김평우(대한변협 前 회장)
法治 없는 민주주의는 허구입니다. 법치 없는 언론은 쓰레기 언론입니다. 법치 없는 국회는 인민독재의 촛불 국회입니다. 법치 없는 검찰은 권력의 시녀, 박영수 특검식 공포의 혁명 검찰입니다. 법치 없는 재판은 인민재판입니다
권력의 횡포와 거짓 앞에 굴복하지 않고 용감하게 저항하는 그 분노의 감정이야말로 신이 우리들에게 주신 최고의 선물입니다. 분노할 줄 모른다면 민주 시민이 아닙니다. 분노할 줄 모른다면 정의가 지켜질 수 없고 법치주의가 세워질 수 없습니다. 저는 민주주의를 위해서라면, 정의를 되찾기 위해서라면, 법치주의를 실현하기 위해서라면 무섭게 분노하겠습니다.
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[성명] 오늘의 탄핵심판 최종변론은 무효다.
오늘의 헌재 탄핵심판 최종변론은 무효다. 그 이유는 다음과 같다.
1. (첫째)
헌법재판소는 9인의 정족수가 채워졌을 때만 유효하다.
고작 8인으로 탄핵을 심판하는 것 자체가 불법이므로 원인무효다. 이는 개인적 견해가 아니라 헌법재판소 이정미 소장이 판결을 통하여 말한 것이다.
“재판관 정원인 9인의 견해가 빠짐없이 반영되는 것이 아니게 되므로 헌법재판청구인들의 공정한 재판을 받을 권리를 침해한다.”는 2014년 4월24일자 헌법재판소의 한 판결문을 통하여 이정미 소장을 포함한 박한철 전 헌재소장과 이정미·김이수·이진성 재판관이었다.
대한민국 헌법이 고무줄이 아닌 한, 이 중차대한 대통령 탄핵을 앞두고 태도를 바꾸는 이정미 소장은 즉각 사퇴해야 마땅하고 대통령 추천 몫 1인을 채우지 않고 8인의 재판관으로 심판하여 최종 변론을 하는 것 자체가 법률적으로, 그리고 헌법적으로 무효이므로 국민은 이를 수용할 수 없다.
만약 이를 무시하고 오늘의 최종 변론으로 탄핵을 심판한다면 거대한 국민적 저항을 각오해야 할 것이고, 이러한 불법 심판을 이끈 이정미 재판관의 역사적 과오는 국민적 심판을 면하기 어려울 것이다.
2. (둘째)
판결 일자를 미리 정해두고 하는 재판은 전 세계에서 그 유례를 찾을 수 없고 각종 법률을 위반한 폭거이므로 오늘의 최후변론은 무효다.
지금의 헌재 일정은 모두 이정미 소장의 퇴임에 시간을 맞추어 진행되고 있다. 국가적 운명이 걸려 있는 탄핵심판이 어느 일 개인의 퇴임 일자에 맞추는 법이 어디 있는가. 헌재 소장이 조폭 두목인가, 양아치 행동대장인가.
이정미 소장의 임기가 끝나면 대법원장이 추천하여 9인의 재판관을 구성하고 심판하면 될 일을 굳이 이정미 소장의 임기종료일 이전에 심판하려는 것은 헌재발 쿠데타이므로 용서할 수 없고, 국민은 결코 좌시하지 않을 것이다. 이는 법률적으로 뿐만 아니라, 국제법적으로도 무효이며, 세계인의 상식에 어긋나는 웃음거리일 뿐이다. 세계적이고 세기적인 조롱거리로 전락할 일정을 누가 수용활 수 있는가. 그러므로 오늘의 최종 변론은 완벽한 원인 무효다.
3. (셋째)
증인없는 심판이므로 오늘의 최종 변론은 원인 무효다.
헌법재판소는 지구인의 상식을 배신했다. 헌법재판소는 증인을 강제 구인할 권한이 있음에도 불구하고 증인을 구인하지 않았고, 쫒기듯 일정에 맞추는 무리한 심판을 진행했다. 이 지구상에 증인의 증언 없는 재판이 어디에, 어느 나라에 있다는 말인가. 반드시 필요한 증인 없는 재판이므로, 증인의 증언을 거절한 재판이므로, 오늘의 최종 변론은 원인 무효다.
4. (넷째)
필수 증거를 부인한 심판이므로 오늘의 최종 변론은 원인 무효다.
헌법재판소는 세계인의 상식을 배신했다. 대통령 변호인단이 남창 고영태 일당의 녹음파일을 증거로 채택하기를 거부했다. 가장 중요한 증거물을 채택하지 않음으로써 헌재 이정미 소장은 이번 탄핵 심판의 비겁한 목적성을 여지없이 드러내었다. 반드시 필요한 증거마저 채택을 거부한 헌법재판소의 심판이므로 오늘의 최종 변론은 원인 무효다.
5. (다섯째)
애초 국회의 탄핵 의결 과정부터 불법인 것을 헌법재판소가 수용했으므로 오늘의 최종 변론은 원인 무효다.
국회는 13개 종목을 하나로 모아 탄핵 의결했다. 개별 사안으로 투표했으면 2/3를 통과할 수 없었던 것을 모아 투표했다. 그나마 뇌물죄는 특검이 끝나고 있는 지금까지도 적용되지 않았다. 그런데 이런 것이 13개 항목에 들어가 일괄투표해버렸다. 이런 탄핵이 어디 있나.
마찬가지로 국회가 헌법과 국회법을 어기고 사기로 탄핵소추장을 작성했다. 헌법재판소가 이것을 알았지만 눈 감아주기로 했다. 이 사실부터 다시 심판하여 국회로 돌려보냈어야 할 소추이므로 오늘의 최종 변론은 원인 무효다.
6. (여섯째)
대통령 탄핵 사건의 사실인정은 아주 엄격한 증명에 의해야 한다. 따라서 상당한 의심만으로는 대통령에 대한 탄핵사건의 소추사유를 인정하는 일은 결코 있어서는 안된다.
