Meet Dennis Baxley...

Florida State Representative Dennis Baxley turns out to be a fascinating public figure.

(image from Fl. House)

I came across him while reading about the murder of Trayvon Martin (link via The Grio). This guy seems to be the epitome of everything I despise in the Republican party. Let me do the list...

(image from ervinlaszlo.com, turned up on a random search. I have no idea who Ervin Laszlo actually is.)

Baxley sponsored the "Stand Your Ground" legislation that will be the basis of George Zimmerman's defense.  This law removes the obligation of Florida citizens to avoid a confrontation. The relevant language seems (not a lawyer) to be section 3, which reads:

A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

Which this lay person interprets as the right to attack someone you think is out of line. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but if I can stand my ground till the situation has scared me, and then attack first...

this strikes me as insanely bad public policy.

(This and unlabeled images from Wikimedia Commons)

In fairness to Baxley, he may not have actually written the legislation he sponsored.  "Stand Your Ground" is part of the NRA legislative agenda of increased gun ownership, tax-payer subsidies to the NRA's "Eddie the Eagle" program, and exemption of gun manufacturers from consumer product safety liability.

But Baxley gives and he gives.  He also sponsored Florida's latest attempt to disenfranchise it's own citizens, by making it harder for likely Democrats to vote. 

I understand that people are really, really good at lying to themselves.  I understand the cognitive basis for equating your interests with the general interest. I try to resist the conclusion that people are evil, and to conclude instead that they're prisoners of their neurology. But Jesus H. Christ...

(image from Graphitti Designs)

if you're a politician, in a democracy, and your interests are served by FEWER citizens voting...

you're on the wrong fucking side. Develop some self-awareness. Looking at you, Representative Baxley.

It is a source of some perplexity to me that Baxley is a Board member of The Florida Council on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys. That seems like a strangely regressive name for an organization, but what do I know? I'm as lilly white as they come, and this is unquestionably an African-American organization with an African-American Board. I've asked them to comment on Baxley's various legislative initiatives, and will post any response they make as an update.

Baxley's in a position to do a lot of damage, and he has.  According to his site he's the Chairman of both the Criminal Justice sub-committee of the Judiciary Committee (oddly, he's not listed as a member of either that committee or that sub-committee on their web pages) and the Health and Human Services Access sub-committee of the Health and Human Services Committee. That last chairmanship has been helpful to Baxley as a launching point for anti-Choice legislation, embodied in HJR 1179.

This bill amends the state Constitution so as to prohibit public funding of abortions. Except, the laws of Florida already prohibit public funding of abortions, just as Federal law does. Even Baxley admitted that the Amendment's importance is purely symbolic.

"I think it's far-reaching and it's controversial, but we as a state will address the sanctity of life, which is a foundational issue," he said.

"That's the overriding issue, and the public should speak to it — and that's more important than how much money we spent on abortions last year."

Finally, Baxley helped push a stealth school prayer bill through the House.

I find these last two pieces of legislation of particular interest. Neither of these bills will have a significant public policy effect. Their entire purpose is the payment of symbolic deference to Christian Conservatives in the hopes of maintaining their political support, at the expense of all Florida tax-payers.

The nice way to say this is that Dennis Baxley aggressively promotes the interests of a particular constituency in the Florida State Legislature. Instead of saying who that constituency is, there's some value in examining who it isn't....

it's not black teen-agers being menaced by a racist vigilante.

It's not members of the permanent underclass attempting to exercise their right as Americans to vote.

It's not women seeking to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, or the tax-payers being forced to fund a purely symbolic exercise in interest group fellatio.

And it's not people uncomfortable with being evangalized by people convinced you're going to burn in Hell.

An Empirical critique of Libertarianism

I have a certain respect for Libertarianism that I lack for Conservatism, at least in its American form. Conservatism, like all political ideologies, is a rationalization for the interests of a particular constituency. But since Conservatism supports the interests of existing elites, it has a much tougher time articulating a coherent set of principles.

(unlabeled images from Wikimedia Commons)

REAL Libertarians (and I'm not speaking of Racism entrepreneur and anti-choice activist Ron Paul here) are the intellectual heirs to the minimal government, individual liberty thinkers of the 18th century that political scientists call "Classical Liberals".

