Month: October 2016

Most of my friends voted for Bernie Sanders in the California primary. Most of them are voting for Hillary Clinton in the General Election. But there are a handful who are voting for Jill Stein or who are sitting this one out. Their argument is admirably summarized in D.M. Andre’s post “Power of the Wasted Vote.”

According to Andre:

Aside from the condescension inherent in telling another their vote is wasted, this logic lacks a basic understanding of what voting means. Voting is more than a simple act of math; voting is people actively taking responsibility for choosing their leaders and representatives. Therefore, you do not vote for who you think will win, you vote for who you think should win. The reality is the “wasted” vote has value, it wields power; it is intrinsically the same as the vote cast for the winner.

For me, Andre’s analysis invokes the memorable line repeated by The Borg Collective from Star Trek: Next Generation: “Resistance is futile: you will be assimilated.” And, yet, against all odds, Jean Luc and his crew resist and, in the end, they prevail.

But is this really how resistance works? Does resistance wield this power?

Let me tip my cards ever so slightly here at the outset. I think that individuals who vote for Jill or who stay home, who vote for anyone other than Hillary Clinton, are guilty of nothing worse, but also nothing better, nothing more noble, than radical individualism bordering on solipsism. Radical individualism because they mistake (and fault) circumspection for logical fallacy; solipsism because they mistake the absence of constraint for freedom. There is something decidedly Dionysian, even Nietzschean to their liberating decision. But, absent a strategic judgment — by choosing Jill I am pushing us closer to freedom — their choice is no better, but also no worse, than Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, or von Mises’ radical economic individualism. It does not contribute to the end of domination so much as it evinces a wholly private, personal, individual act of will and defiance.

Now, I would be the first to admit that such acts can be personally liberating. They may even serve to empower individuals in our immediate proximity. But this should not be mistaken for a reasoned political or social theoretical calculus whose aim might be to identify the mechanisms and actions we have reason to believe might actually liberate, as opposed to merely empowering us, individually, personally, privately.

This is not to inveigh against political opposition. But November 8? Really? This is where the opposition will mount its stand? This is where it will flex its muscles? Good luck with that.

No. Everything is about November 9. Forget November 8. Fivethirtyeight.com will tell us about November 8 in advance. No. November 9 is the date. It is on November 9 that citizens need to flex their muscles; from November 9 through November 10, 2020. Work, fight, organize, and plan.

To narrow down power to a day, to narrow it down to my heroic choice to select A or B, to narrow it down to choice. Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Carl Menger could not have put it better. It’s all about your personal freedom. Right?

Get over it. November 9 is coming. On November 8, vote Hillary Clinton.

Today’s text is one of the most remarkable in Hebrew sacred literature, made all the more remarkable for having been composed during a period of social and political turmoil and war not unlike our own. Did Micah actually foresee the events about which he writes; or did he interpret events he had experienced?

In some ways the text is more astonishing when we assume the latter. Zion has been plowed as a field; Jerusalem has become heaps. Micah tells us why. Would it not be easy at this point for Micah to find fault with the nations? Should he not fault foreigners, unbelievers, or those who follow a different god? Listen to what Micah says:

Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment, and pervert all equity. They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? none evil can come upon us. Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest. But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it. And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts hath spoken it. For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and ever.

First Micah faults “the heads of the house of Jacob . . . princes of the house of Israel.” Why? Because they “abhor judgment, and pervert all equity.” How? Micah tells us that they openly expect and demand payment in exchange for their judgments. They are, he writes, “priests . . . for hire” who “divine for money.” When the actions and mission of the community of faith are governed by money, it is inevitable that these actions and mission will be perverse.

And, yet, Micah does not for this reason despair. Rather, he foresees a day when the surrounding nations – the peoples – will display faith greater than those who today occupy Jerusalem. “Many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, and to the house of the God of Jacob.” Followed by some of the most mesmerizing prose in all of sacred literature. Jerusalem has been leveled or is about to be leveled (it doesn’t matter). But instead of condemning the nations, Micah instead credits God’s judgment with turning the nations to peace. The LORD “shall judge among people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.”

In times when fear seems to govern the actions of all, when everyone appears to be taking up their spears and learning war, Micah reports that God is not with them. This is astonishing. It is astonishing if Micah was only foreseeing the destruction of Jerusalem. But it is even more astonishing if Micah is publishing his message after Jerusalem’s destruction, when we might anticipate instead that he would be screaming words of hatred, war, and revenge.

And, yet, the most amazing is still to come. Is it because God has converted the surrounding nations? Yes, in a manner of speaking. And, yet, amazingly enough, they are still walking in the names of their own gods. “For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and ever.”

In other words, it was not our different faiths or different gods that brought on this calamity. Neither does peace require that we all walk in the name of the same gods. To the contrary. Peace will come when we all embrace justice and all uphold equity.