It has been a while since I visited his site. It was almost exactly two years ago that I wrote him off as crazy. You did a good job on him. You came at him from a different viewpoint and arrived at the same conclusion--mentally defective.
Worth noting is that for centuries, Parliament and Congress (and through them the voters) had direct control over the bureaucracy and especially the taxing apparatus. Thus, voters could more or less directly restrain the civil service. (See here.)
Since about the 1900s, this is no longer true, and in the United States it was because Congress deliberately devolved its authority to the Executive Branch, in order to avoid responsibility for the "scientific" regulation of society. (See here.) Today, the taxing authority and the regulatory authority are both independent of the legislature, and directly subordinate to the executive branch. The machinery is in place for a nondemocratic government; the only reason Congress retains any authority at all is that the Constitution expressly gave it authority over the budget. Yet this authority is sustained, structurally speaking, by habit alone.
Really, we should be thankful for the patriotism of the armed forces; if not for that, and for the accompanying orneriness of gun owners, we would already be Venezuela.
Most gun control advocates, like most liberals, make the same mistake: they believe we are subjects, not citizens. This simple distinction entirely escapes them. They use the term citizen as though there were no difference between the two, when what they mean is "subjects."Were this distinction to become more widely acknowledged, it would cut like Occam's razor through a lot of public policy proposals.
"Ask the question, "What is the process by which you determine truth from falsity?""
Joe, Bingo! And Kevin, thanks for the quote. Socrates and others were quite at home with the concept.
I am acquainted with a young man with mild autism. When we get a chance to chat at length, sooner or later that question comes up, if only indirectly. I hadn't thought about it that way, and will in future.
As Bruce alludes, Mr. Ernst misses a key point: in America, the state is not sovereign; the citizen is. In fact, his argument, given this one correction, is exactly that used to deny that the United States has police powers -- none are delegated in the Constitution -- and thus the FBI, ATF, et al should not arm their agents, nor should those agents have powers of arrest, and so-forth.
The assertion that individual sovereigns are unwilling to delegate authority to a government to act on their behalf is plainly false. An individual's delegation of authority comes with it the implication that this same delegation can be withdrawn. If enough people withdraw their consent from a government, then the government has only two possible paths before it. Namely, the government can acquiesce to the new reality, or they can fight to retain power against the same people who empowered them to begin with. This second option is the most likely path, and also the most painful.
Several years ago, I had some exchanges with GEErnst in talk.politics.guns. The topic was, more or less, "are the people sovereign?"
I agreed that yes, the people are sovereign; however, that doesn't mean "the government" is "the people". That's when GEErnst brought up that son-of-a-bitch piece of dickcheese Jean-JacquesRousseau and his "a person exists only to serve government" evilness.
@Mark Alger -- GEErnst doesn't miss that point, he specifically chooses to disregard it.
I tolerate GEErnst about the same as I would a retarded spider monkey -- you feel a bit sorry for him, but you want to avoid him because all he does is shit in his hand and throw it in random directions.
When dealing with GEErnst it's classic "Locke vs Rousseau" and GEErnst has drank so much Rousseau cool-aid he's deep red.
Interesting you should engage the question of consent, and its withdrawal, it is a key divisor.
It is, in fact, a matter that Locke dealt with thoroughly. In fact, it was the fact of our the withdrawal of consent from the British government that is the keystone of our republic.
The sequence, for those of you who went to public school in the last 20 years, was simple:
The British Crown asserted soveriegnty over the people of the American colonies.
We withdrew that consent, openly declaring so.
The British Government insisted otherwise, at gun point.
We contested the matter with arms
We won.
Rousseau's cancerous reformulation of the social contract stipulates that consent may NOT be withdrawn. That is, in fact, one of the specific tinctures of poison he shat into the well Locke dug.
Since the recent announcement of the "Liberal Gene", maybe the problems faced by Peterson and Ernst are the same as those suffering from the double-X, the extra-chromosome types -- the big guys with the extra gene-juice who are up in Vacaville at the psych facility where Manson is kept.
@ Dutton: ::wry grin:: I got schooled at an early age to "know the author" of a book. You caught me ignoring that lesson. I had no idea who Ernst is, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt, assuming he's an idiot and not actively malificent. Point taken.
Kevin, your post on this matter, as well as Joe Huffman's insightful description of the condition has given me so much food for thought that I have delved into further analysis on the subject in order to understand the cause of Peterson Syndrome.
I've started with the first post on this subject: http://www.thecompostfiles.blogspot.com
"Rousseau's cancerous reformulation of the social contract stipulates that consent may NOT be withdrawn. That is, in fact, one of the specific tinctures of poison he shat into the well Locke dug."
Geekwitha45, I think that is also the basis for the American Civil War. The Southern states tried to reject the US Constitution and revert to their former status as independent states, and the Northern states under Lincoln refused to let them leave.
"The National Rifle Association's individual right is the right to be armed outside of accountability to public authority."
GEERnst is wrong here as well, as the accountability to public authority is found in tort law, just as the accountability to public authority for irresponsible speech is not found in the First Amendment but is found in tort law, which is where the man falsely crying "fire" in a crowded theater would find himself tangled.
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>
JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2010/10/peterson-syndrome.html (14 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
Thanks for the link and all the references.
It has been a while since I visited his site. It was almost exactly two years ago that I wrote him off as crazy. You did a good job on him. You came at him from a different viewpoint and arrived at the same conclusion--mentally defective.
