261: EVIDENCE and COMMENTARY to PARTS I, II, &III (PART IV)
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
2
VIRTUES (Teleology) and VICES (deontology)
Yr
wage" ($1000s)
Wrk (Pop.)
SS ($ Pd in)
SS ($ Pd out)
Debt$ to SS
‘82
11.5
89.8
116.034
109.921
6.13
‘83
12.3
91.2
117.272
111.635
5.64
‘84
13.1
92.4
118.312
113.104
5.21
‘85
13.9
93.5""
132.723
114.45
18.3
‘86
14.8
94.4"""
152.664
115.552
37.1
‘87
15.7
95.6
187.028
117.021
70.01
‘88
16.7
97
201.85
118.735
83.12
‘89
17.6
98.2
226.3
120.204
106.1
‘90
18.5
99.1
240.05
121.306
118.7
‘91
19.1
100
250.01
122.408
127.7
‘92
20.8
101
274.98
123.595
151.4
‘93
21.8
102
291.05
124.818
166.2
‘94
24.1
103.1
325.23
126.164
199.1
‘95
26.5
104.4
362.13
127.755
234.4
‘96
28.8
105.7
398.46
129.346
269.1
‘97
30.1
107.2
422.356
131.549
290.8
of
In a few years, as wage-earning contributors to SS, become aware that the Surplus Trust funds were routinely spent as government’s general revenue, and, were not needed to pay SS benefits to the Baby Boom, therefore, is neither available to recompense wage-earner-contributors nor pay SS benefits. Will the evidence of this grand political theft then become a political issue? Typical willful economic fraud, which Enron, Worldcomm, Tyco, . . . , (now mortgage banking) represent, surely will pall when compared to government’s political heist of SS surplus contributions, which government has misspent as its general revenue. The
EVIDENCE that
this grandest political theft is still ongoing: Worker Population (millions), $ (billions) wage" ($1000s)
Wrk (Pop.)
SS ($ Pd in)
SS ($ Pd out)
Debt$ to SS
‘80
9.92
86.5
103.996
105.882
-1.92
‘81
10.7
88.2
114.377
107.963
6.68
Yr
"
Per Capita Income, Information Please Almanac, 1996, 53
""
"
Per Capita Income, Information Please Almanac, 1996, 53
"""
New rates for 1984 (first year of SS surplus) apply. SS rate was increased 4.48%. .07% inc. in ’85, .14% in’86, and 5.03% in ‘88.
261
Addendum-Preamble
3
Yr
wage" ($1000s)
Wrk (Pop.)
SS ($ Pd in)
SS ($ Pd out)
Debt$ to SS
‘98
31.6
108.9
450.435
132.878
317.6
‘99
33.2
110.6
480.629
134.952
346.7
‘00
34.8
112.3
511.535
137.026
374.5
Beginning in 1984, because of SS tax law, which collects SS surplus, government has routinely spent the SS surplus as its general revenue. The government’s debt to SS through 2000 exceeds $2.9 trillion, in 2008 exceeds $4 trillion, and eventually is expected to reach $12 trillion, as 1983-84 SS Law had specified surplus collections to pay SS benefits to the retiring Baby Boom. If a Principle is something ‘necessary,’
that cannot be denied because denial would entail contradiction of what already has been established 1 , ‘Necessity’ requires that the essential predicate value of that principle ‘is true’, ‘coherent’, and ‘axiomatic’. Unless axiomatically ‘coherent,’ what is considered a principle, neither is ‘necessary’ nor can it be ‘is true.’ And is, therefore, logical fallacy, i.e., irrationally is instead ‘is false.’ For instance, because its economic mechanisms are unitary materialism-based dogma, Capitalism is irrationally unprincipled. Dogmas as mechanism, materialism, and capitalism, which mechanist politics has officially affirmed as economic principles, are not necessary principles in fact. SS insurance, provides mitigating teleological principle, however. Mechanism is affirmed causality that rivals causal Teleology. Mechanism is empirical philosophy, which affirms that the "
Per Capita Income, Information Please Almanac, 1996, 53
4
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
universe behaves like a big machine. Mechanists conclude from this affirmed fallacy that humans must behave in accord with the causal Mechanism-based universe. [Economically isolating the investor caste and kings from determinist servitude, because of ‘divine rights’, which dogmatic belief, God had bequeathed.] Bertrand Russell pointed out the logical contradiction of materialism and its companion, mechanism: if humans were only material entities, the necessities and coherence of these dogma-based theories’ could not be challenged, but also could have no meaning. 2
If we imagine a world of mere matter, there would be no room for falsehood in such a world, and although it would contain what may be called “facts,” it would not contain any truths, in the sense in which truths are things of the same kind as falsehoods. In fact, truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs and statements; hence a world of mere matter, since it would contain no beliefs or statements, would also contain no truth or falsehood. Noumena, human thought, logic, truth, knowledge, . . . , is the essential axiomatic principle intelligence of human life. Materialism, is dogmatic philosophy of temporal orthodoxy, and often is fallaciously affirmed as the antecedent principle of ‘rational empiricism,’ which philosophically only is applied by the democratic part of U.S. constitutional government (i.e., the Bill of Rights part, which protects the essential human Noumena). Whenever, ‘Noumena,’ fails as the antecedent necessity in the U.S. constitutional democratic political arena, factual paradoxes proliferate in results. * * G. W. von Leibnitz, who shared mathematical distinction with Isaac Newton (with developing The Calculus), declared a critical difference between necessary truths (of noumena) and contingent truths [of phenomena (facts)]. 3
There are two kinds of truths; those of reasoning and those of
261
Addendum-Preamble
5
6
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
fact. The truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; the truths of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible.
Glen Ruffenach is a Wall Street Journal reporter and the editor of Encore, the Journal’s guide to life after 55. Ruffenach wrote this article about Social Security. He can be reached at encore@wsj.com.
Unless necessary ‘noumena’ is maintained as the antecedent of phenomena, mechanist capitalism is then fascism, and paradoxes rule human life’s essence (Noumena). In this Addendum, DeYoung tests for tautology: both of the research, and orthodox views, which articles in media often represent. M. H. DeYoung
While my research mostly agrees with Ruffenach, it takes exception with his ‘failure hypotheses,’ which orthodox political view of crisis, is a failure of politics, which mechanist orthodoxy, economically exploits Social Security. My annotations to Ruffenach’s article are set off by borders, as here shown:
261
Topical Guide
G. Ruffenach’s Article Population indices of my research model
6 15
J. L. Smith’s commentary
40
About economic teleology
47
Importance of testing for logical tautology
48
Axioms (essential statements taken to be ‘true,’ without proof)
50
‘Noumenon’ is of natural essential necessity
54
Organizations have a philosophic basis.
68
Values Differences are subtle and often paradoxical
75
Professor Waldemer P. Read’s Address
110
SOCIAL SECURITY: The Readers Weigh In 4 Social Security, judging from our mailbox, seems to generate as many questions and concerns among would-be and current retirees as it does these days on Capitol Hill. Two weeks ago, we wrote about research at Radford University in Virginia that suggests that, in some instances, filing for reduced Social Security benefits at age 62 might make better economic sense than waiting for full benefits at age 65. The reason: the so-called time value of money. Because your dollars, over time, can have added value (if they’re invested, for instance), the three additional years that the early filer receives Social Security checks can make it tougher for the late filer to “catch up.” (For a complete look at the research, visit the Web site of the Journal of Financial Planning at www.journal@wsj.net and under featured articles in the June issue, click on “Social Security Benefit Considerations in Early Retirement.”) After our column ran, we were inundated with comments and questions from readers-both about the timing issue and Social Security benefits in general. The topic, it seemed, was ripe for a quick revisit. First though a few basics. That older Americans are concerned about their
G. Ruffenach’s Article: Readers Weigh In
261
7
retirement benefits should come as no surprise, Social Security checks are the largest source of income for current retirees, accounting for fully 40% of their income on average, according to 2000 figures from the Census Bureau. In 2016, the federal entitlement program will begin paying out more than it takes in; by 2038, according to government estimates, Social Security will be broke. The latest effort in Washington to avert that problem is President Bush’s new commission on Social Security reform, which began work last month. Ruffenach’s statement (In 2016, the federal entitlement program will begin paying out more than it takes in), is hypothetical dogma-based orthodox fallacy, which facts and reason fail to confirm:
8
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
million births before that I called John-Mary. For comparison, I call the Baby-Boom’s population Sean-Michelle: all group’s birth counts are in millions.5 For the 1990 window, The US Department of Commerce furnished the information about the population of 65 and older.6 As age 65 is reached, mortality has shrunk each birth year’s count by a little more than 20%. Then, after twenty years, as life transcends age 85, each birth year’s count statistically becomes extinct. Still, in 1990, the census counts of those transcending age 100 is 35,808 (28,109 of whom were women).
There were twenty years of births in the Baby Boom. Yr
Births
Yr
Births
Yr
Births
Yr
Births
‘46
3.29
‘51
na
‘56
4.22
‘61
4.27
‘47
3.7
‘52
3.91
‘57
4.31
‘62
4.17
‘48
na
‘53
3.97
‘58
4.26
‘63
4.1
‘49
na
‘54
4.08
‘59
4.3
‘64
4.03
‘50
3.63
‘55
4.1
‘60
4.26
‘65
3.76
Factually, natural births do not grow. They cannot grow! Instead, due to deaths occurring randomly, the only dynamic is shrinkage caused by death. Still, immigration effects population growth similarly as births, but, after the fact. My research focus here is on the Baby-Boom’s natural births, which occurred between 1946 and 1965. This Baby-Boom’s population totaled 77 million live births. ‘Infant mortality’ had shrunk this count by about one million. The previous twenty year’s birth count (to which I gave the pseudonym Tom-Sue) totaled 52 million. The twenty year’s 55
This ‘factual distribution’ is a model on which, by inference and conclusion (logical syllogism), the Baby Boom’s population in retirement logically can be forecasted: each five year interval of this 1990 model, if internal coherence exists, will inferentially forecast the Baby Boom’s retiring birth counts (as reduced by mortality). And because mortality is a natural pattern that increases as life advances,
258
Population Changes
9
the first year of each interval is the logically dominant indicator of population change. For instance, in 1990, the birth year of a person, 65, was 1925. The birth count in 1925 was 2.9 million.7 The corresponding count in 2011 represents the first year of the Baby Boom’s generation to reach age 65 ( 3.29 million births in 1946). When this ratio (3.29/2.9) is typical of the trailing years (i.e., is consistent), logically infers that the Baby Boom’s retirement population in 2011, will be 13.4% greater than 1990's retirement population. In 2016 the ratio of correspondence is (3.62/2.9), but this increase (25%) is not relevant to the Baby Boom’s retirement, because SS benefit eligibility is gradually shifting to age 67 (This gradual seven year eligibility shift, to be completed in 2022, was imposed by the SS tax law of 1983, made effective in 1984). This shift will result in some persons aged 65 remaining in the workforce until benefit eligibility is attained). By 2022, births for ages 65 and 66 are detained in the workforce. And, by this retirement delay, the retirement population is reduced by about 6.8 million. But, maybe of more significance, the workforce is increased at a time when employment demand is extremely critical (contribution taxes and surpluses are increased as well).""
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
10
(millions of potential wage-earners) YEAR
ENTER (Age 18)
EXIT (Age 65)
1965 1966 1967 1968 1969
3.65 3.59 3.60 3.58 3.77
(1) 1.49 1.49 1.56 1.64 1.72
2.16 2.10 2.04 1.94 2.05
(1)
1970 1971 1972 1973 1974
3.86 3.91 4.02 4.05 4.16
1.80 1.88 . . 1.96 2.03 2.17
2.06 2.04 2.07 2.02 2.00
(2) 115.1
(2) 20.1
1975 1976 1977 1978 1979
4.25 4.20 4.24 4.20 4.21
2.20 2.23 2.26 2.29 2.32
2.05 1.97 1.98 1.91 1.89
125.3 (2) 124.9
(2) 22.41
1980 1981 1982 1983 1984
4.11 4.04 3.97 3.71 3.56
2.32 2.31 2.31 2.31 2.31
1.80 1.73 1.66 1.40 1.25
134.8
POPULATION CHANGES, 20 - 65 AGE GROUP """
""
Unfortunately, now in 2008, the economy has been devastated by a series of mechanist orthodox fallacies. Therefore, maybe the best temporary solution is to retire aged workers earlier rather than later. """
Factors of Mortality applied to reduce the birth counts were: 0.9869 for age 18, 0.7822 for age 65 and 0.7451 for age 67. These factors are from the Table of Mortality furnished by the Census Bureau for 1990. Numbers in parentheses relate to notes that
follow the Table.
NET CHNG.
TOT. (18-64) ?
TOT. (65-?) ?
258 YEAR
Population Changes
ENTER (Age 18)
EXIT (Age 65)
1985 1986 1987 1988 1989
3.47 3.46 3.55 3.68 3.51
2.30 2.29 2.29 2.28 2.28
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994
3.22 3.10 3.12 3.10 3.13
2.23 2.18 2.14 2.09 2.05
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
3.28 3.29 3.45 3.56 3.60
2000
NET CHNG.
11 TOT. (18-64)
TOT. (65-?)
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
12
The rates of mortality among the general population in the United States have been calculated and published after each decennial census since 1890. However, the earlier tables did not represent national mortality since they were based only upon data from states which require statewide registration of births and deaths. By 1940, all the states were in this category, so that the mortality rates of the tables published thereafter do reflect nationwide experience.
1.17 1.16 1.26 1.40 1.23
142.0
.99 .91 .98 1.01 1.08
148.1 (4) 147.0
2.01 1.97 1.93 1.90 1.86
1.27 1.32 1.51 1.67 1.74
153.3
3.63
1.89
1.75
161.3
2005
3.78
1.97
1.81
169.9
2010
4.03
2.57
1.45
178.5
2015
(5) 3.75
2.99
.76
183.3
2020
(5) 3.75
(6) 3.30
.45
186.2
‘57-’53
4.31
4.22
4.1
4.08
3.97
2025
(5) 3.75
(6) 3.34
.41
188.2
‘25-’21
2.18
2.18
2.17
2.11
2.05
2030
(5) 3.75
(6) 2.82
0.93
191.6
2040
(5) 3.75
2.48
1.27
202.7
2050
(5) 3.75
2.92
.83
212.1
(3)
(4) 31.1
(2) Census Bureau’s estimates.9 (3) This year’s net change represents the lightest level of competition for jobs. A reasonable expectation is unemployment rates will abate. (4) My population model reliably tracks through 1990 the Census Bureau’s most recent projection in the 1986 World Almanac.10 (5) Counts are estimated as published empirical counts beyond 1993 were unavailable. 11 (6) Mortality adjusted highest birth counts of the BabyBoom. First Interval Correspondence Table for 2022 Yr\Age
(1) Births for years before 1910 are unavailable because: 8
65
66
67
68
69
The first year’s ratio is typical of the trailing years. Excluding the effects of mortality, this indicated increase for 2022 is, therefore, about 95% more than in 1990 Including the effects of mortality, the indicated increase must be reduced by about twenty percent. 10.066 million count in 1990, therefore, has 17.7 million in
258
Population Changes
13
14
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
2022. However, since about 7 million will be retained in the workforce, paying SS taxes, until eligibility for retirement at age 67 is attained, therefore, results to decrease this Interval’s retirement population to about the 10 million, which is about equal to the empirical count in 1990.
retirees are wage-earners that are eligible to receive SS benefits. A $12 trillion SS trust fund was considered necessary to pay benefits to the retired Baby Boom. " My research shows that 18 million additional retired individuals in 2022, makes this surplus trust fund anything but laughable.
Second Interval Correspondence Table for 2022
By natural populations, I mean the projections of populations are based on known native births. The birth estimates for the years following 1996 have no influence on the retired populations of concern; they have a small influence on the workers’ population of 2025 and a greater influence on the workers’ population of 2050. However, mortality is having its natural way: in 2050 the Baby Boom is no longer of concern. I applied the Census Bureau’s empirically based mortality factors for 1990 to the most recent birth counts furnished by the Census Bureau. Birth count estimates for years 1995 through 2050 were artfully selected to produce in 2050 a population of 300 million (as the Census Bureau recently projected it would be). My estimates are equally conservative. One should consider that higher birth counts are probable and if true the increase will first impact on the younger age groups before impacting on the retirement group. Most significant, is that the greatest accuracy involves the retired population (The birth facts are all known). Therefore, the ratios (retired/worker populations) for 2010, 2015 and 2025 are reliable. The ratio’s decline predicted by the Census Bureau, based on faulty information available in 1983, can now not occur. It follows, therefore, that the Social Security Surplus collected, ostensibly to fund the retirement of the Baby Boom, will not be necessary for reasons they explained when the 1983 Social Security Tax law was enacted.
Yr\Age
70
‘52-’48
3.91
‘20-’16
1.99
71
72
73
74
3.63 1.91
1.83
1.74
1.65
This Interval’s increase is between 96% (for those of age 70) and 98% (for those of age 72), say 97% for the total interval. The second Interval population increase, therefore, will add about 6.4 million individuals to the empirical second intervals population in 1990 (14.4 total ): Third Interval Correspondence Table for 2022 Yr\Age
75
’47-‘43
3.29
‘15-’11
2.9
76
77
78
79
3.7
The increase is less than 14%. The third interval’s net population increase will likely be less than 1.2 million (7.3 million total). The Baby Boom’s retirement population’s marginal increase in 2022, as compared to the 31 million 1990 empirical Census-based population, will not exceed 40 million. (My research model provided further on projects a 65-93 population in 2025 of 39.77 million, of which 6.52 million will be retained in the work force until retiring at age 67.) Not all
"
Huge reserves, say $12 trillion, as SS Commissioner Dorcas Hardy, stated during the late 1980s
258
Population Changes
15
In 1983, the Census Bureau furnished this faulty premise to legislators that revised the Social Security law:12
On an economic note, the ratio of the working age population . . . to the retirement age population will begin an unprecedented decline. The nation had 5.3 people of working age in 1982 for every person 65 or older. The ratio is projected to drop to 4.7 in 2000 and to 2.4 in 2080 My research of more reliable facts shows the ratio in 2000 is closer to 5.9 and with the age for retirement shifted to 67, the ratio in 2050, when the Baby Boom is essentially only a historical footnote, will be close to 5.6; the ratio in 2080 should also be favorable.
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
16 Year
1990
2000
2010
2015
2025
2050
152.63
160.42
171.68
172.92
174.20
194.96
workers /retired
6.25
7.16
7.81
6.76
5.24
6.70
65
2.18
1.92
2.89
3.06
3.26
2.92
66
2.18
1.84
2.51
2.92
3.26
2.87
67
2.17
1.77
2.13
2.71
3.17
2.73
68
2.11
1.76
2.02
2.64
3.11
2.63
69
2.05
1.74
2.05
2.55
2.98
2.58
70
1.99
1.71
1.90
2.50
2.92
2.47
71
1.91
1.67
1.63
2.14
2.74
2.35
72
1.83
1.63
1.59
1.78
2.55
2.17
73
1.74
1.58
1.49
1.65
2.41
1.97
74
1.65
1.52
1.39
1.64
2.21
1.85
75
1.54
1.46
1.28
1.46
2.04
1.65
76
1.43
1.37
1.16
1.21
1.84
1.52
Age Total 18-66 Ratio:
Population Indices from my research model for selected years (in millions of population) Year
1990
2000
2010
2015
2025
2050
Age Total (1-17)
61.6
66.4
69.8
72.7
75.7
75.7
Total 18-64
148.26
156.66
166.27
166.93
167.68
189.16
6.08
5.29
4.21
5.42
Ratio: workers /retirees
5.15
5.99
258 Year
Population Changes
17
1990
2000
2010
2015
2025
2050
1.30
1.28
1.04
1.12
1.60
1.39
Age 77 78
1.15
1.14
.95
.99
1.43
1.23
79
.99
1.00
.85
.85
1.25
1.12
80
.82
.85
.73
.71
1.07
1.03
81
.65
.67
.59
.55
.75
.86
82
.46
.48
.43
.39
.47
.59
83
.23
.26
.23
.21
.24
.31
84
.12
.14
.13
.12
.14
.16
85
.09
.11
.10
.09
.10
0.13
86
.06
.08
.08
.07
.07
0.1
87
.04
.06
.06
.05
.05
.08
88
.03
.04
.04
.04
.04
.06
89
.02
.03
.03
.03
.02
.04
90
.01
.02
.02
.02
.02
.03
91
.01
.01
.01
.01
.01
.02
18 Year Age
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum) 1990
2000
2010
2015
2025
2050
92
.0
.01
.01
.01
0
.01
93
0
0
0
0
0
0
Tot all ages.
