What is the Meaning of New Year’s ?

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The meaning of most holidays is clear: Valentine’s Day celebrates romance; July Fourth, independence; Thanksgiving, productivity; Christmas, good will toward men. The meaning of New Year’s Day–the world’s most celebrated holiday–is not so clear. On this day, many people remember last year’s achievements and failures and look forward to the promise of a new year, of a new beginning. But this celebration and reflection is the result of more than an accident of the calendar. New Year’s has a deeper significance. What is it?

On New Year’s Day, when the singing, fireworks and champagne toasts are over, many of us become more serious about life. We take stock and plan new courses of action to better our lives. This is best seen in one of the most popular customs and the key to the meaning of New Year’s: making resolutions.

On average each American makes 1.8 New Year’s resolutions. When the rest of the world is taken into account, the number of people making resolutions skyrockets to hundreds of millions. From New York to Paris to Sydney, interesting similarities arise as shown in two very common resolutions: people wanting to be more attractive by losing weight, and to be healthier by exercising more and smoking less. They want to do things better, become better people.

New Year’s Day is the most active-minded holiday, because it is the one where people evaluate their lives and plan and resolve to take action. One dramatic example of taking resolutions seriously is the old European custom of: “What one does on this day one will do for the rest of the year.” What unites this custom and the more common type of resolutions is that on the first day of the year people take their values more seriously.

Values are not only physical and external. They also can be psychological. Many New Year’s resolutions reveal that people want to better themselves by improving psychologically. For example, look at your own resolutions over the years. Haven’t they included such vows as: be more patient with your children, improve your self-esteem, be more emotionally open with your wife? Such resolutions express the moral ambitiousness of a person wanting to improve his self and life.

What then is the philosophic meaning of New Year’s resolutions? Every resolution you make on this day implies that you are in control of your self, that you are not a victim fated by circumstance, controlled by stars, owned by luck, but that you are an individual who can make choices to change your life. You can learn statistics, ask for that promotion, fight your shyness, search for that marriage partner. Your life is in your own hands.

But what is the purpose of making such goals and resolutions? Why bother? Making New Year’s resolutions (and doing so even after failing last year’s) stresses that people want to be happy. On New Year’s Day many people accept, often more implicitly than explicitly, that happiness comes from the achievement of values. That is why you resolve to be healthier, more ambitious, more confident. You want to enjoy that sense of purpose, accomplishment and pleasure that one feels when achieving values. It is happiness that is the motor and purpose of one’s life. It is New Year’s, more than any other day, that makes the attainment of happiness more real and possible. This is the meaning of New Year’s Day and why it is so psychologically important and significant to people throughout the world.

If people were to apply the value-achievement meaning of New Year’s Day explicitly and consistently 365 days each year, they would be happier.

So every day, fill your champagne glass of life to the brim with values–and drink deep to your life and the joy that it can and should be.

Happy New Year. Happy life.

Scott McConnell, Capitalism Magazine

Don’t Vote

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In her 1957 masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand introduced us to a powerful concept which she called “the sanction of the victim.”  This concept is defined as “the willingness of the good to suffer at the hands of the evil, to accept the role of sacrificial victim for the ‘sin‘ of creating values.”  As Rand explains through the character of her hero, John Galt, “Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us,” and, “I saw that evil was impotent…and the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it.”   In Rand’s view, morality requires that we do not sanction our own victimhood.  This concept may be original in the thinking of Ayn Rand and is foundational to her moral theory: she holds that evil is a parasite on the good and can only exist if the good tolerates it.

The sanction of the victim takes many forms, on the individual level in our personal relationships, and in the social or public realm in our relationship with the State.   In Rand’s Atlas Shrugged it primarily takes the form of unearned guilt and the need to acknowledge and show kindness towards our tormentors and those who would exploit us.  Ultimately, the sanction of the victim is used by our exploiters as the weapon of our own destruction.  The victim becomes an accessory to the crime.

