: is it moral or immoral?

Yes, in order for a British Sharia court to hold any weight, it must be consented to by the parties in question, but this is entirely irrelevant to the question of whether or not they are moral institutions. As governmental bodies, do Sharia courts faithfully uphold man’s right to life, liberty and property? Are you muttering that it does not matter if man’s rights are protected, so long as everyone involved consents to their chains? If so, you are simultaneously holding the following two positions:

• That you believe the moral premises of the Sharia courts to be evil and in opposition to the fundamental rights of man, and:
• That the British government, an institution whose sole purpose is the protection of individual liberty, should enforce said evil.

You are giving your moral sanction to that which you know to be evil.

It does not matter that the slaves consent to their chains; what matters is that you believe that they should be chained by the very institution set up to protect them.

The fundamental error here is the belief that any action is permissible, so long as all parties involved consent to it. This is a position commonly held by Libertarians. While it is true that consent is a necessary requirement for morality, it is not the only requirement; it is not a proper standard by which to judge the morality of an action.

When a man chooses to abuse drugs or alcohol, he makes a conscious choice to do so, a choice that he felt was (out of all of his options) the best one for him at the time, given the context of his knowledge. It was an action that he consented to, that he wanted for himself, otherwise he would not have taken it. All of this is necessarily true about this man, but it doesn’t change the fact that it was the wrong choice. Just because he consented to it does not mean he was making the right decision about his life.

Consent as a moral standard is a necessary result of Libertarianism because it espouses no moral philosophy at all; it is simply the belief that man may do as he pleases, so long as he does not initiate the use of force against others. While this is fine as a political philosophy, it is morally non-prescriptive; it gives no answer to the question: How should I behave? The inevitable result of Libertarianism’s non-answer to this crucial question is an anything-goes mentality toward life, which is so destructive because in life, anything does not go. As Ayn Rand wrote,

Just as man is free to attempt to survive by any random means, as a parasite, a moocher or a looter, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment—so he is free to seek his happiness in any irrational fraud, any whim, any delusion, any mindless escape from reality, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment nor to escape the consequences. (Italics mine)

There was once a time when I thought I’d never understand why Ayn Rand once said that she would rather be a Marxist than a Libertarian; I now understand her completely.

The British government has officially adopted sharia law. Special “Sharia courts” have been set up that have the authority to arbitrate among Muslims according to Muslim law and tradition; the rulings of these courts carry the full weight of British law, and are enforced by the British government. The courts can rule on any range of civil issues, from financial disputes to divorce and domestic violence; I find this to be laughably absurd.

In order for a government to work properly and efficiently, it must govern according to an objective, impartial standard to which all people must adhere with equal consideration; such a standard is commonly referred to as the law. When two governmental bodies operate under different standards, there is a problem of competing governments, which inevitably results in mobbery and thugs with guns ruling hand over fist. What muddles this particular issue so much is that in this case, the conflicting parties are courts sanctioned by the same government. How can one government faithfully execute the laws according to two different standards, two different value-systems? It cannot. To put it simply: “No man can serve two masters.” Mark my words: this flawed system will prove to be a problem for the organs of the British government in the near future; worries over a “parallel legal system” seem small when the potential damage of this move is fully considered.

It must be noted, however, that currently, the Sharia courts are not mandatory for anyone; Muslims who wish to live under normal, British Common Law are free to do so. The choice is theirs. But what is to say that a Muslim man will not force his wife to attend Sharia court, where the beatings he gave her are sanctioned, or are at least met with a much less severe penalty than that of the normal courts of England? In divorce cases, like all others, Sharia law favors men, who are usually permitted retain all of their assets, in addition to some of their wife’s. The British government’s sanction of this kind of tribunal is disturbing, and it sets a dangerous precedent.

What has really happened here is the British have ceded Her Majesty’s Government to Islamic Totalitarians, people (men, mostly) who feel that it is their duty to Allah to convert the entire world to Islam, by force if necessary. But there are two kinds of Islamic Totalitarians; there are those that we see (the gentlemen in masks on television, who fire AK47’s into the air on the streets of Pakistan), and there are those who choose to remain largely unseen. These men do not wear masks or carry AK47’s, they wear suits, and they carry briefcases. They talk about Muslim discrimination, and demand special treatment and rights because of their religion; they talk about benefiting British society as a whole, “through the promotion of Islam and Islamic values,” a quote I pulled off of The Islamic Society of Britain’s website. Think long and hard about what is meant by “Islamic values,” and you will realize that it is men such as this that we should be paying attention to, with equal if not greater intensity than the men with the guns.

We have already seen Muslims attempt to use the force of government to restrict the freedom of speech of individuals in the West. Now the situation has become more severe; a dangerous precedent has been set by the British government, one that cannot go unchallenged here in the United States.

My father has done quite well for himself in his life, the majority of which he has spent working. He started his own plumbing company, which is now one of the most successful on the northshore of Chicago; he did all of this himself. I have a lot of admiration for him.

Today, I had a rare conversation with my father. We often talk about politics, since he is the more conservative of my parents, and therefore has more in common with me; but our talk is usually filled with levity– it never takes on a serious tone. Today was different.

I asked my father how much money he makes a year. I thought I had a pretty good idea, but I wanted to be sure. The number that he gave me seemed very low– much lower than I thought, considering my family’s lifestyle. I asked my him if he was sure about the figure he gave me, and he started to talk to me about tax deductions; thats when I realized why the number seemed so low to me– he wasn’t talking about how much money he made each year, he was talking about how much he made after taxes. I asked him how much he really made each year.

“Why does that matter?” He asked.