They believe in maximum liberty.  They don't want government doing anything except enforcing contracts, and they'd be happier if there was some way to outsource that function.

But if we start with their initial postulates, we see that the stated objective and intent of their proposed Utopia are to maximize individual liberty. This is a laudable goal...

if we can agree on a definition of "Liberty", and the desirability of maximizing it, and deciding how to reconcile the liberties of different individuals, and how to avoid the Hobbes Problem.

It's also clearly a normative judgement; it's based on the judge's individual preferences, and beliefs, and biases. This is not an ideal starting point from which to analyze human social behaviors. And the analysis of such behaviors must clearly inform any attempt to create social institutions, regardless of whether the goal is the maximization of individual liberty, or order, or prosperity, or any of the other metrics proposed by 2500 years of political theorists.

My preferred analytical starting point is cognitive/biological. Human beings are organisms attempting to survive and reproduce within an ecosystem. And while the nature of that ecosystem, and the adaptive behaviors necessary to succeed within it have changed radically since the last Ice Age, we remain what biological evolution made us: social primates adapted to hunting-gathering in small groups.

Human beings form dominance hierarchies in any group you place them.  If you put 3 people in a room, one or more of them will behave as an alpha. In hunter-gatherer groups, the small size and intimacy of the group tends to keep the dominance hierarchy relatively egalitarian and informal.

But the adaptive behaviors required for human reproductive success have changed radically since the end of the Ice Age. The first new adaptive strategy came with the domestication of other social animals, and the eventual development of pastoralism as an alternative survival strategy to hunting-gathering.

Animals represent the very first form of wealth that didn't have to hauled around by you or your family. They could move livestock around under their own power. People could have more than they needed. People could be more than well-fed, they could be rich.

Herding is like anything else; some people are better at it than others, some people are luckier than others... the adoption of pastoralism created the first sharp, long-term differences in social status.

If you have a huge herd of cattle, and sheep, and goats, you can host an enormous Tony Soprano style barbecue for the entire tribe, and important people from the next tribe over, every time there's a funeral, or a wedding, or religious service. You can send the guests home with a week's worth of greasy leftovers. You can take the less fortunate some starter stock for a new herd, or food. You can reward your friends...

and you can punish your enemies.

(Okay, this image from Tony Soprano's Pizzeria. Not kidding)

So what I'm telling you is that by about 4000 BC we run into the first problem with the libertarian model. The effect of increasing inequality of circumstance, combined with human social dominance mechanics, are what lead to the earliest forms of the State which Libertarians seek to minimize or to eliminate. And I'm not guessing about this; we've got the archeological evidence for all of this.

(image from The World of Ancient Art site)

From the libertarian standpoint, things just get worse with the domestication of the Horse, and the invention of the Wheel. The quantum improvement in transportation technologies available to elites allowed them to exert their influence at greater distances. It increased the geographic range of their patron-client networks. Most importantly of all...

the world got bigger.

Transportation improvements brought together groups of previously isolated people, with different cultures and practices and life-styles. The difference between "us" and "them" got a lot sharper, as "they" became people who talked funny, and who dressed funny, and who didn't cover their dead with red ochre. These recently introduced neighbors traded.  They intermarried.  They raided each other, particularly for cattle. They competed, and that competition was lead by elites who increasingly were coming to resemble the State. 

And the technologies kept improving. Around 3200 BC some nameless genius in Egypt invented the sail. Other geniuses started using the sail on ocean going vessels. The distances across which elites could exert influence kept getting bigger. As the distances got bigger, they included more people, and the patron-client network maintained by powerful men more elaborate and less egalitarian. Finally, ancient Sumeria took the next step in making the State inevitable.

The State, (which most people think of as "the government") has been with us one hell of a long time. It is the expression of social dominance behaviors applied to very large communities. Each new improvement in communications and transportation technology has created larger communities, and in every human community there will be elites and masses. The "nation-state" is a fairly new invention, but it is the logical outcome of a process which continues today. 

The Libertarian preference for a minimal or even absent State fails to take into account why States exist in the first place. As long as there are people, and those people share membership in a community, you will have a State of some sort.

The history on this is irrefutable.