결국 ‘합리적 의심이 없는 엄격한 증명’이 있어야 함에도 불구하고 심판은 계속되었다. 살인했을 것이다는 의심으로 사형을 집행하고 수사는 그 뒤에 하여 증명하겠다는 식의 심판은 있을 수도 있고 있어서도 안 된다. 양아치와 같은 특검으로 수사했지만 결국 나온 것은 대통령이 단 돈 1원도 먹은 것이 없다는 사실 뿐이다. 이러한 인식을 부인하고 진행되어 온 심판이었으므로 오늘의 최종 변론은 원인 무효다.
7. (일곱째)
대통령은 3월 2일 정도에 출석하여 최후 진술하겠다고 했다. 그러나 헌재는 이를 차갑게 거절했다. 무조건 2월 27일의 최종 변론일에 맞추라고 강요했다. "최종 변론 후, 대통령이 출석의사를 밝혀도 안 받아 주겠다."가 기사 제목이었다.... 헌재가 깡패인가. 이는 김정은이나 할 수 있는 헌재 독재다.
물론 이정미 소장의 퇴임 일정 때문에 그러했다. 이 얼마나 불법이고 억지인가. 민주사회, 법치의 기본인 피청구인 대통령의 최종 변론권이 박탈당했으므로 이는 원인 무효다.
8. (여덟째)
헌재는 법률적 판단보다는 정치적 판단을 우선했다. 북한을 제외하고는 지구상 어느 나라에서도 하지 않는 폭거를 자행했다. 어떻게 해서든 대통령 탄핵을 인용하려는 이정미 소장과 강원일 재판관의 폭거는 헌법 재판관으로서의 기본적 소양을 외면했다. 특히 변호인단의 강원일 재판관의 기피 신청은 그 사유서가 제출되기도 전에 기각되었다. 이런 재판은 있을 수 없다. 아주 강력한 소추인 편들기 심판은 불법으므로 오늘의 최종 변론은 원인 무효다.
<국민저항권 발동>
탄기국은 제 13차 태극기 집회에서 <국민저항권>을 발동했고, 국민저항본부를 설치했다. 그러나 탄기국 정도는 조족지혈일 것이다. 법률을 무시하고, 국민을 경시하고, 엉터리로 진행한 심판을 이 나라 국민이 용인 할 것으로 보이는가.
헌법재판소는 쓰나미처럼 몰아 칠 국민의 저항과, 심판 불복종 운동의 확산과, 결국 국민이 아스팔트 위에서 피를 흘리게 될 것이라는 변호인단의 경고를 무섭게 받아들여야 할 것이다.
이러한 합리적인 이유로 오늘 우리는 오늘의 헌재 탄핵심판 최종변론은 무효임을 선언한다.
2017.02.27
탄기국 대변인
정광용
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이광훈 드림사이트코리아 CEO에 따르면, 현대식 온돌의 개발자가 미국의 건축가 프랭크 로이드 라이트(Frank Lloyd Wright)라고 한다. 일본의 제국호텔 건축(1918년 건축 시작)에 처음으로 온돌을 이용했다고 한다. (조선일보)
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바람에 나무가 굽었지만 나무는 끝내 쓰러지지 않았다. 거대한 자연에 맞선 생명의 승리이다.
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오늘 헌재 앞에서 시위한 애국 아주머니.
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현대 국가의 개입주의와 복지정책을 비판하는 미제스의 글
시장 경제를 주장하는 사람들은 극단주의자로 불리고, 그들의 주장은 일고의 가치도 없다고 여긴다.
현 세대는 “계획”을 바라고 있는데, 그것은 가부장적인 국가가 모든 시민의 삶과 노동, 여가 시간을 통제하는 것이다.
생산의 유일한 목표는 수요의 만족, 즉 소비이다. 시장경제에서는 모든 생산 활동이 궁극적으로 소비자에 의해 제어된다. 생산자들은 소비자의 수요에 맞추지 않을 수 없게 된다.
결국 시장 경제에서는 모든 물질적 생산 요소의 소유자들이 소비자를 가장 잘 만족시키는 생산자에게 투자하게 된다.
다른 사람의 자유를 침해하지 않는 범위에서 자신의 목표를 추구하는데 제한받지 않는 것, 그것이 바로 자유이다.
자유로운 시장 경제 하에서 인간들 간의 자발적인 협조가 사회주의적 관리로 통제되면, 독재적 정권이 나타나게 된다.
계획 경제는 인류 역사상 최악의 인간 노예화 체제이다.
정부가 산타클로스처럼 나눠주는 복지 혜택은 나중에 인플레로 돌아와 시민들의 지갑을 털 것이다.
Mises (1951): Some Observations on Current Economic Methods and Policies
By Ludwig von Mises (written in 1951, published for the first time in Money, Method, and the Market Process)
I.
If no radical changes in the prevailing political trends and tendencies occur very soon, the system of full government control of human activities will within a few years triumph in all countries this side of the Iron Curtain.
The doctrine today accepted by all those statesmen and politicians who do not openly embrace all the teachings of communism and totalitarianism maintains that it is the duty of the government to interfere with the operation of the market whenever the outcome of this operation appears to the government as “socially” undesirable. This means: the individuals in their production activities and in their buying and selling on the market are free as far as they precisely do what the government wants them to do; but they are not permitted to deviate from the course approved by the authorities. This doctrine of government omnipotence is, of course, today not yet completely enforced. The governments have not yet attained the formal power to control prices and wage rates. But the resistance offered to the enactment of such powers is weakening more and more. The government of the United States, in its endeavors to go on in its reckless inflationary policy, continually threatens the nation with the specter of all-round control of prices and wages. And only a few voices of protest are raised.
People who declare that they are in favor of the preservation of the market economy are called “extremists” and their arguments are not deemed worthy of a refutation. Even members of minority groups join in this enthusiasm for government omnipotence, although this system would deprive them of the only opportunity they have for overcoming the animosity of the majority by excelling in the service of the public, the consumers. Almost all educational institutions, for the most part carefully avoiding the ticklish terms communism and socialism, are propagandizing for—all-round—planning and for “production for use.”
Gone are the days when people, and first of all the youth, held liberty in esteem. Our contemporaries long for the “plan,” the strict regimentation of everybody’s life, work, and leisure by decrees of the paternal dictator.
II.
