Sunday, September 30, 2012

Real Talk: Cultural Evolution

For as long as I can remember black vernacular has included "real talk" or "real talk son" as a starting phrase to conversations. It denotes authenticity and accuracy for the subsequent speech the speaker is about to deliver. Depending, of course, on the character of the character who is doing the speaking. A couple of years ago I encountered "real talk", the phrase, used in an unfamiliar context. The white context (the wh in white pronounced like the wh in cool whip).

Real talk, I am accustomed to using this phrase as a substitute for honestly, truthfully and frankly. The white context differs. Instead of being used as a starting phrase, it is used to describe a time where one held a congenial conversation. What I once knew to be solely adverbial is now a noun as well.

After many instances of hearing the new "real talk," I have realized that the present is a transitionary period. Just as the Neanderthals had a short stint of coexistence with the Cro-Magnon, the two definitions of the phrase "real talk" are still in use. Although, recently the usage in the black context has dwindled significantly. For someone who gets delighted about linguistics and etymology, developments such as these need to be paid attention to.

Here is my attempt to be inclusive by combining the two distinct cultural uses of the phrase. Real talk, my wants will be satisfied if I have real talk about Liberalism.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

The word is Liberal

I want to keep this blog filled with as much original content as I deem feasible, and I shan't skimp on the writing. However, I do come across an article from time to time that is so pertinent that I simply must share it. This FreeMan article covers the confusion that occurs when using terms such as left or right as political descriptors. The terms have changed with time, and are beyond obsolete. Leonard Read, whom is the author, clearly and concisely illustrates this point. His fault is only that he could not provide a more adequate word than libertarian.

Libertarian is fine, and thus his fault is minimal. However, one of the goals of this blog is to reclaim the term Liberal from the interventionists. And thus I say a better word to describe the liberty/freedom/capitalist mentality is Liberal. Noninterventionist is the most specific and accurate, but it has the burden of being wordy. I prefer a term that positively declares what I am to one which denotes what I am not. I believe that individuals should be free. I am a Liberal.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Freed Men are Friends

Being a noninterventionist anywhere is going to make you butt heads with a lot of people. Being one in California is another story entirely. At least places like New Hampshire, Maine and Texas harbor somewhat individualist minded populaces. Somehow I have yet to completely lose my mind. I think reading and writing about it aids the situation.

The sheer confidence it takes to look into the eyes of 99% of the people I interact with and know that their political world view is unjust. That it not only fails to satisfy their wants, but logically cannot. To know that the problems of the world are due to intervention. Whether that be to imprison people indefinitely without trials, extra-judiciously assassinate teenage Americans or trust a private bank with our currency supply. The self-control needed not to release a barbaric YAWP, every time someone advocates a central plan for the interactions of other individuals' lives. A plan which could only be successfully orchestrated by an omniscient and omnipotent being. These are attributes that I have and that I do not need to display with my friend Josh Friedman.

The reduction of stress that comes about with interacting with a fellow noninterventionist is neither qualifiable nor quantifiable to another human. It is however, splendiferous. I need not prove the fact that we are surrounded by a police state that violates the 4th, 5th and 6th amendments. I need not lay out apodeictic axioms that illustrate unequivocally the unemployment wrought by minimum wage laws. 

With Josh I can mosey around a basketball court musing about libertarians that are averse to the Privatization of Roads and Highways. A semantical argument about whether a society with voluntary government taxes can be called a society with government at all, can also ensue. All this is to say, I believe in this man and his work. He is a product of the Digital Age, and frees minds with the medium that he has matured on. The internets. His journalism is a breath of fresh air to those strangled by the tentacles of Leviathan's 4th Branch. Main stream media be warned. 

His website www.freeslo.com is where he preaches the evangel of freedom. Support this man. Read.

Ge'ez Lesson

 This will probably be the least polemic post I ever do. If you have a problem with it, then I  have no words to rebuke you. 

I want to revive the "dead" language of Ge'ez. It is both semitic and ancient. It is the root of many tongues in the horn of Africa. So that it is not buried between the walls of Non-Chalcedonian Churches and Beta Israel Temples, I have made a video that helps promote its usage. If you missed that last link search Ge'ez Calendar on youtube. 

The Ge'ez number system and calendar system have been categorically ignored by the past few generations of Habeshas. I hope the musings of am American born Habesha can inspire the devotion that helped our beautiful language flourish in the first place.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

The Process of Peace

The easy response to violence is more violence. The old adage, fight fire with fire, attests to this mentality. This is the illiberal mentality. This is the interventionist mentality. This is the Anti-Capitalist Mentality. Tools that a liberal should use to disassemble this mentality are cooperation and peace.

For as long as syndicates of force, States, have existed they have responded to disputes with this mentality more than with diplomacy. The U.S. spends almost as much as the rest of the world combined on military expenditures. Even without knowledge of that which is not seen, and without the abolition of the State, these are misallocated resources. If even one fifth of these resources were given to the promotion of peace we would live in a more secure world. I do not advocate extra government spending for peace, but if the dollars have already been budgeted then the Institute for Peace is a preferable candidate to the U.S. Department of War (an Orwellian renaming).