(1) 238.6
249.24
263.39
271.18
283.14
Total 65-93
(2) 28.8
(2) 26.15
(2) 27.36
31.53
39.77
34.88
21.96
(2) 25.55
(3) 33.25
(3) 29.09
Total 67-93
24.4
22.39
299.73
(1) My population model used the actual birth counts and the most recent (1990) Mortality Table furnished by the Census Bureau. Still, it projects ten million less than the Census Bureau counted in 1990. When considering that the birth counts do not include the increases due to immigration, for instance, the low projection is reasonable. (2) The age of eligibility for full Social Security Benefits is 65. This age definition shifts gradually until 2022 when the age for receiving full benefits is 67. (3) The age eligibility for full Social Security Benefits is 67. (Of note is that my model’s total SS retirees’ population is in 2025 close to the empirical count of retirees in 1990) In 1983, the Census Bureau furnished the following faulty premise to those who revised Social Security: 13
On an economic note, the ratio of the working age population . . . to the retirement age population will begin an unprecedented
258
Population Changes
19
20
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
decline. The nation had 5.3 people of working age in 1982 for every person 65 or older. The ratio is projected to drop to 4.7 in 2000 and to 2.4 in 2080.
(principles) of Adam Smith’s philosophy regarding wage-earning production. If the SS system is ‘broken’ as President Bush’s commission draft report suggests, the cause is mechanism related
My research shows that the ratio does not drop in 2000. Then, with the shift to age 67, it never drops below 5.24. My analysis shows the ratios are destined as follows (the shaded ratios apply and the applicable ratio for 2015 is between 5.29 and 6.76 depending on how much conversion to age 67):
and is not the fault of the SS system’s teleology . These differences are confronted in my document called ‘Virtues of SOCIAL SECURITY and the Vices of ORGANIZATION.’ And we should bear in mind the overreaching nature of politics, as Benjamin Franklin warned. Parrington provided this clip:14
Year Ages
1990
2000
2010
2015
2025
2050
18-64
5.15
5.99
6.08
5.29
4.21
5.42
18-66
6.26
7.16
7.81
6.76
5.24
6.7
Correspondence must also apply to the relative length of lives as workers and retirees. The length of life as a wage-earner is 18-65, 66, or 67 (47 to 49 years), say for argument 45 years. The length of life in retirement, depends on mortality. As distributed in the 1990 model, the population is distributed roughly by the formula [.036 (40) + .203 (35) + .748 (30) + 2.035 (25) + 3.909 (20) + 6.103 (15) + 7.98 (10) +10.066 (5)] ÷ 31 = 12.3 corresponding years. Unless mortality shifts, one wage-earner corresponds to 3.65 retirees when retiring at age 65 and 4.5 retirees at age 67. The effective ratio of workers to retirees in 2025 is, therefore, 23.6 worker years correspond to each retiree year. Society’s main problem is sustaining wage-earning. This analysis convinces that the birth counts of any large existing group do not pose a threatening natural problem for the Social Security System. Instead, the threat to Social Security is endemic to the politics of The American System of Political Economy and the sophistries of self-serving special interests that mechanistically fail to follow the ‘moral approbation’
In one of the most delightful letters that he ever wrote, Franklin commented on the ways of men thus: It is wonderful how preposterously the affairs of this world are managed. Naturally one would imagine, that the interests of a few individuals should give way to general interest; but individuals manage their affairs with so much more application, industry, and address, than the public do theirs, that general interest generally gives way to particular. We assemble parliaments and councils, to have the benefit of their collected wisdom; but we necessarily have, at the same time, the inconvenience of their collected passions, prejudices, and private interests. By the help of these, artful men overpower their wisdom and dupe its possessors; and if we may judge by the acts, arrets, and edicts, all the world over, for regulating commerce, an assembly of great men is the greatest fool on earth? . . . employment demand of political economy In 2016, the 3.63 million individuals born in 1950 are 64 years old; mortality for 1990 (Census Bureau’s count) shows that 3.17 million survived their 64th birthday (are expected to retire from the work force) while, also that year, the population of 18 year olds (those
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Population Changes
21
born in 1998 and entering the work force) totaled 3.9 million (the net change in the work force population is an expected increase increase of less than a million): The difference between potential workforce entrants, and those exiting it, represents a natural dynamic that like birth and death, effects the (18-64) workforce population. However, as ages 65 and 66 are redefined as part of the ‘workforce,’ (18-65, or 66), surviving birth counts (ages 65 and 66) also then remain to pay contribution taxes. Considering this workforce redefinition is important, since, the natural yearly increase of less than a million workers, beginning in 2010, continues for a sustained period: The economy is entering a period where natural-born workers are insufficient to fill normal employment demands: What naturally unexpectedly happened in the 1990s, to cause low unemployment rates, is repeating with more vigor as Baby Boom begins to retire. If the low unemployment of 1990s baffles (when the yearly natural increase in worker population was always greater than .9 million), a similar natural dynamic will begin in 2015 (when natural increases fall to less than .5 million), will be even more baffling. While the economy is healthy, employment opportunities for retirees will increase greatly. In fact delaying the Baby Boom’s retirement for two years, might be more a necessity to fill employment needs, than to ease the drain on funds needed to pay retirement benefits. With SS surplus not needed, paying SS benefits along with elective employment and health care, might be an imperative solution. The chances are better than good that working retirees will offset the anticipated need for surplus contributions that now are being collected, then misspent as government’s general revenue. While former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y. agreed with mechanist orthodoxy to claim,
that workers and retirees do not own their benefits and have no legal claims on them,15
22
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
a $6-10 trillion debt to the SS Funds to pay retirement benefits to former wage-earners accumulates. And, if this surplus is not needed as specified, then President Bush established a precedent for returning tax surpluses ‘to those that paid them’: Therefore, despite legal orthodoxy regarding whom owns taxes or benefits, (the Supreme Court has specified no difference between revenue taxes and contribution taxes). Therefore, wage-earners have equal rights when expecting excess contribution taxes are returned to them. The strategy to dismantle the SS system could easily be based in the original arguments about Social Security and those of society, who perceive the teleological truth basis of Social Security, must therefore be more than just on guard. They must be active political boosters of the ‘social usage’-based SS insurance system. In fact, the pure liberal fight must not be with democrats, republicans, or capitalists. But rather is a proverbial conflict of ideas that must be won on the political battlefield of the public-mind: the mortal struggle to achieve sovereign solidarity in teleologically ethical morality and truth (Which is further explained in ‘Duty without Principle’). About original arguments of SS, H. B. Leonard wrote this:16
Well before the drafting of the Social Security Act began, the most crucial policy question for the program was framed. Should a federal program to help the elderly be a welfare program or a pension program -- in the terms of the day, should it be a ‘dole’ or ‘insurance’? The resolution of this question would profoundly and permanently shape the politics of social security. If the program were structured as a dole, the attached stigma would limit it -- fewer people would aspire to be on it, fewer would have a stake in it, fewer would want to be associated with it. If, by contrast, it were an insurance program, one that just happened to be operated by the federal
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government, its constituency would be proud and potentially broad based. This political distinction was critical from the start, and it persists in today's Social Security debate. Pertinent to the chaotic issues, Leonard points to pay-as-you-go and pay-for-yourself. Pay-as-you-go was blessed by the Supreme Court. It was the basis for Social Security, as installed in 1935. There was no authorized surplus! Changing to Pay-for-yourself SS system is a political precedent to shutting pay-as-you-go Social Security down and arguably this change to SS was installed by the Social Security law of 1983. A huge surplus then began to accumulate. It was the huge accumulation of surplus, which had little promise of ever being utilized to pay SS benefits, was the potentially fatal change to Social Security, which, in 1985, motivated my research. I resigned my CEO position to accomplish this research. The argument involving Social Security surplus got seriously underway with the November 5, 1994 article Experts say Social
Security must cut benefits or hike taxes. This article was based on the same argument that was made to install the rate hikes of the Social Security Law of 1983. Some $400 billion accounted as SS surplus, as of 1994, was not expected to be there when needed. The article stated this:17
The latest projections show that Social Security faces a cash shortfall in 2013, when payroll tax collections will not be enough to cover monthly checks for retirees. At that point, the retirement system should be able to draw on the sizable surplus, which is invested in Treasury IOUs. But because the federal government keeps running a deficit, that money is being spent to cover ordinary expenses. The consequence: Government will have to borrow, raise taxes, or
24
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
cut benefits when the baby boomers retire. This article confirmed my research premise that the Social Security Law of 1984 was in all practical effects, general revenue taxation without wage-earner representation. Should the fresh call for ‘returning taxes to those that paid them,’ in fact mean that a heavier burden must again politically and mechanistically fall onto wageearners? I surely hope not but the politics for this is mounting! And the worse scenario is the call for general tax reductions without first reconciling the federal debt owed to S.S.Funds: with commensurate SS contribution tax relief. Consider, in the light of fickle politics, that the system was changed in 1984 from the simple, direct pay as you go (where current payments into the system are paid out to current beneficiaries) to an extremely complex system of paying for yourself (which system requires huge reserves’ accumulation as well as fiducial custody of it (it is the custody that must be considered very carefully in light of Franklins reality): of huge reserves, say $12 trillion (as SS Commissioner Dorcas Hardy, stated during the late 1980s *). Consider then, the nature of sovereignty and the factional financial advantages which have been catered to ‘wealth’ and ‘power’ in the history of our federal government. * In 1984, the contribution-tax revenue going to SS’s original program (OAI) is 11.8 times the tax revenues collected in the mid-sixties (When the expansions to Social Security are included, Medicare for instance, the total contribution’s revenue in 1984 is 14.5 times that in 1965) Wages earned were only five times, and the employee’ population had grown only 1.5 times. These fundamental facts frame the political rationalization, from which the SS contribution-tax-rates were set, and surplus contribution taxes were made as necessary. And while the government badly
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needed revenues, because of abating high end revenue taxation, the only justification for increasing SS contribution tax rates was inflation endemism’s effects on general economy (the systemic maturation of SS had no necessary causal effect on SS taxes). S t ill, I n t r i n s i c o f t his analysis, the count of retirees receiving SS benefits had dwindled while total SS beneficiaries had greatly increased. In other words, during the ‘Great Society’ years of the 1960's, the SS System, and the benefit pipelines from it, were politically given social welfare roles. In 1988, the SS Commissioner, Dorcas Hardy, commented about the OASDI benefit outlays: She reported that 60 percent went to retirees, 40 percent to spouses’ survivors (that lived on scanty wages and retirement income of those retired) and those on SS disability insurance.18 The population of those over age 65 rose from 18 to 27 million, in line with the expansion of employment, while the aggregate of individual benefit payments to retirees rose on average to four times what they were in 1965, which is less than the increase in wages earned (this fact confirms the previous statement that John-Mary received benefit checks that in constant dollars are 80% of what the other groups would receive). In the ‘1980s, 93% of all people aged 65 and over were eligible for cash benefits.19 As for the SS Systems maturity (with eligibility now including most women, as well as men), SS was surely reaching ‘maturity.’ This says only that the inordinate pressures on the SS contribution tax rates, set in ‘78 and ‘83, no longer included the necessary provision for SS ‘eligibility growth’ that I call ‘systemic maturation,’ which was the primary cause to increase SS tax rates. But the ‘70s and ‘80's gave us rampant inflation that would reach past 20 percent. And inflation endemism is more pernicious
26
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum) to SS than any SS systemic maturation ever was. And because SS has no causal nexus to inflation, therefore, first dollar SS taxes, as based on inflation, are grossly and patently unfair.
Then consider the sad reality that the contributed reserves for SS did not accumulate: were commingled with general revenues used to pay for the general operations of the federal government. Who owns what? And who pays? Before leaving this dissent, however, consider the latest orthodox argument of the SS crisis because of the fact that federal surplus (anticipated) has now been returned to general revenue tax payers. Particularly pertinent is the notion that ‘workers and retirees (of SS) do not own their benefits and have no legal claim on them.’
Social Security crisis predicted Bush commission’s draft report recommends major overhaul Washington -- Social Security cannot meet its group promise to future retirees without reducing benefits, increasing taxes or massive government borrowing, a presidential commission said in a preliminary report Thursday. The report says Social Security faces a “fiscal crisis and a crisis of confidence” if it is not overhauled soon. It also lays the groundwork for a final report later this fall to recommend a plan to let younger workers invest a portion of their payroll taxes in the stock market. “The system is broken,” wrote the commission’s cochairmen, former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., and Richard Parsons, an executive at AOL-Time Warner and a Republican. The report made clear that workers and retirees do not
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own their benefits and have no legal claim to them. “What they have is a political promise that can be changed at any time, by any amount for any reason,” said the report written by staff members. The full commission has not yet endorsed the findings and meets Tuesday to discuss it. Opponents accused the White House and the commission of trying to manufacture a crisis to scare the public and make the stock market idea easier to sell. The White House said the report shows the need for urgent action. “The president wants a solution,” said White House spokesman Jim Wilkinson. “The opponents of reform want a political issue.” The start of the baby boomers’ retirement in the coming decade will put a strain on the pay-as you-go system. By 2016 Social security will collect less in payroll taxes than it will pay out in benefits. The program is projected to run out of cash in 2038. Opponents argue stock market investment is risky and the cost of setting up a system would mean cutting benefits. The report, in an appeal for support by women and minorities for the system overhaul, said those groups are more likely to be pushed into poverty unless there are changes. “Social Security contributions may represent their only hope to build assets and wealth,” it said. Earnings of lowincome Americans “are collected to support a system that offers them only uncertain promises and below market rates of return.” Rhetoric about crisis and fewer workers per retiree palls alongside
28
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
‘The report made clear that workers and retirees do not own their benefits and have no legal claim to them. What they have is a political promise that can be changed at any time, by any amount for any reason.’ Is this assertion reminiscent of Jefferson and Paine or in the vein of Edmund Burke? Does the Constitution, and the laws of it, act as a binding contract or ultimately, in democracy, are the laws, and the Constitution even, subject to review, criticism and consent by common reason of persons affected by what is done? And does the Constitution’s Bill of rights provide guarantees of equal treatment under law? When government surpluses are returned ‘to those that paid revenue taxes,’ as has now been done (only to high end tax payers), is the above assertion constitutional? Has ‘legal’ departed? Or should ‘equality’ also apply to contributions’ surpluses? And the question about causes and equities in inflation also appertains. About the statement
“Social Security contributions may represent their only hope to build assets and wealth.” Earnings of low-income Americans “are collected to support a system that offers them only uncertain promises and below market rates of return”: Is true of capitalism but not Social Security? Social Security was not designed to make people rich and powerful. Rather, SS was designed to ease capitalism’s economic paradoxes. Professor E. K. Hunt gave these strategic designs of Capitalism:20
Capitalism is defined by . . . essential features that are always present in a capitalist economy. ---First is the ubiquity of monetary exchange. For the vast majority of people in capitalism, one can get the things one wants and needs only if one has money with which to buy these
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things in the market. ---Second, capitalism always has at least four clearly identifiable socioeconomic classes: the class of wealthy capitalists, the class of small businesspeople and independent professionals, the class of working people and the class of destitute persons who live by various welfare programs or by theft, prostitution, or whatever means are available. . . . [as in all Hindu-like castes] The working class has no significant access to or ownership of productive resources. Individuals in this class must sell control of their power to labor (i.e., get a job) as their only means to escape sinking to the destitute class. . . . Income from ownership and the wages of workers are considered to be the only socially respectable sources of income. The destitute class must depend on the somewhat “less than respectable” sources of income, such as welfare, charity, or the fruits of quasi legal or illegal activities in order to get by. The stigma that attaches to members of this class motivates all propertyless individuals to try very hard to secure employment even if working conditions and wages are poor. If the commission to improve SS wishes to provide discretionary income to the poor, it should consider improving mechanists’ strategic capitalism, to eliminate poverty. And it should consider the sources of inflation, which only wage-earners in capitalism pay for. Look at the increases in the rates of payroll taxes: The maximum increase is 76 times the original base rate. Inflation caused a lot of it. If any system is near to being bankrupt, it is capitalism as administered by the American system of Political Economy. I will not attempt to explain the nuances of inflation here but do in the main body of Virtues of Social Security and Vices of Organization. For now
30
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
consider E.K. Hunt’s statement:
---- First is the ubiquity of monetary exchange. For the vast majority of people in capitalism, one can get the things one wants and needs only if one has money with which to buy these things in the market Wages are never designed to satisfy all wants and needs. Recent accounts of the public consumer debt is more than $16 trillion. Without wage increases, bankruptcies are sure to rise. And with the weak Stock market, big ticket item sales must languish. Political economy finds itself in straits that only the Social Security payments each month keep it from sinking completely. SS is needed now as never before and it is not the entitlement to these checks nor the system that is causing inflation. G. P. Brockway has reasoned that it is the ‘Banker’s COLA that causes inflation. Years ago bankers were allowed a 3 percent margin on money entrusted, then loaned. Today, competition sets this COLA: the Stock and Bond Markets also. Money’s ubiquity defies common definition. Amass enough of it and you can control everything that fits the definition of ‘being owned’: Of late, fictitious individuals (corporations) have become the commodity of money amassed by bankers. Tackle inflation at its sources, and the commission to fix SS will give wage-earners the best gift of all: an assurance that what they earn, does not vanish over time. Therefore, what they contribute to the system of SS will have the same purchase value when they retire. If ever double entry bookkeeping covered the workings of money and value, inflation would show up on the balance sheet as ‘debt’ put onto wages in offset to ‘profits,’ which are taken merely because of investment: The Tax Bill of 2001 only gave tax surplus back to the profit’s side of our political economy. All of it represents the inflation, which was consumed, that orthodox economy (legally)
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converted into profit. There are many mechanist sources in ‘American political Economy’ to which J. M. Keynes observed:21
“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler. No surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” -- John Maynard Keynes -The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1920 My research about the economic situation with retiring the Baby Boom must be seriously examined independently of government and politics: In deference to the power and wealth of special interests, politics and, therefore, political economy of government, fails to cater sovereign independence required here (For instance, Did Social Security cause depression, war, or inflation? , is never answered because the question is never asked?). Political deference to overreaching special interests that Franklin observed, make sure such questions are never asked. Only if it can be shown that SS has a causal relationship with catastrophic events as war, depression, and especially inflation, should the contribution taxes of SS be made the primary source of funds to retire the Baby Boom. If the causes of war, depression, and inflation are independent of SS, the retirement of the Baby Boom is the nation’s problem and not the problem of wage-earners (and their employers). In this analysis, the nation owes a $3 trillion debt to SS (representing the inflated contributions to SS). And unless the contributions to surpluses stop, the nation’s debt to SS will increase to more than $10 trillion (as ‘unfunded liabilities’ of SS as has fallaciously been
32
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
actuarially calculated). Emphasizing why $3 trillion and not the $1 trillion accounted, inflation is the nation’s problem and not the problem of SS. Ruffenach’s article continues
The question about when to begin collecting Social Security benefits clearly bedeviled many of our readers. The idea filing early seemed to be counter intuitive to many people. “Should I retire now?” asked Maureen S. Miller, 62, a legal secretary in Minneapolis. “If I retire at 63, my income would be $1,034 per month vs. $1,208 per month at full retirement. That seems to be quite a difference in monthly income, especially when you consider issues like medical coverage.” Medical coverage is critically important In Nevada, pension laws are hotly debated now. The head of the DMV (Motor Vehicle Department) is paid $103,000 and will now be allowed to collect $70,000 in retirement benefits gained in a 38year police career, including tenure as Washoe County Sheriff and Reno police chief. The Governor approved this practice, he said, because of difficulty to recruit qualified people for high level positions. Considering the extremely costly and ineffective services of the DMV, neither the Governor nor department head is qualified for their positions. Maybe Nevada’s problem is more related to mechanist nepotism and officiousness, reminiscent of mob mentality, than a lack of qualified people? (Following Ruffenach’s article, commentary about this practice, of columnist John L. Smith is furnished) Older persons in health plans are an impossible problem that will only worsen as the numbers increase. Pressure is on designing a universal health care insurance plan. As more common sense of this occurs, this will convince Congress to allow Baby Boomers to continue to work, and also enjoy medical coverage while they pay SS contributions and collect SS benefits. (Who would have ever
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thought that pensions that are essentially ‘full salary’ equivalents, would become wedges to pave the way for a universal health insurance plan?) Anyway, Pension Law in Nevada has entered new and unknown territory. The Executive Officer of state retirement system said a new study on the financial effect of the pension law will take place before June 30, 2004."" Taxes must increase to pay unfunded liabilities that avoid detection while growing faster than taxation. Unfunded liabilities are a greater problem for pensions than for payas-you-go SS.
The funding situation for state and local pension plans is even more precarious than that of the federal government’s.22 Ruffenach’s article continues
It may be hard to imagine that the time value of money can overcome that difference, but as we pointed out in our earlier column, it can. But the answer to “sooner or later” isn’t as simple as that. It depends on many factors: additional sources of income, your household budget and-as Ms. Miller notes-the availability of health insurance, among others. Kaz Glista, a 78-year-old retiree in West Hartford, Conn., who waited until 65 to collect Social Security, brought up another factor disputing the arguments for drawing benefits early. “First, you didn’t take into account the three years of earned income I received by retiring at age 65 rather than 62,” Mr. Glista said. “Second, you didn’t take into account that I received cost-of-living increases for 14 years at my maximum ""
We moved to Utah and, therefore, no longer receive ready news on this issue.
34
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
Social Security income. My wife, who took benefits at 62, received the same percentage cost-of-living increases but on a reduced payout. With three years of additional earnings and the cost-of-living adjustments on my full amount, I think I am ahead of the game.” Robert L. Pendergast in Fond du Lac, Wis. , spoke for many readers when he asked us to remind him when full benefits actually became available. The answer, as of 1983, isn’t always 65. In that year, Congress and President Reagan raised the ages at which most future retirees will qualify for full social Security benefits. Workers born in 1960 and later, for instance, won’t be able to get full benefits until they reach age 67. Similarly, the reduction in benefits for people who want their checks at 62 will eventually increase to 30% from the current 21.7%. (A table identifying when full benefits are availably, based on year of birth, is on the Social Security Administrations Web site, www.ssa.gov.) You say you didn’t know about any of this? You’re not alone. A surprising 55% of individuals surveyed earlier this year about their retirement preparations by the Employee Benefit Research institute in Washington, D.C., said they weren’t aware of the changes passed in 1983. Twenty-one percent said they believed they would be eligible for full Social Security benefits before age 65, which has never been the case. *** Most readers had questions about the penalties involved when a person elects to collect Social Security benefits at age 62 and still has earned income. “The government eliminated [the cap on] the amount of earnings you can have without affecting your Social Security benefits,” wrote Gail Calvin in Aurora, Ill.
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“Does that apply only to an individual who starts collecting benefits at 65, or does it also apply to someone who begins collecting at 62?” Good question. Congress last year did eliminate what had become a much-despised provision of the Social Security program: For every $3 that an individual age 65 or older earned above $17,000 each year, he or she forfeited $1 dollar in Social Security benefits. The repeal of that penalty, though, affects only those old enough to collect full benefits. Currently, people 62 to 64 who are collecting Social Security are still subject to wage caps. More specifically, early retirees who continue to work lose $1 of every $2 of their Social Security benefits-in effect, a 50% marginal tax rate-once they earn more than $10,680 a year. (That figure is indexed to inflation annually.) What’s more, because the age at which a person qualifies for full Social Security benefits is gradually increasing, this penalty will affect, once again, individuals age 65 and 66 with earned income. Example: A person born between 1943 and 1954 isn’t eligible for full Social Security benefits-and, thus, will be subject to wage caps-until age 66. Why didn’t Congress repeal the Social Security earnings limit for all older adults? ”I think it was too much to bite off,’ says Merrill Matthews, a visiting scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation, a think tank based outside Dallas. “It was a little easier to sell the idea of 65-plus than it was [to eliminate the wage cap for] all seniors.” About 800,000 seniors benefited from the change last year. Today, almost 600,000 early retirees, ages 62 through 64, collect Social Security benefits and have earned income. How many more seniors, asks Dr. Matthews,
36
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
are dissuaded from working because of the annual cap? “It makes no sense to penalize early retirees for trying to be productive,” he says. “The last thing we want to do is discourage our most knowledgeable and experienced citizens from working.” In May, Republican Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas introduced legislation that would repeal the Social Security earnings cap for early retirees, as well. In the meantime, individuals debating whether to begin collecting benefits 62 vs. 65 should consider how the penalty might affect their budgets. “Somehow that’s got to be factored into the equation when doing a break-even analysis,” wrote Mel Langer in Diamond Bar, Calif. “By taking the money at 65, you’ve got much better flexibility in terms of earned income.” A reader in Moraga, Calif., asked: “Is it possible for a widow, age 62, to take her Social Security now and then take her deceased husband’s Social Security when she reaches age 65?” Such questions “are very common,” says Tom Tobin, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration. “Women often live longer than their husbands and have all kinds of questions about their benefits.” To that end, the administration in May introduced a Women’s Page on the Web site, one that provides information for a number of different individuals. The categories include: Working Woman, Bride, New Mother, Divorced Spouse, Care giver, Widow and Beneficiary. Another section discusses “what every woman should know” about Social Security, retirement, survivors, disability, supplemental security income and Medicare. (The answer the above question is a qualified “yes.”
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Switching benefits, of course, is a common practice. A widow, for instance, can switch from her own benefits to the presumably higher-benefits of her deceased husband. The timing of such changes though, is tricky. “I suppose it’s mathematically possible that a widow could benefit from taking her own Social Security at 62 and her husband’s when she reaches 65,” Mr. Tobin says. But without knowing each person’s job history, he adds, it’s difficult to know for sure. His advice: Call Social Security at 800-772-1213 or visit a Social Security office.) A Snapshot of Benefits Source: Employee Benefit Research Institute
As of February 2001 (latest figures from SS Administration) --45.5 million people received Social Security benefits, including 28.6 million retirees. --72% of the total were age 65 or older; 9%, 62 to 64.
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SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
--$35.6 billion in benefits were paid out that month, including, including $30.8 billion for retirees. --$846 was the average monthly payment for retired workers; $787 for disabled workers; and $812 for nondisabled widows and widowers. This is critical information upon which to anticipate the retirement of the Baby Boom. For now, we are blessed with a favorable retiring population situation (The twenty-year population born following the depression and before the start of the Baby Boom in 1946). This group comprised three million less than the group that represents the roaring twenties including the population crest dubbed the ‘Notch Babies’ (those born between 1917 and 1926).
With reference to retirement population level (the sea rather than a wave) we are midway in a period of a natural birth retirement hiatus until the Baby Boomers begin to retire. What this 2001 fact-
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based, analysis suggests is that the count of retirees is quite stable until 2010 and probably until 2020, then will spike a little. The notes, that follow the table insert, apply to my model-research summary. Millions Year Age
1990
Tot all ages.
(1) 238.6
Total 65-93
(2)
Total 67-93
28.8
24.4
2000
2010
2015
283.1
2050
249.2
263.4
(2) 26.15
(2) 27.36
31.53
39.77
34.88
21.96
(2) 25.55
(3) 33.25
(3) 29.09
22.39
271.2
2025
299.7
(1) My population model used the actual birth counts and the most recent (1990) Mortality Table furnished by the Census Bureau. Still, it projects a count that is ten million less than the Census Bureau counted in 1990. When considering that the birth counts do not include increases due to immigration, for instance, the low projection is reasonable (also, not everyone who turns age 65 is eligible to receive SS benefits; this fact also mitigates the differences with counts furnished by SS). My model accurately depicted the empirical count furnished by the SS Administration. (2) The age of eligibility for full Social Security Benefits is 65. This age definition shifts gradually until 2022 when the age for receiving full benefits is 67 (In fact, Ruffenach’s article confirms that beginning in 2010, full benefits are not available until age 66; therefore, the count of full-benefit-retirees will be less than in 2001; they are about the
40
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
same in 2015 and begin to increase until 2025 when they will be about three million higher). (3) The age eligibility for full Social Security Benefits is 67 The period of increases will last for less than 15 years, then decrease somewhat and then settle around one to two million higher than now. (My model of natural births is very close to the empirical count disclosed in the above Snapshot.) Unless the count of unretired beneficiaries of SS increases significantly, the surpluses collected were unnecessary. Is SS responsible for war and depression(?), is critical to finding equitable solutions to the expanding problem? John L. Smith’s commentary of July 18, 2001, 23 about double-dipping, collecting pensions while drawing full salaries along with generous medical benefits, appertain here: When I first read that Department of Motor Vehicles Director (name not important here) was approved to collect his $70,000 state retirement while drawing his #103,000 salary, my reaction wasn’t one of outrage, but envy. Actually, the outrage came moments later. Initially, I cursed the fates that led me to newspaper work instead of Public Service, which has such a noble ring to it. Public Service makes it seem as if a person is feeding the poor or inoculating plague victims. Little did I know that when political leaders say those words they really mean, “The public is best served medium-rare with a bold Chianti to mask the gamy taxpayers’ aftertaste.” Had I gone into Public Service, I also might have been
41
able to serve myself heaping portions of taxpayer contributions thanks to a state law allowing an employee to simultaneously receive pay and retirement benefits in areas of critical shortage.” As anyone who picks up a newspaper knows, there is never a critical shortage of opinions. So the chances of such a law ever being adapted to fit the news trade are infinitesimal. In all, 22 state employees had applied for the two fisted status. Among those, 10 were Nevada Highway Patrol troopers, five Parole and Probation officers, three Capitol Police officers. Shackled with budget cuts, laughable starting salaries, and vicious working conditions, the state shows some sense in trying to keep as many competent state public workers on the job as long as possible. But the idea that what the bedraggled DMV really needs is an administrator making $173,000 from the state is ridiculous. Giving the law that created this loophole every benefit of the doubt, it never should have come to this. Alas, this is the strange science that happens when you have a governor and legislative hierarchy that largely refuses to lead by failing to create a tax structure that addresses the crushing growth rate and critically overrun infrastructure. The ‘critical shortage’ law promises to be one expensive Band-Aid. Tell me, since when has there been a short supply of state employees willing to run a department for $103,000 a year? Since never. A shortage of lowly troopers and parole officers, yes. A
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shortage of social service caseworkers, always. A shortage of investigators to enforce consumer protection laws, of course. A shortage of experienced teachers to decrease classroom overcrowding, precisely. All that, but not bosses. Not even (the DMV director) whose 38 year career included time as Reno police chief and Washoe County sheriff, all of which flowed into his Public Employees Retirement System pension. (His) dandy double dip could be better spent hiring and training DMV clerks, the occupation which perennially suffers from a high turnover and a ‘critical shortage.’ Anyone who has stood in line at the DMV knows that. If anything, recent history shows the DMV has suffered from a critical lack of administrative leadership. Giving its latest director a windfall is like giving the captain of the Titanic a bonus because he only hit one iceberg. Just because today’s lines are slightly shorter than the Bataan Death March, is nothing to pop champagne corks over. Does no one feel shame for failing to separate the front-line foot soldiers from the in-the-rear-with-the-gear and generals in this battle. (The DMV director) has his defenders, but it’s probably the wrong day for them to start lobbying. On Tuesday, it was announced that a DMV accounting glitch failed to credit $9 million in vehicle tax revenue to the general fund. Not exactly proof of a well-tuned machine. Meanwhile, there’s still no ‘critical shortage’ of
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columnists. Everyone knows we are easily replaced. Possible Solutions to consider Wage-earners were given reason to be unhappy with the nation’s Tax Bill of 2001. But there is political opportunity here as well. President Bush has put the government in a situation that is similar to what President Reagan had experienced. Following deontological notions of duties (wars) and thereby passing on teleologic economic principles, he will surely miss the precious opportunity to reduce the nation’s debt by using budget surpluses to pay down the IOUs to SS (These projected surpluses are more than committed to pay for tax reductions that will not give relief to SS contribution taxpayers).
As far as equity in government goes, and especially if the contribution taxes will not be necessary for purposes as designed in 1983, wage-earners have amassed equity in government that arguably makes them the substantial equity holder of government (particularly
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since the lion’s share of taxes returned went to higher incomes). But everything about this equity depends on political power and will (finding means to overpower the politics of the rich). Unfortunately for workers, inflation does not lower the SS contribution-tax burden: Only those with incomes that allow discretionary spending can invest to gain from the inflation effect on economy: Brockway’s ‘banker’s COLA’ works for them.* * Brockway documents the Political Economy (unequal rights) advantage enjoyed by bankers and investment counselors. Added to the rate banks pay for money they loan, is the Bankers COLA. What was once around 3% is now what political economy will allow. With the new financial services approach, insurance has merged privileged Political Economy rights of banking with annuity products that they offer. For instance, the latest annuity product guarantees a flat rate of return from a contract that invests the principle in mutual funds. Of course the banker’s COLA still applies and pays commissions of the investment brokers. While the source of inflation is more ubiquitous, efforts to control it are made more difficult. And the inflation cost is always paid by the wage-earning consumers. Let it never be said, without strong and justly reasoned rebuttal, that the rich are underprivileged. As Brockway suggested, rights and privilege of economic paternalism, claimed or granted, are not justified by reason: Wage-earners can claim every right and privilege that political economy grants to the capital side of economy, as equally belonging to them: the Banker’s COLA extended to brokerage, for instance. Because it is doubtful that contribution taxes will be given back to those that paid them (businesses have routinely charged off their contributions against taxable income, as costs of business recovered at points of sale when their goods and services were consumed), a political fair exchange must be found in which the
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nation’s debt to wage-earners is settled by providing beneficent ‘social usage’ programs. The list begins with government stemming inflation at it sources (Congress must do its constitutional duty to control inflation by strictly regulating interest rates and fluctuating mediums of exchange as Roger Sherman had constitutionally provided for in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution); providing for general taxbased universal health care insurance; then the exchange should include Sustenance Security Insurance to replace all welfare mechanisms including those put onto SS. The unfunded liabilities problem must soon convince us that inflation must either be strictly controlled or our political economy will fail as the tailing tax burden gets impossible to pay. An excellent treatment of this problem was addressed by H. B. Leonard’s Checks Unbalanced. Social Security must return to ‘pay as you go,’ a program of ‘social usage’ in which unfunded liabilities are not at issue (All government programs of insurance must also be run as nonprofit ‘social usage’ programs. And with general tax rates essentially flat, the SS contribution’s tax must apply to far greater income than is required to just subsist. Politics of teleology has never been needed as it is now. My research sections pertinent to teleology are section 240, Duty without Principle, and sections 250-260, Virtues of Social Security and the Vices of Organization. *** In the space remaining, my hope is to support the statement
‘Opponents argue stock market investment is risky and the cost of setting up a system would mean cutting benefits.’ Assuming the 1983 SS Tax Law remains, IOUs accumulate as the surpluses are spent as general revenue, and government’s interest payments on this debt also rise. Wage-earners must awaken
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to the realization that yearly budgeted interest payments by government materializes only by general revenue taxes, which they must pay. This budgeted cost to general revenue taxes will at some point eclipse the amount of SS benefits payout. With lowered tax rates to high incomes, must result in wage-earners then essentially paying the revenue taxes needed to pay the interest on government’s debt related to SS Trust Funds. So where is mechanist doctrine about taxes, as ‘it’s your money’? And while inflation continues to cause both wages and interest payments to rise artificially, who must pay for this silent villain. Will wage-earners be better off than they were during past years? Or, when inflation is backed out, will they find that the purchase power of their supposed higher wages equals less than they had before? Constant dollars show real family income declined since ‘77 and in ‘83 equals the income value in ‘66. Budgetary teleology in economic conditions requires necessary strategic purposes to achieve and maintain systemic integrity. Particularly important is that expenditures and receipts are in balance.
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About economic teleology
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Wage-earners particularly must realize that wage-earning is the only pure principle of capitalism’s economic wealth. For instance, Quesnay’s ‘produit net’ was the pure principle of the Physiocratic Agrarian economy. And, Adam Smith found labor, not nature, was the principle source of capitalist-production ‘value.’ Inflation, on which capital market-based investments thrive, robs wage-earning of economic vitality. To regain principle-based rights belonging to them, wage-earners must act politically to reclaim their principle role in economy. Political sophistry that amounts to theft of principle value 24 proposes to invest surpluses contributed to SS on behalf of wageearners that paid them. Of course, brokers of the investment will be paid their COLA-BASED fees. Instead, just reduce inflation and lower the payroll taxes! Real economy of industry and consumption will then again seek to be the legitimate principle of economy.
About economic teleology, our nation must maintain, as its primary ‘necessary’ basis of security, a strong wage-earned
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economy as so aptly was demonstrated by the Clinton administration. Importance of testing for logical tautology Federalist deontology (‘duty,’ rather than ‘purpose’) favored divine right dogmatic orthodoxy, therefore, fundamentally rejected democracy and devised legal springs to catch unwary democrats. This historical fact shows that Federalists strategically set ‘legal springs’ to impede democracy, which philosophically is defined as ‘rational-empiricism’: as rationally reasoned administration of essential human rights as balanced with human material positions. By affirming the Federalist orthodox opinion, while also denying (conflating) human essence, Federalists successfully vilified democracy, however, also committed tautological fallacy. This factual fallacy is provable by testing the accounts in history for tautology. Ideologies identified with the orthodox deontology (duties associated with the mechanist orthodoxy) and the opposed teleologies (purposes associated with human rights) are fundamental to the abiding divide in American politics. These ideologies are diabolically disposed: causal dogma called ‘mechanism’ is exploitative of human rights, whereas causal teleology aspires by reasoning the natural end purposes of humanity as the only coherent necessary ideology with nature. About Federalist strategy, tautologically consider this historical comment: 25
Principles must not stand in the way of success Through the fierce scramble of rival politicians moved a scholarly figure who preserved to the last dignity and distinction of an earlier age. James Kent, whose long life and ripe legal learning were devoted to upholding what he conceived to be the ultimate principles of law and politics, was the chief political thinker of the transition days of New York. A disciple of Locke and Blackstone, remodeling seventeenth-century liberalism into
Importance of testing for logical tautology
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eighteenth-century conservatism, he was concerned to erect the barriers of the Common Law about the unsurveyed frontiers of the American experiment, assigning exact metes and bounds beyond which it should not go. Like John Marshall and Joseph Story he was expert in devising legal springs to catch unwary democrats, and while the Jeffersonians were shouting over their victories at the polls, he was engaged in the strategic work of placing the Constitution under the narrow custodianship of the English law. An ardent Federalist and later an equally ardent Whig, he reveals in his precise thinking the intimate relations that everwhere exist between economics, politics, and legal principles. [’False principles’ are hallmarks of causal mechanisms] About logical veracity, David Hume observed tautology as a critically important analytic test of truth that humans fallaciously rationalize.26
We can only be certain of analytic truths (“relations of ideas”), vis. mathematics and tautologies. With regard to synthetic truths (“matters of fact”) we at best can have a high degree of probability. But even the notion of probability is dubious and leads to a certain skepticism, because the notion of cause and effect upon which experiential knowledge is based is itself not an impression but an idea [Was Hume pondering Kant’s synthetic a priori?] About logical tautology, John N. Fujii wrote this:
Testing compound statements to see whether they are tautologies is thus equivalent to testing an argument for validity. . . . In carrying out an indirect proof, note that we can always begin with the denial of the conclusion as an added premise. If the arguments of the proof lead us to assert the denial of any premise, the conclusion, or contradictory
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statements, then we will be able to assert the required conclusion. Whether dogmatically or legally we foreclose the certainty of analytic truths, instead to make ‘synthetic truths’ the affirmed ‘nomos’ (orthodoxy) of society, we compromise and eventually will foreclose the values upon which pure truth is naturally based. Tautology is a critical veracity tool for preserving truth value pureness in morality and justice. Rationalization-based dogmatic opinions or illusions (as mechanism or materialism), affirmed as truth, are tautologically exposed as logical fallacy: they represent logical ‘falsehoods.’27 By a [logical] tautology we mean a statement, which has the truth
value ‘true’ for all possible truth values of its components. . . . Compound statements with all truth values ‘true’ are called tautologies and represent valid argument forms. The implication formed by the conjunction of all the premises as the antecedent and the conclusion as the consequent that form a valid argument form, will always result in a tautology. Testing compound statements to see whether they are tautologies is thus equivalent to testing an argument for validity. And sorting out this political paradox is very important to the disposal of $ trillions of SS surplus, which because of being misspent as general revenue, is an accounting reality only and can, if politically allowed, be summarily excused by the same conservative politics that willfully misuse calumny to have its way (This politics has consistently held that SS surplus is the government’s to use as government will). The myriad dogmas fallaciously affirmed by authoritative rationalization are falsehoods. However, by applications of ‘social usage’-based remedies, economic paradoxes can be mitigated. An axiom
28
is principle:
29
is truth that is the unproved
An Axiom is unproved principle
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basis of other truth? : For instance, ‘point’ and ‘line’ is a dual axiom of Geometry. Human Noumena is the axiomatic principle of life’s intelligent necessities: causal teleology, i.e., life’s end purposes and obligations.
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universally teaches some form of the ‘divine right’ dogma:
God appointed me to lead you,’ therefore,‘ God wants you to follow me? It was dogma, I suspect, which L. C. Allison wrote this about:31
Man is given free will and his first conscious act is to make himself into God. (His second act, when caught, is to blame someone else) Like truth, hope of religious virtue can be ‘true’ but often is ‘false’ [In terms of tautology, can be ‘rational’ but often is fallacy (is irrational)]
Belief that is affirmed principle, which about source, origin, force, or cause, lacks necessary a causal nexus to nature or sovereignty. These affirmed qualities are, therefore, contingent upon the belief’s inculcation.30 Inevitably, however, they represent the contingent dogma of rationalization; contingent theories, which are experience-based rather than reason-based, that causally is mechanism dependent rather than of teleology: (orthodoxy as ‘divine right,’ ‘materialism,’ ‘determinism’ for example). Therefore, mechanism causality concerns contingent theory (which tautology show is fallacy) in place of axiomatic truth’s necessary coherence. While dogmas, which lack necessity, require hierarchical ‘chiefs’ (authority position or power) for to affirm them, because they lack necessity, the duties and obligations are temporal and deontological, the truth value of which portray allegiance to the belief or deontology, and not to end purposes, which are exclusive to teleology. The scripture, God is jealous and will have no other before him, concerns the supreme axiomatic nature of God and the critically incoherent deontological consequences of paradoxes when manmade dogma is supplanted for the necessary principles of the supreme axiom of truth. For instance, if virtue exists in blind adherence to cultural dogma (orthodoxy), it adheres dogmatically to belief, which
We are never beneath hope, while above hell; nor above hope, while beneath heaven. The miserable hath no other medicine but only hope. Shakespeare True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings; kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings. Shakespeare Religious hope often converts fear into comfort and assurance.
We speak of hope; but is not hope only a more gentle name for fear? L. E. Landon And, hope is medicine that cures.
Hope -- of all ills that men endure. The only cheap and universal cure; the captive’s freedom, and the sick man’s health, the lover’s victory, and the beggar’s wealth. Abraham Cowley On the ‘false’ side of hope,
The man who lives only by hope will die with despair. Italian Proverb Patrick Henry, in his Give me Liberty Address, had said:32
It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, . . . Emily. Dickinson popularized poetry of simple comforts of hope.
An Axiom is unproved principle
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‘necessity.’ God is the ultimate natural axiomatic principle and humans have natural Noumenon-based faculties, which are like God’s. Only in necessary truth can temporal human likeness of God find coherence with Pure truth that is the common axiomatic essence of God and man. Ontologism describes the axiomatic communicating of this essence. St. John’s First Epistle is a testimony to ontologism. Causal mechanism, rivals teleology. Causality, therefore, distinguished conservative from liberal. Mechanism asserts this:
"Hope" is the thing with feathers-That perches in the soul-And sings the tune without the words-And never stops--at all-And sweetest--in the Gale--is heard-And sore must be the storm-That could abash the little Bird-That kept so many warm--
The universe behaves like a big machine.
I've heard it in the chillest land-And on the strangest Sea-Yet, never, in Extremity-It asked a crumb--of Me. Emily Dickinson Others also captured the essence of hope.
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon, Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face Lighting a little Hour or two--is gone. Rubaiyat When a Principle is a ‘necessary’ something, necessity 33 requires those essential predicates of trust or troth are axiomatic, coherent, and true (faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty, and promise have been ascribed to the supreme axiom of truth),
that cannot be denied because denial would entail contradiction of what already has been established. Unless axiomatically ‘coherent’ [based on systemic coherence, (must be accepted without proof, as ‘line’ and ‘point’ are undefined axioms of geometry)], what is considered a necessary principle fails
Mechanism is, therefore, contingent upon dogmatic belief in unitary materialism. And as Bertrand Russell pointed out, the fallacious contradiction of belief in materialism is this: if humans were material entities only, the theory of Mechanism would be unchallenged but meaningless. Noumena, as human thought, logic, truth, . . ., are essential axiomatic principles of life’s conduct. Materialism and its contingently deducted fallacious corollaries, as Mechanism, are human-affirmed temporal realities, which have upstaged God’s axiomatic teleological Noumena. And, Capitalism, without ‘rational empiricism’ (democratic balancing effects of rational ‘noumenon’), fails as logically essential economic ‘principle.’ Paradoxes of deterministic mechanisms proliferate. Without Noumenal 34 balance, capitalism is fascism and the manmade factual paradoxes of it rule life: substance, which Bertrand Russell pointed out is meaningless, rules essence. Research Samples are inserted to demonstrate teleologies, as based on necessity, and deontologies, as based on belief. Fresh comments are also inserted here.
noumenon is of natural essential necessity The Worldly Philosophers (about origins of economy), Robert L. Heilbroner’s ‘classic,’ was launched with this statement:35
‘noumenon’ is of natural essential necessity
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[Since time began] man has faced the problem of survival, not as
an individual but as a member of a social group. His continued existence is testimony to the fact that he has succeeded in solving the problem; but the continued existence of want and misery, even in the richest nations, is evidence that his solution has been, at best, a partial one. . . . But in an advanced community this tangible pressure of the environment, or this web of social obligation, is lacking. When men and women no longer work shoulder to shoulder in tasks directly related to survival -indeed when two-thirds of the population never touches the earth, enters the mines, builds with its hands, or even enters a factory -- or when the claims of kinship have all but disappeared, the perpetuation of the human animal becomes a remarkable social feat. So remarkable, in fact, that society’s existence hangs by a hair. A modern community is at the mercy of a thousand dangers: if its farmers should fail to plant enough crops; if its railroad men should take it into their heads to become bookkeepers or if its bookkeepers should decide to become railroad men; if too few should offer their services as miners, pudlers of steel, candidates for engineering degrees -- in a word, if any of a thousand intertwined tasks of society should fail to get done -- industrial life would soon become hopelessly disorganized. Every day the community faces the possibility of breakdown -- not from the forces of nature, but from sheer human unpredictability. Intelligence is a natural principle something that is inherently natural to individual humans, and only through humans, vicariously are incidental to organizations: Organizations, however constituted, must acquire this natural Noumenal capability that remains only
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indigenous of humans for pertinence, vitality, sovereignty, . . . , without which, organizations cannot exist. An organization’s Noumenal aspect (as intelligence, truth, morality, . . . ), therefore, does not and cannot independently exist apart from the unalienable qualities provided by the human constituents of the organization. Roger Williams’ dictum considers the indigenous sources and the limits of organic authority.
Every lawful Magistrate whether succeeding or elective, is not only the minister of God, but the Minister or servant of the people also (what people or nation soever they be all the world over), and the Minister or Magistrate goes beyond his commission who intermeddles with that which cannot be given him in commission from the people. . . .[“The Bloudy Tenent Yet More Bloudy,” in Narragansett Club Publications, Vol. IV, p. 187] Human designed dogmas, supplanted for natural Noumenal authority, describe the artful science of duty (deontology), which duties, as assigned by organic authorities, often transgress Williams’ dictum. Finding truth’s meaning is the philosophical pursuit of Epistemology, a branch of Ontology, a division of Metaphysics. Ontology concerns what reality is. And, deontology, is about metaphysical things that are naturally paradoxical to ontological reality. I conceive of deontology, as analogous to a contrast between human thought and human action. Adopting Kant’s use of noumenon and phenomenon, I consider human thought is of noumenon, while human action is contingently analogous to phenomenon of human action. And if deontology is metaphysical, about duty and moral obligation, then it must occur naturally to human thoughtful intelligence: but, as Plato observed, only as thought is ‘pure’ and ‘good,’ is truthful moral obligation observed. By naturally inherently necessary ontologism, humans’ have intelligence. But, only as thought is ‘pure’ and ‘good’ (of reason rather than opinion) can deontology (duty) be teleological (i.e., have natural end purposes). As
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with notions of truth, humans (not organizations) have organically employed deontology to subordinate antecedent notions of authoritative obligation, and responsibility. These human notions of deontology are as impure as their notions of truth are. At the earliest dawn of human existence, Hesiod had cited deontology as aggravated by paradoxical conditions of (manmade) nomos in the temporal world (Plato’s visible reality).36 . . . The word ‘nomos’ is as old as the epic poets, and seems
originally to have been used to denote the ways of behavior characteristic of any group of living beings, whether men or wild beasts. Thus Hesiod uses it in ‘Works and Days:’ The Son of Cronos has ordained this ‘nomos’ for men. Fishes and beasts and winged fowl devour one another, for right is not in them; but to mankind he gave right, which proves far the best (Evelyn-White’s translation). In later days ‘nomos’ was applied only to human ways of behavior; but it never lost its original meaning of custom, nor its association with justice. While intelligence is fundamental to managing entities of organization, it is deliberately mechanized deontologically by humans to commandeer specifically non teleological objectives and goals. E. K. Hunt wrote about deontological organs37 in a capitalistic society,38
The working class has no significant access to or ownership of productive resources. Individuals in this class must sell control of their power to labor (i.e., get a job) as their only means to escape sinking to the destitute class. [The onus of responsibility has deontologically been shifted onto individuals] Hunt also wrote about property ownership,39
Private property had its origins in brute coercive force and was perpetuated both by force and by institutional and ideological legitimization.
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And tenets, rules and laws about organization,40
The passage of the Sherman Act and the establishment of various government regulatory agencies were ostensibly aimed at controlling these giant corporations. In practice, however, government tended to aid these giants in consolidating and stabilizing their massive empires. While the foundations deal adequately with objects and goals of organization, the noumenal essential, human intelligence (ethical morality) is taken for granted. About odious neglect of purpose, Hunt gave these strategic mechanist designs of Economic Determinism:41
Capitalism is defined by . . . essential features that are always present in a capitalist economy. ---First is the ubiquity of monetary exchange. For the vast majority of people in capitalism, one can get the things one wants and needs only if one has money with which to buy these things in the market. ---Second, capitalism always has at least four clearly identifiable socioeconomic classes: the class of wealthy capitalists, the class of small businesspeople and independent professionals, the class of working people and the class of destitute persons who live by various welfare programs or by theft, prostitution, or whatever means are available. . . . [as in all Hindu-like castes] The working class has no significant access to or ownership of productive resources. Individuals in this class must sell control of their power to labor (i.e., get a job) as their only means to escape sinking to the destitute class. . . . Income from ownership and the wages of workers are considered to be the only socially respectable sources of income. The destitute class must depend on the somewhat “less than
‘noumenon’ is of natural essential necessity
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respectable” sources of income, such as welfare, charity, or the fruits of quasilegal or illegal activities in order to get by. The stigma that attaches to members of this class motivates all propertyless individuals to try very hard to secure employment even if working conditions and wages are poor. Clearly Hunt wrote about Capitalism as modified by The American System of Political Economy. American Whigs, contemporary with Lincoln, achieved to establish it by affirmation rather than legislation. And while Hunt’s account of organizational development is starkly presented, the prescriptive purposes of industrial organization did not consider or accommodate inalienable human agencies that are so fundamentally important. Human rights were only discovered as amorality surprisingly filled the voids of organizational duties that failed to accommodate the natural human desiderata. Organized determinism persists to supplant dogma for the ontological
immutable laws mentioned by John Quincy Adams:42 The eternal and immutable laws of justice and of morality are paramount to all human legislation. The violation of those laws is certainly within the power, but it is not among the rights of nations. The power of a nation is the collected power of all the individuals which compose it. . . . If, therefore, a majority . . . are bound by no law human or divine, and have no other rule but their sovereign will and pleasure to direct them, what possible security can any citizen of the nation have for the protection of his unalienable rights? [Sovereignty, like life, is not transferable; states and nations have no proper authorities to license private organizations to violate inalienable human rights] The purposes of organization clearly were more focused on material gain than on desiderata (phenomenal deontological focuses obscured noumenal focuses). Originally, material-based visceral responses to basic needs
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as eating, shelter, comfort, . . . motivated productive efficiencies of organization. Visceral instincts preceded wisdom and motivated the otherwise chaotic purposes of organization (In this materialistic view of social philosophy, Thomas Hobbes’ empiricism -- the foundation of ‘conservatism’ -- is valid). As ‘feudal’ and ‘spoils system’ organization was required to gain ever more human ‘reach’ for its visceral ‘want,’ dogma, as ‘divine right,’ claimed by the leaders of organization, supplanted inherent ontological authorities of the constituent individuals. For instance, Hammurrabi, the king of Babylon, in about 1750 B. C., claimed ‘divine right,’ when he justified his authority to issue some 300 legal provisions for Babylonians to follow (Shamash, patron of justice, was the sun god of common worship who Hammurabi claimed gave this ‘divine right’ to him). Similarly, kings and monarchs traditionally found the license of ‘divine right’ necessary to supplant naturally divergent ontologies. This propensity is found in all forms of ‘ideal absolutism’ which commonly are of two types: communism and fascism (And the organization of capitalist corporation is an ‘ideal absolutism’ form. Materialism is the common focus of ‘ideal absolutism’ and dogma needed to justify the abandonment of natural ontologies is ‘positivism,’ ‘nihilism,’ ‘divine right,’ and ‘mechanism.’ Only with critical advents of organization did humankind discover philosophy from which the intelligent noumenon became commonly understood to possess ‘unalienable rights’ that had to be accommodated (Not many years ago, an Israeli official was asked if war was an option of consideration to deal with Palestinian uprisings; he answered, War is no longer an option for any country to consider’; then the newly elected prime minister reverted to colony expansions based on war! ) Grudgingly, beginning with Magna Carta and more with the U. S. Constitution, human rights were constitutionally protected (Whenever mechanist conservatives’ lament a need for ‘strict constructionism,’ greater ‘deterministic absolutism’ is the probable appeal: for legal property rights over human rights).
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This empirical view presents ‘man’ as naturally ‘conservative.’ Greed is considered the dominant human attribute. Then, reflectively, human culture has become ‘liberal.’ An organic balance of the first with the later has never been closer constitutionally than was reached by Amendments to the U. S. Constitution. Human ontological truth-based capability, while naturally endowed, is always a reasoned ‘late bloomer’ in terms of temporal life’s resident orthodoxy: the orthodox conservative view of humanity, as John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Edmund Burke, . . . had expressed with authoritative conviction prevails as dogmatic belief, affirmed, in contemporary organic rule, particularly with the Federalist administration of judicial affairs. However, noumenal scientific advancements are now everywhere, as discovering the genome of human genetics, for instance, natural human life makeup is now considered complete, which itself, is now a candidate for human acquisitive commercial manipulation. And, while societies’ focuses to be teleological-ethical, must now shift away from the phenomenal toward the noumenal. Commercialism seems an improper fit, but is sure to happen anyway. With this advent, the reflective ontological liberal obligation of humanity tweaks moral consciousness as never before. Without fiducial responsibilities formally codified, this foundational knowledge portends a dismal future for the underprivileged economic classes of ‘mechanized’ (those without opportunities afforded them) humanity. Human rights and morality are before us as never before in history. In this we see that mechanist ‘conservatism’ and ontologically philosophical ‘liberalism’ are the natural poles of a political cultural paradox that is crucial to the ‘wax’ or ‘wane’ of human culture. Is human society up to the task? Philosophy surely has a role in world society as never before and Plato, it appears, was right: ‘Let the philosophers (where truth values and morality are naturally vested) not the ‘takers’ and exploiters, of dogmatically
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defined ‘property,’ rule. "" Are noumenal rights and responsibilities transferable?
In organizations, as presently licensed, they apparently are! ; hopefully temporally, until legislation proposes limitations to protect unalienable human rights, they are. Still, only if human rights and responsibilities are contractually transferable, and they are not, do they logically apply to organizations. This is a liberal facet of justice that still must be learned by unlearning dogmatic belief: when, because of emancipation, Congress legislated and the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was added, a ‘strict constructionist’ inclined Supreme Court, without legislative or administrative consultation (in its own dogmatic cognizance, or as a growing public opinion contends, the Supreme Court unconstitutionally engaged in the legislation of law), to legally award ‘due process rights’ to State licensed entities of organization as if they were naturally endowed intelligent humans; So that, what humanity must contend with, is a legal organic will which, in authoritative dogmatic
""
This political materialism has raged since George W. Bush became the U.S. President. Particularly, evident in Congressional enactments is mechanist political preference for mercantile property advancement, even while the constitutional trade off is to eliminate human rights, at issue. Was the mechanist conservative political target, to advance the U.S. commercial dominance in world markets? (Major U.S. petroleum corporations have in 2008 achieved contractual arrangements with Iraq to commercially handle Iraq’s oil distribution: Which answers why we engaged a war, excused as fighting terrorism, to achieve this commercial advancement, that had been closed for some thirty years?)
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assumptions, as claiming the fair exchange for wages paid (Max Weber’s ‘iron cage’ 43), treats wage-earner human rights as property to be exploited: Competitive success is measured by paying the lowest possible wages for the greatest possible results. And when sued for human abuses. A legalized constitutional right of ‘due process’ protects the licensed fictitious organic right: a patent fact of political economy determinism as encouraged by ‘strict constitutional constructionism’ which, of design, patronizes the licensed ‘fictitious organic sovereignty’ (constitutionally protects the fictitious dogmatic organic ‘divine right’). The resultant secrecy of exploited human abuses shows in contemporary problems, as case law which seals court records from public view to protect the legal organic rights: The Firestone tire recall problem, in which individual settlements were never publicly disclosed, and therefore was not a grassroots problem for government until the corporate will, of putting profits over public safety (the cost effectiveness of settling individual court cases in which deaths had occurred, in results of defective products that was a standard for profitable business practice) became an explosive issue. Even then, the legislative solution was to impose legislative oversight of business, but did not consider challenging the courts’ sealing of records. L. Pojman wrote this about accountability that is legally excused by materialism-based dogma upon which we ‘falsely’ (fictitiously) base ‘conservative’ political values and therefore, many official policies and laws:44 The man who used the idea of determinism more effectively than anyone before him was the great American criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow. In the 1920s two teenage geniuses from the University of Chicago, Leopold and Loeb, committed what they
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regarded as the perfect murder. They grotesquely dismembered a child and buried the parts in a prairie. Caught, they faced an outraged public who demanded the death penalty. The defense attorney was Clarence Darrow, champion of lost causes. He conceded that the boys committed the deed, but argued that they were, nevertheless, “innocent.” His argument was based on the theory of determinism. It is worth reading part of the plea. We are all helpless. . . . This weary world goes on, begetting, with birth and with living and with death; and all of it is blind from the beginning to the end. I do not know what it was that made these boys do this mad act, but I do know there is a reason for it. I know they did not beget themselves. I know that any one of an infinite number of causes reaching back to the beginning might be working out in these boys’ minds, whom you are asking to hang in malice and in hatred and injustice. . . . Nature is strong and she is pitiless. She works in her own mysterious way, and we are her victims. We have not much to do with it ourselves. Nature takes this job in hand, and we play out part. In the words of old Omar Khayam, we are: “But helpless pieces in the game He plays Upon the chess board of nights and days; Hither and thither moves, and checks and slays, And one by one back in the closet lays.” What had this boy to do with it? He was not his own father, he was not his own mother; he was not his own grandparents. All of this was handed to him. He did not surround himself with governesses and wealth. He did not make himself. And yet he is to be compelled to pay
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(Clarence Darrow, “Attorney for the Damned, Simon and Schuster, 1957). This was sufficient to convince the jury to go against public opinion and recommend a life sentence in lieu of the death penalty. If Leopold and Loeb were determined by antecedent causes to do the deed, we cannot blame them for what they did, any more than we can blame a cow for not being able to fly. Darrow had explained the deterministic cultural materialism behind Emerson’s early existentialist general comment.
That which we are we are all the while teaching, not voluntarily, but involuntarily. Emerson The following view came from a minority opinion of President Carter’s erudite commission to establish the nation’s agenda for the 1980's (With the election of President Reagan, the views of this commission were excoriated and in 2000 those who did the excoriating blamed the Clinton administration for not having established an energy policy). Thomas C. Jorling’s concern stands prominently among a growing many others: 45
With some reluctance, I have chosen to register independent views on . . . the exercise of power by large, often multinational corporations. Deep concern over accountability in the exercise of power, especially as it affects individuals, has been a hallmark of American society. In my view, the Commission (for a National Agenda for The Eighties) should have acknowledged, in the context of the eighties, the historic concern of Americans with the exercise of power. At the time of the framing of the Constitution, many provisions were adopted to constrain and make accountable an agent of power--the federal government. During the past 200 years, new aggregates of power have come into being, especially
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the large, multinational corporation. Brought into existence by state charter, these institutions were once constrained by limits on size and power, limits rapidly made obsolete by interstate competition. Justice Brandeis, in a descent in the 1932 case Liggett v. Lee, described the history concisely: 'Although they fully recognized the value of this instrumentality in commerce and industry, they commonly denied incorporation for business long after they had granted it for religious, educational, and charitable purposes. They denied it because of fear. Fear of encroachment upon the liberties and opportunities of the individual. Fear of the subjection of labor to capital. Fear of monopoly. Fear that the absorption of capital by corporations, and their perpetual life, might bring evils similar to those which attended 'mortmain.' There was a sense of some insidious menace inherent to large corporations. So at first the corporate privilege was granted sparingly; and only when the grant seemed necessary in order to procure some specific benefit otherwise unobtainable. The removal by leading industrial states of the limitations upon the size and powers of business corporations appears to have been due, not to their conviction that maintenance of the restrictions was undesirable in itself, but to the conviction that it was futile to insist upon them; because local restriction would be circumvented by foreign (other states) incorporation. Indeed, local restriction seemed worse than futile; Lesser States eager for the revenue derived from traffic in charters, had removed safeguards from their own incorporation laws. 288 US 517, 548, 557. Nothing took the place of the limits -- limits designed to control power -- once imposed by states. Subsequently, the
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corporation has continued to grow, and it now is the source of the exercise of the greatest amount of power in national and global society. Simply put, the large business corporations, separately and collectively, wield the greatest quantum power in our society. Power with many dimensions: to shape the form of society, to alter the landscape, to distribute new chemicals, to provide or withhold food, to determine income differentials, to make us dependent upon technology. On and on we could go, but for purposes here it is sufficient to assert that the power once thought of as the exclusive province of government -- to exercise power to control others -- is now held and executed largely by large business corporations. Where government has such power, we establish measures to protect the individual, but not so with the corporation. While government cannot deprive a life experience for the exercise of speech, a corporation can deny employment providing the paycheck essential for survival for such expression. Specific multinational corporations wield power beyond the boundaries of any national jurisdiction. We are now in the economic throws of corporate malfeasance and crumbling stock markets. Diagnosis: it is, 46
the result of a single accounting gimmick. . . . It turns out a good chunk of the “new economy” was something very old -ripping off shareholders. . . . This is not just a few bad apples; it’s practically the whole barrel. And, the investment of surplus Social Security funds in these markets is supposed to be the answer for growing funds for retirement benefits? We change the nature of causality when we supplant natural
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teleology endemic of human nature with the fallacious affirmed empirical principles of materialist mechanisms (determinism). As with Copernicus’ paradox, finding truth is a matter thinking beyond our sensory experiences. W. Durant surmised our paradoxical trouble?47
Ultimately, our troubles are due to dogma and deduction; we find no new truth because we take some venerable but questionable proposition as the indubitable starting point, and never think about putting this assumption itself to a test of observation or experiment. Will Durant Organizations have a philosophic basis. Only the democratic form of organization represents philosophic virtue (the mean of the absolute extremes between individual and communal forms of ownership and sovereignty) and, therefore, should be the goal of all nations (or state or communal forms of) organizations. In this regard, the notion of a democratic nation or state, is, as noumenon, a late-found option at the middle of the
political extremes of materialism. At extremes, ‘the state’ is conceived as absolute sovereign authority: either in a fascist individual or in the communist communal group. Democracy is the rational mean of the ‘absolute’ extremes. In this contrast, the conceptual meaning of ‘state’ is bared. Anthony de Jasay wrote:48 ‘Preferences for political arrangements depend on people’s conception of their good as well as on the arrangements that are supposed to be preferred.’ States generally start with somebody’s defeat. ‘The origin of the state is conquest’ and ‘the origin of the state is the social contract’ are not two rival explanations. One deals with the origin of the state in real time, the other with logical
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deduction. Both can be simultaneously valid. Whereas de Jasay’s analysis also considers the paradox’s dilemma, his approach was quite different. Mine begins with the origins of human consistency and meaning which entails logic and syllogism: critical noumenal aspects of human being. Recognizing that both
noumenon (intelligence) and the phenomenon (matter) exists, democracy defines a common pathway between the absolute extremes (and ‘absolute’ is a deliberately chosen adjective that uniquely applies to the idealistic extremes defined as fascism and communism).49 Democracy, communism, and fascism are each based on a philosophic position. When ‘absolute’ materialist politics confronts ‘rational’ discourse, paradoxes flare, as happened in the election of 2000 when ‘conservatism’ hugged the middle ground of democracy (which is the divide of noumenal-phenomenal human agencies. Paradoxes between deontological ‘Positivism’ and teleological ‘Reason’ clearly showed. And, perhaps the greatest problem of American democracy is the states’ authoritative licensing of dogma-based belief in fictitious corporate entities, as rivals of humans’ natural rights’ endowments.50
‘Rational Empiricism,’ the philosophic basis of democracy, believes that the world is both material and spiritual. It holds that change and progress occur by applying reason to experience, and human nature can be changed and improved by experience. On the basis of these principles, democracy stresses discussion and the use of reason as a way of arriving at conclusions. It emphasises the importance of tolerance and freedom in developing intelligent, loyal citizens. ‘Democracy’ is commonly defined: 51
1) a government that is run by the people who live under it. 2)
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a country, state, or community having such a government. 3) The common people, distinguished from the privileged class, or their political power. 4) The treatment of others as one’s equals. The intelligent, noumenon , aspect of a democracy (the teleological rational aspect) distinguishes it from absolute forms described as fascism and communism. While Democracy is also materialistic, the ‘absolute materialism’ does not dominate. Therefore, appertaining to all forms, ‘materialism’ philosophy must be clearly understood. Materialism, the philosophy52 started in 400 B. C. Democritus and Leucippus theorized that invisible material particles made up the physical world, and that similar particles made up the mind. Paradoxes of this theory could not and were not then explained. Scientific Materialism53 has always been popular among scientists, because, if everything in the world is made up of matter, then it can be analyzed and understood according to the natural laws that govern the way matter behaves. However, a bias of scientists, that they like neat non paradoxical solutions, is more frequently observed now. Contrarily, truth was never advanced by the orthodox view. Mostly new truth was found by pursuing the unorthodox. Had Socrates and Plato been satisfied with orthodox views, the scientific method of applying logic and syllogism would not then have been established (Socrates, chose to die rather than subscribe the orthodox view of reality; Crito had arranged for his escape from prison; his deontological response was, ‘leave me Crito for I must obey God’). Socrates surely did not refer to any of the mythical Greek gods that he openly criticized. Rather. It was the God of nature’s creation that by ontologism had become the teleology of his life. As Plato explained cogently, he understood metaphysical truths of cosmic reality 400 years before Christ. Copernicus, could not explain the paradoxs of the relationship between the earth and sun until he chose to reason the relationship from the sun’s point of view (earth was not flat and was not the center of the universe, he then explained). Liebnitz pursued
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the calculus and then explained the common paradoxes of truth (There is ‘necessary’ truth and ‘contingent’ truth; only necessary truth has no opposites, contingent truth can have either or both ‘is true’ and ‘is false’ values). Lindeman, despite the orthodox view that irrational numbers generally represented ‘nothing,’ by using them, he proved mathematically that ‘the circle could not be squared’. Spinoza, described the double view of Plato’s paradoxical divide of truth and he showed that only in ‘reason’ was paradoxical argeement found. Einsteins Relativity opened greater understanding to the cosmic realm of metaphysical reality. Neat orothodox solutions is not the pathway of scientific progress: James Glick’s book, Chaos, is about these natural paradoxes. Natural organization is evident in the seeming chaos of the universe: Neat mathematical solutions have only touched a small portion of the natural chaotic organizations.
Materialism n. the doctrine that all spiritual phenomena are the result of organized matter.54 Materialism n. the belief that all action, thought, and feeling can be explained by the movement and changes of matter: In the latter half of the 1800's, materialism severely challenged the traditional spiritual view of man (Science).55 World Book gave this analysis of maybe the greatest paradox:56
Mechanism is one of the two great philosophical theories of cause and effect in the universe. Opposed to the theory of mechanism is the theory of teleology. Any thing that grows and develops can be explained in two ways. Mechanism explains it from behind, in terms of its origins. Teleology explains it from the front, in terms of the goal it is seeking. About the unorthodox view of ‘scientific man,’ which materialist absolutism always challenged, Craig Thomas wrote this:
It is Cicero’s clarification and codification of Stoic natural law theory that influenced the early and medieval Christian thinkers,
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who preserved natural law theory and made it irrefutably dependent upon the Christian deity. It is a history of continuity that attends natural law theory rather than one of change or adaptation. We might encapsulate this continuity simply by comparing the original Stoic concept of the cosmopolis with that of ‘kingdom of ends’ Kant expounds in his essay ‘Perpetual Peace’ -- and similarities are remarkable. Natural law theory enshrined and preserved the ideas of equality of reason, justice, rights, and liberties. By doing so, it also preserved the conception of the unique value of each individual as a rational being and thus entitled to equality. Equally, the theistic origin or guarantee of natural law is also preserved. There is no profound change within, or decline of, natural law theory until the ‘materialism’ of the French Enlightenment, when reason becomes divorced from all theistic conceptions of the universe for, perhaps, the first time. There is continuity, too, in the Stoic conception of the passions as malfunctions of reason, as requiring government by the rational faculty in human nature, together with the sense of transcending mere ’nature’ through the employment of reason in the pursuit of knowledge. It is a tradition that reawakens in Descartes and Spinoza, however applied or altered, in their emphasis upon reason as the essence of human nature and existence, particularly in Spinoza’s ideals of liberty and justice and in his theory of the necessity of reason to subdue the [orthodox] order of the ‘passions.’ Natural law theory, in other words, illuminates the theories of the great rationalists, just as it forces upon us a recognition of the tradition to which Kant belonged and upon which Locke drew. In Stoic and Roman thought, therefore, natural law
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theory is nothing less than a theory of human ‘identity,’ since it avoids all classifications of human beings into groups or classes or within any exclusive idea of citizenship or even the status of the ‘wise’ in human society. It allows and promulgates a common identity to all human beings as opposed to any more partial means of identification, just as it establishes the spirit of any legal system or positive law, which must imitate and embody natural law. . . . What become in Locke ‘inalienable rights’ are those very principles which admit the equivalence of identity (and therefore significance) between ourselves and others -- you are as individual as I am. . . . Natural law theory and the importance of reason are synonymous throughout [the] millennia, in Greek Roman, and Christian thought.
human capability to think is of the same materiality as the body: Human reason derives from materiality theory of Democritus and Leucippus (invisible material particles that make up thought and reason and as well the tangible parts of humanity). And until the unknown natural makeup of noumenon is discovered, this
Materialism, the dogma The roots of Stoic philosophy, which is about early metaphysics development (cosmic, ontology, deontology, ontologism, and teleology), began with contemporaries of Socrates (469? B. C.) and continued in Plato and Aristotle. The philosophy of materialism (of Democritus and Leucippus) was contemporary with the stoic systems of thought (including mathematics) based on reason. Which was more or less radical is an open question, and neither was in reaction to the other? Such contemporary criteria for adjudging which is ‘liberal,’ the other ‘conservative,’ is invalid. The only quality that would make one ‘conservative’ and the other ‘liberal’ involves a fundamental difference between tangible reality and intangible thought: Kant’s distinctive use of phenomena and
molecular materiality (or try to explain the difference between the dead body as compared to the living human that it was: is the difference of molecular materiality?). Contemporary Scientists as quantum physicist F. Wolf concede:57
noumena did not occur for more than a millennium. And putting nihilism on the shelf (as not applicable to western civilization), the earliest form of materialist dogma is A. Comte’s doctrine (called ‘positivism’) based on the axiomatic assumption that
‘absolute’ dogma called materialism cannot be disproved by viewing the natural paradox from the empirical side of metaphysical reality (the reality of all things that are evident but not visable must be approached by faith and pure syllogistic thought). Those who reason deliberately (have a ‘tincture of philosophy,’ Russell would say), can and, do, in faith based work, find truths of ‘necessity,’ which can be ascribed only to the LOGOS of all creation, that confirms the seeming intangible reality of noumenon which is fundamentally different from
to grasp Plato’s concept of the soul, and we need to do that to understand how modern science can have anything to do with such an idea. [Socrates teleological sense of duty when answering Crito’s offer of escape from prison: ‘I must follow where God leads’] When Constantine, Emperor of Rome, declared that all Christians were of his Empire, religious dogmas were installed with intent to meld Constantine’s materialism-based power of the Roman Empire with the noumenal ontologism-based teachings of
Christ. A clear example of this resultant deliberate obfuscation of Deity is presented later. This obfuscation diminished the common understanding of noumenon and raised the common acceptance of materialism (the dogma of nihilism, the eastern companion of positivism, anteceded).
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While Descartes and Spinoza rekindled Cicero’s clarification and codification of Stoic natural law theory, The real work of restoring philosophy that supported human rights was left to Kant and Locke. Their radically ‘liberal’ work marked the beginning of the philosophic war between Western ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals.’ Myriad forms of dogmatic materialism have succeeded to compromise our individual human liberties. Our government, which philosophically is based on ‘Rational Empiricism’ (commonly called Democracy), must be resilient in preserving ‘reason’ to preserve human Noumenon, as tolerance and freedom. Otherwise, our nation’s philosophic economic materialism, the ownership of which is privatized, called ‘The American System of Political
Economy,’ which, while not legislated, was officially installed, the private ‘economic determinism’ of which, now has international ‘legs.’ And, will, by ‘owning’ natural resources, dominate to win the philosophic political war between property and human rights. And while our nation’s economic practice will not become a communist form of ‘Dialectical materialism,’ it surely will become an ‘Absolute idealism’ form, which philosophically defines ‘fascism.’ ‘Conservative’ mechanist materialism takes us on this path. While Hegel was not a materialist, he provided a history of philosophy that fed the Western Communist movement. About this, Craig Thomas wrote:58 Marx’s imitation of Hegelian dialectic caused him the most profound problems in attempting to obviate its optimistic determinism, such that it is an intellectual reaction that causes him to embrace the notion of revolution. He is brought to the pass of having to imply, if not promote, the idea of revolution as the Weltgeist of history, in order to free human activity from Hegel’s conclusion that the future is unpredictable except that
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it will be the next or futher manifestation of Spirit in History. In that sense, the dialectic, whether his own as borrowed or the Hegelian original, failed Marx, since Hegel’s view of history is ‘amoral’ while Marx’s was fundamentally imbued with moral outrage. Thoughts of Thomas Jefferson When considering the role of private organizations in our republican form of democracy, thoughts of Thomas Jefferson, as expressed in his ‘Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom’ in Virginia, must be considered. This landmark Bill was not adopted by the Virginia Legislature in 1786 as he intended, but in his absence ten years later and another Legislature, did make it a law in Virginia. Its guarantee of religious liberty was a precursor of the First amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Human rights became the soul of the Constitution. Jefferson’s purpose is largely explained by his commitment to freedom (both of the soul and the body). Toward that dual end, Jefferson unceasingly promoted freedom of speech, the press, religion, education and action (Laissez faire). These independent freedoms must be honored, protected and defended to the last man in a democratic society and from the inevitably organic property-based determinism to control these human freedoms for those private organic owners of determinist mechanist property. The human rights’ threat is insidious. Thomas Jefferson considered this private organic role in democracy when he proposed the ‘Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia.’ This guarantee of religious liberty was included in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.59
Jefferson thought this action so important that he mentioned it in the epitaph which he wrote for himself. The epitaph reads: ‘Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the declaration of
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American Independence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia.’ George Mason, another Virginian, with others, wrote the Declaration of Rights which influenced Jefferson and was the basis for the American Bill of Rights. Jefferson’s purpose involves more than religious liberty. His teleology is explained by his commitment to the principle of a free mind. Unceasingly, he sponsored freedom of speech, the press, religion, education and laissez faire. These freedoms must be honored, protected and defended in a democracy. Organizations invariably usurp individuals’ rights to these natural freedoms. By hierarchical command they subordinate individual freedoms for to antecedently advance the exclusively materialist purposes of organization. Differences are subtle and often paradoxical. Concerning truth values, the difference between an adjective and a subject or the difference between what is said in the predicate about the subject it describes, is often paradoxical. Describing the predicate, if someone pointed to a rock and said, this rock is ‘true,’ most might wonder what was meant. Ambiguous, even foolish, many might say. Still, because such remarks are common, the conventional meanings of things that routinely we claim are ‘is true’ are recalled. If it is an object that we
say is ‘is true’ then it conforms to one (or more) following statement:60 It might agree with fact or it might not be false; It might be real or genuine; faithful or loyal; It might be right, proper or agree with some standard; It might be exact or accurate; It might be representative of a class
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(as, for instance, this strange animal is a true Rabbit); it might be rightful or lawful; reliable or sure; Or it might be accurately formed, fitted or placed. Trueness should neither be assumed nor asserted that it is an equal of Truth any more than an adjective can be assumed as the equal of a subject, which it the predicate describes. Trueness has one or more Noumenally intelligent value qualities, as faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty, promise, so that the truth value ‘is true’ can correspondingly also be ascribed to it, the object (fact) of truth: distinguishing the fact in some common manner as not being ‘is false.’ While Trueness corresponds to qualities or conditions (descriptions) of objects. Truth is the accurate correspondence of one’s perception with it, the object. Truth requires more: Truth is more than the Noumenal truth value of its predicate
adjective that subjectively describes the factual object of truth. Two possibilities are categorical: ‘is true’ or ‘is false.’61 According to Democritus, truth lies at the bottom of a well, the water of which serves as a mirror in which objects may be reflected. --I have heard, however that some philosophers, in seeking for truth, to pay homage to her, have seen their own image and adored it instead. Henri Richter (1685-1748) To find truth, a human must use analytically critical intelligence, that is beyond subjective empirical perception, to discern facts as they naturally exist (as the factual objects are constituted). The burden of truth is about critical perceptive accuracy of noumenal intelligence. Perception of the object, a false idea for instance, need not possess trueness for it (the object, as Immanuel Kant calls it) to be correctly perceived. Truth is correctly perceived when the predicate adjective ‘is false,’ when the correspondence correctly is perceived as false. However, when what is described as ‘is true,’ is no more than the desire of subjective judgement, the ‘mirrored well’ analogy of
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Democritus applies: Nothing about truth is then correctly perceived and the truth value of perception patently ‘is false.’ * * President Clinton, when he waved his finger and said ‘I did not have ‘sexual relations’ with that woman,’ excited political opinion that categorically charged he had lied. This political opinion, which was no more than political desire, then alleged, tha Clinton had perjured himself when deposed in the Paula Jones’ Trial. If the court, in fact, had defined ‘sexual Relations’ in a way that did not apply to Clinton’s conduct, as the Court did, the mirror of Democritus’ well shows that perceptions of the political allegations were ‘is false’, and has nothing to do with Clinton’s truth or lie. The perception of this opinionated political ‘smoke’ is about biased fury which perceptively always has the truth value ‘is false.’ Clinton’s accusers had no interest in truth. And dogma-based political orthodoxy, which favors capitalistmechanist-religious positivism confirms that such false political fury had been supplanted for any prescriptive interest in ‘is true’ truth. Truth is an analytically critical perceptive quality in correspondence to an object in which the object is accurately perceived, whether or not the predicate value of the person’s prescription that posited the object ‘is true’ or not. When dealing with ‘intent’, as to perjury, the predicate adjectives, which describe the ontological truth value of intelligence (logos) of him that posited the fact, when accurately considered, the predicate adjective’s truth value in perjury ‘is false.’ In the absence of factual evidence that corresponds to the prescriptive perception, perjurious intent cannot legally or constitutionally be considered (while political fury is prone always to supplant its biased will for truthful correspondence). Our war on terrorism puts human prescriptive faculties in focus: Similarly, New England’s witch hunts occurred because of fury.
Indirect evidence62 Something that only tends to establish a theory by showing consistent facts. Assume, for instance, a
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witness testifies that every day for the past 20 years she has seen a certain man come into her store at noon and buys a newspaper. Although she was not in the store on the day in question, her testimony could be accepted by some courts as indirect evidence that he was there. Fact63 Something done; an event or circumstance. The word ‘fact’ is often contrasted with the word ‘law’. Law is a principle; fact is an event. Law is a rule of obligation or duty; fact is what has actually been done. A ‘question of fact’ concerns what actually happened and is decided by a jury or, in a criminal case, when the defendant requests a trial without a jury. A ‘question of law’ deals with the legal principles that affect the facts and is decided by a judge. A burden of proof64 The burden of proof is the duty of positively proving guilt with sufficient evidence. In general, the burden of proof to establish the guilt of the accused beyond a reasonable doubt is on the prosecution. The prosecution must prove every essential element of the crime charged. The burden rests on the prosecution from the beginning of the trial until the moment of conviction or acquittal. Elements of a crime65 A crime cannot be committed unless all of its elements have been fulfilled. Elements are the conditions that make an act a crime. Every law is made up of certain elements. For example, ROBBERY is generally defined by state laws as the taking of goods or money from someone’s person by force or intimidation. . . . Committing a wrongful act is not necessarily a crime in itself, even when all elements specified in a criminal statute are fulfilled. According to the
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law, a crime consists not only of the overt act -- pointing a gun at someone to force him to give you his money -- also an intent to commit a crime, Criminal intent is an element of most crimes, even when it is not specifically indicated in the statute defining the crime. Criminal intent66 In order to be a crime, the act must usually be accompanied by criminal intent -- that is, an intent to do, knowingly and willfully, an act prohibited by law on pain of punishment. Such an intent is called a ‘general criminal intent. Guilty knowledge67 The term ‘knowingly’ implies that the accused person was aware that he could not lawfully do the act with which he is charged. To act knowingly means to act voluntarily and purposely and not because of mistake, inadvertence, or some other innocent reason. Without such guilty knowledge, general criminal intent cannot exist. The Bill of Rights amounts to constitutional codification of the philosophy called Laissez Faire : allowing individuals to act uninhibited by authorities, which were consented to government. ‘Circumstantial evidence’ is predicate-value-intensive, but about Democritus’ mirror, truthful perception of facts is not direct and therefore, untrustworthy. Not to be trusted because it is not ‘first party’ predicate value. And when testimony is purchased, the predicate value must always be suspect. Russell recalled Socrates’ thought about truth:68
Theaetetus, when Socrates asks him for a definition of ‘knowledge,’ suggests that knowledge is perception. Socrates persuades him to abandon this definition, mainly on the ground that percepts are transient, whereas true knowledge must be of something eternal; but he does not question the occurrence of perception as a relation between subject and object.
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Note the separation of the subject and the object and that knowledge has requirements that are permanent, therefore, beyond human temporalness. Russell also observed,69 [With all perceptions] we cannot go beyond "probably,” since we
know that people sometimes see [things] that are not there, for instance in dreams. The statement -- it is true -- asserts that perception agrees with fact. This correspondence must exist with each separate perception: Truth is misrepresented in absences of resolute duality of ‘trueness’: It (the prescriptive predicate adjective which posited the factual object of truth) must not be false. Truth tables are applicable to a duality of correspondences. ‘Trueness’ must apply to (A) it is perception and (B) it is fact. Truth exists only if ‘trueness’ applies to the conjunct (A and B). Particularly, truth is (A) (B) (A and B) misr epr esented, when c o mp e t i n g p e r s o n a l T T T t e l eologies wil l f u l l y T F F supplant prejudice (or F T F bribed witnesses) for F F F ‘trueness.’ Adjudging ‘trueness’ of allegations is the target of legal pursuit. Proving that the intent (prescriptive perception) is ‘truthful,’ is a problem laced with diabolical ambiguity. Biased perception, or deliberate falsehoods (testified as truth), are unresolvable. Juries serve to provide a consensus of moral judgement (common sense) similarly to that which Solomon showed when he decided which of two women’s alleged child belonged. Because justice cannot depend on arguments, claimed as truth, either in the formulations or adjudications of fact and law, the moral judgements of juries must be depended upon. Lawyers, as sworn officers of the court, are supposed to be
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trustworthy (Their ‘word’ is considered as ‘bond’). However, in ‘positive’ nomos, Plato’s ‘good’ (the purest form of truth) is never found in forms of truth which Plato called ‘opinion.’ Truth values of the predicate of ‘opinion,’ always confronts a preponderance of mixed ‘true’ and ‘false’ values (still these nomos-inclined forms of human prescription posit manmade facts, of partly ‘false’ truth value and therefore amoral in nature). In this ‘positive’ state of orthodoxy, justice applies to visible forms (to belief and illusion) of Plato’s truth, where biases of materialism rule authoritatively. This circumstance is the depraved condition of society that Hobbes, Machevelli, Burke, Hamilton and John Adams described. It is the negative or back view that because reason is generally supplanted by command deontology, natural ontologism is wasted: cosmic, ontology, deontologies and teleologies are concepts for reason alone to understand. The predicate of truths of opinion generally takes the ‘false’ value. And when justice is based on circumstantial evidence or opinion, the truth value should not reach beyond ‘reasonable doubt,’ as when viewed in Democritus’ mirrored well, biased perception rather than truth and justice is shown. Ethics is an orphan here. Still, guilt is often adjudged in our courts. The estate’s attorney in the Binion murder trial, testified that Binion had instructed him by telephone to take the girlfriend (Murphy) out of his will. Because this circumstantial evidence was considered a fact by the court, the supreme court of Nevada ruled that Murphy would get nothing from the estate. Because Justices are elected in Nevada, they are, therefore, not insulated from political influences (The estate’s attorney, in this instance, was named in the Binion will to receive a $ million. The trial disclosed that Binion had personally handed some $ 40,000 cash to a Mayoral candidate on the day of his drug related death. (Influences related to campaign contributions should be of greater public concern). Years later, in the summer of 2002, the Nevada State Supreme
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Court heard the conventional appeal of the guilty of murder decision, and a new trial ordered. Then, more than a year later, and a new trial, Murphy was found not guilty of the murder that had incarcerated her, however, other retained guilty charges that had been ‘bundled,’ foreclosed Murphy from filing a claim on Binion’s estate. Organizations (corporate, political, religious, special-purpose, a gang, and even your local Bridge Club), all of which lack nature endowed intelligence (i.e., they lack natural agencies to cognize) can independently perceive of nothing, let alone truth. Organizations are, however, effective to increase ‘duty-based’ civil order, regimentation, communication, production, politics, . . . , all of which are of phenomena and not Noumena. However, to achieve these advantages, individual organic human members must surrender natural Noumenal aspects of themselves to support the deontological dutybased organizational objectives. In the processes of organizing or joining we trade what C. H. Monson called the intelligible part (individual Noumenal or birthright) for visible (phenomenal) group synergies that gratify life’s carnal desiderata only. We trade abstract portions of ‘self’ for ‘positive’ gratifying aspects of organization (As in the Biblical story of Esau, we trade ‘birthright’ for ‘pottage’).70 In the sense of trading ‘self’ for government, we trade for organizational sovereign powers that were specified to administratively assure, insure, license, support, and protect us, but increasingly the U.S. constitutional agreement, made more than 200 years ago, has since legally empowered ‘fictitious’ organizational sovereignties (which like property or wealth-based sovereignty) have legally subdued individual humans, which are now controlled absolutely by the economic mechanist organizations that State government licenced: for a paycheck or bribes which more often in polite terms are called incentives, bonuses, stocks and such, as the economic argument goes: we contractually traded our rights for a paycheck. (Can dogmas be unlearned or mechanists’ injustices either are dispelled or mitigated?)
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When spurious claims are made that organizations own the intellectual rights to products produced, organizations invariably disrespect the human ‘rights,’ which by consent empower them, (When cases of this are legally upheld, then a form of slavery is legally justified). Only those humans of organizational authority can intelligibly represent an organization: to conceive of or possess organizational truth. Important is how the organization is empowered. If ‘ad hoc’ authority, the consent empowerment is of the attending humanity that by suffrage appointed the authority. If ‘absolute,’ the authority is by an inculcated ‘divine right’ or power that at some historical point was enforced by armament. If of licensed by organic authority, the authorities are chartered, and are publically accountable (For instance, this example of legally skirting licensed public accountability, ‘talk show host Oprah Winfrey, whose organization’s authority was by licensed fictitious legal charter, contractually makes all her employees sign an agreement prohibiting them from talking or writing about Oprah’s personal and business life and affairs -- for the rest of their lives’). 71 All assertions of organic truth must concern some or all of the people who are organized in some formal or informal manner. Ralph Nader claims that international organization as WTO and NAFTA are organizations that operate without authority. He points out, they were organized without suffrage or license that is accountable to any nation or public group. Is he right in this? Again, only people can conceive of or possess truth which, as C. E. Luthardt (1823-1902) said, ‘denies common error.’72
Truth is by its very nature, intolerant, exclusive, for every truth is the denial of its opposing error. Luthardt However, Luthardt spoke of pure truth and did not include Plato’s truth form, which he called ‘opinion.’ In this opinion-based realm of truth, the predicate value of human logos, which also posits facts, results in truth values, which can be ‘is true,’ or ‘is false,’ or some mixed combination: Like Democritus’ mirrored well, ‘facts do not lie,
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but liars do posit facts’ (often, this truism is stated: ’figures do not lie, but liars do figure’). It follows that truth which corresponds to a fact, posited by a liar, generally has ‘is false’ as its truth-value. The ‘liar paradox’ confirms the analysis of Plato, Liebnitz, Russel, . . . that truth of Plato’s realm of ‘opinion’ can in fact either be ‘is true’ or ‘is false’: Liebnitz distinguished truth with no opposites as ‘necessary’ and all other truth (with natural opposites) as ‘contingent’ truth. All ‘necessary’ truth, which is pure, involves transcendence: an individual must analytically, critically reach beyond his temporal cognizance until a specific truth is fathomed to become a part of the individual's personal entourage of mind we call knowledge. This thought agrees with Plato, I believe: [only truths of ‘reason’ can approach ‘good,’ where Synaeresis (Lao-tse would say), of no opposites is found]. About the grades of truth, Monson wrote the following about Plato’s assessment of humanity’s condition:73
Pay careful attention to the various parts of [Plato’s] divided line and notice how they are exemplified in [his] allegory. Plato believes reality consists of two aspects, that which is visible and that which is intelligible, and that the latter is the more important. From Plato’s ‘Divided Line and the Allegory of the Cave’:
Whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of Good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light, and the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally either in public or private life must have his eye fixed. ---About Plato’s ‘good,’ on which side of the ‘divided line’ is the ‘positivism’ defined by A. Compte, found? Is this ‘positivism’
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about sight, touch, smell and the empirical measures of objects so observed, ontologically limited to mechanists’ belief in unitary materialism? And does this dogmatic belief conflate intelligent Noumenal rights?
Positivism:74 1. deals only with positive facts and phenomena, rejecting abstract speculation. 2. A being positive; definiteness; assurance; dogmatism. Is it a contest between that which is visible and that which is intelligible? And, by what constitutional right can organizations’ restrict human rights, as specified in the Bill of Rights? Organizations conceived by mechanist ‘positivism,’ routinely are licensed by State governments to pursue commercial objectives and in processes of achieving, they employ wage earners and claim ‘ownership’ rights to products, including services and intellectual properties. Organizations were legally given special constitutional status regarding both Noumenal and phenomenal rights: the legal special status of commercial organic rights is centered in legal dogma, which equated the licensed fictional organic entity to that of a human. This happened by similar legal affirmative definition which had extended the Federal Constitution to States’ Constitutions. In the context of Plato’s line between ‘positive,’ visible reality and reasoned reality of ‘Noumenal pursuits and posits of humans,’ natural paradoxes are encountered. When pondering Plato’s thoughts about this, one might better value what I call innate-conservatism: i.e., the reasoned realm of intellectual rights, which naturally necessarily are only produced by human minds, memory, and posits, which as robotic wage-earners, are rewarded only by wages paid for organic phenomenal duties as assigned. In fact, wage-earners violate their specified organic duties whenever ‘positive’ phenomenal realness as produced, is transcended for to engage intelligent creative thought, called reason. Instead of any pureness of ‘necessary’ truth, this innate conservatism is organically usurped by what Plato called ‘beliefs’ and
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‘illusions’ that thrive on wage-earnings that are paid for duties assigned to static human minds, which Hobbes’ brutish man described. Temporal duties, whether wage-earned or not, often act to restrain deliberate thoughts: They often inhibit a critical ontological need to seek after and transcend in truth and knowledge. Organic influences qualify, condition and sanitize what becomes a believed resident of human minds: peer-pressure, hypnotic inducements, but more the seemingly benign illusionary inculcation by families, gangs and religion, while not intended, often acts to inhibit similarly and particularly, as orthodox organic order, usurps each human member’s deliberate reason. A personal transcendence to Plato’s realm of ‘deliberate reason’ and ‘pure thought’ encounters natural paradoxes with each and every step taken into the independence of deliberate reason. But it has a great natural Noumenal companion, ‘ontologism,’ which is the exclusive reward for pursuing pure truth (which ultimately is in pursuit of the LOGOS of all creation). As St. John had properly named God! The statement -- (This or that) church is true -- is far more ambiguous than saying -- this rock is true, and yet in orthodoxy, the later has far more pertinence with truth. Subtle obfuscation of definition and authoritative affirmation has made the object (this church) far more ambiguous, but, maybe, more pertinent to the transcendence of human intellect. Also “getting your head straight” when viewing the mirror of Democritus’ well is critical:75
According to Democritus, truth lies at the bottom of a well, the water of which serves as a mirror in which objects may be reflected. --I have heard, however that some philosophers, in seeking for truth, to pay homage to her, have seen their own image and adored it instead. Henri Richter (1685-1748) Logical Tautology In Plato’s view, it is critically important not to compromise necessity
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by adopting instead, contingency as an axiomatic foundation of truth, for this corrupts the necessity, logically making it false. With this concern, the meanings of ‘paradox’ are critically important to understand cogently the philosophic range of a paradox: --(1) a statement with opposite meanings that is ‘true;’ --(2) a statement with opposite meanings that is ‘false’ (one or both opposite is ‘untrue’); --(3) an intentional inference, as intent, that opposes the statement, which when ‘untrue’ makes the statement ‘false’ (telling a lie, for instance); --(4) any inconsistent or contradictory fact, action or condition (only in the logical tautological sense can inconsistent or contradictory things be ‘true’).76 Definition: By a [logical] tautology we mean a statement which
has the truth value for all possible truth values of its components. [in the argument (P6C), i.e., the proposition P infers the conclusion C , all parts P, C, and 6 must be true independently and the denial argument -P 6 -C must also be true.] THE DEBATE Vernon Louis Parrington wrote about the Constitutional Convention’s decision which gave us a republican government form:77
Accepting then the principle of republicanism as a compromise between the extremes of monarchy and democracy, the practical problem remained of erecting a system that should secure the minority [business and property] against the aggressions of political faction [democratic sovereignty] . . . .. In elaborating a system of checks and balances the members of the convention were influenced by the practical considerations of economic determinism more than by the theories of Montesquieu [Still, in fact, they based the separate executive, legislative and judicial powers of government on
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Montesquieu’s theory 78]. They were realists who followed the teachings of the greatest political thinkers from Aristotle to Locke in asserting that the problem of government lay in arranging a stable balance between the economic interests of the major classes. The revolutionary conception of equalitarianism, that asserted the rights of man apart from property and superior to property, did not enter into their thinking as a workable hypothesis [But they were forced to accede to the common will that homespun democracy persuaded and The Declaration of Independence had sealed]. Parrington introduced the above concession with this comment: 79
Even Hamilton yielded to the logic of Colonel Mason’s argument: “Notwithstanding the oppression and injustice among us from democracy, the genius of the people is in favor of it, and the genius of the people must be consulted. The antecedent cause of action in framing the Constitution was only partly based on “unities of Aristotle’s non-material (i.e., Noumenal) form” as bequeathed by nature to humanity and convincingly explicated by John Locke as inalienable human property rights. As this inalienable nature-based flux we call sovereignty confronted the manmade flux which favored the dogmatic theory of mechanistic economic determinism (mechenism-based causality), human sovereignty had only won the Bill of Rights portion of the Constitution. But this was only one battle in the internal war of political flux. Benjamin Franklin had observed that our society is astride two political horses. Both are harnessed to government and pull oppositely. Politics of economic determinism and. politics of democratic sovereignty are the push and pull of opposing political flux. Concerning the effects of democratic flux in other nations, our first war of the Twenty First century is still about this push and pull of
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opposing flux. Democratic human rights threaten the orthodox mechanist values of religious feudal potentates. Political inculcation of dogmatic terrorism then ensued to become the pawn of mechanist fear tactics.
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'Freedom' being the foundation of all the rest. . . .81
We might think of this political push and pull as natural human rights in which human political contrivances, are the extremes of Aristotle’s excess and deficiency, the mean of which is where virtue is found Cicero in 51 B.C. prescribed ‘true law:’ 80
True law is right reason in accord with nature; it is of universal application, unchanged and everlasting. Does income represent both human necessity and contingency? At some point, is the divide of Locke’s ‘state of war’ found?
--- The right to property is defined as an essential or basic right for the purpose of defining the sovereignty of the individual and the necessity to guarantee his rights and property 'against' others, 'not' so as to allow him to acquire, to control, to achieve domination through landed property. --Every Man has a 'Property' in his own 'Person.'. . . --Men living together 'according to reason' are properly in the State of Nature.' --No individual has a right or power over the life of another. . --Force without Right, upon a man's person, makes a State of War. . . . --It is a 'right,' a possession of each individual which must be protected together with his other freedoms, protected from others who are in a 'State of War' against the individual . . . --He that in the State of Nature, 'would take away the Freedom,' that belongs to anyone in that State, must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take away everything else, that
The U.S. Democratic political flux must not allow this state of war. Louis Pojman wrote this:82
Determinism is the theory that everything in the universe is governed by causal laws. That is, everything in the universe is entirely determined so that whatever happens at any given moment is the effect of some antecedent cause. If we were omniscient, we could predict exactly everything that would happen for the rest of the hour, for the rest or our life time, for the rest of time itself, simply because we know how everything hitherto is causally related. David Hume pointed out that “universal causality” was not a logical truth. Immanuel Kant confronted the philosophical dilemma presented by considering only the physical flux of Materialism upon which the orthodox, dogmatized determinism of economy is based. Kant called the principle of universal causality “a synthetic a priori,”
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i.e., false deductive rationalization about natural causes.83 The Determinism of Materialism is called Mechanism. Mechanisms of the U.S. political economy distributed wealth as the graph indicates.
Mechanism n. . . . 6. The theory that everything in the universe is produced and can be explained by mechanical or material forces: “the influence of mechanism and materialism in science (Science News). 84 Authoritative rationalization of prescriptive values is evidently represented by these factual results of political economy. Prescriptive value, probity, failed to apply here: though the spectrum of rationalization spans benign to evil intent.85
Rationalize -- v.t. 1. To make rational or conformable to reason. 2. to treat or explain in a rational manner. 3. To find (often unconciously) an explanation or excuse for. 4.to explain (myth, legend, ets.) In terms of contemporary contemporary scientific knowledge. 5. To organize or run (a business, industry, operation, etc.) on economically sound or proven methods of administration and production [this definition admits the divide between human rights and business interests]. 6. ‘Mathematics.’ To clear from irrational quantities. -- v.i. to find excuses (often unconsciously) for one’s desires. Essential prescriptive values were apparently rationalized by the flux of political economy to support the private profit sector of economy (meaning #3)? And since definition #5 is about ‘organizing or running business successfully,’ the prescriptive values of business mechanisms are the antecedents (causes) that determined the income distribution shown above? The nexus, of mechanisms’ departure from essential values, to ‘irrational quantities of mathematics,’ #6, are unclear. But, manmade systemic paradoxes are analogous to squaring circles, which can’t be done. The ‘irrational quantities of
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mathematics’ are particular and necessary instances of paradoxes that exist metaphysically? Similarly, human situations where probity fails because of rationalization’s definition #3, are unexplainable. While this does not explain the ubiquitous paradoxes of political economy, it at least suggests that solving a paradox requires principles of necessity to provide the answers: an obvious answer is to retrofit probity into the prescriptive values of our constitutional logos. Failing this, solutions with softening the adversities might be targeted for investigation. Everywhere, truth encounters opposites. In the cosmic sense, phenomena entail essential principles (the poles of electricity, for instance) that are coequal and opposite. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Divided line distinguished the pureness of reason (no unessential opposites) from the paradoxes of opinion, which embroil unessential opposites: Plato divided ‘necessary’ truth from ‘contingent’ truth. A principle is a ‘necessary’ something: The logical meaning of ‘necessary’ is something that cannot be denied because denial
would entail contradiction of what already has been established.86 Attentiveness to the logical compulsory meaning of ‘necessary’ is herein extolled, for if a teleology of life exists, the ‘necessaries’ of paradoxical truth must be clearly understood, and celebrated?
Necessary truth , therefore, is truth that, uncontradicted, stands alone: It is principle , an axiom of ‘intelligence’ rather than theory. Contingent truth is conditional. It is truth that depends upon something that is uncertain, therefore, unnecessary. Plato’s Line divided what is ‘necessary’ from what is ‘contingent.’ God’s truth is exclusively necessary principles! If the supreme intelligence
called nature’s LOGOS, God, authors uncontradictable ‘necessary’ truth, God does not author confusion or contradiction 87
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(Did the word of God go out from you or did it only extend to you? ; let all things be done in a becoming manner, according to Order.). Humans are responsible for rationalizing contingent truth. Epicurus (342-270 B.C.) theorized that pleasure was ‘good’ and pain was ‘evil.’ He rationalized that visceral paradox increased with extravagance and, therefore, wisdom prescribed a simple and temperate life. Unlike Plato’s line, Epicurus’ paradoxes embroiled mostly the hypothetical of ‘contingent’ truth. Zeno (335-265 B.C.) had founded Stoic philosophy on similarly hypothetical. Undoubtedly, his personal misfortunes fed experience-based-belief in a meddlesome, determining supreme ‘divine intelligence’: The wise man will ‘follow nature and fit his desires to the pattern of events,’ he proffered. Paradoxs of Zeno included ‘the race of the tortoise and the hare,’ which he called ‘Achilles and the Tortoise,’ and ‘The Dichotomy’ which by considering successive midpoints, asserted that unbounded motion is impossible. While these paradoxes might have acted as ‘hard determinism’ that inhibited development of the calculus, i.e, it was not until the fifteenth century that recidivist paradoxical cultural falseness was intellectually overcome, reason eventually did develop the calculus, which proved that Zeno’s ‘limits’ are both reachable and surmountable. Similarly, ‘hard causal determinism,’ called mechanism, abides as official economic doctrine, as dogma supplanted for principle, for instance: As happened with developing the calculus, Psychologists have found similar analogies in divergent thought patterns, as applied to the paradoxical divide of viewing a half-filled glass of water. Anyway, the faithful of Christ were plagued with a cultural controversy as spun by then cultural paradoxes of rationalization.88
. . . guard that intrusted to thee, turning away from the profane empty sounds and contradictions of that falsely-named knowledge.
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And humanity today continues to be plagued by the resulting paradoxical falseness of official dogma. If Old Testament people understood the unreliability of opinion-based belief, they understood rationalization. ‘Opinion’ implies unreliability?89
How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God follow him. . . . Then said Elijah unto the people, I, even I only, remain a prophet unto the Lord; but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men. While Biblical laws are the religious canon of the Old Testament, Biblical principle , as personified in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, is the canon of the New Testament (So, like Plato’s Divided Line, in Christ is found the Way to transcend sins, which are related to Biblical paradoxes). Paradoxes that result in Biblical laws and penalties, are contingent upon transgressions of principles, called sins (Christ’s principles, were then tenets of The Covenant of Jehovah). Because Christ’s life established the personification of Gospel ‘principle’ (i.e, the alfa and omega to fulfill the Gospel necessities of truth’s values of human life’s Creation), Christ represents ‘pure truth.’ A great difference exists in the fact that the Old Testament laws depended on ‘not abiding ten specific principles,’ or commandments:90
Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.
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In Plato’s view, it is critically important not to compromise ‘necessity’ by adopting ‘contingency’ as an axiomatic foundation of truth, for this logically corrupts the ‘necessity,’ often making it false. With this concern, ‘paradoxes’ appertain critically to understanding cogently the philosophic range of truth that ‘is true.’ 91
A paradox is, --(1) a statement with opposite meanings that is ‘true;’ --(2) a statement with opposite meanings that is ‘false’ (one or both opposite is ‘untrue’); --(3) an intentional inference, as intent, that opposes the statement, which when ‘untrue’ makes the statement ‘false’ (telling a lie, for instance); --(4) any inconsistent or contradictory fact, action or condition (only in the tautological sense can inconsistent or contradictory things be ‘true’). Encountering paradoxes that embroiled irrational numbers’, mathematicians defined methods to circumnavigate the opposite meanings so to preserve truths’ correspondences of fact with perception (This problem remains unresolved in courts of law). 92 Definition: By a tautology we mean a statement which has the truth value for all possible truth values of its components. [in the argument (P6C), i.e., the proposition P infers the conclusion C , all parts P, C, and 6 must be true independently and the denial argument -P 6 -C must also be true: for all parts and components.]" Whenever legal prosecution bundles crimes and criminals, a tautological problem is created. Also, whenever an indirect argument
"
While logically (as indicated in truth tables) the denial statement normally would be considered false, in tautology, the denial statement must be true
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based on circumstantial evidence is the basis of prosecution, the problem of paradoxes which mathematicians circumnavigated by tautology, confronts justice. With DNA, and other direct evidence of innocence surfacing belatedly, as in many capital cases has occurred, should convince court officials to resolve the tautological problem. Each part (proposition, conclusion, and argument, for each crime) of a tautology must be separately adjudged for complex convictions to assure that logical fallacies are eliminated [An example for tautology (bundled crimes and convictions), the Binion murder case (Las Vegas) should be revisited with an interest in assuring ‘is true’ justice.]. A special example of a paradox: 93
A statement that is false because it says two opposite things: ‘There is that glorious epicurean paradox . . . : “give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries”’ [which depicts usual political economy]
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Humanity, by measures of choosing falseness of the paradoxes, forbears the ‘necessaries’ of life? : untruths are often chosen over truth. Emotionally and culturally the inherent result or oppositions of adopting paradoxs, in biblical culture particularly, was commonly called sin. Some most deadly sins are suggested to be these:
Politics without principle. Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character. Business without morality. Science without humanity. Worship without sacrifice. these, I suggest, might be added
Sexuality without probity. Old Testament Law without New Testament fulfillment. And considering recent court actions, politically partial (i.e.,Federalist), biased judgements.
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99
100
That paradoxes are always relative in matters of truth, must be accepted. Paradoxes are never ‘absolute’ in any isolated sense of being ‘true’ (for instance, Communism’s ‘absolute’ dependence on Hegel’s ‘dialectical materialism’ was a philosophical misnomer since this ‘dependent’ truth failed absolutely to accommodate human ‘necessities’ of life; likewise, Fascism is a misnomer for the same reason). In fact, although popularly obscure, the philosophic study of truth cannot progress without comprehending mitigating principles of paradoxes. The study of mathematics affords a wealth of contemplation in this regard. And while we might recognize Plato for his philosophic acumen, we should not overlook his mathematics. Mathematics is where the study of paradoxes and mitigating principles of truth derived fundamental meaning. Herbert Western Turnbull wrote about the contributions of mathematicians to ‘necessary’ truth and knowledge. His book, The Great Mathematicians, is lucidly concise. He wrote this:94
These ideas have had an enormous influence on the trend of recent and contemporary thought; it is enough to say here that they exhibit in diverse ways the more mathematical side of that philosophical search into the principles of our subject which has marked the most recent stage of its history. For mathematics had now reached a state in which it was possible to do for the whole what Euclid tried to do for Geometry, by disclosing the underlying axioms or primitive propositions, as Peano called them: and the most patient investigation has been made -notably in our own land by Whitehead and Russell -- first of the subject-matter itself and next of the very ideas that govern the subject-matter. As all this was conceived on a sublimely universal scale, it is hardly remarkable that certain paradoxes have come to light. How to face these paradoxes is an urgent
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problem, and there are at present two or three schools of thought employed upon this. . . . They trace the presence of paradoxes to the use of indirect proofs, or more precisely to what is called in logic the law of the excluded middle. To this they object, very much as others have objected to the Parallel Postulate of Euclid: indeed, it may be a symptom of the advent of a high synthesis in arithmetic and analysis, just as the earlier was in geometry. As nothing less than the whole edifice from Eudoxus to Cantor is at stake, little wonder that these viewes cause a stir in the mathematical world." ‘Of what use,’ said Kronecker to Lindemann, ‘is your beautiful investigation regarding B? Why study such problems, since irrational numbers are nonexistent?’ * So back we are once more -* The precise evaluation of B is approached by the Calculus and particularly this irrational number is critical to precisely evaluating circles. Circles are a continuum: no begin and no end. A number that is necessary to fit a continuum into three-dimensional space is crucial indeed. Particularly it is crucial to evaluating orbits of planets and such. And we might suspect it has to do with the Divide between reasoned physis-based necessary truth and nomos, which unnecessarily is paradoxical because natural necessities are expediently supplanted by human wants, the nature of which is concupiscent.
-- at the logical scandal such as troubled the Greeks. The Greeks survived and conquered it, and so shall we . . .. There is a largeness about mathematics that transcends
"
And in matters of law, prosecutors should worry about convictions that are based on indirect argument: that all parts of tautology including the denial argument are ‘true.’
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race and time: mathematics may humbly help in the marketplace, but it also reaches to the stars. To one, mathematics is a game (but what a game!) and to another it is the handmaiden of theology. . . . Mathematics transfigures the fortuitous concourse of atoms into the tracery of the finger of God.
102
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum) * Census Bureau information furnished in 1986 ** decline in the 4th quintile is significant. *** Census Bureau information furnished in 1996. The decline in the 4th quintile, while not specified, continues. The decade’s increase in the Top quintile is more than the total of the Bottom quintile (as established in 1969) **** Only the bottom and top quintiles are shown in the above graph.
Are materialistic concupiscent sponsors of mechanistic economic rationalization, sociopathic? :i.e., know that what they do is wrong but do not care because it benefits them.
DISTRIBUTION BY POPULATION QUINTILE OF FAMILY INCOME AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL INCOME Bottom
2nd
Middle
4th
Top
1969*
5.6
12.4
17.7
23.7
40.6
1979*
5.2
11.6
17.5
24.1
41.7
1982*
4.7
11.2
17.1
24.3
42.7
1986**
4.6
10.8
16.8
24.0
43.7
1996***
3.7
? ****
?
?
49.0
The empirical facts, depicted by the preceding graph, are from the Census Bureau. The explanation given falsely, said that the bottom quintile’s “take” in 1996 compared to 4 percent in 1967. This error represents either a sophist reporting that intended to mislead readers’ perceptions, or it is simply a mistake, which has the same effect. When economists justify the mechanistic dogma, which rules of economic conduct are officially affirmed to be absolute, then in a sociopathic manner claim that The Economics is natural science, wage-earners, who particularly are political economies’ dupes, must be wary of the dogmatic authoritative rationalization, which had politically affirmed this nomos-based paradoxical economy (which clearly is sociopathic in the sense that owners’ of profits taken, benefit from what holistically is mechanistically taken from wage-earner dupes at the economic bottom). Natural sovereignty (the causal effects of suffrage), which is unalienable, is mechanistically under siege: It is compromised by usurpation
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and thraldom." " The antecedent cause, of compromise or usurpation of human sovereignty, Hume and Kant had reasoned, is an apparent result of supplanting dogmatic causal mechanism (i.e., hard determinism) for necessary truth values. While mechanist believers in “Hard Determinism” bear the burden of proving that the affirmed mechanism-based economic proposition ‘is true,’ that the political flux which had officially affirmed the mechanist theory, and thereby restored privately owned mercantilism to the U.S. political American economy," " is based on natural principles instead of dogma. They cannot! Will not! And, care not to even consider this inherent responsibility. Instead, they feel secure in the orthodoxy of “positive” nomos forms of truth, which Plato said were about shadows and such, they willfully dismiss reasoned physis, which question’s veracity of the mechanist flux, from which the economic dogma had become orthodoxy. Still, this affirmed antecedent cause was not natural. Instead, this economic dogma’s cause was “positive” applications of the mechanist concupiscent human will: in biased politics which fused untruth and moral controversy into theory about the visible deterministic forces of nature (this moral untruth, which perpetuated mercantilism, is companion to the politics of slavery). In this reasoned manner of deliberate examination, one can prove the untrueness of “materialist” and “mechanist” dogmatic theories, which are based ""
John C. Calhoun (1782-1850), Congressman (1811-1817), Secretary of War (1817-1825), Vice President to Andrew Jackson, Senator (18321844) had justified the Whig mechanist economic system proposed by Henry Clay, by defending his perception of U.S. democracy as compared to the slave system-based Greek democracy. ""
What Parrington noted as returning to the sixteenth Century, from which the seventeenth Century had rejected.
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on “hard determinism.” Faith in dogma always closes the mind, which otherwise is open to reasoned thought where are found pure truth, knowledge, morality and justice . Craig Thomas wrote this: 95
The ‘sense of nation’ is militaristic, expansionist, and aggressive, for German idealism and for German Sociology. Hegel’s apologia for the Prussian state and Weber’s support of his government’s approach to the Great War are more than sufficient evidence of the power of history on ideas, rather than the reverse. . . .. When one comes to examine the attitudes of thinkers belonging to later generations, one finds the persistence of attitudes rather than facts. Though Durkheim and Weber, for example, developed their principal theories at the end of the last century and the beginning of this one [the twentieth], their ideas exist in a historical vacuum to a large extent. They are determined by Marx and their other predecessors rather than by the empirically observable society around them. And if Weber ever threw off the influence of Marx (and he spent his life refuting the greater German), he did not discard the persistent influence of Hegel and what one might call ‘Prussianism’ [which is mechanist Authoritarianism]. Ideas of political society in the nineteenth century did, to one degree or another, operate under the umbrella of the metaphysical tradition, revivified with a vengeance by Hegel. They became ‘philosophical‘ and like the other branches of speculation, derived much of their energy, antithesis, and conclusions from reaction or response to other ideas [their idealism was of materialist prejudice, more than reason: of material phenomena rather than essential Noumenon].
Differences are subtle and often paradoxical
105
One is left to conclude perhaps, the ideals which first inspired the French Revolution were those, however altered by the elevation of a secularist conception of human reason to ‘essence’ or model, that had inspired both the English and the American revolutions that preceded it. However, contemporary reflection upon the aftermath of the initial changes of the revolutionary period served only to throw political and social thought gratefully into the arms of collectivist theorists, another generation of metaphysicians. It is necessary, therefore, to regard the triumph of the revolution not as the triumph of the individual and the values of what historians term liberalism but rather the reverse. Confirmed by history, it was the triumph of a peculiarly French form of idealism which masqueraded as materialism, a close relative of Lockian empiricism. Reason itself had become something ‘ideal,’ something essential, ‘a priori’ and self-evident -- and something to be elevated to the status of the divine. Added to this is the fact that the tradition of French philosophy, from Descartes to Rousseau, was metaphysical. Materialism, at its best, is an accommodation of Locke’s empiricism with the prevailing current [of Hobbes’ ontological authoritarianism (the power of history on ideas)].
For the moment, all that need be additionally remarked is that nineteenth-century political [or ‘sociological’ (or anthropological)?] theory is dogged by other minor legacies of the new science of history and from those who professed to interpret its mysteries for the benefit of the uninitiated, and these are derived from the sense of pattern attempting to accommodate itself with the ‘fact’ of the contemporary or spring from the recognition of pattern itself in history. We are
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dealing with determinism on the one hand and pessimism on the other. . . . Not only is history beyond the control of the individual (even the individual society or government or state), but its pattern, given the continuing vigor of the capitalist system, despite Marx’s . . . prognostications, implies lack of change, the ‘iron cage’ that Max Weber eloquently spoke of. Kerkegaard’s observation that Abraham was not a thinker opened reasoned thoughts about faith to the dynamic results of ontological sylogistic reason, effort, and action, as based on reasoned personal ‘spiritual works’ of living in faith: Kerkegaard observed that Abraham felt no need of getting beyond faith. 96 But Faith is a Basis of things hoped for, a Conviction of things unseen. Then, paradox was a particular problem in the development of mathematics.97 It is hardly remarkable that certain paradoxes have come to light. How to face these paradoxes is an urgent problem, and there are at the present time two or three different schools of thought employed upon this. Brouwer or Holland . . . [traced] the presence of paradoxes to the use of indirect proofs, or more precisely to what is called in logic the law of the excluded middle. In the development of mathematical truth tables, logical tautology became the means for testing truth’s veracity. Logical Tautology is a critical veracity tool for preserving the value pureness in truth, morality and justice. Rationalization-based idealist illusions (as materialism), espoused as orthodox truth, are thereby exposed as tautological ‘falsehoods.’98
By a [logical] tautology we mean a statement, which has the truth value ‘true’ for all possible truth values of its components.