The only goal of production is to provide for the satisfaction of wants, that is consumption. The eminence of the market economy is to be seen in the fact that all production activities are ultimately directed by the consumers. Man is sovereign in his capacity as a consumer. In his capacity as a producer he is bound to comply with the wishes of the consumers.
By their buying and by their abstention from buying the consumers determine all that happens in the sphere of what is commonly called economic affairs. Their behavior ultimately determines everybody’s place and function in the social apparatus of production. They allot ownership of the material factors of production to those who have succeeded in directing them into employments in which they best satisfy the most urgent of the needs of the consumers. Property in material factors of production, wealth, can be acquired and preserved in the capitalistic or market economy only by serving the consumers better or more cheaply than others do. Such property is a public mandate, as it were, entrusted to the proprietor under the condition that he use it in the best possible way for the benefit of the consumers. The capitalist must never relax in endeavors to serve the public better and more cheaply. If he feels that he cannot achieve this without help from other people, he must choose adequate partners or lend his funds to such men. Thus there is built into the system of the market economy a mechanism, as it were, that inexorably forces the owners of all material factors of production to invest them in those lines in which they best serve the consumers.
In a similar way the consumers determine the height of the earnings of those working for salaries and wages. The employer is under the necessity of paying to each helper the full price the consumers are prepared to refund to him for what this worker has contributed to the qualities of the product. He cannot pay more, for then the employment of the worker would involve a loss; neither can he pay less, for then his competitors would lure away the job seekers from his plant. It is not the valuation of the employer, but that of the consumers that is instrumental in granting high wages to popular actors and athletes and low wages to street sweepers and charwomen.
That this system benefits all nations and all individuals within every nation has been spectacularly demonstrated by the unprecedented increase in population figures it has brought about. Wherever governments and pressure groups resorting to violent action have not fully succeeded in their endeavors to sabotage the operation of the market, industry has provided the masses with amenities of which the wealthiest princes and nabobs of the past did not even dream.
If one compares economic conditions in the most prosperous parts of the earth with those in the so-called underdeveloped countries, one cannot help realizing the correctness of the fundamental principle of nineteenth-century economic liberalism. Against the vagaries and revolutionary delusions of the socialist and communist agitators, the economists, opposed the thesis: there is but one method available to improve the conditions of the whole population, viz., to accelerate the accumulation of capital as against the increase in population. The only method of rendering all people more prosperous is to raise the productivity of human labor, i.e., productivity per man hour, and this can be done only by placing into the hands of the worker more and better tools and machines. What is lacking in the countries usually described as underdeveloped is saving and capital accumulation. There is no substitute for the investment of capital. If any further proof of this fundamental principle were needed, it is to be seen in the eagerness of all backward nations to get foreign capital for their industries.
III.
In dealing with the pros and cons of socialist management, one unfortunately neglects to pay sufficient attention to those effects which are commonly considered as non-economic. One fails to pay attention to the human aspect of the problem.
The distinctive feature of man consists in his initiative. An animal’s life takes precisely the course peculiar to all members of the species it belongs to. A deviation from this line can be brought about only be external force, the interference of a human will. But man is in a position to choose between various ways of conduct open to him. His fate depends to some extent on the mode in which he reacts to the conditions of his environment and integrates himself into the social system of peaceful cooperation. He is, within definite limits drawn by nature, the founder of his fortune. Not to be restricted in the pursuit of his own plans by anything else than the same freedom accorded to his fellow men, is what is commonly called freedom. Freedom does not mean unbridled license to indulge in any acts of ferocity and it does not conflict with the operation of a “state,” i.e., a social apparatus for the violent repression of the recourse to brute force on the part of unruly individuals or gangs. On the contrary, it can work only where the peaceful cooperation of individuals is protected in such a way against oppression and usurpation.
Constitutional government by elected officeholders—representative government—is an institution to give the citizens in the administration of public affairs a supremacy as far as possible analogous to the sovereignty they enjoy in their capacity as consumers in the market economy. Supplanting the rule of the aristocratic lords of the feudal ages and all systems of slavery and serfdom, it developed in the countries of Western civilization simultaneously with the gradual disintegration of the economic self-sufficiency of families, villages, counties, and nations and the evolution of the world-embracing system of the international division of labor. It is the political corollary of the economic democracy of the market economy, and it gives way to a dictatorial regime whenever and wherever the voluntary cooperation of men under the system of free markets is abolished by the establishment of any kind of socialist management.
For the planned economy is the most rigid system of enslavement history has ever known. Its advocates implicitly admit it in calling it a method of social engineering, that is: a system that deals with human beings—with all of them but the supreme dictator—in the way in which the engineers deal with the dead material out of which they build houses, bridges, and machines. To the individual no other choice is left but between unconditional surrender or hopeless rebellion. Nobody is free to deviate from the role the plan assigns to him. From the cradle to the coffin all actions of a man as well as his behavior in the time styled leisure hours are exactly prescribed by the authorities.
Such are conditions in the regime after which the immense majority of our intellectuals and the masses of common men are passionately hankering. The children and grandchildren of the generations that were full of enthusiasm for liberty are enraptured by the image of a utopia in which they themselves will be nothing but pawns in the hands of other people. To those familiar with the long history of the struggles for freedom it gives a peculiar impression to see today the old and the young, the professors and the ignorant, the artists and the boors longing for the unlimited rule of “big brother.”
This infatuation of the intelligentsia as well as of the illiterate masses is so firm that no adverse experience can weaken it. The more information about the real state of affairs in the communist countries reaches the Western nations, the more fanatical become the daily swelling ranks of those longing for the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
IV.
The radical change that has buried in oblivion the ideal of liberty and extols to the skies unconditional submission to the “plan” is reflected in the alteration of the meaning of almost all terms designating political parties and ideologies.
In the nineteenth century the term liberal (derived from liberty) denoted those aiming at representative government, at government by laws and not by men, and at restricting the power of the government to the preservation of peaceful interhuman relations against any possible attacks on the part of domestic gangsters or of external foes. Today in the United States to be liberal means: to advocate full government control of all human activities in domestic policy and, in foreign policy, to sympathize with all revolutions aiming at the establishment of a communist dictatorship. No term is left to signify those who favor the preservation of the market economy and of private property in the material factors of production. Such “reactionaries” are not considered worthy of having a party name.
In some parliamentary chambers of nineteenth-century Europe the members of the party advocating government by the people and full civil liberties were seated to the left of the chairman. Hence the designation left came into use to signify them and the designation right to signify their opponents, the advocates of despotic government. In present-day American usage the meaning of these terms has been inverted. The champions of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” of the Russian and Chinese methods of unlimited tyranny of those in power, are nowadays called leftists and the advocates of constitutional government and civil liberties rightists. In this terminology not only Lenin, who on January 6, 1918, dispersed the Constituent Assembly by military force, is to be called a leftist, but no less his predecessors in the impolite treatment of parliaments: Oliver Cromwell and the two Napoleons. But Karl Marx, who vehemently rejected this Bonapartist method of suppressing the opposition in one of his best known pamphlets, would have a fair claim to be qualified as a member of the “extreme right.”
The truth is that any kind of socialist or communist regime is incompatible with the preservation of civil liberties and representative or constitutional government. Representative government and civil liberties are the constitutional or political corollary of capitalism as unlimited despotism is the corollary of socialism. No semantic prattle can alter this fact. The socialist movement is not a continuation of the liberal movement of the nineteenth century, but the most radical reaction against it. The total state of the Lenin and Hitler pattern is the embodiment of the ideals of all the great tyrants of all ages.
V.
Unintentionally the words a man chooses in his speaking and writing reveal something about his ideas that he would not be prepared to express directly.
The noun revolution originally signified a revolving motion and then a transformation. But since the American and the French Revolutions it means first of all violence, civil war, war against the powers that be. When Arnold Toynbee used for his rather biased account of the evolution of modern industrialism in England (first published in 1884) the title Industrial Revolution he unintentionally disclosed his interpretation of history as a succession of violent conflicts, of killing and destroying.
The same disposition explains the use of the expression “the conquest of a market” to describe the fact that Ruritanian merchants succeeded in selling their wares in Laputania.
Many more examples could be quoted. But it is sufficient to mention one: the United States’ “war against poverty.” The only method of reducing poverty and of supplying people more amply with consumers’ goods is to produce more, better, and cheaper. This is what profit-seeking business aims at and achieves, provided sufficient capital has been accumulated by saving. All that a government can do in this process is to protect the operation of the market economy against violent or fraudulent aggression. What lessens poverty is not taking something away from Paul and giving it to Peter, but making commodities more easily accessible by producing more, better and cheaper. There is nothing in this sequence of events for the appellation of which the term “war” would seem to be adequate. A governmental system that spends every year billions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money to make essential foodstuffs, cotton and many other articles more expensive should certainly have the decency not to boast of an alleged war against poverty.
VI.
What distinguishes the mentality of our contemporaries most radically from that of their grandparents is the way they look upon their relation to the government. To the nineteenth-century liberals state and government appeared as institutions to give to the people the opportunity to live and to work in peace. Everything else, the development of material welfare as well as the cultivation of man’s moral, intellectual, and artistic faculties, was the concern of the individuals.
The citizens had to comply with the laws of the country and they had to pay taxes to defray the costs incurred by the government apparatus. In their household accounts the state was an item of expenditure. Today the individual sees in the state the great provider. Together with his fellows organized as a pressure group, he expects material assistance from the authorities. He is convinced that the state’s funds are inexhaustible as it can fleece the rich endlessly.
The state which the citizens supported in paying taxes could be democratic. The state from which the citizens are getting subsidies cannot remain democratic. People competing with one another for bounties submit humbly to the candidate for dictatorship bidding the most.
What the masses in their thirst for lucre do not see is that they themselves will have to pay the costs of the “presents” the government gives them. Inflation, the main source of the Santa Claus state’s funds, makes their savings wither away. While investors in real estate and common stock profit from the progressive weakening of the monetary unit’s purchasing power during an inflation, the investments of the less wealthy strata, predominately consisting in savings deposits, bonds, and insurance policies, melt away. The popularity inflationary measures enjoy among the masses of wage earners, who are victimized by them more than the rest of the nation, shows clearly their inability to see what their genuine interests really are.
<reformed libertarian.com>이라는 블로그에서 가져온 글. 정치, 경제 그리고 기타 문제에 대해 자유주의적 접근을 하는 블로거들의 글.
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이타주의는 모든 상황에서 타인을 자신보다 앞세우는 것인데, 자신의 신체는 자신이 소유하고 거기에 대해 배타적인 결정권을 갖는다는 기본적인 권리를 부정하는 것이다. 이는 타인에게 다른 개인의 권리를 침해할 수 있는 권리를 부여하는 것이다.
이타주의는 사람들을 의기소침하게 하고 자존심을 떨어뜨린다. 이때 대중을 통제하려는 사람이 나타나 그들을 선동해서 독재적 정권을 만든다. 그럼으로써 자기 희생의 도덕은 독재자를 위한 희생으로 바뀐다.
Is Altruism Really a Virtue?
05/27/2015
•Gary Galles
Altruism has commonly been held up as the standard for moral behavior, with those claiming to see deviations from altruism commonly condemning the deviants as selfish or greedy. For example, Martin Luther King claimed that “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” Similarly, Alan Dershowitz asserted that “Good character consists of recognizing the selfishness that inheres in each of us and trying to balance it against the altruism to which we should all aspire.”
In contrast, accepting altruism as a touchstone of morality was vehemently rejected by Ayn Rand. She asserted that altruism was not an “automatic trademark of virtue.” Instead, it was “incompatible with freedom, with capitalism, and with individual rights,” making it “the basic evil behind today’s ugliest phenomena.” In fact, “In any encounter with collectivists, it is always the acceptance of altruism as an ideal not to be questioned that defeats us.”
That head-on collision between the widespread endorsement of altruism as virtuous and Rand’s diametrically opposed view justifies giving it serious thought. Perhaps the best place to start is with the word’s inventor.
The term was coined by French philosopher Auguste Comte. The altruists.org website describes Comte’s meaning as “Self-sacrifice for the benefit of others,” where “the only moral acts were those intended to promote the happiness of others.” The philosophybasics.com website describes it as a doctrine that “individuals have a moral obligation to serve others and place their interests above one’s own.” In Comte’s Catechisme Positiviste, he wrote that altruism “gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence,” and therefore “cannot tolerate the notion of rights, for such a notion rests on individualism.” In short, Comte asserted that people had to be altruistic to be moral and fully selfless to be altruistic.
In Comte’s view, if an act was performed for any reason beyond advancing the well-being of someone else, it was not morally justified. As a consequence, we must ask how many of our generous, benevolent, or charitable acts meet his criteria for being altruistic, and therefore moral.
If I get a tax deduction for a charitable donation, I didn’t solely benefit others. There was a benefit to me. While I was altruistic in the now-commonly used sense of being generous (I did less for my narrow selfish interests with my resources than I could have), I was not altruistic in Comte’s view. Similarly, if I performed an act of generosity because I viewed it as “enlightened self-interest” or because “what goes around comes around,” I would still fail Comte’s altruism standard.
Even if I am generous because doing good for someone else makes me feel good, there is a benefit to me. So tainted, it falls short of Comte’s standards. In other words, the generosity involved in doing anything for others is essentially invalidated if it helps satisfy an individual’s desire to help others. It is hard to imagine a bleaker criterion for morality than one that demands such joylessness.
Comte went further. He argued that the golden rule failed the standard of altruism, because it introduced a “purely personal calculation” into individuals’ behavior (I decide who and how and how much to help), in contrast to Comte’s assertion of an unlimited duty to do for all others. Even “love your neighbor as yourself” fails, due to the “stain of selfishness” (e.g., assistance I would not desire need not be offered to others). As George H. Smith summarized Comte’s view, it is inadequate because “One should love one’s neighbor more than oneself.”
Ayn Rand’s attacks on altruism as a standard for morality take Comte’s meaning as its starting point. Roderick Long described her as “taking Comte’s conception of altruism seriously,” when others had eroded its meaning to little more than a synonym for generosity. But that has made Rand’s now non-standard meaning of altruism a source of much confusion. In Long’s words,
her sometimes misleading rhetoric about the “virtue of selfishness”…was not to advocate the pursuit of one’s own interest at the expense of others…she rejected not only the subordination of one’s interest to those of others, (and it is this, rather than mere benevolence, that she labeled “altruism”), but also the subordination of others’ interest to one’s own.
This offers a key to understanding Rand’s categorical rejection of altruism. Comte’s requirement of total selflessness is inconsistent with any individual mattering for his or her own sake. In other words, it requires the rejection of individuals’ human significance, invalidating the reality that, as Albert Camus put it, “man alone is an end unto himself.” In Rand’s words,
The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.
Consider the “virtue of selfishness” as a response to Comte’s demand that each person completely disregards him- or herself. One need not equate it with the extreme of megalomania or exclusive self-involvement, as some critics have done. But starting from Comte’s view of selflessness as the ideal, more attention to oneself --more selfishness--is the direction we must move to find the “golden mean” that finds value in each individual and significance in each life.
So what is wrong with Comte’s altruism as a moral standard?
No actual person could ever meet Comte’s standard. As noted above, virtually nothing an individual could do would ever be “good enough.” And anything that might be judged “good enough” would be disqualified if someone felt good about it. Importantly, it also acts to immobilize our moral sense by taking away self-reflection as an at-all-reliable guide to action—if I feel something is good, the satisfaction I feel as a result must make me question whether it is really good. In consequence, not only does altruism fail as a moral standard for individuals, it undermines their morals.
Further, even if an individual could meet Comte’s criteria, no society could ever do so. His logic is internally inconsistent. It is impossible for you to sacrifice yourself fully for me, while at the same time, I am sacrificing myself fully for you. We cannot both be altruistic in Comte’s sense at the same time. Perhaps even more important, if neither of us has any intrinsic value, what would be good about the result if we tried? That would be true even for a society of just two. For an extended society, the inherent contradictions are multiplied. In consequence, supposedly altruistic societies, which by definition cannot exist, offer no guide to morality or goodness.
That conclusion is reinforced by something Adam Smith noted long ago. “Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.” In contrast, Comte’s view would characterize a society where everyone was sustained as a beggar, dependent on charity, as moral, but would characterize people providing for themselves and their families as immoral.
Beyond such inherent problems that reveals Comte’s conception of altruism as suffering from fatal logical flaws, it is also consistent with liberty. Comte defined it as the duty to put others first, above yourself, at all times and in all circumstances. But that denies self-ownership and the power to choose that derives from it. Unbounded responsibility to others means that individuals can make no claims on others, while somehow, others always have preemptive claims on them, thus overriding any individual rights. In contrast, benevolence involves voluntary choices to benefit others of one’s own choosing, in ways and to the extent one chooses for oneself. That respects individuals’ self-ownership and the property rights (power to choose) that derive from them. And the power to choose is necessary for an act to be either moral or immoral.
This is why Rand criticized equating altruism with benevolence. The key is not the “doing good for others” aspect that the two words share, but the distinction between benevolence’s individual discretion in making such choices with one’s recognized-as-valid claim to decide such things and altruism’s unconditional requirement to sacrifice for others in all things. Rand called the latter treating man as “a sacrificial animal.” As she put it,
Do not hide behind such superficialities as whether you should or should not give a dime to a beggar. That is not the issue. The issue is whether you do or do not have the right to exist without giving him that dime…The issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence.
Rand also noted that altruism’s duty of self-sacrifice, once accepted as the ideal, opens the door to the imposition of vast harm on the humanity Comte claimed to advance and fulfill.
The fact that the omnipresent duty of self sacrifice can never be consistently met leaves people feeling valueless and guilty, self-condemned for their inability to act as they say they believe. They become dispirited, which erodes both their self-respect and their moral sense. That makes them vulnerable to manipulation by those who can dress up a desire for the acquisition of power over others as “really” a means to attain some noble goal people feel they cannot otherwise achieve. The desire to sacrifice for the good of others becomes transformed into the requirement to sacrifice to the desires of leaders. From there, it requires only a small step to turn the moral ideal of self-sacrifice into the coercive political imposition of whatever sacrifices rulers see fit. As Rand expressed it,
Those who start by saying: “It is selfish to pursue your own wishes, you must sacrifice them to the wishes of others”—end up by saying: “It is selfish to uphold your convictions, you must sacrifice them to the convictions of others.”