Jesus of Nazareth, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi are renown for practicing non-violence in response to violence. Their illustrations of radical peace are inspirational. I am not a pacifist, but I do believe in exhausting channels of peace before resorting to violence in the form of self-defense. I mention self-defense, because it is only justifiable to use force if another party has initiated force against you. As owner of their body, an individual has the right to expel any invasions of their sovereign territory.

For an individual to act aggressively only in acts of self-defense is admirable. For a State to do so is anomalous. Aere perennius, would be an expansive voluntary association devoted to peace. www.antiwar.com and the liberty movement in general (TomWoods, LFBDailyPaul, CircleBastiatAdamKokesh) are pioneering my vision for a peaceful world. The Los Angeles Center for Civic Mediation is laying the groundwork for peace-building in schools and negotiations. My dream sees the results of these seeds. I have a dream, that one day, the planet will be comprised of a majority of peacemongers.

Voluntary exchange is what will lead to the increased production of peacemongers. Violence begetting violence is aided by the anti-capitalist mentality. The view that trade must bring about one winner and one loser. The perception of producers swindling and hornswoggling consumers out of their money. Voluntary exchange involves the trading of goods and services subjectively desired by individuals. Both parties A and B win. Unfettered capitalism brings about win-win exchanges as opposed to the zero-sum game that it is portrayed as allowing to occur. When governments, apparati of coercion, prevent peaceful exchanges cooperation is being stopped. Whether their reasoning comes from territorial disputes over imaginary and arbitrary borders or lobbying from domestic special interests, it is a violent strategy nonetheless. For a velvet revolution of voluntary exchange to happen, State barriers in the forms of tariffs, sanctions and embargos must be utterly repudiated.

Then humans, being the innovative creatures that they are, will increase their specialization through the division of labor. This cooperation leads to further satisfying of wants. All the while, communication between varied individuals will breed better understanding of different cultures. Using cooperation as a contagion the objective of spreading peace as a pathogen will be achieved.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

A Liberal Limerick

I made a hip-hop mixtape when I was in my sophomore year of college. My impressions are that I need training on how to stay on beat, and to sever the choral reading of the hook. I keep thinking I will hop back in the booth one day, but it has of yet not occurred. However, I still write lyrics from time to time. If I may toot my own horn, they are not too shabby. This verse in particular has a noninterventionist focus.

Like Jada said "no salary cap in the dope game!"
competition bred for fortune or fame,
voluntary exchange, still niggas cops slain,
still remember Oscar's name,
what about the bankers mayn?
drug dealing is just a part of the free market,
homie, no phony, crony-capitalist T.A.R.P. shit,
getting billions in bread, Tony Stark it,
when workers get the choice, everyone elevates,
rough riders in a Rolls Royce, and hella vapes,
vagrants in V-dubs, in every state,
people in poverty having problem paying for a beer,
are better off than the princes of yesteryear,
government goons worry about wife beaters,
while Black Friday brought 129 thousand new heaters,
fuck the feds when it's self defense,
civilly jumping over your fence,
cuz you're preoccupied spending on foreign defense,
while they occupy Zuccatti,
you occupy damn near everything but Saudi,
get nervous of the day we're actually rowdy,
Wild West burning bridges with burners, yelling Howdy!

Monday, September 3, 2012

Linguistics and Indirect Echange

Language and money have the same origin story. They came about through the decentralized private exchanges of individuals. Hayek refers to these phenomenon as results of spontaneous order. Imagine that! Our primary mode of communication and our medium of indirect exchange are not products of some unelected czar.

Joseph Salerno delivered a delightfully informative afternoon lecture, on the history of money, during a congressional briefing. An individual may directly exchange a good or service for the good or service for the good or service of another individual. This is bartering. The historical problem that often arose with bartering is that direct exchange only works when both parties have exactly what each other wants. For example a person with good A trading with a person with good B does not always desire good B, and vice versa. The solution is to stock up and trade a third commodity C, that many people value but do not need to use as promptly as what they want. This is indirect exchange. Properly speaking, this is money.

The diktat of King James (mistranslation of Jacob) brought about the authoring of a bible that enshrined the English language with eudaimonia. The King James Version. However, the English tongue was not crafted by such a central command. The private interactions of influential Germanic tribesmen led to the founding of English. Not the Fuehrer, nor the Kaiser nor the Pope.

Today myriad languages have been standardized and are supplemented with words from centralized boards. Yet the market economy's inexorable mutation is still evident. Through my voluntary interactions with individuals from different regions of the U.S., I have noted examples of changes in the lexicon. Three culprits of evolving diction are ratchet, bougie and swag.

I opine that the current usage of the word ratchet did not come from the dictionary definition, a mechanical device. It is more likely to stem from a mispronunciation or consternation of the word racket, an undesirable ruckus. The word ratchet refers to any behavior or person caught behaving in an obnoxious, sexual or self-demeaning manner. The bourgeoisie are the so-called middle class workers whom ignore the plight of the masses, whilst remaining oblivious to their own submission to the private owners of the means of production. In short, elitists not at the highest echelon. Bougie, an overt shortening of bourgeoise, refers to persons that display particularly discriminating tastes. Prices occur in the market, because of the oscillating discriminatory whims of the populace. However, bougie people are seen as picky in their selections. Mises would be appalled, but Marx & Engels would be beaming with pride. Swagger is a purposefully braggadocios gait. Swag is its descendant. Swag has come to denote supreme confidence, stylish attire and a filler word for Lil B fanatics.

The remarkable aspect of these innovations is that they sprouted without the watering of a cold government bureaucrat's hand. Instead, the Adam Smith's invisible hand handled this harvest of ideas. Just as it did the linguistics and indirect exchange. Leave humans alone to interact voluntarily, and appreciate the beauty that unfolds.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Premeditated Polemic Poems

My sabbatical is over. This will be a presentation of brief poems that I have constructed as euphemisms for the government. I was entertained with this enterprise, I hope you will be as well.

the coterie of collusion, is the imperial illusion.

the conglomerate of coercion, seeks to disperse immersion.

the clique of compulsion, thinks they own the ocean.

the State is an apparatus, of centrally uncontrolled madness.

the gang of goons, wants to homestead moons.

the government group, devises a devious dupe.

the team of takers, sends prisoners to their maker.

the union of force, assassinates children with no remorse.

the congregation of collaborators, work in secret not as ellaborators.


Uno mas en espanol. I apologize for the lack of accent marks and tildes.

No soy de Honduras, pero tiene las curas,
es el tiempo de ideologias puras, hay una guerra de las drogas,
con las policias de E.E.U.U., persecucion y discriminacion a los que se parecen al Zulu,
pero hay esperanza para cambiar en la Region Especial de Desarollo,
vamos a comer como estamos a la mesa con pollo.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Economics and Eloheim

Whilst delighting in the sights and sounds of Kenneth Park, I came upon a genius. My church youth group was discussing the paths that sinners can take. Either progress or regress, there is no middle ground. In Human Action, the seminal work of Ludwig von Mises, there is similitude to this black and white truth. The Volkswirtschaft (the market economy) is ever changing.

Mises often describes the fictional world of the evenly rotating economy, where the State sets all prices. In this fantasy, Sozialismus, there is a stage in which equilibrium of prices occurs. This would mean humans would cease attempts at improving their current state of affairs. As long as humans act they act in accordance with their self-interest to try to attain a more satisfying state of affairs. Mises describes this in lieu of prices, "In the world of reality all prices are fluctuating and acting men are forced to take full account of these changes...The market economy is essentially characterized as a social system in which there prevails an incessant urge toward improvement" (pg.539). The only way to avoid the apodeictic axioms of the Volkswirtschaft is for humans not to act. That is to say that in the realm of the living, economic law is sovereign to utopian fantasies.

According to orthodox Christianity, every human is a sinner. There is the inherited sin that one receives as a descendant of Adam and Eve. Also there are the sedulous trespasses against the decalogue that we all take part in. Idolatry, adultery, theft, bearing false witness etc... pick your poison. The reason for the stress on orthodoxy per se is, because I have heard Protestants use terminology that resembles the arguments presupposing an evenly rotating economy. Often Protestants speak of a moment, in their teenage years or college, when they were saved. Whether they were raised Christian or not, they believe there to be a state of equilibrium in their lives when it comes to sin. Before they are truly cognizant of Christ they acted in a way that they call "unchristian" or sinful. Once their faith has bloomed, and a quasi-ascetic life begun, they are "christian". This means that they are somehow in a separate class, from their old selves and others whom may consider themselves Christian, where they do not really sin anymore. This is patently false. A living human cannot help but act. The imperfection of humans elicits sinful action. Eternal life is promised to those humble enough to submit to the will of the one transcendent creator. This submission is exemplified by the sacrament of repentance/confession. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not with us" (1 John 1:9-10 KJV). The process is an acknowledgement that we are not omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent entities. We are imperfect, and in a gradual process of being saved by the grace of the perfect King of Kings.

 The verisimilitude evenly rotating economy fails because humans constantly change their subjective wants. Humans have two options to choose in building a relationship with God. They can either reduce their sin count or add to it. Either an increase in proximity to God occurs or a distancing from his will. There is no equilibrium. Human action dictates the proclivity to mutability. Yahweh is immutable. We may seek to improve our current state of affairs with an assiduous battle to reduce our sin count. It ends only when we cease to act, in other words die.


Post Scriptum: A special thanks to Ye Maryam Lijoch of Los Angeles and Abba Thomas, whom helped spark the thought that led to this post. Discussion is delectable.