Worth noting is that for centuries, Parliament and Congress (and through them the voters) had direct control over the bureaucracy and especially the taxing apparatus. Thus, voters could more or less directly restrain the civil service. (See here.)
Since about the 1900s, this is no longer true, and in the United States it was because Congress deliberately devolved its authority to the Executive Branch, in order to avoid responsibility for the "scientific" regulation of society. (See here.) Today, the taxing authority and the regulatory authority are both independent of the legislature, and directly subordinate to the executive branch. The machinery is in place for a nondemocratic government; the only reason Congress retains any authority at all is that the Constitution expressly gave it authority over the budget. Yet this authority is sustained, structurally speaking, by habit alone.
Really, we should be thankful for the patriotism of the armed forces; if not for that, and for the accompanying orneriness of gun owners, we would already be Venezuela.
Most gun control advocates, like most liberals, make the same mistake: they believe we are subjects, not citizens. This simple distinction entirely escapes them. They use the term citizen as though there were no difference between the two, when what they mean is "subjects."Were this distinction to become more widely acknowledged, it would cut like Occam's razor through a lot of public policy proposals.
"Ask the question, "What is the process by which you determine truth from falsity?""
Joe, Bingo! And Kevin, thanks for the quote. Socrates and others were quite at home with the concept.
I am acquainted with a young man with mild autism. When we get a chance to chat at length, sooner or later that question comes up, if only indirectly. I hadn't thought about it that way, and will in future.
Tells you something about the gun controllers.
As Bruce alludes, Mr. Ernst misses a key point: in America, the state is not sovereign; the citizen is. In fact, his argument, given this one correction, is exactly that used to deny that the United States has police powers -- none are delegated in the Constitution -- and thus the FBI, ATF, et al should not arm their agents, nor should those agents have powers of arrest, and so-forth.
M
Well he goes to great lengths to deny it, but then whines that SCotUS is "politicized" and "There is no public that holds the courts accountable."
Well no shit Ernst - that is utterly consistent with your view that ALL power is vested in govt.
Unintentional self-parody might be my favorite human foible.
The assertion that individual sovereigns are unwilling to delegate authority to a government to act on their behalf is plainly false. An individual's delegation of authority comes with it the implication that this same delegation can be withdrawn. If enough people withdraw their consent from a government, then the government has only two possible paths before it. Namely, the government can acquiesce to the new reality, or they can fight to retain power against the same people who empowered them to begin with. This second option is the most likely path, and also the most painful.
Several years ago, I had some exchanges with GEErnst in talk.politics.guns. The topic was, more or less, "are the people sovereign?"
I agreed that yes, the people are sovereign; however, that doesn't mean "the government" is "the people". That's when GEErnst brought up that son-of-a-bitch piece of dickcheese Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his "a person exists only to serve government" evilness.
@Mark Alger -- GEErnst doesn't miss that point, he specifically chooses to disregard it.
I tolerate GEErnst about the same as I would a retarded spider monkey -- you feel a bit sorry for him, but you want to avoid him because all he does is shit in his hand and throw it in random directions.
When dealing with GEErnst it's classic "Locke vs Rousseau" and GEErnst has drank so much Rousseau cool-aid he's deep red.
You might like this link to the Daily Telegraph. They have a light article on the subject of the supposed Leftie-Gene that has been discovered.
Take a good look at the cut-away view of the human "Leftie" brain. It's quite comical.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/8094719/Lifetime-cure-for-Lefties.html#dsq-content
Interesting you should engage the question of consent, and its withdrawal, it is a key divisor.
It is, in fact, a matter that Locke dealt with thoroughly. In fact, it was the fact of our the withdrawal of consent from the British government that is the keystone of our republic.
The sequence, for those of you who went to public school in the last 20 years, was simple:
The British Crown asserted soveriegnty over the people of the American colonies.
We withdrew that consent, openly declaring so.
The British Government insisted otherwise, at gun point.
We contested the matter with arms
We won.
Rousseau's cancerous reformulation of the social contract stipulates that consent may NOT be withdrawn. That is, in fact, one of the specific tinctures of poison he shat into the well Locke dug.
Since the recent announcement of the "Liberal Gene", maybe the problems faced by Peterson and Ernst are the same as those suffering from the double-X, the extra-chromosome types -- the big guys with the extra gene-juice who are up in Vacaville at the psych facility where Manson is kept.
@ Dutton: ::wry grin:: I got schooled at an early age to "know the author" of a book. You caught me ignoring that lesson. I had no idea who Ernst is, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt, assuming he's an idiot and not actively malificent. Point taken.
M
Kevin, your post on this matter, as well as Joe Huffman's insightful description of the condition has given me so much food for thought that I have delved into further analysis on the subject in order to understand the cause of Peterson Syndrome.
I've started with the first post on this subject: http://www.thecompostfiles.blogspot.com
"Rousseau's cancerous reformulation of the social contract stipulates that consent may NOT be withdrawn. That is, in fact, one of the specific tinctures of poison he shat into the well Locke dug."
Geekwitha45, I think that is also the basis for the American Civil War. The Southern states tried to reject the US Constitution and revert to their former status as independent states, and the Northern states under Lincoln refused to let them leave.
"The National Rifle Association's individual right is the right to be armed outside of accountability to public authority."
GEERnst is wrong here as well, as the accountability to public authority is found in tort law, just as the accountability to public authority for irresponsible speech is not found in the First Amendment but is found in tort law, which is where the man falsely crying "fire" in a crowded theater would find himself tangled.
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>