The Fallacy of Strict Constructionism

Strict Constructionism is the name given to conservative judicial philosophy in the United States and given lip service by Conservatives regardless of their actual preferences in judicial decisions. It correctly posits the Constitution as the ultimate guide/constraint on public policy by all three branches of government, and insists that the "plain meaning of the text" should guide any questions regarding the application of the Constitution to public policy questions. In cases where the meaning of the text is open to question, we should be guided by the "Original Intent" of the Framers, as known through the historical documents of the time, particularly the Federalist Papers and James Madison's notes from the Constitutional Convention.

(image from PBS.ORG)

This doctrine is based on a number of fallacies, the most important of which is the assumption that the Constitution was ever intended to be some sort of "sacred writ" immune from interpretation.

The Constitution was (and remains) an explicitly POLITICAL document, in that it was written as it was with the intent of garnering sufficient political support to insure its ratification. When the Framers couldn't garner enough consensus in their ranks regarding a particular topic, they had recourse to a heirarchy of tactics in writing text that was acceptable to a sufficient number of delegates.

As a first resort, they would compromise. We see this in "the great compromise" which resulted in the creation of a bicameral legislature. We also see it in the frequently misunderstood 3/5ths compromise.

(image from the B.S. Report)

However, the Framers frequently couldn't compromise, either. In such cases, they would intentionally leave the language of the Constitution vague. An example of this intentional vagary can be seen in the tension between the President's role as "Commander in Chief" and the enumerated powers of Congress over the military. The "plain language" of Article I gives control of the military budget to Congress. However, the "plain language" of Article II makes the President the final authority regarding military operations. Can Congress prevent a military operation by refusing to fund it? Can the President order a military operation without obtaining a Congressional appropriation?

We don't know what the Framers thought about this, because the "Framers" disagreed on the subject. The "original intent" of the Framers was different from faction to faction. Consequently, the determination of these questions has been left to 1) the Supreme Court, which has frequently refused to intervene in disputes between the other two branches and 2) established precedent. In the example of military authority, the relevant precedent was set by Theodore Roosevelt. When Congress refused to appropriate money to send "The Great White Fleet" on a show-the-flag tour of the world, Roosevelt ordered them to sail halfway round the world. Congress then had to appropriate enough money to get the fleet back to the United States, completing the circumnavigation. 3) Clarifying legislation, such as the War Powers Act, which every subsequent President has insisted is unconstitutional.

 (image from kirkwoodk12.mo.us)

On certain issues, the Framers couldn't compromise, and neither side would tolerate vague language regarding the issue. In such cases, the Framers would insert both mutually contradictory directives in the Constitution, so that each side could point to a particular provision and claim victory. The best known example of this is the flatly irreconcilable vision of Federal power made in the "necessary and proper" clause in Article I, Section 8, and the 10th Amendment.

In cases where the Framers deliberately tried to have it both ways, the Supreme Court has been stuck trying to untangle the mess. The best example of this is the case of McCullough v. Maryland, where the Supreme Court explicitly rejected the idea that Congress was limited to those powers explicitly granted to it in Article I section 8, (with all other powers being reserved to the States) and instead embraced a more expansive view of Federal power based on the idea of "implied powers", i.e. powers the Feds can safely be assumed to have simply because governance is impossible without them. Subsequent Supreme Court decisions have extended and reinforced this view, and constitute a complete refutation (refudiation?) of the central tenet of the Tea Bagger view of Federal power.

(Sorry, I couldn't resist.  Image from daemonsbooks.com)

Finally, when the Framers couldn't compromise, couldn't fudge, couldn't agree to have it both ways...

they simply ignored the issue. The best example of this is the question of slavery, both in new states and in the free states. This particular tactic lead us into the Civil War.

Another hole in the strict constructionist view of the Constitution is the fact that the Framers themselves explicitly repudiated the doctrine. James Madison refused to make his notes from the Constitutional Convention public for two decades, because he didn't want them being used to determine "original intent" in interpreting the Constitution. George Washington didn't believe the Constitution would remain in effect more than 20 years or so. And Thomas Jefferson (more properly viewed as a "Founding Father" than as a "Framer" explicitly disavowed the original intent doctrine in a letter he wrote to Madison in 1789, in which he asserted "...the earth belongs in usufruct to the living: that the dead have neither rights nor powers over it."

Any appeal to the original intent of the framers is contrary to the original intent of the Framers.

(image from visitingdc.com)

Conservatives will object to my arguments on the basis of "consequence" (or, the fallacy of the slippery slope). If the meaning of the Constitution is open to interpretation, what keeps any potential tyrant from deciding the Constitution allows him to become dictator?

The answer is obvious. It is not the responsibility of dead men to protect us from tyranny, it is our own responsibility. The dead men have given us the best possible guidance in doing so, but that guidance consists of hints, general principles and precedent. They have not given us a sacred document that must be read according to the "jot and tittle" standard applied by crazy fundamentalists to the Bible.

(image from vaticanassassins.org

Finally, the whole notion of judicial conservatism is merely a political slogan designed to delegitimize progressive judicial decisions. Conservative jurists are every bit as activist as liberal jurists, as is shown by the Supreme Court's recent decisions in Citizens United and the lifting of Chicago's gun ban.

When you overturn 200 years of stare decisis, you're a fucking activist.

(image from enormousthrivingplants.blogspot.com

In case I wasn't clear...

in my post on financial bubbles, let me eliminate all ambiguity.  


"Capitalism", as practiced in the United States, and most of the developed world is fundamentally corrupt at its core.  Its successful practitioners almost invariably lie, deceive, mislead, misrepresent, bully, threaten (both tacitly and explicitly), bribe and steal.


The above behaviors are carried out, over and over again, in the course of daily business.  It is done as part of routine business operations, and it takes place as part of dominance behaviors having nothing to do with business operations.  This behavior is carried out by a particular subculture to whom we may refer as "Commercial Elites".  The behavior itself is a form of coercion, in that it leverages asymmetries in power between parties in a transaction in such a way as to cause the weaker party to act in ways it would not otherwise have acted.  Such coercion may take the form of a bribe rather than a threat.

(image from candlemaking.com)

Commercial Elites are no more innately evil than any other identifiable subgroup of our species.  But they have "power", in the sense that they can impel behavior in others that would not otherwise be present.  And, like any other group of human beings with power, they use that power to influence what we are told are purely "market" transactions.  


Every elite will promulgate an ideology (often a religion) that legitimates both their greater power and the use of that power to further their own interests.  Commercial Elites promote a particular type of Capitalism that is excessively deferential to those elites, that exalts its practitioners to the status of heroes, and that defends the privileged position of Commercial Elites by predicting catastrophic economic consequences should their behavior be moderated.

(image from tree-hugger.com)

It would be a mistake to conflate coercive business behavior with crime.  Lots of utterly sleazy business transactions  are perfectly legal.  They are legal because Commercial Elites invest trivial sums of money (by their standards) in the campaigns of politicians.  The fact of their legality is itself a product of the power of Commercial Elites.  But of course, there's plenty of criminal behavior, too.

It would also be a mistake to conflate every single business person with the coercive subset of that group.  I have very little experience interacting with this group, so you should ignore my estimate that no more than 40% of them are actively corrupt (in the moral rather than legal sense).  But many, many more members know about coercive business practices and stay silent. 

And of course, any subset of humanity is as corrupt as Commercial Elites.  But lacking power, their corruption lacks specific, obvious national consequence.

(image from silive.com)

"Capitalism", (by  which I mean the practice of Commerce as it is carried out in the United States today) has been successfully legitimized in the minds of the American mass populace by  associating it with such potent nationalist symbols as "liberty", the "founding fathers", and "rugged individualism" despite having no relationship to any of those things.  This makes attempts to moderate the behavior of Commercial Elites through public policy processes inherently difficult.

"Capitalism" (much like Marxism) has also been legitimized by claims that its outcomes are somehow rational, or scientific, or objective.  And in fact, one can imagine a world where demand and supply are always moderated by price and price only.

(image from freecomputerwallpaper.com)

It has been said so often that it is a cliché; the "market" is a purely intellectual construct, an abstraction employed because of its utility both descriptively and predictively...


and then, having covered their intellectual asses, the Capitalism Apologists promptly reify the market, citing the "efficiency" of an admitted intellectual abstraction in defending existing supply and pricing arrangements.  But those existing arrangements are not typically arrived at through the beautifully meshed operations of supply and demand mediated by price.  So-called market outcomes are primarily the result of power differences between the parties in an transaction. 

(image from activewin.com)

Capitalism is also cited as the primary causal variable in contemporary American prosperity.  This assertion calls for two responses...


the extent of American prosperity is massively overstated.  And Americans cannot internalize that fact beyond a vague anxiety about their personal circumstances..  We are not the 
richest country in the world.  We don't have the best healthcare in the world (if by "we" you mean most Americans).  We don't have the most leisure time in the world.  We don't have the best education system in the world.  We are a top 10 country, not number 1.  But if you can convince people that we are number 1 because of an almost religiously fundamentalist devotion to practicing economic activity in a way that defers to your personal interests....


that turns out to be an effective tactic.


American prosperity is not due to "Capitalism". (Again, as it's practiced here.)  American prosperity, such as it is, is a complex phenomenon.  Like all complex phenomena, it is multi-causal and changes over time.  But here's a striking relationship...  the public policies advocated by Capitalism apologists don't seem to have resulted in greater prosperity for the American people, despite their promises.  


It is claimed that Capitalism takes advantage of the particular expertise of private industry, but in fact, our so-called "Captains of Industry" are no more competent (just as they are no less moral) than any other subset of humanity.  There are smart business people, and there are business people that are astonishingly dumb, in about the same proportion you'd find among teachers, or cops, or government bureaucrats.  Furthermore, the relationship between competence and ultimate success is tenuous at best.

(image from solidprinciples.com.  Really.)

Ideologies are programmatic.  They advocate behaviors which, it is promised, will result in certain outcomes.  But, the public policies advocated by apologists for the American practice of Capitalism don't give us the outcomes the apologists predict.  Their supply-side tax cuts don't result in economic growth beyond the anemic Keynesian effect one would expect.  Their massive deficits don't magically vanish under a "rising tide" of economic growth that always comes in weaker than they promise.  And their fanatical deregulation inevitably empowers Commercial Elites to employ ever more coercion against those with whom they transact business.

The benefits which derive from American Capitalism have been grossly exaggerated.  The economic and social costs of regulating the behavior of Commercial Elites has been exaggerated even more.


Commercial Elites will ruthlessly exploit those with whom they do business to the extent that the existing regulatory environment allows them to do so.  As it is presently constituted, the regulatory environment of the United States fails to deter coercive business practices, including practices blatantly illegal under current law.  


Increasing regulatory restraint on Corporate Management will not make us poor.  It's not anathema to the principles of the Founding Fathers.  And it's the only defense we have against our rapacious exploitation by a privileged, hypocritical elite.

It occurs to me that I still haven't watched "Capitalism, a Love Story" by Michael Moore.  I think it's on pay-per-view...

certainly, the Penguins don't have any games scheduled.  

From Thucydides

Cleon (the speaker) was a contemporary of Thucydides.  In fact, I believe he was actually present for this speech.  

..."What you do not realize is that your Empire is a Tyranny over subjects who do not like it and who are always plotting against you; you will not make them obey you by injuring your own interests in order to do them a favor; your leadership depends on superior strength and not on any goodwill of theirs."...

This is a form of the 'peace through strength" argument, or deterrence, if you prefer.

...that lack of learning combined with a sound common sense is more helpful than the kind of cleverness that gets out of hand, and that as a general rule states are better governed by the man on the street than by intellectuals. These are the sort of people who want to appear wiser than the laws, who want to get their own way in every general discussion, because they feel they cannot show off their intelligence in matters of greater importance, and who, as a result, very often bring ruin on their own country. But the other kind - the people who are not so confident of their own intelligence - are prepared to admit that the laws are wiser than they are...

Anti-intellectualism didn't originate with Sarah Palin, either.

People are fond of claiming that "You can't change human nature." I'm a Behaviorist, I think people can be socialized into doing anything. But in the absence of contrary socialization, memes, mores and values persist indefinitely.

Incidentally, Diodotus' response to Cleon demonstrates the same phenomenon. His refutation of the deterrence value of execution holds up perfectly well 2500 years later.



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