On the personal level, among countless situations, the sanction of the victim would apply to the beaten wife, the verbally abused husband, and the parents of mooching offspring that refuse to grow up and leave home (excluding the handicapped and emotionally disabled).  An ever-growing percentage of our youth now choose to remain at home with their parents indefinitely.  The parent-victims have been played like a violin by their offspring, conditioned to believe they are financially and emotionally helpless, incapable of surviving independently.  The parents are terrified of the unbearable guilt they would carry if they were to send them packing.  The parents’ acceptance and acquiescence constitute the sanction of the victim.  Consequently, the parents become the victims of their own cowardice.

The sanction of the victim in the public or political realm expresses itself in two principal forms: participation in popular democratic processes, including elections, and acknowledging, approving, and extending respect and kindness toward our political exploiters (i.e. elected officials, their many toadies, and the supportive media).

Participating in the political process in all its forms constitutes the sanction of the victim. Again, you are an accessory to the crime, a victim of the crimes in which you are an active, but ignorant participant.  You are in effect abating the crimes of the political elite.  All of these things send the wrong message to the criminals and reprobates that comprise the political class.   Voting, attending political rallies, and perhaps worst of all, sending them money, constitute the sanction of the victim.  We are telling the political class, “We approve of your system.  Even though you’re robbing us blind and crushing our Constitutional liberties, we still like you.  Even though you’re corrupt beyond words, you are nevertheless lovable thugs, and we could not begin to fathom or contemplate life without you.

So how do we beat these people?  Democracy and every form of representative government based on popular consent with constitutional constraints is the god that failed.  We are told that political apathy and disengagement is to blame.  I disagree.  Disengagement is the solution, not the problem.  The sanction of the victim only reinforces the problem, whether it’s a bad marriage or a corrupt, tyrannical government.

Here is the Three-Step Program for defanging the snake.

DON’T VOTE.  As political satirist P.J. O’Rourke said, “Don’t vote, it only encourages them.” Elections change nothing systemically.  They only decide who gets to pick your pocket and hold the boot over your neck.  What difference would it have made if slaves had been allowed to elect their plantation overseers?  When you vote you’re doing the same thing.

When has there ever been an election that gives you the choice of A, B, or none of the above?  Hmmm?  Never.  Wouldn’t it be great to live in a voting district with no legislator, no congressman, no senator, no one to suck up to?  Yes, but you don’t have that option.  But you can refuse to be part of the whole scam by not voting.  So don’t vote.  Look, you’re being used like a cheap condom.  Furthermore, the odds of you casting the deciding vote are far less than the odds of your winning the Big Lotto.  In fact, the odds of your being involved in a fatal car accident en route to the polling place are far greater than the odds of casting the deciding vote.  When you vote, you are sanctioning the system, its leaders and their crimes.

Voting is just a bad habit.  Like all bad habits, it is self-defeating.  Moreover, it serves to reinforce the bad habits of your tormentors.  I gave up voting and smoking over 30 years ago.  Both healthy choices, and among the most liberating and empowering I had ever made.

I remember a popular saying when I was young: Imagine if they held a war and nobody showed up.  Well, imagine if they held an election and nobody showed up.  Talking about sending the political class a message !

STOP TREATING POLITICIANS WITH KINDNESS.  What do politicians crave more than power?  Attention.  Attention is their drug of choice.  Indeed, politicians must seek the affirmation and approbation and applause of those whom they would never invite into their homes, have a beer with, or call their friends.  In other words people like you and me.  They have nothing but scorn and contempt for us.  And besides, they’re corrupt beyond words.  So what do we do?  We cram into public auditoriums to catch a glimpse of their faces and suck up their lies like a cat does a saucer of warm milk.  We reach out to grasp their hands as though they were the healing hands of a divine savior.  If you came home from work to find a burglar carrying your possessions out of your house, would you shake his hands and wish him well?  No, you’d call the cops, maybe even beat him up.  Why do we treat politicians any differently when they steal our money every day?  If we started denying politicians the attention and approval they so crave, maybe they’d consider getting an honest living.

A few years ago, on my way to work, our district congressman was shaking hands with us commoners at a Metro station in his district.  Half asleep, I shook his hand and actually wished him well.  Not five seconds later, I realized what a dumb-ass I was—shaking hands with a common criminal, a guttersnipe, a reprobate, a predator, a public parasite.  There I was, extending my best wishes to high-ranking political leader who bore direct responsibility for the mess we found ourselves in.  Would you shake hands with a cat-burglar, a serial rapist, a pedophile?  No, of course not, so why would you shake hands with a politician?

So, take the pledge.  When a politician reaches to shake your hand, act like the person has a communicable disease (what we used to call the “cooties”).  Take your hand back as quickly as possible, and say something pithy like, “No, thank you. When you sleep with dogs, you get fleas.  Don’t ever try to shake my hand again.”  If more of us started treating politicians with the disdain and contempt they deserve, they might begin to consider a more respectable line of work.

3-REFUSE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE PROCESS AT ANY LEVEL.  A good friend of mine is constantly urging me and everyone else he knows to “get involved.  It’s the only way we can fix things.”

As Sherman Potter would say, “Horsehockey !”  What sort of track record does popular participation have compared to apathy and disengagement?  None.  Politicians have always used elections and every form of democratic process to sanction and justify the criminal enterprise we call government.  It just gives them cover.  Government is, and has always been, nothing more than an organized crime syndicate, a protection racket sanctioned by the many forms of popular approval—which Ayn Rand called the sanction of the victim.

So, stay home, focus on your beautiful family, your kids’ Little League and soccer games.  Spend quality time with your friends.  Work at your hobbies, do crossword puzzles, listen to a symphony, read a good book, take your spouse and kids to the movies.  Watch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.  Return the ladder you borrowed from your neighbor seven years ago.  Clean out your fridge, there’s probably stuff in there since you were in grammar school.  Take your grandkids to the playground.  Have a glass of champagne with your breakfast cornflakes.  Tell your kid to rake the leaves while you nap in a hammock.  Go to church, bake brownies, take your dog for a walk; mow the lawn; clean out your gutters; weed the garden, shovel the snow in your driveway.  Be at peace with your Maker, whatever you imagine him to be.  But whatever you do, avoid politicians like stray dogs.

The Artful Dilettante

The Wisdom of Ayn Rand

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“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Why Do Democrats Cheat ?

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There is ample evidence for those who care to see it, that the Presidential election was stolen.  Peter Navarro’s report, entitled “The Immaculate Deception: Six Key Dimensions of Election Irregularities,” is also a must read. 

My question is: Why is the fraud always on one side?   Why do Democrats cheat? 

The population has never been more polarized. Conservatives and regressives (they are not progressive and they are not liberal) no longer worship the same God, share the same values, honor the same heroes and history, or agree on the meaning of human existence.  We also no longer share a view of the nature and purposes of government.  

This country was founded on shared Judeo-Christian beliefs.  Even without a common religion, we still shared basic beliefs that our rights and responsibilities are ordained by Almighty God.  It’s spelled out in our Founding document, the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.– That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Those of us who respect the Founding Father’s understanding of God-given rights respect their vision of limited government that follows from that. Our rights come from God, not from government.  It has become clear that Democrats do not believe this.  Democrats believe that our rights come from government.  Therefore, government can decide what rights we have, can grant new rights and take away rights at the will of those in power.  Take the “universal right to healthcare” for example.  This is not a right in the sense that we believe in rights. God does not operate a healthcare system and grant universal access.  God-given rights do not impose burdens on others.   Government-granted “rights” force people into involuntary servitude in order to provide them.

Once you come to grips with this moral divide it becomes easier to understand why Democrats cheat.   For if you believe that rights come from government it is a very short jump to “the ends justify the means.”  If what you believe is that more government power and control means more rights it becomes understandable that for Democrats anything goes and win by any means necessary.   

John Adams warned us: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Matthew J. Chellis, American Thinker

The Dangers of Government Debt

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It is that time again when liberals, sensing the possibility of being in control, are revving up the debt engines. So many things need to be done in a post-COVID world, and there is so little revenue to pay for it. Debt is the way out, they claim.

Now is the time to borrow a way out of the crisis. Congress has not even waited for the New Year.   Bipartisan efforts are currently underway to negotiate a quick fix for the bargain price of just under a trillion dollars.

Debt Addiction Affects Everyone

Unfortunately, debt addiction affects both political parties. Every administration this century has run budgets at a deficit. The average deficit over the last two administrations has been around one trillion dollars annually. The COVID crisis has been an occasion to throw caution to the wind and borrow like there is no tomorrow.

Some Republican legislators maintain the role of a fiscal conscience. They loudly complain about deficits, especially when the opposition is in power. However, the uproar has diminished as officials scramble to find the means to throw money at the problems they want to go away.

Embrace and Love Debt

The latest buzzword in economic circles is that Americans should not deplore but embrace debt. They should even learn to love it as a saving tool in a chaotic world.

Of course, most Americans need no tutorials on how to embrace debt. Consumers are buried in some $14.3 trillion of it. They manage to spend it on houses, cars, education, home improvement, and credit-card charges. Everywhere they go, they spend beyond their means. In the frenetic intemperance of the marketplace, embracing debt comes all too readily.

Loving debt is more difficult, especially when the bank notices come due. People learn quickly that unsecured commercial acts have abrupt and tragic consequences.

A Fiscal Paradigm Shift

However, the rules that apply to consumer debt that can end so badly do not apply to government spending. Such fiscal acts apparently have no negative consequences.

Thus, liberals are asking that the floodgates of federal debt be opened. Now is the time to help those suffering from the coronavirus crisis, build up its sagging infrastructure and finance their wish list of underfunded causes.

Liberal economists say there is no cause to worry about federal debt. The New York Times’ Paul Krugman, for example, explains that the nature of government debt has changed. He claims there has been “a fiscal paradigm shift” that makes borrowing different and desirable. “The bottom line is that government debt just isn’t a major problem these days.” 

Reasons to Borrow

They wrongly claim debt is not a major problem for many reasons. One of them is that America borrows in its own currency and thus can always issue more money to finance its debt. The circular logic of the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is popular among liberal legislators anxious to receive a blank check to expand federal spending.

However, the main reason why columnists like Krugman encourage debt is because of the low-interest rates that make money cheaper to use. He argues that there are no red lines in the sand dictating the limits of how much can be borrowed. Conservative legislators conjure up these red flags to scare people into not spending money.  

Thus, he says cheap money costs the taxpayer little in the long and short term in interest payments. If there is a time to spend, now is that time. The U.S. government should take full advantage of this opportunity to invest heavily in the future. That means making big government bigger. That means public investment in climate control, education and children (as long as they are not unborn). The panic of the coronavirus gives the spending spree a sense of urgency.

What is there not to love in this new fiscal wonderland where every liberal desire can be fulfilled as if by magic? There are so many reasons to embrace and love debt.

Very Dangerous Assumptions

The Krugman solution is based on very dangerous assumptions. What he proposes is the equivalent of borrowing money from oneself, over and over again with an ever-increasing principal. It might also be compared to paying an extra-low minimal monthly payment on an ever-increasing credit card bill. As long as people make timely payments, everything will work out fine.

It presupposes order and stability over the long term. Krugman affirms that in today’s upside-down world, there will always be very low-interest rates. He notes that “all indications are that they’ll stay low for years to come.”

Issuing government debt also assumes that people worldwide will want to buy American debt — and a lot of it.  As the world’s reserve currency, most people see treasury bonds as a safe harbor despite their low yield. However, should something unexpectedly disastrous happen to America, all this could change — just as life changed with the coronavirus crisis.  

Such wildly optimistic assumptions are dangerous. One great financial calamity could bring down the whole system as it almost did in 2008. It would introduce a new “fiscal paradigm shift” of a different nature.

Changing the Nature of Things

There is something metaphysical in all this debt magic. It reflects the socialist mentality that holds human nature can be changed, and the most bizarre schemes can thus be implemented.

In this case, the “love-debt” scheme contains the idea that people will act responsibly once they realize they possess a money machine that produces as much cash as they want. Such wishful thinking ignores the fact that fallen human nature always seeks the easy way out. People will turn to the cash machine whenever difficulty strikes. In addition, corrupt people will find ways of gaming the system to favor their self-interest. Once the floodgates of unbridled debt are opened, they will follow the unbridled passions to ruin. Human nature has not changed in the face of easy money.

However, liberal moneymakers also want to change the nature of money and debt. Money is an obstacle for those who want a world without restraint. It creates inequalities that liberals wish to overthrow. Money forces people to make an effort to exchange the value of their actions for goods and services. People with jobs delay gratification by working so that they might later enjoy the fruits of their labor. Those who work harder will earn and prosper.

Debt is a ticket to instant gratification. It delays working so that people might enjoy now the goods and services they desire. The need to pay back loans curbs people’s desire to borrow and introduces an element of responsibility.  

Living in the Krugman Fantasyland

In the Krugman fantasyland, the nature of money changes. It is no longer the same means of exchange, measure of value and storehouse of wealth. Money becomes the great equalizer that allows everyone to share wealth regardless of the disparity in their efforts. It becomes a mechanism created out of nothing to serve the political ends of government. Debt is no longer a burden that needs to be paid off. It is a revolving door of obligations that can be put off indefinitely. The nature of debt changes when there is no intention of repayment.

When debt has no immediate consequences, gratification rules. A society thus organized is beholden to the only real power left — a strong central government ever ready to issue more money to “borrow its way out of every crisis” until the day of reckoning comes. If they choose to do this in their personal lives, the consequences are theirs alone to bear. However, it is criminally negligent for political leaders to clamp the debt millstone around America’s neck and still expect the country to swim its way to safety.

Those who embrace and love debt do so at their own risk.

John Horvat II, American Thinker

An Uncertain Happy New Year

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We are not in a “pandemic”. We are in a media-generated hysteria combined with an unprecedented grab for world tyranny. All of this took place in a cultural-psychological climate of unearned guilt, overreliance on emotions as tools of cognition, and unleashed savagery and anarchy designed to break the spirit of decent people. Our crisis is so much greater and deeper than a real pandemic would ever be. It’s a spiritual pandemic of low confidence, where the good guys hide and evil triumphs. It may well destroy not only America, but EVERYTHING that civilization worthy of the name has generated for the last several thousand years.

Happy New Year. But this is no time to lie to ourselves about the gravity of what we face. As you sit at home under house arrest, carefully weigh your options.

Some thoughts from Winston Churchill:

“…if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Summary: The Art of War, by Sun Tzu

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“According as circumstances are favorable, one should modify one’s plans.”
“All warfare is based on deception. Hence when able to attack we must seem unable. When using our forces we must seem inactive. When we are near we make the enemy believe we are far away. When far away we must make the enemy believe we are near.”
“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”
“If he is superior in strength, evade him.”
“Attack him where he is unprepared. Appear where you are not expected.”
“The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand.”
“There is no instance of a country having benefitted from prolonged warfare.”
“A wise general makes a point of foraging on the enemy. One cartload of the enemy’s provisions is equivalent to twenty of one’s own.”
“Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
“The worst strategy of all is to besiege walled cities.”
“There are five essentials for victory: He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces. He will win who’s army is animated by the same spirit throughout all it’s ranks. He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared. He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign.”
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself, but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
“One may know how to conquer without being able to do it.”
“In war, the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won.”
“In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack: the direct and indirect.”
“An army may march great distances without distress if it marches through country where the enemy is not.”
“You can be sure in succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended.”
“Military tactics are like water. For water, in its natural course, runs away from high places and hastens downwards. So, in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and strike at what is weak.”
“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move fall like a thunderbolt.”
“Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.”
“A clever general, therefore, avoids an army when its spirit is keen, but attacks it when it is sluggish and inclined to return.”
“It is a military axiom not to advance uphill against the enemy nor to oppose him when he comes downhill.”
“The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy not coming, but on our readiness to receive him.”
“Make your way by unexpected routes and attack unguarded spots.”
“If they will face death, there is nothing they will not achieve.”
“The principle on which to manage an army is to set up one standard of courage which all must reach.”
“If it is to your advantage, make a forward move. If not, stay where you are.”

Great Quote

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A very good case can be made, on moral as well as economic grounds, for a system in which the individual is required to stand on his own feet, not to lean on the state for handouts. Character, resourcefulness, capacity are formed and developed in struggle with obstacles, not in waiting passively for benefits from outside.   – William Henry Chamberlin

The Wisdom of Ayn Rand

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The “extreme realists” or Platonists, . . . hold that abstractions exist as real entities or archetypes in another dimension of reality and that the concretes we perceive are merely their imperfect reflections, but the concretes evoke the abstractions in our mind. (According to Plato, they do so by evoking the memory of the archetypes which we had known, before birth, in that other dimension.)

The extreme realist (Platonist) and the moderate realist (Aristotelian) schools of thought regard the referents of concepts as intrinsic, i.e., as “universals” inherent in things (either as archetypes or as metaphysical essences), as special existents unrelated to man’s consciousness—to be perceived by man directly, like any other kind of concrete existents, but perceived by some non-sensory or extra-sensory means.

The Platonist school begins by accepting the primacy of consciousness, by reversing the relationship of consciousness to existence, by assuming that reality must conform to the content of consciousness, not the other way around—on the premise that the presence of any notion in man’s mind proves the existence of a corresponding referent in reality.

The content of true reality, according to Plato, is a set of universals or Forms—in effect, a set of disembodied abstractions representing that which is in common among various groups of particulars in this world. Thus for Plato abstractions are supernatural existents. They are nonmaterial entities in another dimension, independent of man’s mind and of any of their material embodiments. The Forms, Plato tells us repeatedly, are what is really real. The particulars they subsume—the concretes that make up this world—are not; they have only a shadowy, dreamlike half-reality.

Comments:

I am almost through with one of the best books I’ve ever read—The Cave and the Light, by Arthur Herman

Momentous conclusions about man are implicit in this metaphysics (and were later made explicit by a long line of Platonists): since individual men are merely particular instances of the universal “man,” they are not ultimately real. What is real about men is only the Form which they share in common and reflect. To common sense, there appear to be many separate, individual men, each independent of the others, each fully real in his own right. To Platonism, this is a deception; all the seemingly individual men are really the same one Form, in various reflections or manifestations. Thus, all men ultimately comprise one unity, and no earthly man is an autonomous entity—just as, if a man were reflected in a multifaceted mirror, the many reflections would not be autonomous entities.

According to Amazon, it’s the definitive sequel to New York Times bestseller How the Scots Invented the Modern World is a magisterial account of how the two greatest thinkers of the ancient world, Plato and Aristotle, laid the foundations of Western culture—and how their rivalry shaped the essential features of our culture down to the present day.
 
Plato came from a wealthy, connected Athenian family and lived a comfortable upper-class lifestyle until he met an odd little man named Socrates, who showed him a new world of ideas and ideals. Socrates taught Plato that a man must use reason to attain wisdom, and that the life of a lover of wisdom, a philosopher, was the pinnacle of achievement. Plato dedicated himself to living that ideal and went on to create a school, his famed Academy, to teach others the path to enlightenment through contemplation.
 
However, the same Academy that spread Plato’s teachings also fostered his greatest rival. Born to a family of Greek physicians, Aristotle had learned early on the value of observation and hands-on experience. Rather than rely on pure contemplation, he insisted that the truest path to knowledge is through empirical discovery and exploration of the world around us. Aristotle, Plato’s most brilliant pupil, thus settled on a philosophy very different from his instructor’s and launched a rivalry with profound effects on Western culture.
 
The two men disagreed on the fundamental purpose of the philosophy. For Plato, the image of the cave summed up man’s destined path, emerging from the darkness of material existence to the light of a higher and more spiritual truth. Aristotle thought otherwise. Instead of rising above mundane reality, he insisted, the philosopher’s job is to explain how the real world works, and how we can find our place in it. Aristotle set up a school in Athens to rival Plato’s Academy: the Lyceum. The competition that ensued between the two schools, and between Plato and Aristotle, set the world on an intellectual adventure that lasted through the Middle Ages and Renaissance and that still continues today.
 
From Martin Luther (who named Aristotle the third great enemy of true religion, after the devil and the Pope) to Karl Marx (whose utopian views rival Plato’s), heroes and villains of history have been inspired and incensed by these two master philosophers—but never outside their influence.
 
Accessible, riveting, and eloquently written, The Cave and the Light provides a stunning new perspective on the Western world, certain to open eyes and stir debate.

I highly recommend this book. A/D

The Freedom to Pursue Happiness

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The governors of all 50 states, and the mayors of many large cities, have assumed unto themselves the powers to restrict private personal choices and lawful public behavior in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19.

They have done so not by enforcing previously existing legislation but by crafting their own executive orders, styling those orders as if they were laws, using state and local police to enforce those so-called laws and — presumably when life returns to normal and the courts reopen — prosecuting the alleged offenders in court.

It is hard to believe that any judge in America would permit a criminal trial of any person for violating a standard of behavior that has not been enacted into law by a legislature. We know this because under our system of representative government, separated powers and guaranteed liberties, only the legislative branch can craft laws and assign punishments for noncompliance. This is Constitutional Law 101. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has written that the executive branch cannot enforce a law that it has written. If it does, we will have approached tyranny.

Have we approached tyranny already?

During the past eight weeks, governors and mayors have closed most businesses, public venues and houses of worship, prohibited public assembly and restricted travel — all of which they have unilaterally decreed to be nonessential.

In his terrifying novel “1984” — which posits a future of total control of all persons by the government and total control of the government by one political party — George Orwell argued that he who controls the meaning of words controls the laws as well.

That Orwellian truism has been manifested like never before here in America, where executive branch officeholders have used state and local police to restrain people from engaging in private and public behavior which they concede was lawful two months ago because today it is not deemed “essential.”

Frankly, I am surprised at the ferocity of police enforcement and the lameness of police compliance. The police have taken the same oaths to uphold the same Bill of Rights — it’s not the Bill of Safety; it’s the Bill of Rights — as have all other officeholders. The police also know that it is unlawful for them to obey an unlawful order, particularly when they use force.

The lockdown orders are all unlawful because none of them — none — has been enacted by a legislature, and all of them — all — interfere with fundamental liberties, each of which is guaranteed — guaranteed — by the Constitution.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I recognize the scientific value of personal efforts to control contagion. But under the Constitution, these social-distancing, wear-your-mask, shut-your-business, stay-at-home edicts constitute mere recommendations that should induce rational voluntary compliance, because the government in America is without lawful power to compel compliance.

The governors complain about resistance. They need to know that Americans will resist efforts to interfere in behavior that remains as moral, natural, lawful and constitutional as it was 60 days ago.

Last week, President Donald Trump, sounding fed up with gubernatorial lockdown orders, declared that religious worship is essential — meaning, in his opinion, all houses of worship should be opened — and he offered that he was prepared to “override” any governors who disagreed with him.

When he realized that he lacked any authority to override even unlawful gubernatorial decrees, he dispatched the Department of Justice to begin filing challenges to governors in federal courts and to argue that constitutional freedoms are being impaired by the states.

I applaud this, but it is too little, too late. Where was the DOJ when Catholic priests were threatened with arrest for saying Mass or distributing palms and when Jewish rabbis were put in COVID-19-infested jails for holding funerals? At all these religious events, folks freely chose to exercise their freedom to worship; and to take their chances.

These DOJ interventions provoked the question: Who should decide what goods, services or venues are essential — the states or the federal government? The question is Orwellian, as the answer is: neither of them. The government in America — state or federal — has no power and no right to determine what goods, services and venues are essential.

Those determinations have been for individuals to make since 1776, and those individual choices have been constitutionally protected from the feds since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791 and from the states since the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868.

What is essential to the laborer or student or housewife may not be essential to the former Goldman Sachs partner who was elected governor of New Jersey, and who decreed last week, “It shall be the duty of every person or entity in this State… to cooperate fully” with his orders, or essential to the ideologue who is mayor of the Big Apple and who, for all his professed liberality, threatened to close permanently — permanently — businesses and houses of worship that flaunt his guidelines

A duty is undertaken voluntarily or by nature, not by executive command, Governor Murphy. And the government cannot take property away from its owners except for a legitimate public use and only for just compensation, Mayor de Blasio.

Governors and mayors can make all the dictatorial pronouncements and threats that they wish. But they cannot use public assets to enforce them. And when they seek to use force, those from whom they seek it should decline the offer.

In America, we decide for ourselves what produces happiness. We have never delegated to the government — ever — the power to make personal choices for us.

And some of us are willing to take chances and even do “nonessential” things. The essence of the freedoms for which we have fought since 1776 is the liberty to be ourselves.

Andrew Napolitano