It was at that moment, looking into my father’s tired eyes, that I realized that when the government takes money from him, it takes so much more than just monetary wealth– it takes a piece of my father’s pride; it robs him of the joy that comes from the achievement of a value. It takes a piece of my father’s spirit.

Just to come to the understanding that my father doesn’t look at how much money he earns each year in terms of how much wealth he was able to create, but rather– of what tax bracket he belongs in, to really understand the full implication of that fact– it truly saddens me.

And to come home and to talk to these people on the internet who are my age, who think they know everything, who talk about how much they are inspired by Barack Obama’s plan for “social justice,” who talk about how they find socialism “interesting,” who speak voluminously about their love for humanity…

I just think about looking into my father’s eyes in that moment.

Last night, the two remaining contenders for the presidency took the stage together for the first time in the election cycle. The event, as you probably know, was held at Saddleback Chruch in Lake Forest, California. All in all, this event showed us two things:

• Any casual observer learned (and probably already knows) that Barack Obama cannot preform well off-the-cuff, and that John McCain can; this means the debates between these two are going to be interesting, and that this election may be a lot closer than many of us previously thought.
• We also learned that both candidates despise their own happiness– or at least consider it something to feel guilty for, to try to hide from the public.

Case in point: when asked what his greatest moral failure was, Senator Obama mumbled something about drug use, but then went on to say that it was a “fundamental selfishness”

I am proud to say that what Barack Obama lists as his greatest moral failure is the thing that I would consider to be the greatest moral achievement a person could aspire to: selfishness.

When Pastor Rick Warren asked McCain why he wanted to be president, he said that he wanted to,

“inspire a generation of Americans to serve a cause greater than their self interest.”

For all their disagreements (and agreements) on foreign and domestic policy, these two candidates sure do come down together on the issue of whether or not Americans have the right to live for their own sake: the answer, firmly, emphatically, is: no.

John McCain is not the first politician that has called for a generation to bow to a cause greater than themselves; watch the clip. Barack Obama is not the first politician to call for a country that– like in the clip above– “knows no class distinction;” This is not a Change I can believe in– in fact, its not a change at all. Its been done before.

You see, ladies and gentlemen, the actors change, but the course of history stays the same.

John McCain wants you to serve your country; Barack Obama wants you to serve, not just your country, but an amorphous “others.” But what these men forget– or rather, what they do not forget– but instead, what you forget is that where there is a servant, there is a master, ladies and gentlemen.

And don’t comment saying that its inappropriate for me to compare modern day political figures to Adolf Hitler, because it isn’t; watch the video.

Besides, that’s just what I do: I compare people to Hitler.

Since starting this blog, I’ve blogged about environmentalism a little more than I’d like to.

There are other issues out there; issues that are more pressing, that affect our country and our world much more directly– like Iran’s nuclear program, or the fact that they’ve been launching test missiles capable of striking Israel. But so often I choose to write about the Environmentalist Movement over other things for a very specific reason, which is:

The choice to accept environmentalism or not is the choice between industry and inactivity, civilization and primitivism, comfortability and suffering; it is the choice between life and death. Many may disagree with this claim, citing the good intentions of the environmentalists: taking care of the earth couldn’t be bad, could it? After all, not all environmentalists are nut jobs like Eric Pianka, a noted ecologist who wants to kill off 90% of human life; most are in fact quite moderate, and simply believe that humans have a responsibility to look after the earth.

Such people are not evil, but they are misguided. They accept the two basic premises of environmentalism: that the environment is good because it is the environment, and that the smallest human interference in the natural ecological structure is a desirable goal. The logical conclusion of these premises, of course, is that human activity must be restricted as much as possible in order to prevent such interference. If you accept these premises, chances are good that you would not be in favor of a mass culling of the human population. The danger is that men like Pianka also accept them, and they desire to see their logical ends carried out. Since you’ve already accepted their premises, they can use the power of guilt to get you to accept a gradually more oppressive environmental policy. Case in point:

Yesterday, the leaders at the G8 Summit agreed to cut their countries’ carbon emissions by 50% by 2050, a radically anti-industrial move that will dismember the economy and stunt the standard of living for the global population. No one can claim that such an act was motivated by anything other than a hatred for mankind. Last week, a measure was put up for conideration in the British Parliament that would institute a personal cap-and-trade policy for every resident of England. Was this act considered because its proponents love the earth, or because they hate humanity? You be the judge.

With the basic premises of environmentalism so common today, it won’t be long before such cap-and-trade proposals are made in the United States. Do you really believe that such a measure would be beyond the scope of a Barack Obama environmental policy? Maybe not now, but what about four years from now? This is why the environmentalism issue is so important to me.

But there is another reason I frequently choose environmentalism over other topics. Throughout history, the war against man’s productive faculty has been waged under the banner of countless different names and movements; tribalism, monarchism, feudalism– more recently communism, socialism, and fascism– and of course, there’s always been the monstrosity that is organized religion. All of these have been a part of an overarching war on Individualism and a hatred of humanity; environmentalism is no exception here– it is merely the newest leader in the same war, the latest manifestation of the same hatred. However, environmentalism is different from its ideological ancestors in one, very important way.

In the past, movements that sought to destroy humanity (the modern ones anyway) have disguised their hatred for man’s virtues, proclaiming them to be the immoral while holding up their own standards as the moral alternative. With the broad base of society accepting altruism, their unpracticeable moral code, they guilted people into embracing their own self-destruction in the name of the love of mankind. Environmentalism is different because it makes no attempt to disguise its contempt for humanity.

Now, I won’t run through my whole spiel on environmentalism again because I’ve already blogged on it and have stated my opposition to it in as clear terms as I can, both here and in other places. But I will say this: