I’ve seen it expressed in many different ways:

• “I hate the government, but anarchy would be even worse.”
• “Voting for radical reformers is one thing, but we shouldn’t just throw away our republic/democracy/whatever!”
• “Anarchists want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
•  ”Getting rid of the government is just quitting.  Corporations will take over, and that won’t solve anything.”

And so on.

In my experience, the idea that anarchism = “giving up” stems generally from the same type of misunderstanding that leads people to believe anarchists are all bomb-throwing terrorists.  Believe it or not, there’s no such thing as anarcho-terrorism.  Anarchists by and large have simply adopted the natural conclusion of libertarianism.  The images of violent teenagers so often affiliated with anarchy are, in all likelihood, not even representative of actual anarchists, or show people who have adopted the name only and are oblivious to any underlying philosophy.

So let’s be clear here that anarchism is the political philosophy that government is unnecessary.  Other qualifiers can be attached, such as opposition to hierarchy and capitalism (the latter being a subset of the former), all of which are interrelated, but “no rulers” is the main idea. Anarchists of all persuasions tend to hold in common the desire for a voluntary society, one that is as free from coercion as possible.  This is not a fanciful notion of utopia, but rather a recognition of the fact that people can organize freely.  Even if they can’t, that by extension eliminates any possibility of those same people being qualified to elect a competent government and any possibility that the government itself can ever be successful at anything beyond magnifying the ineptitude and ethical failings of its members and constituents to national or global proportions.

So when statists tell me anarchists are giving up, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, etc., I marvel at the irony.  It is the statists who have concluded that violent monopolies are necessary; that thuggery is a blight on civilization unless it is carried out by individuals in uniform with titles like “Officer” and “Corporal” and “Sergeant” in front of their names; that theft is undesirable unless carried out on a massive scale by properly ordained tax collectors and agents; that murder is undesirable unless carried out on a massive scale by properly ordained soldiers and law enforcement personnel, or ordered remotely by somone holding a particular office at a particular time, exercising his so-called right to shed the blood of so-called enemies using money he has stolen from his subjects, whom he claims to represent and work for.

In this world-view, a single death is indeed a tragedy, while a million deaths are a mere statistic.  And this is how it must be, they say, because this is what we are and what we will remain.

Who then has given up?  It is most certainly not the anarchists.

Yesterday (10/14/2008), President George W. Bush said to his audience: “These measures are not intended to take over the free market, but to preserve it.”  He was referring, of course, to the U.S. Government’s injecting of $250 billion into banks in exchange for partial ownership (a stock buy-up, in essence).  In true Bush fashion, his statement is both a lie and laced with a profound ignorance.

In reality, there is no free market in the United States.  There is a quasi-private market, which is not even remotely the same thing.  No free market can run on state-monpolized fiat currency, protected from competition by armed threats and cages.  Actual free market proponents like the Austrians have been decrying U.S. economic policies for decades as antithetical to liberty, prosperity and common sense.  Now that the corporatist mini-regimes that have whored themselves out to government for as long as they’ve existed (and vise versa) are collapsing under their own weight, generations of steadily increasing state intervention in the economy have been strangely omitted from the bulk of public discourse.  Rather, recent events and the policies which led to this point are termed “market failures,” as opposed to the more accurate and redundant “government failures,” thereby opening the way for foolish tools like George W. Bush to claim that current activities which could not be more anti-free market are actually intended to “preserve” the free market, which just so happens to not even exist.

If Bush wanted to be more truthful, he could have replaced “free market” with “capitalism” or “corporatism,” yet he, like so many other politicians and their apologists, seems perfectly content in his fallacies and abject ignorance of economics.  Of course, government, like religion, is not in the business of discovering and propagating truth, but rather the business of selling a particular dogma and ensuring that the largest number of people possible believe in it, regardless of truth.

For more information on the current economic madness, I recommend “The Bailout Reader” at Mises.org.

Whenever someone talks about “gun laws,” I get a bad feeling, especially if that person is noncommittal or, worse, adamantly in favor of such things. My problem with gun laws is that they rest on making sweeping moral judgments about the people within a given society, whereby a ruling body determines what is acceptable for those people to possess and what they may be punished for possessing. What an individual does with a given item (a firearm in this case) is irrelevant if he obtains it without permission from a ruler or rulers.

In essence, this relegates gun laws to creating thought crimes, and even that is illusory because it’s more of an assumption that “possession = bad” than a censuring of actual thoughts. Bob might store a fully automatic M4A1 under his bed, and he might have no ill will toward anyone, yet he is a criminal by the very nature of doing nothing aside from possession itself, despite having neither committed nor considered aggressive violence.

The inevitable battle cry from detractors is:

“Prevention! We must prevent gun crime!”

But I don’t understand this. A true criminal act — behavior that involves one person initiating force against another — is a crime whether a gun is involved or not. Simply placing gun possession in this category because some lawmaker dreamed it up is viciously circular.

“Stupid redneck, guns are far more destructive than baseball bats and knives!”

Yes, that is true. But if one is to focus on an evaluation of consequences, then guns statistically are used for crime prevention more often than they are used for crime commission (of course, numbers to the effect vary widely according to the political predisposition of the surveyors). More importantly, statistics notwithstanding, my self-defense takes precedence over numbers, trends and political debate. Even if a given society is literally teeming with unjustified gun-related violence, that is still not an argument against the average person’s possession of a firearm. In fact, as balances of power shift about, whether due to a government or a more underground criminal element, the importance of civilian armament increases proportionally. The fact that guns are deadly in the hands of someone with the will to kill for non-defensive reasons is an argument for guns in the hands of everyone else. The only preventive measure I will stake my life on in a threatening situation is my own ability to acquire and use the tools necessary for survival.

But individuals in governments and their apologists will not abide this. Rather, they are more concerned with regulation and thought crimes, at times even going so far as blaming the prevalence of firearms in rural areas for the failure of urban gun control attempts (I would cite a source here, but it was in a chat debate last year, and I’m too lazy to find it). Further, consider the flawed study posted at the Violence Policy Center, which makes some amusingly weighted assertions:

“In 1998, for every time a woman used a handgun to kill in self-defense, 101 women were murdered with a handgun.”

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“In 1998, for every time a woman used a handgun to kill an intimate acquaintance in self-defense, 83 woman were murdered by an intimate acquaintance with a handgun.”

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“In 1998, for every time a woman used a handgun to kill a stranger in self-defense, 302 woman were murdered with a handgun.”

Notice the key phrase: “to kill … in self defense….”

Proponents of firearm ownership, to my knowledge and myself included, do not consider the only successful defensive use of a firearm to be one in which the assailant is killed. Using a gun in self-defense can be as simple as brandishing it, even if it is unloaded. Even more effective is having a region known for citizens carrying concealed weapons, which can discourage criminals from even considering targets in that area. Also, the VPC “study” makes much of the marketing evils of gun makers toward women and the apparent trend of women largely eschewing handguns anyway. Of course, this says nothing of what might occur if more women carried guns and conveniently omits the demographics of the female victims in question. This is just speculation, but I would wager the bulk of the crimes occurred in urban areas where strict gun control is already the norm, so perhaps the women could not have acquired guns for protection even if they’d wanted to.

Until a day when it is possible to teleport heavily-armed g-men directly to the scene of a crime in a second’s notice, I foresee no sane arguments for limiting civilian access to firearms. I’ll even go so far as including machine guns, rocket launchers, grenades, tanks and aircraft in that assessment, because I do not and will not trust people who claim the right to wield such weaponry for my own good, while simultaneously denying me the ability to protect myself in the same manner. Nonetheless, for the time being, anyone who chooses to act on such a conviction is prone to see his or her life and liberty destroyed under existing thought crime legislation, while those making the laws are busy sending costumed agents into the streets and around the globe with orders to commit kidnapping and murder in the sacred name of nationalism and profit.

Anyone of a libertarian mind-set has probably had a conversation similar to this:

You: Government sucks.

Bob: Yes, but it’s necessary. People are stupid and evil, and life without government would degenerate into a chaotic dictatorship of corporate mobs and gang warfare.

Another common variant is the more succinct:

Bob: Humanity can’t be trusted with that much freedom.

The obvious problem with this line of reasoning is a heaping dose of self-defeat. If people are, as a rule, stupid, evil and predisposed to chaos and gang-based war, then the most irrational action one might take in pursuit of minimizing these consequences is the deliberate formation of such a gang. After all, those who would serve in government are members of the same human race as the rest of us. It cannot be declared that government is necessary because people are evil, while simultaneously exempting the people in government from this inherent evil.

Of course, the inevitable response to this is the catch-all solution: democracy!  We keep the undesirables out of office by simply not voting them in.  Power to the people . . . right?

Oh, wait.  People.  Stupid, evil, chaos-loving, warmongering people — who will almost certainly elect stupid, evil, chaos-loving, warmongering politicians.  It seems that democracy does not solve or even manage the problem.

There are other forms of government to consider, however.  Some form of technocratic oligarchy is an option, an enlightened elite exerting control through any variety of means.  There’s also the possibility of dictatorship or monarchy.  Still, this presents the question of why one group or class of humans is fundamentally different from all others.  Further, even if these enlightened elites succeed in securing a given society in the name of reason and peace, there’s nothing to stop the stupid, evil majority from undoing any hypothetical progress in a relatively short period of time.  Because, remember, the military and police and entrenched bureaucrats are likely not from the elite class, and even if they are, they will be outnumbered to a staggering and possibly unmanageable degree.  Additionally, due to the aforementioned conditions, the likelihood of any given elite or group of elites successfully imposing their will upon a stupid, evil populace is quite small.  Oligarchies, dictatorships and monarchies do not solve or even manage the problem.

The irony here is that, as the implications of an inherently stupid and evil human race are considered, the level of authoritarianism required in order to compensate for and combat it is essentially limitless.  This leads, of course, to the very chaos and gang warfare that is so often cited as the reason we must have a government in the first place.

Just kidding. I wanted to get your attention, that’s all.

I don’t write about religion much here. When I have in the past, it’s usually been to antagonize Muslims. Outside of LessGov, however, I kick around the subject of religion quite a bit. Maybe I should write about it more. I’m writing about it now, at least, but this won’t take long.

A Yahoo! Answers user named Bobert recently posted the following intellectual gem when asked for proof that God (presumably the Christian God) created the world:

The universe exists. [Therefore] God exists.

It is impossible for something to come into [existence] from absolute nothing with absolutely no cause. That would violate the laws of thermodynamics.

Therefore there must be a Creator.

Brilliant, eh? No? Well, there’s no fooling you, apparently.

Really, it’s straightfoward nonsense, but this particular specimen is interesting due to the creative invoking of thermodynamics. Bobert starts off all wrong with his little syllogism — “The universe exists. [Therefore] God exists,” – because such a statement has no more meaning than, “The universe exists; therefore Zeus exists.” Sorry, buddy. That’s what we call a non sequitur.

The next line — “It is impossible for something to come into [existence] from absolute nothing with absolutely no cause,” — is no less than an appeal to Primum Movens, or more specifically the lauded cosmological argument. This necessitates remaining vague on identity and exempting the deity from the “first cause” by placing him/her/it outside of space and time, which by all definitions is nonexistence. The deeper implications hinge on metaphysical primacy (existence vs. consciousness), and I may take a notion in the near feature to explain why I think primacy of consciousness is a hopelessly pathetic notion.

Additionally, the “from absolutely nothing” portion demonstrates a staggering ignorance of prevailing scientific theories, as none that I’m aware of posit that anything came into existence from nothing. For that matter, if the theist can posit a god that is exempt from all known laws of nature and can exist without existing, who are they to object to a hypothesis centered on a singularity that might have expanded (ala Big Bang) by way of natural processes we simply have no knowledge of yet? That strikes me as far more plausible than magic.

Then we have Bobert’s … attempt at humor, perhaps? He claims, “That would violate the laws of thermodynamics.” He says “laws,” but I’m not sure from whence he derives that.  Here I will assume that he is likely referring to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that a non-isolated system not in equilibrium will be subject to entropy over time. Since Bobert did not cite the law(s) in question or explain why they are violated, I am willing to bet he doesn’t even know the first thing about thermodynamics but simply regurgitated something from a Kent Hovind video. Predictably, his claim stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the second law, which is addressed concisely at TalkOrigins on their Index to Creationist Claims:

1. The second law of thermodynamics applies universally, but, as everyone can see, that does not mean that everything everywhere is always breaking down. The second law allows local decreases in entropy offset by increases elsewhere. The second law does not say that order from disorder is impossible; in fact, as anyone can see, order from disorder happens all the time.
2. The maximum entropy of a closed system of fixed volume is constant, but because the universe is expanding, its maximum entropy is ever increasing, giving ever more room for order to form (Stenger 1995, 228).
3. Disorder and entropy are not the same (Styer 2000). The second law of thermodynamics deals with entropy. There are no laws about things tending to “break down.”

So at last we reach Bobert’s awe-inspiring conclusion: “Therefore there must be a Creator.” However, his short path to this finale has been plagued by poor reasoning, crazy leaps of faith and simple bad information. Suffice it to say that he has not convinced me of anything, except that he would serve his cause better by finding a new argument.

Words to live by from the SHAGYA BLOG…

Anarchism and the Open Source Movement

This guy (Furyan) left a comment on my YouTube trash blog a while back, and I recently stumbled across his hilarious public flagellation of a shit-for-brains neo-con. Enjoy.

“Conservatism is a Mental Disorder“

I recently received a private message through YouTube from a user called Individualism101, who purports to be an “Anarcho-capitalist and Agorist working my ass off to save money, to raise capital, to start ventures.” The message contained the bizarre claim that Murray Rothbard’s property ethic (the “homesteading principle”) rests upon the long-disproved labor theory of value. This is a gross misrepresentation of Rothbard’s position, because he never claimed that labor added any intrinsic value to anything (he subscribed to the Austrian school, after all), but labor is rather a mere means of appropriation. Value is always subjective.

I informed Individualism101 of this and rather politely told him I would think about making a video on the matter if I came to any other startling revelations about his idea. That was essentially the end of civil discourse, and I’ll let portions of the “discussion” speak for themselves from here on (Individualism101 in red, me in green).

It seems to me that the concept of transforming the land is simply arbitrary, and can be heavily abused. If I wanted to own the entire moon I could simply let loose some robots up there to put a flashing beacon every 100 meters, thus transforming the entire moon and appropriating it to myself. I don’t think anyone would really consider this to be a valid title of property. By the same argument I could release a bacteria into the atmosphere of mars thus transforming it; this would not constitute valid property title either.

Again, I’m not sure you are accurately representing Rothbard. If you don’t think robots and bacteria create valid property titles, that’s fine — it’s a dubious prospect at best. But I don’t recall any argument leveled by Rothbard or any other Austrian or Chicago school — or ANY Lockean-friendly school — economist that even hints at such. Rothbard would probably argue that releasing bacteria in one region and letting nature take its course doesn’t constitute labor on your part. On the same token, nor does the “currently in use” theory of mutualism purport that someone should be able to seize your farm simply because the crops fail one season. That is also a gross misrepresentation of the position. If I’m in error, please point me to some sources supporting your claims, but as it stands I have no idea from whence you’ve derived these conclusions.

Rather than acknowledging that his position has no relation to Rothbardian or mutualist property theory, he then repeats his argument:

If I am an entrepreneur who hires labour to bulldoze a site and erect a factory it is not my labour, but I am still said to be the owner, because it was my capital which paid the workers and hired the capital equipment.

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If you replace workers with robots, does the story change? If you replace robots with biological robots, such as genetically engineered bacteria, does the story change?

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If I invest the capital to develop a bacteria to terraform mars, and succeed, am I now in ownership of the atmosphere of mars?

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Surely you concede that the criteria of basic transformation is too open ended to constitute a valid principle of first ownership — or is it? And from the mutualist standpoint a criteria of current use is again too open ended.

Neither system is too “open ended” if you actually understand what they entail and do not entail. Rothbard specifically argued against atmosphere ownership, which you apparently are not even aware of. As for dispatching your biological or mechanical minions, have at it, but don’t expect anyone to recognize your ownership simply because you’ve painted every other tree or released a microbe into the air. What you describe Rothbard would label feudalism (and Kevin Carson more accurately labels “bastard feudalism), which he (Rothbard) also opposed vociferously.

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Carson outlines the modern Mutualist position in “Mutualist Political Economy,” and once again I have never gleaned anything even approaching what you have apparently concluded from his writings. Have you read any of his material at all, for that matter?

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Directly related, there is quite a discussion in a Stephan Kinsella blog post at mises.org on this very issue — “absentee landlordship” specifically in Carson’s context — and it includes some very interesting points and counter-points. If you’re looking to put mutualist property theory through the ringer, that’s the place to start rather than making up bizarre ideas that don’t even reflect what the theory actually is, like “someone can steal my farm if the crops fail.” That’s erecting a straw-man and attacking it with a machine-gun, and I’m, frankly, bewildered that you even think you’re attacking valid ideas here. To make a comparison, what you’ve done is like someone analyzing the libertarian opposition to the welfare state by attacking libertarians for wanting to starve poor children. It simply doesn’t make sense.

Again, unable to make a salient point, he repeats his argument (noticing a pattern yet?):

I’m not deliberately misrepresenting Rothbard or Carson (although, as you point out, I have not read the latter). I am aware Rothbard argued against atmosphere ownership but I am yet to see any principle by which original ownership can be strictly defined, as to leave no doubt in the minds of onlookers.

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Further, I was not attempting to construct a strawman with respect to mutualist property title; I was just arguing that it would lead to injustice if, again, no strict definition of current ownership were established. Perhaps there exists such a strict definition, if so I am ignorant of it. Please reply with a link to it if you know of one.

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As Rothbard himself points out, feudalism would essentially be equivalent to a libertarian society if the lords respected the negative liberty of their renters and if the land was homesteaded through valid original ownership by the lords. And this is really what confuses and irritates me.

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Because we now have technology to amplify the power we (as individuals) wield, a criteria based on homesteading, or first transformation, or first use, becomes little harder to satisfy than planting a flag and just declaring the land yours…

If you can’t see this, then what is your suggestion? If you think labor transformation or own-through-use concepts are arbitrary, open-ended or whatever, what would you consider NOT open-ended and arbitrary? Something more along the lines of Max Stirner?

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- “Might is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for ‘one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right’”

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- “Whoever knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property.”

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- “What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing.”

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That constitutes a clearly delineated account of property yet in my estimation is no more or less arbitrary than declaring property a result of labor or use. It’s also incredibly open-ended, because someone can just, to borrow your example, conquer an entire planet. Seriously, I don’t know what you’re looking for. Everything, in the end, is arbitrary, even if you write detailed laws and enforce them universally and fairly. Even the libertarian non-aggression axiom is ARBITRARY. I consider it ESSENTIAL, mind you, in order for any flavor of my political philosophy to be viable, but it is no less arbitrary.

Cue the scene where I am accused of being negative, defensive, rude, etc….

“Wow you give me a pretty negative vibe, as though I am an enemy of liberty or something”

“…the original transformation criteria of original ownership becomes no harder to satisfy than parking your space-yaught in orbit and claiming mars for your own.”

And as I have explained to you repeatedly, this does not satisfy any criteria of original ownership that I’m familiar with. If I need to say it in another language, let me know and I’ll try to accommodate.

“…but the burden of proof isn’t on me.”

I would say that it is, because you have yet to demonstrate that you’re even accurately representing the ideas you’re attempting to attack.

“There is no need to be rude.”

Don’t confuse rude with honest. But if you’re really getting a “negative vibe,” maybe you should just go talk to someone who agrees with you.

Regrettably, I cannot quote directly from his last message, because it has mysteriously vanished from my inbox. I don’t know if I deleted it accidentally or if YouTube is behaving oddly again, as it often does. At any rate, I’ll summarize his final points from memory.

• I am intellectually dishonest for calling him wrong without explaining why he is wrong.
• I am an ass.
• He hopes I will never be a leader within the libertarian movement.
• I can go fuck myself.

I attempted to respond to him one last time, but apparently he has blocked me from communicating with him (which is why his crap is now posted here). Had I been addressing him with unmitigated belligerence, I suppose that’s a fair reaction, but in light of his ideas having no merit whatsoever, he strikes me as petty, childish, and not fundamentally different from a religious zealot who simply cannot face being wrong. In fact, in the reply I typed before realizing I was blocked, I told him I could not tell any difference between his behavior and that of a creationist who insists I believe the “universe came from nothing” and “humans evolved from monkeys,” no matter what I tell him to the contrary. It’s a wonder my patience lasted as long as it did.

Anyway, addressing his final bullets:

• I did explain why he was wrong. His initial premise was incorrect, because Rothbard’s property theory relies on labor as a means of appropriation, not a means of conferring value, as value is subjective. Also, in terms of claiming moons and planets, I suggested that would fall under what Rothbard terms “feudalism,” which he fervently opposed. Individualism101 even provided a possible answer to himself, whereby even if we accept the flawed interpretation of homesteading, a “landlord” can either not violate libertarian principles when dealing with tenants or be willing to sell his land freehold to new residents. At any rate, the “whys” regarding my opposition to Individualism101’s claims were clearly expressed, whether he would acknowledge them or not.
• I never claimed I wasn’t an ass, though I think my discourse in this matter was largely civil until it reached “creation vs. evolution” status.
• Don’t worry, as I have no aspirations to lead anyone. I’m asocial and hate crowds. That said, I hope anyone who does fancy himself a leader has a much clearer understanding of libertarian principles than one Individualism101.
• He concluded his message by telling me to go fuck myself. Need I say more?

I think we’re done here.

I’ve always been confused by the label “militant atheist” or “militant atheism.” It’s a label often applied by the religious, particularly Christians, whenever they perceive any manner of intolerance for their faith-based view of the world. In recent years, there has admittedly been an increase in the aggressiveness of some atheists, partly due to the Internet and the resulting enhanced ability of the godless minority to communicate and organize. But this seems a poor excuse for calling atheists “militant,” since Christians have been highly organized and vocal for most of their history, especially within the evangelical movement in the United States over the last century.

A common charge from some Christians is that certain historical figures were atheists and also happened to be tyrants and mass murderers. Stalin and Mao are oft-cited examples. Since atheism is a “religion” unto itself, as is often claimed, the history of atheism is just as tainted and, indeed, bloodier than the history of Christianity. Of course, atheism, properly understood, is a mere disbelief in deities, not a religion or ideology that intrinsically entails any philosophy, per se. Surely, it isn’t rational to make assumptions about the nature or views of a man who denies or disbelieves in the existence of Zeus. The assertion that a lack of belief in deities is fundamental — or even causal — to a demented philosophy makes about as much sense as asserting that a belief in God is fundamental or causal to the same. Further, it is theists who, despite interpreting their sacred literature in a variety of ways, at least draw from the same source. There are no atheist scriptures to which one might dogmatically adhere or after which he might model his life.

So, similar to passion and organization, the atheism of notable tyrants seems a weak means of linking a lack of belief in gods to the “militant” qualifier.

All that said, perhaps an examination of the term “militant” is in order. Some common definitions from the Random House Unabridged Dictionary are as follows:

1. “…vigorously active and aggressive, esp. in support of a cause.” (Random House Unabridged)

2. “…engaged in warfare; fighting.” (Random House Unabridged)

3. “Fighting or warring.” (American Heritage)

4. “Having a combative character; aggressive, especially in the service of a cause….” (American Heritage)

5. “…wishing to take, or taking, strong or violent action.” (Kernerman English Multilingual)

Definition number one certainly applies to some atheists, though how one determines what is “vigorously active and aggressive” is up in the air, as is defining what constitutes a “cause.” Using this definition, it becomes obvious that almost anyone who ardently pursues anything is militant, yet I wonder why the word is not applied more liberally.

Perhaps the reluctance to throw the term around wantonly has something to do with its negative connotation. I’ve never heard a Christian proudly proclaim his favorite evangelist to be respectably militant, nor is Ghandi widely known as a militant peace activist. Are scientists militant in the pursuit of knowledge? Richard Dawkins writes books and harshly denounces religion. If he is militant, what about Christian apologist Lee Strobel? Creationist Michael Behe? Author C.S. Lewis?

As you can see, “vigorously active and aggressive” isn’t necessarily the whole story, and the other definitions predictably paint a more comprehensive portrait of the word “militant.” Accordingly, it makes very little sense to describe prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, P.Z. Meyers, Sam Harris and others as militant simply because they disagree with a particular world-view. Even if they are militant, this label necessarily includes Christianity’s own heroes, which presents the question of why some theists are so quick to apply it.

So having established that aggressive atheism and atheists who are militant by no means inherently equate to militant atheism, the question is raised: Does militant atheism even exist? Clearly, adherents of various faiths have been persecuted and slaughtered over the centuries, by both adherents to other faiths and those with no religious faith at all. Of course, as explained earlier, atheism entails no ideological or philosophical concepts it and of itself, so it is obvious that those who militantly oppose religion are militant for reasons other than atheism.

The closest thing I can find to “militant atheism” is antitheism, which Wikipedia describes as an “active opposition to theism” that “may be adopted as a label by those who take the view that theism is destructive.” Still, even this label is convoluted, as anyone can see by just browsing through the article. Timeless attempts by theists to equate atheism to religion — using phrases like “atheistic evangelism” and “opposition to God” (which is nonsense, because atheists disbelieve in all gods) — make any objective definition of the concept all but impossible.

In my view, applying a label like “militant atheism” cheapens the term “militant” in a rather disgusting fashion, much the same way in which some socialists cheapen the horrors of chattel slavery by associating it with their flawed idea of so-called “wage slavery.” Only behaviors, not mere ideas, can be militant, and assigning a word that denotes coercion and violence to an idea simply because one disagrees with or does not understand it reeks of arbitrariness, dishonesty and ignorance. At the very least, I would like to see more theists who are willing to accept the militancy of their own if they are going to hurl the “militant” qualifier at active, outspoken atheists. However, given that such assignments are pejorative and consequently meaningless, a much more effective strategy for facilitating rational discussion and the pursuit of truth seems to be reserving the “militant” label for actual militants.

That said, this requires that rational discussion and the pursuit of truth be mutually accepted standards.

The debate surrounding subjective and objective knowledge is age-old and will probably endure to the end of human existence and beyond. In all the years this site has been online, I have never offered any sort of comprehensive summation of my views on this issue, so I would like to attempt to do that briefly here.

As a disclaimer, please keep in mind that this is the perspective of a layman whose only real interest in philosophy is limited to basic logic and concepts rooted in reality, as opposed to mystical musing about whether existence exists and whether it is anything more than a perpetual dream within an immaterial cosmic consciousness. Philosophy is a tool for discovering truth and enhancing my life with relevant, coherent, consistent principles. Any persons who want to send me treatises on the virtues of solipsism or dualism can, therefore, save themselves the trouble.

Let me begin by offering some definitions.

Objectivism - the philosophical position that certain truths are true everywhere, independent of human thoughts, emotions, opinions, etc. Ethical objectivism or moderate moral realism is the position that certain acts are objectively right or wrong, independent of human opinion.

Subjectivism - a philosophical tenet that accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law. Ethical subjectivism is the meta-ethical belief that all ethical sentences reduce to factual statements about the attitudes of individuals.

Truth - conformity with fact or reality; a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, or the like.

Generally, I will be referring to objectivism and subjectivism in the context of ethical considerations, but there might be broader implications if the reader chooses to apply them.

Truth in and of itself is a fairly straightforward idea, but there is a depth to the analysis one might engage in that is beyond the scope of this article and possibly beyond my ability to care. As such, I’m content with the above definition and will elaborate only in stating that truth may be categorized as self-evident, empirical or deductive.

“I exist” is an example of a self-evident truth, because someone making the statement must exist in order to do so. Likewise, “I do not exist” is self-refuting, because someone making the statement must exist in order to claim that he doesn’t exist. An empirical truth is one than can be observed and tested. This encompasses science and general everyday observations about the universe. Deductive truth is usually found through logic, wherein a series of premises lead to a conclusion. Faulty premises can and often do result in faulty conclusions.

So there’s that, but is any of this truth objective or — *gasp* — absolute?

In short, it is irrelevant. If the human senses are so unreliable, and human logic so imprecise, that the identification of objective truth and accessibility of objective reality remain inexorably out of our grasp; and even if we are to ignore the performative contradiction of asserting that nothing is absolutely true — then the only conclusion one can draw from this is that humans are limited and that there might be aspects of existence that are beyond our ability to detect. As such, if we cannot detect something, which means neither the thing itself nor its effects are testable or observable at all, then that thing — the higher, unknowable truth — is functionally nonexistent to humans and irrelevant. Even if what we can test and observe does not produce any manner of objective or absolute truth, it is pointless to argue in favor of proceeding otherwise on the grounds that truth is unknowable or inaccessible.

Maybe this position can be dubbed “irrelevantism.” I don’t know if there is an existing term or phrase that suffices.

In terms of ethics, then, it becomes apparent that quibbles over objectivity and subjectivity are quite meaningless. The simple solution is to subject ethical propositions to the same rigor one might reserve for any other claim, namely logic and empirical testing. If ethical claims evaluated in this manner are not objective, then neither is any science or discipline ever conceived by mankind, and such status is impossible to attain. It becomes moot to consider anything beyond whether a particular claim is consistent with known reality.

So it is for this reason that I am sympathetic toward objectivism but ultimately convinced by neither objectivism nor subjectivism. Objectivists (including the big-O Randian variants) defeat their own cause by claiming objectivity through reason but reaching so many opposing conclusions that they might as well just call themselves relativists. The Randian philosophy isn’t even internally consistent (which is a whole other article). In the subjectivist camp, as alluded to previously, it is impossible to even make claims without contradicting the core premise of subjectivism. Some might call this consistency, but I call it garbled nonsense.

My solution to this mess is to consider any ethical proposition that checks out under logical and empirical scrutiny to be valid, until which time the available data points to something else. So goes science. Murray Rothbard’s proposals are mostly good in this regard (though he frequently referred to rights and such, and while I think certain right-ish principles derive from reality, I’ve yet to see a coherent defense of rights as they are usually posed). Robert Nozick’s philosophical ideas always struck me as intriguing, though, like the Randian Objectivists, some of his conclusions fall short of his purported principles. David D. Friedman is uber-practical, and his book The Machinery of Freedom is partly responsible for my acceptance of anarchism, but libertarian consequentialism is an ethical black hole that can “logically” justify almost anything.

In the older school, Lysander Spooner remains perhaps one of the best proponents of natural law — arguably my favorite — and his No Treason papers have yet to be successfully challenged to my knowledge. However, he too was regrettably mired in the concept of rights without any real explanation of whether such things even exist external to cultural conventions. Other philosophers — Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Jefferson, Stirner, Proudhon, Thoreau, Nietzsche, Kant — all made their venerable contributions to human thought as well as their respective fair shares of absurdity.

Not long ago, I reviewed a book by Stefan Molyneux titled Universally Preferable Behaviour: A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics. While I did not (and still do not) feel qualified to judge whether the ethical “beast” (to borrow Molyneux’s metaphor) has been conquered, I can speak for myself in saying that UPB succeeds where other systems have failed. The reason it succeeds is that it is not a system, per se, that attempts to tell a person what he should or should not do. Rather, it is a framework for evaluating the truth value of ethical statements. For example, “Murder is moral” self-detonates because it requires one person to be moral by murdering and another to be immoral by not murdering. This is, of course, incredibly simplistic, so rather than risk misrepresenting the book, I must recommend reading it for oneself, as it and several others are freely available in digital format at Freedomainradio.com. To date, UPB is the most logical and comprehensible approach to ethics that I’ve encountered. That by no means makes it objective or even true, but like any other proposal subject to rational analysis, it either stands or does not.

Critiques of UPB have been posted at RationalAnimal.net (Part 1 and Part 2) and Back to the Drawing Board, and I encourage anyone who has read the book to take a look at these two sites.

All of the above in consideration, my conclusion for the time being is that there is no reason to proceed as though ethics cannot be regarded as objective, at least to the reason-centric extent apprehensible by humans. We know that murder and theft are mostly undesirable, with only certain segments of the population embracing them as viable foundations for an ideal society (the ruling class, typically, along with those who benefit from the violence of the ruling class). As David Friedman observed, “The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.”

It strikes me as truly pointless to engage in prolonged debates over whether murder, theft and a general disregard for self-sovereignty constitute moral virtues, evils or neither. Humanity has spent thousands of years on the path of slavery and slaughter. Governments and their armies haven’t solved these problems. Even when they try to, the end result often either involves a mere changing of the guard or is even worse than the original situation. To call the track record of religion in terms of peace and prosperity abysmal is a grand understatement. The collusion of humanity’s two main authoritative institutions is perhaps the most dreaded scenario of all for those of us who value progress and liberty.

So even if one considers objective human ethics to be dubious, unknowable or outright impossible, that is a poor excuse for approaching life as though nothing can be good, bad, right or wrong. If objectivity is beyond our reach as humans, then we can depend only on the science and logic that have given us modern medicine, computers and spaceflight. If objectivity is out there but remains undiscovered, that is likewise a poor excuse for dismissing ethics, as doing so amounts to little more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. If objectivity exists and can be demonstrated, then I eagerly long to discover the proof of this.