Given that society’s “leaders” have for ages aggrandized themselves by harming rather than helping people, the desires of some to be selfless can thus become transformed into the means by which still others are sacrificed. The wars of the 20th century, including the cold war, offer good illustrations. In Rand’s unfinished The Moral Basis of Individualism, she wrote,
Every major horror of history was perpetrated…in the name of an altruistic purpose…Every leader gathered men through the slogans of selfless purpose, through the plea for their self-sacrifice to a high altruistic goal…
Philosopher Leonard Peikoff’s description of the results is particularly striking:
Every man, [altruists] argue, is morally the property of others—of those others it is his lifelong duty to serve; as such, he has no moral right to invest the major part of his time and energy in his own private concerns…if he refuses voluntarily to make the requisite sacrifices…he is a moral delinquent, and it is an assertion of morality if others forcibly intervene to extract from him the fulfillment of his altruist obligations…Thus has moral fervor been joined to the rule of physical force, raising it from a criminal tactic to a governing principle of human relationships.
In sum, Comte’s view of altruism can be seen as logically inconsistent, joyless, liberty excluding and morality eroding. And, as Ayn Rand took the lead in showing, it has enabled the imposition of vast harm on vast numbers. It is not entitled to deference as a guide for morality. And one need not accept everything Rand ever argued to recognize her rebuttal of Comte as overwhelming.
However, with the world having largely transformed altruism in Comte’s sense into a synonym for benevolence, why should we still care about a rebuttal of a term that now usually means something else? The key here is Rand’s emphasis on duty.
While in typical modern usage, what people who endorse altruism really advocate is benevolence (something Rand did not reject, despite misrepresentations that she did). But just below the surface, the concept of duty remains. And it frequently re-emerges as an illustration of William Graham Sumner’s “forgotten man.”
When A needs something, in B’s opinion, if C, who can do something about it (and virtually everyone could always choose to divert some of their time, efforts and resources from their current ends to other ends), refuses, what happens? C is pilloried as someone who is selfish rather than altruistic for not choosing to support B’s cause. The faulty syllogism remains that “C is failing to do his duty here. C should do his duty. So C should be made to do it.” And with the vast number of margins at which someone else’s need can be asserted, using that syllogism as a bludgeon remains an ever-present threat from everyone who wants to do good with someone else’s resources, and finds coercion an acceptable mechanism.
Rand reminds us of the central defense against that threat. It lies in protecting individual self-ownership and the property rights that derive from it. When that is maintained as fundamental, my power to choose what to do with myself and my property—including when my conclusion is “I could contribute to cause X, but I choose not to”--is accepted as legitimate. Thus we would soundly reject the view that “Apart from such times as [a person] manages to perform some act of self-sacrifice, he possesses no moral significance.” Without the coercive violation of rights, liberty can be maintained. The vast majority of people would not only be generous, they would have far more to be generous with as a result. Their voluntary arrangements, including their voluntary generosity, creates a better world than altruism.
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Hail the generals! Never in the history of the English-speaking peoples has there been an officer class this good. --닐 퍼거슨
장군들을 위하여! 영어권 국가의 역사에서 지금처럼 뛰어난 장교 집단은 없었다.
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온난화의 상징처럼 된 북극곰이 감소하기는커녕 오히려 증가했다.
Polar Bear Scare Unmasked: The Saga of a Toppled Global Warming Icon
Date: 27/02/17
Susan Crockford, GWPF TV
Happy International Polar Bear Day! Thriving polar bear populations have exposed the hubris behind global warming’s most beloved icon.
In 2005, international polar bear specialists decided that future sea ice loss due to human-caused global warming had replaced wanton over-hunting as the primary threat to polar bear survival.
It was the first time that such future risks were used to decide a species conservation status.
In 2007, American government biologists insisted that by 2050, when summer sea ice would cover 42% less of the Arctic than it did in 1979, polar bears in ten populations most at risk would be wiped out.
Almost 20,000 bears would be gone by mid-century and by 2100, the species would be on the brink of extinction.
The process had already begun, the experts said, and it would only get worse.
Polar bears became a global warming icon, the preferred symbol of the consequences of burning fossil fuels.
The media, with the help of polar bear specialists and conservation organizations, made sure we were aware of each incident that signaled the dying of the species.
A few polar bears were reported to have drowned in a storm – expect more and more bears to drown during long swims across open water, we were told.
Photographers filmed a bear or two breaking through thin ice, and suggested yet another way drowning deaths could occur.
A few photos of starving bears made headlines, usually accompanied by the suggestion that perhaps hundreds more were in the same condition.
A few incidents of cannibalism also made headlines, again with the implication that dozens more were going unreported across the Arctic, as polar bears became desperate with hunger.
This frenzy of dire news went on unchecked until 2007, when the first reports on polar bear studies undertaken since 2004 were made public.
Surprisingly, the news from a new Davis Strait study wasn’t grim but encouraging.
Not until about 2013, however, as more studies were completed, did it become clear that polar bears really were thriving.
Unfortunately, the media weren’t so keen on good news: if positive results were reported at all, the encouraging aspects were downplayed or dismissed, often using quotes from polar bear specialists themselves.
It was as if polar bear scientists and their government funders wanted the public in the dark about the good news.
What was going on?
Summer sea ice had indeed declined – more than expected, in fact.
By 2016, it was apparent that potentially devastating ice levels had come decades sooner than experts predicted.
By September 2007 sea ice extent was about 43% less than it had been in 1979 – a magnitude of decline not expected until mid-century, and every year after was almost as low, or lower.
Polar bears had been living through their dire sea ice future since 2007.
Yet no more drowned polar bears were documented, no more bears than normal starved to death, no unusual spikes in cannibalism occurred, and not a single polar bear population was wiped out.
Polar bear photos still led media stories about starving bears, sea ice loss, and the threats of global warming but they were photos of fat, healthy bears.
By 2015, new studies showed that several populations once thought to be declining had increased in size or remained stable.
In 2005, the official global polar bear estimate was about 22,500.
By 2015, it had risen to about 26,500 but only part of that was a real increase.
However, by early 2017, the results of two studies of bears in high-risk regions were made public: they never made the mainstream papers, but they changed the picture.
Polar bear numbers in one half of the Barents Sea, had increased by 42% between 2004 and 2015, suggesting the entire population grew, by about 1100 – an increase not included in the official global estimate.
A survey of Baffin Bay bears, completed in 2013, showed that the population had not declined by 25% as expected but increased by 36% – adding about 750 more bears to the global total.
The formerly small population in Kane Basin more than doubled.
Now we know that between 2005 and 2015, the estimated size of polar bear populations in the two ecoregions that experts thought would be wiped out by years of low summer sea ice had grown by more than 3100.
The global average had risen to about thirty thousand bears, far and away the highest estimate in more than 50 years.
So why did the models devised by polar bear experts get it so wrong?
First, it appears that sea ice conditions and food abundance in early spring have been very good for polar bears despite the decline in summer ice extent.
Polar bears consume 8 months worth of food during early spring, which makes it the critical feeding period.
Second, it appears the experts assumed that when summer sea ice was present, polar bears ate more seals than they actually do.
Adult bearded and harp seals are virtually the only seals that rest on the ice from about mid-May to October because most ringed seals (the primary prey species of polar bears) have left the ice to feed.
Broken pack ice in summer leaves these adult seals many escape routes, which means most polar bears eat very little over the summer whether they spend those months on the sea ice or on shore.
It turns out summer is not a critical feeding season for polar bears.
Lastly, seal pups in many areas are more abundant than they were in the 1980s.
Less summer ice in the Chukchi Sea, for example, has meant more ringed seal pups in spring for polar bears to eat because these seals do most of their feeding in open water.
In short, the claim that summer sea ice is essential habitat for polar bears has been scuttled by their continued health through years of low ice coverage.
Evidence does not support the claim that loss of summer sea ice, regardless of the cause, is a major risk for polar bear survival.
Polar bear specialists vastly underestimated the resilience of polar bears when they modeled future survival and many of the assumptions they made were wrong.
Thriving polar bear populations have exposed the hubris behind global warming’s most beloved icon and “the plight of the polar bear” has become an international joke.
Humpback whales were recently taken off the US Endangered Species List because their population size indicated a strong recovery from past over-hunting.
Polar bears have done the same and are not currently threatened with extinction.
A thorough external review of the polar bear status issue is now required - not only because it’s the right thing to do but because it may help restore public support for science and conservation.
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Armand D'Angour 님이 리트윗했습니다
Cf Aristotle 'Being honoured is too unreliable a means to happiness, since it may be seen to depend on the giver rather than the recipient'.
아리스토텔레스 -- 존경받는 것은 행복에 이르는 믿음직한 방법이 되지 못한다. 그것은 존경을 받는 사람보다 존경을 바치는 사람에 의존하기 때문이다.
NassimNicholasTaleb 님이 리트윗했습니다 Armand D'Angour
Wittgenstein's ruler (in Fooled by Randomness): Under some conditions the table will be measuring the ruler than the other way around.
비트겐스타인의 잣대: 몇 가지 조건에서는, 테이블을 측정하는 것은 잣대가 아니라, 그 반대로 테이블이 잣대를 측정한다.
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대학가에서 좌파들의 safe space를 둔 논란
Geoffrey Miller
'Taking the controversies out of colleges is like taking the weights out of gyms. You don't need to be safe. You need to get strong.'
대학에서 논쟁을 제거하는 것은 체육관에서 역기를 제거하는 것과 같다. 학생들은 안전할 필요가 없다. 그들은 강해져야 한다.
NassimNicholasTaleb 님이 리트윗했습니다 Geoffrey Miller
You want to send your kids to college so they come back intellectually stronger, not pre-bureaucrats.
부모가 아이를 대학에 보내는 것은 아이가 예비 관료가 아니라, 지적으로 성숙해서 돌아오기를 바라는 것이다.
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국민들이 빵과 서커스에만 관심이 있던 로마는 얼마 후 멸망하고 말았다. 현대의 미국도 이와 다르지 않다.
우리 역시 티비만 틀면 어디서고 요리 프로그램과 노래, 드라마를 본다. 우리 역시 사정은 크게 다르지 않다.
Of Bread And Circuses
Guest Post by Ben Moreell , January 1, 1956
A twentieth-century repetition of the mistakes of ancient Rome would be inexcusable.Rome was eight and a half centuries old when the poet, Juvenal, penned his famous tirade against his degenerate countrymen. About 100 A.D. he wrote: “Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things, bread and circuses.” (Carcopino, Daily Life in Roman Times [New Haven, Yale University Press, 1940], p. 202.) Forty years later, the Roman historian, Fronto, echoed the charge in more prosaic language: “The Roman people is absorbed by two things above all others, its food supplies and its shows.” (Ibid.)
Here was a once-proud people, whose government had been their servant, who had finally succumbed to the blandishments of clever political adventurers. They had gradually relinquished their sovereignty to government administrators to whom they had granted absolute powers, in return for food and entertainment. And the surprising thing about this insidious progression is that, at the time, few realized that they were witnessing the slow destruction of a people by a corruption that would eventually transmute a nation of self-reliant, courageous, sovereign individuals into a mob, dependent upon their government for the means of sustaining life.
There are no precise records that describe the feelings of those for whom the poet, Juvenal, felt such scorn. But using the clues we have, and judging by our own experience, we can make a good guess as to what the prevailing sentiments of the Roman populace were. If we were able to take a poll of public opinion of first and second century Rome, the overwhelming response would probably have been—“We never had it so good.” Those who lived on “public assistance” and in subsidized rent-free or low-rent dwellings would certainly have assured us that now, at last, they had “security.” Those in the rapidly expanding bureaucracy—one of the most efficient civil services the world has ever seen—would have told us that now government had a “conscience” and was using its vast resources to guarantee the “welfare” of all of its citizens; that the civil service gave them job security and retirement benefits; and that the best job was a government job! Progressive members of the business community would have said that business had never been so good, that the government was their largest customer, which assured them a dependable market, and that the government was inflating currency at about 2 per cent a year, which instilled confidence and gave everyone a sense of well-being and prosperity.
And no doubt the farmers were well pleased too. They supplied the grain, the pork and the olive oil, at or above parity prices, for the government’s doles.
The government had a continuous program of large-scale public works which were said to stimulate the economy, provide jobs and promote the general welfare, and which appealed to the national pride.
The high tax rates required by the subsidies discouraged the entrepreneur with risk capital which, in turn, favored the well-established, complacently prosperous businessman. It appears that there was no serious objection to this by any of the groups affected. An economic historian, writing of business conditions at this period, says, “The chief object of economic activity was to assure the individual, or his family, a placid and inactive life on a safe, if moderate, income . . . . There were no technical improvements in industry after the early part of the second century.” There was no incentive to venture. Inventions began to dry up because no one could reasonably expect to make a profit out of them.
Rome was sacked by Alaric and his Goths in 410 A.D. But long before the barbarian invasions, Rome was a hollow shell of the once noble Republic. Its real grandeur was gone and its people were demoralized. Most of the old forms and institutions remained. But a people whose horizons were limited by bread and circuses had destroyed the spirit while paying lip service to the letter of their once hallowed traditions.
The fall of Rome affords a pertinent illustration of the observation by the late President Lowell of Harvard University that “no society is ever murdered—it commits suicide.”
I do not imply that bread and circuses are evil things in themselves. Man needs material sustenance and he needs recreation. These needs are so basic that they come within the purview of every religion. In every religion there is a harvest festival of thanksgiving for good crops. And as for recreation, we need only recall that our word “holiday” was originally “holy day,” a day of religious observance. In fact, the circuses and games of old Rome were religious in origin. The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease. The moral decay of the people was not caused by the doles and the games. These merely provided a measure of their degradation. Things that were originally good had become perverted and, as Shakespeare reminds us, “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”
More than fifty years ago, the great historian of Rome, Theodore Mommsen, came to our country on a visit. At a reception in his honor, someone asked him, “Mr. Mommsen, what do you think of our country?” The great scholar replied, “With two thousand years of European experience before your eyes, you have repeated every one of Europe’s mistakes. I have no further interest in you.”
One wonders what Mommsen would say today in the light of the increasingly rapid destruction of our traditional values during the past 25 years.
Many of our people have been converted to the idea that liberty has been tried and found wanting, just as many believe that Christianity has been tried and found wanting. They do not know that what has been found wanting is not the true values of liberty and religion but only perversions, worthless counterfeits. So when we urge upon them those true values, they shy away. They have been fooled before, so they want to try something which they think is “new.”
How far have we departed from our traditional values? There is no mystery here. It is well known that the basic policies of the two major political parties with respect to the intrusion of the State into the economic and social lives of the people differ only in degree and method. There is no discernible difference in fundamental principle. Prominent political figures of both parties pay lip service to the letter of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, while they violate the spirit.
The proponents of an all-powerful centralized government have erected a bureaucratic colossus which imposes upon our people controls, regimentation, punitive taxation and subsidies to pressure groups, thus paralleling the “organized mendicancy, subvention, bureaucracy and centralization” which played so great a part in the downfall of Rome!
We are demoralized by an indecent competition. Each one denounces government handouts and privileges for the other fellow—but maintains that his special privilege is for the “general welfare.” The slogan of many of us seems to be, “Beat the other fellow to the draw”—i.e., “draw out of the public treasury more than you put in, before someone else gets it.”
I am no prophet of inevitable doom. On the contrary, I am sounding an alarm that disaster lies ahead unless present danger signals are heeded.
What specific steps should we take? I believe that neither I nor anyone else, no matter how exalted his position, can determine for 165 million people their day-to-day economic and social decisions concerning such matters as wages, prices, production, associations and others. So I propose that these decisions, and the problems connected therewith, be returned to the people themselves. This could be done in four steps, as follows:
First—Let us stop this headlong rush toward collectivism. Let there be no more special privileges for employers, employees, farmers, businessmen or any other groups. This is the easiest step of all. We need only refrain from passing more socialistic laws.
Second— Let us undertake at once an orderly demobilization of many of the existing powers of government by the progressive repeal of those socialistic laws which we already have. This will be a very difficult step because every pressure group in the nation will fight to retain its subsidies, monopoly privileges and protection. But if freedom is to live, all special privileges must go.
Third—Of the powers that remain in government, let us return as many as possible to the states. For on the local level, the people will be able to apply more critical scrutiny to the acts of their government agents.
Fourth—Above all, let us resolve that never again will we yield to the seduction of the government panderer who comes among us offering “bread and circuses,” paid for with our own money, in return for our sovereign rights!
Admiral Ben Moreell (1892 – 1978) was the chief of the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Yards and Docks and of the Civil Engineer Corps. Best known to the American public as the Father of the Navy’s Seabees, Moreell’s life spanned eight decades, two world wars, a great depression and the evolution of the United States as a superpower. He was a distinguished Naval Officer, a brilliant engineer, an industrial giant and articulate national spokesman.
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2017년 3월 15일 이후 모든 것이 정지한다. 정부가 파산한다.
David Stockman
“I think what people are missing is this date, March 15th 2017. That’s the day that this debt ceiling holiday that Obama and Boehner put together right before the last election in October of 2015. That holiday expires. The debt ceiling will freeze in at $20 trillion. It will then be law. It will be a hard stop. The Treasury will have roughly $200 billion in cash. We are burning cash at a $75 billion a month rate. By summer, they will be out of cash. Then we will be in the mother of all debt ceiling crises. Everything will grind to a halt. I think we will have a government shutdown. There will not be Obama Care repeal and replace. There will be no tax cut. There will be no infrastructure stimulus. There will be just one giant fiscal bloodbath over a debt ceiling that has to be increased and no one wants to vote for.”
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스탠포드대 학장이었던 에치멘디의 경고.
대학가의 좌파들에 의한 지적 불관용
Former Provost John Etchemendy
But I’m actually more worried about the threat from within. Over the years, I have watched a growing intolerance at universities in this country – not intolerance along racial or ethnic or gender lines – there, we have made laudable progress. Rather, a kind of intellectual intolerance, a political one-sidedness, that is the antithesis of what universities should stand for. It manifests itself in many ways: in the intellectual monocultures that have taken over certain disciplines; in the demands to disinvite speakers and outlaw groups whose views we find offensive; in constant calls for the university itself to take political stands. We decry certain news outlets as echo chambers, while we fail to notice the echo chamber we’ve built around ourselves.
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