Differences are subtle and often paradoxical
107
Compound statements with all truth values ‘true’ are called tautologies and represent valid argument forms. The implication formed by the conjunction of all the premises as the antecedent and the conclusion as the consequent that form a valid argument form, will always result in a tautology. Testing compound statements to see whether they are tautologies is thus equivalent to testing an argument for validity. John N. Fujii gave three classical valid arguments and two classical invalid arguments (d) and (e): (d) Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent, and (e) Fallacy of Denying the Antecedent. (P = compound premises, Q = consequent, - = denial, = therefore): Important are (d) and (e), because they are logical fallacy: (d) ‘Affirming the Consequent,’ and (e) ‘Denying the Antecedent.’ (a) Modus ponens (b) Modus tollens (c) Hypothetical syllogism P6Q P
Q
P6Q
P6Q Q6R
-Q -P
(d) P 6 Q Q
P For instance, consider admonition as the necessary truth:
P6R (e)
P6Q
-P -Q Christ’s
following
heterodox
He who preserves his life, shall lose it; but he who loseth his life on my account will preserve it.
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Living (doing) in faithfulness to Christ’s principles mitigate the paradoxes of sin? Earlier, Christ said this:
Be not anxious how or what you shall speak, because what you should say will be suggested to you at that moment. For it is not you that shall speak; but the spirit of your Father is that which speaks by you. In faith this heterodoxy is understood to be the prescription for success in all walks of life: That to be personally successful Christ’s principles must be practiced without rationalization. Then consider the idealist rationalization, that to be successful as an employee of another, the corpus of a project or business purpose must similarly be adopted and practiced. Because we agree on salary, we do not pause to consider or test for tautology of a project or business. Still, our faith in the business objective fails when personal principles of Christian faith conflict with the corpus of life’s employments. As experience with Enron, Worldcom, . . ., is considered in the aftermath of the stock market crash of 2002, faith in Christ’s axiomatic heterodoxy is rekindled as the orthodoxy of employments is clearly shown as tautological fallacy. Aggressive accounting, legal or not, is an apparent orthodox example of fallacy (‘affirming the consequent’, or ‘denying the antecedent’) that became accounting practice in the mid 1990s. Orthodox concupiscent greed was in accord with these tautological fallacies. Reflectively, true greatness is an enduring, faithful conscience: happy and tranquil with reason about life’s faith-based ‘good’ and the ‘worth’ (orthodoxy routinely assails it). Few men have achieved the greatness of philosophers. Among these, Christ was the greatest. His philosophy is about ultimate personal principles for life’s conduct: all that teleology describes. And, those before and after him, who gave their life for these same principles, based solely on their faith in consistent sylogistic reason, are distinguished with similar
Differences are subtle and often paradoxical
109
110
greatness. St. John gave Jesus the name LOGOS to describe this Godly noumenal aspect of Christ. The axiomatic meaning of this proper name of ‘God the Creator’ came from the Greeks, and democracy undoubtedly played an important role: Frank and open discussion of these principle-based truths could not have occurred in any other form of government than our own unique republican democracy. Before Christ, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were prominent among the many inductive architects of axiomatic logic that began with ultimately consistent undefinable principles, axioms. They called the ultimate undefined principle ‘LOGOS’, which is,
The American System of Political Economy is a licensed system of private mechanisms, which are intrinsically, but politically connected to government and its constitutional authorities (authority to grant business licenses fail as constitutional specificity except as unspecified authority reserved for the separate states" ). Supposedly government is ‘of the people, for the people, and by the people,’ however, political economy’s licensed mechanisms oppose this teleology of Lincoln, immortalized. These private mechanisms divide the economy and upset the ethical flux in culture. Our Political Economy locks Americans of the REAL ECONOMY between Americans of the SURREAL ECONOMY and Americans of the NON ECONOMY. Tyrannous Determinism results to compromise the human rights bequeathed by the Constitution. --Are we losing our unique AMERICAN HERITAGE?
(A Greek word, of great breadth of meaning, primarily signifying in the context of philosophical discussion the rational, intelligible principle, structure, or order which pervades something).
While this Thesis was motivated by perceptions of mechanist thraldom, which originated in the local organic religious faith, social results now bear witnesses to its great wisdom: Professor Waldemer P. Read addressed a Great issues’ forum in 1962, which I attended, and was so moved to preserve this copy. It concludes this section: Potentially more unfortunate in scale than the fateful plight of Branch Dividians or members of Jonestown, the mind control of deterministic materialism dogma has captivated the U.S. government with all its licensed private business agents -- the practical instrument of society’s
They were the temporal axiomatic organizers that gave logical meaning to this ultimate truth, which Christ’s life embodied as principle-based truth: Christ’s truth, as necessary mitigating principle to the paradoxes of temporal life, fulfilled the scriptures, to an extent that these principles are not only subscribed, but lived. After Christ, Descartes, Kant, Locke, stand tall. More recently, Einstein’s axiomatic achievements justly deserve great honors for unlocking more mysteries of the LOGOS of creation. And there are many more. All were men of faith in principle and truth. And they are the foundation of my aspirations here. Axiomatic principles are, I commend, the most important fiducial understanding that is available to humans. Success, as measured in honors and credits, is comforting and appreciated. But, faith based axiomatic thought, focuses only on serving and achieving modicums of philosophical (love of truth) progress in what Plato described as ‘good’: only found near God.
SS: Virtues and Vices (Addendum)
"
Is it reasonable to expect that government of, for and by the people must specify, as a stringent requirement of business license, those necessary fiducial principles of conduct are practiced by fictitious person corporations? Otherwise, government must mete effective, necessary regulation of these legalized organic fictions, which are given license by a ‘catchall’ constitutional provision for ‘states authority’? This regulation of license must be administered by the federal government?
Differences are subtle and often paradoxical
111
political economy -- to effect the desired ends of affluence. We need to learn, as soon as possible, the lesson that Professor Waldemere Read taught in 1962: . . . What I have hoped to emphasize is that the conditioning
process is a means of manipulation, an instrument of control. Moreover, the conditioning process is equally effective whether used unwittingly or with deliberate intent. The bearing of this principle upon our problem is simple. Individuals become members of society, not through reasoning, but by conditioning. Every institution, every family group for instance, and every church group is a conditioning agency. Through conditioning it recruits and controls its members. "In order that any society may function well, its members must acquire the kind of character which makes them want to act in the way they have to act as members of the society or a special class within it. They have to desire what objectively is necessary for them to do. Outer force is replaced by inner compulsion, and by the particular kind of human energy which is channeled into character traits." 99 However, institutional control is like rain, or food; it's good up to a point; beyond that point it is deadening. Institutional control is good if the institution which provides it is open at the top; if the institution is closed, then the control is bad. That is, an institution may be such as to provide a ladder by which the individual may reach a launching pad from which he may transcend the very forms that lifted him; or, it may provide a ceiling which shields him, to be sure, but also limits him and uses him as one of the elements in the truss which holds it up. Institutions of the first sort liberate the human spirit; those of the latter kind imprison it. Bertrand Russell has written
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of the harm in educational systems which treat the individual child as a means to an end, not as an end in himself. "The teacher," he says, "should love the child better than his State or his Church." To so love the child is to want to liberate him. It is to refuse to treat him as mere plastic material to be molded to a common form; it is to cherish his individuality, his uniqueness, his independence of thought and belief, his potentials as a possible contributor to the growth and enrichment of the human spirit in the continuing progress of mankind. As features of . . . . uniform beliefs and teaching practices, certain methodological beliefs are noteworthy. These beliefs then [become tools of the institution] to reinforce uniformity. They become matters of attitude and function in the culture much like a governor functions in a locomotive or motor bus. They tend to insure that no discussion will get out of hand, that no heretic will run away with the argument, that the truth will always prevail. Three of these attitudinal or methodological beliefs are: ---1) belief in the absolute certainty of the doctrine (the dogmatic attitude); ---2) belief in the wickedness of doubt; and ---3) belief in the authoritative hierarchy. All three of these beliefs are conditioned responses. No one of them can be justified as an aid to cognition [which is the only human faculty to allow one to garner truth and knowledge]. They all intend to block inquiry, or, rather, to transform inquiry into rationalization. . . . . A word or two about each. Dogmatism is inimical to freedom in thought. It denies the need of inquiry - save the inquiry of the learner; it denies the need for further research. In contrast with dogmatism, science
Differences are subtle and often paradoxical
113
became successful when it became tentative, skeptical, selfcorrective. The scientific spirit is one willing to settle for probable as opposed to certain truth. But for the scientist, no settlement is final. He wants to be as assured as possible; and that induces a willingness to look again, to re-examine. Dogmatism in its very nature is unreadiness to re-examine. It trans mutes reason into [a rationalized search for the] "right reason"; right reason is that which comes up with the accepted answers. It has little in common with that reason of which Russell spoke when he said; "Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. It sees man a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as it were lord of the universe. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world and the chief glory of man" [one might also note that often it obviously is not based in the “right reason” of which Cicero spoke]. Turning now to the adoration of faith and the distrust of doubt which characterizes . . . . [a ‘closed’ or ‘dogmatized’] culture, it will be well to remind ourselves of remarks of John Stuart Mill: ". . . . it is the opinions men entertain, and the feelings they cherish, respecting those who disown the beliefs they deem important which makes this country not a place of mental freedom." "No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his
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intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead." The free mind recognizes that the question of truth - the determination of truth - is prior to the obligation to believe. The insistence upon faith begs the question of truth. The . . . . [closed, dogmatized] culture penalizes the reluctant believer by holding him suspect as to character. Too frequently, it is assumed that an attitude of skepticism or of unbelief is a sign of moral turpitude and of spiritual rebellion. For too many, the idea that an unbeliever may be a good man is quite unthinkable. Perhaps nothing is more popular with . . . . [such as those who fostered dogmatized beliefs which led to the massacre at Mountain Meadow, or the followers of koresh, or Jones, or LeBaron] than the importance of deferring to the authorities in matters of judgment - not only with respect to doctrinal interpretation, the reading of the scriptures, but with respect to matters of policy and practice. Social wisdom is supposedly vested in the . . . . [authorities] - and deep moral insights. "When those who are in authority have decided, the thinking has been done." The virtue of deference to authority is thought to be one of the strongest assurances of salvation. It is, however, an abnegation of individual responsibility in thought. When carried to extreme, it is the antithesis of freedom of mind. "If thou seest a man of understanding, get thee betimes unto him. And let thy foot wear the steps of his door. Yet accept no person against thine own soul. And let not reverence for any man cause thee to fall; But let the counsel of thine own heart stand: For there is none more faithful unto thee than it. For a man's mind is sometime want to bring him tidings, More than seven watchmen, that sit above in a high tower." --Ecclesiasticus
Differences are subtle and often paradoxical
115
116
ENDNOTES
Dogmatism, adoration of faith, and deference to authority; all three of these conditioned beliefs tend to solidify and perpetuate the uniformity of belief.
1 World Book Dictionary (1965) 1293
In Jefferson is found the first great victory for democracy; In a word, the nature of this victory was humanitarian. Over the years since Jefferson, however, democracy’s meaning struggles to endure diverse postulations made by our temporal “Wonderland’s dogmatic White Rabbits.” 100
3 Quoted by S. West, What happens After Death? (Abbott Macdonnell
Interpreted by the coonskin Jacksonian it meant political equalitarianism; by the slave economy it meant a Greek democracy; by the industrial economy it meant the right of exploitation. . . . [eventually] came to be interpreted as the right to use the government of the whole for the benefit of the few. . . . In this [quasi-dogmatic positivist] thinking two main forces are at hand: economics and psychology. In our economic realism we are returning to the spirit of the eighteenth century, and adapting the determinism that marked political thought from Harrington and John Adams to Webster and Calhoun; but we are equipped with a psychological knowledge that those earlier thinkers lacked. . . . Yet not too hastily should we abandon our earlier faith: the eighteenth-century conception of environment as a creative influence in determining character is a vital idea not yet adequately explored. . . . Jefferson was not as foolish as many of his disciples have been, and Jeffersonian democracy still offers hope. Education begins to fail -except education to individualize and to summon forth the potential intelligence of the younger generation.
2 Pojman, 152 Winchester, 1977) 62
4 Encore, Las Vegas Review Journal, Sunday, July 15, 2001, 9F 5 US Statistics, 1996 Information Please Almanac, 840 (before 1950, births are from Statistical Abstracts of the US, 1949 and 1978)
6 The World Almanac, 1994, 958 7 Statistical Abstract of the US, 1978, 59 8 W. O. Menge & C. H. Fischer, Mortality Tables, The Mathematics of Life Insurance (Ulrich Books 1965) 7
9 Statistical Abstract of the U.S. (1978) 8 10 World Almanac 1996, 258 11 O. Johnson (Editor), 1996 Information Please Almanac, 840 12 The World Almanac 1986, Newspaper Enterprises Assn., Inc., p 257 13 The World Almanac 1986, Newspaper Enterprises Assn., Inc., p 257 14 V. L. Parrington, Main Currents of Thought, Vol. I (Harcourt, 1930) 164-78
15 L Stroipe (Associated Press), Social Security crisis predicted, Las Vegas Review Journal, July 20, 2001, 9A
16 H. B. Leonard, Checks Unbalanced (Basic Books, 1986) 52 17 Experts say Social Security must cut benefits or hike taxes, KnightRider Newspapers, Las Vegas Review-Journal, November 5, 1994
ENDNOTES
117
118
ENDNOTES
18 The Daily Spectrum, St. George, Utah, January 25, 1988 (Copley news
35 R. L. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (Touchstone, 1986) 18,19
service report on a speech delivered by Dorcas Hardy; Are Social Security Benefits still secure for retirees?)
36 G. R. Morrow, Plato and the Law of Nature, in Essays in Political
19 Encyclopedia of Economics, 1982, 866 (B. Clyman, S.S. Programs)
Theory Presented to George H. Sabine, Milton R. Konvitz and Arthur E. Murphy, eds. (Ithica, N.Y. :Cornell University Press, 1948) 20-25, 28-29
20 E. K. Hunt, Property and profits (Harper and Row, 1990), 12
37 Federalist organic notions as allowed to business organization licensing
21 F. T. Saussy, Roger Sherman, 8
38 E.K. Hunt, Property and Profits (Harper & Row, 1990) 12
22 H. B. Leonard, Checks Unbalanced (Basic Books, 1986) 33
39 E. K. Hunt, 123
23 J. L. Smith, Letting workers double dip in pay, retirement bad answer
40 E. K. Hunt, 132
to shortages, Las Vegas Review Journal, July 18, 2001, B1
41 E.K. Hunt, 12 24
“The ‘New Economy’ was something very old, ripping off shareholders, just as Warren buffett and Alan Greenspan always said.” Quote from J. Alter, Whose side is Bush on?, Newsweek, July 22, 2002
42 John Quincy Adams, Publicola, Columbian Centinel of Boston, June 8
25 Parrington, Vol. II, 197-98
43 C. Thomas, There to Here (Harper Perennial,1991) 21,22
26 L. Pojman, Philosophy, the Quest for Truth (Wadsworth,1989) 136
44 L. P. Pojman, PHILOSOPHY The Quest for Truth (Wadsworth, 1989)
to July 27, 1791 (as reprinted in Main Currents . . ., Parrington, p 325)
255
27 J. N. Fugii, Introduction to the elements of Mathematics (J. Wiley & Sons, 1961) 45
45 Excerpted from An Additional View to the Report of the President's Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties.
28 Dictionary, 138 (is self evident truth) 46 J. Alter, Whose Side is Bush on? , Newsweek (July 22, 2002) 29 World Book Dictionary (1965), 1544 (1st definition) 47 The New Dictionary of Thoughts (Standard Book, 1955) 665 30 Dictionary, 1544 (definitions 2-6) 48 A. de Jasay, The State (Basil Blackwell, 1985) 15 31 E. S. Bates, The Bible (Simon and Schuster, 1993) xii 49 World Book Encyclopedia (Vol. 15) 348 32 D. Ravitch (editor), Speech to the Second Virginia Convention, American Reader (Harper Colins, 1990) 18
50 World Book Encyclopedia (Vol. 15) 348
33 World Book Dictionary (1965) 1293
51 World Book Dictionary, 528
34 Dictionary, 1324
52 World Book Encyclopedia (1965) Vol. 13, 237
ENDNOTES
119
120
ENDNOTES
53 World Book Encyclopedia (1965) Vol. 13, 237
73 Edited by C. H. Monson, Jr., The Divided Line and the Allegory of the
54 New Dictionary of the English Language (1925 Edition), 527
Cave, Philosophy Religion and Science (Chas. Scribner’s Sons, 1963) 161167. (From Plato’s The Republic, 2nd ed., translated by Benjamin Jowett. New York: Oxford University Press, 1891, Books VI and VII, 510-519.)
55 World Book Dictionary (1965), 1196 56 World Book Dictionary (1965), 1202 57 F. W. Wolf, PhD, The Spiritual Universe (Simon & Schuster, 1996) 6058 C. Thomas, There to Here (Harper Perennial, 1991) 273 59 World Book Encyclopedia, Vol. 11, 1965, 62 60 As furnished in The World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary 61 New Dictionary of Thoughts, 667 62 I. N. Dobelis, editor, Family Legal Guide (Readers Digest, 1981) 560 63 I. N. Dobelis, 462 64 I. N. Dobelis, 280 65 I. N. Dobelis, 268 66 I. N. Dobelis, 269 67 I. N. Dobelis, 269 68 B. Russell, An Inquiry Into Meaning And Truth (Unwin Hyman Ltd.
74 World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary, 1965, 1516 75 New Dictionary of Thoughts, 667 76 J. N. Fujii, . . . Elements of Mathematics (Willey, 1961) 45 77 Parrington, Vol. I, 282 78 World Book Encyclopedia (1965) Vol. 13, 635-36 79 Parrington, Vol. I, 281-82 80 Law, Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia, 1993 81 Thomas, 89, 91 82 Pojman, Freedom of the Will and Determinism, 254 83 Pojman, 255 84 Dictionary (1965) 1196 85 Dictionary (1965) 1615 86 Dictionary (1965) 1293
1980) 116
87 Diaglott, I Corinthians, 14: 33, 36, 40 (from a Greek original)]
69 B. Russell, 121-22
88 I Timothy 6:20 (original Greek translation, Diaglot)
70 Gen. 25
89 I Kings 18: 21
71 Las Vegas Review Journal, April 16, 2000
90 Jn. 8: 31-34
72 The New Dictionary of Thoughts, A Cyclopedia of Quotations, Standard
91 J. N. Fujii, . . . Elements of Mathematics (Willey, 1961) 45
Book Company, 1955, 664
ENDNOTES
121
92 Fujii, 45 93 Dictionary (1965),definition and example of a paradox, 1406 94 H. W. Turnbull, Great Mathematicians, (Barnes & Noble, 1993) 141 95 C. Thomas, There to Here (Harper Perennial,1991) 21,22 96 Diaglot (a Greek original translation), Heb. 11:1 97 H. W. Turnbull, The Great Mathematicians (Barns & Noble, 1993) 140,141
98 J. N. Fugii, Introduction to the elements of Mathematics (J. Wiley & Sons, 1961) 45
99 E. Fromm, in David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd, 5 100 Parrington, Vol. III, xxiv