Notes from Underground

School Is Not Life

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I’m pretty cynical about politics because most political discussion is ignorant babbling. In a typical political discussion, everyone involved knows almost no facts about the subject at hand and they actually have zero influence on the broader society. Yet, they act really serious about everything as if the fate of the world depends on them clinging to the eternal truth captured in some ridiculous video or the punchline from a TV comedian. So, there are very few so-called “political” issues that I care about — but education is one of them. I grew up believing that education was important, but schools are not.

Schools seemed irrelevant to me because I attended a different school every one or two years from the age of 5 until I graduated at 18. It is difficult for me to imagine this thing that Americans call a “public school system,” because in my experience, it was not a single system at all. For example, some schools let above-average students just get A grades in everything; some schools let them take honors or advanced courses; some schools made them sit out in the hallway so they didn’t bother the normal kids; and some schools disciplined them (as in “inflicted corporal punishment”) for working ahead. Even schools in the same district that taught the same grade levels had completely different classes, rules, student demographics, and learning environments.

Lacking continuity in my schooling, I wasn’t trapped in the illusion that some people have about public education as a kind of communal effort to implant a common body of knowledge into children and prepare them for the special little slots waiting for them in the community of adults. I saw education more as a personal adventure in accumulating as many different skills as possible so that I could be successful on my own terms. As a result, I developed the outlook of a self-taught person, and totally ignored the social significance of schooling.

The point of public school in the US has always been to “educate” in the broader cultural sense, not in the narrow sense of learning a subject (or range of subjects) or learning how to do a particular job. From its earliest forms in the US up through its institutionalization and desegregation, it was always explicitly promoted as a method of integrating into “productive” society all the religious outsiders, immigrants, lower classes, Indians, Blacks — everyone who was not a middle-class, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

This is still an explicit objective of public school, except that now it also has a normative function for the middle class — in other words, it has become the de facto normal condition of the middle class to have had a public school experience. That is why the defenders of public schools nowadays go further and claim that without having had a public school experience, a child literally has no place in adult middle-class society and is incapable of functioning normally. This is the single most common public objection to homeschooling, even more than fears of child abuse, child neglect, or educational neglect. They are afraid of the possibility of a “parallel society” — suggesting that there should be only one monolithic society fed by one monolithic school system, neither of which can co-exist with diverse forms.

Ironically, as primary and secondary schools became public enterprises in the US and became more open to all students, they lost their original diversity of mission — to prepare students for integration into particular communities — and developed instead a uniform rationale of idealized, large-scale universality that is disconnected from organic communities, and more closely related to prisons and factories.

The traditional European and American models of education were nearly always directed toward the creation of a particular mindset that would fit in within a particular culture. Prior to the 19th century, however, this usually meant a subculture within the broader society, partly because schools were exclusive by design, not just because of geography. Even after US schools became nearly “universal” in the scope of their students, the notion that each needed to impart a specific cultural outlook and set of habits has remained. It isn’t so obvious in primary and secondary schools, unless they are charter schools or magnet schools. However, in post-secondary education, the cultural differences between different universities, campuses, schools, and departments have always been very clearly defined — mostly out of self-defense, as they competed against each other for funding, and even more as they have struggled against online schooling and free self-education opportunities.

Education has two different basic styles, an inner and an outer style. One style sees sociality as an exercise in formation, whereas the other sees sociality as an exercise in expansion. The first is narrow insofar as its purpose is to create a person with a certain worldview; the second is broad insofar as its purpose is to unburden a person of their existing worldview through cosmopolitan interactions that ideally leave them with no particular worldview at all.

Contrary to stereotype, social formation does not necessarily result in narrowness, and social expansion does not necessarily result in openness. A person with a carefully formed worldview could be inquisitive and open to changing unfounded prejudices. A person with no worldview at all could be hollowed-out enough to assimilate any pre-programmed ideology. The challenge for schools, at least for those that are not preparing children to live in a totalitarian prison state or a religious cult, is how to balance convergent and divergent educational objectives in order to help people develop themselves.

My early life was characterized by a divergent education that conditioned me to see schools and their communities as disconnected little way-stations on a wandering path. That point of view didn’t really change after I went to college. But by the time I was older, I started to notice the cultural differences in each higher education experience, the way each group of teachers had a different ideal end that they seemed to be trying to draw me towards.

After a couple of decades of college classes I started to see that an ideal end, the formation of a certain kind of person, was actually the only purpose of every formal educational framework, also known as a “school.” Their purpose was not to convey knowledge as such, obviously, since they were very inefficient at conveying knowledge, and anyway the details changed continually. Apart from those few who truly needed a structured format in order to learn a particular subject, most students acquired knowledge despite their schooling, not because of it.

Most importantly, everyone who is not in school full-time already knows this, and that is why most people don’t want to “go to school” ever again after they become adults. In real life, they are either told what to think or they discover something for themselves; knowledge is just a commodity, not the result of a process, for most people.

The result of an educational process is a set of habits of thought, and the habits acquired through socialization lead to identification with a characteristic ideal — what we like to call character. If those habits can be supported in real life, then we may be able to live according to our ideals outside of school — but only if the ideals modeled in school represent real life.

What Does It Mean to Be Educated?

Homeschooling as a right, and a needed practical alternative

Hacker News comments on “Homeschooling as a right”

Why Nerds Are Unpopular

SSC Gives a Graduation Speech

The true purpose of a university education

The Purge

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One important lesson I learned as a child was to regularly evaluate everything I owned and throw away whatever was simply taking up space. I never liked doing it, but I had to do it anyway. If I looked at it and had no attachment to it, I had to throw it away because each thing took up space and it contributed to the weight of household goods that had to be carried from one place to another.

Sometimes things actually had negative feelings associated with them — they were only being kept out of a sense of obligation, not due to attachment or any perceived need — and those things also needed to be discarded.

I can’t say that this kind of decluttering ever became a habit, but it did become something I was used to doing. Probably the personal habit that developed out of this practice was the habit of carefully segregating anything I didn’t want to accidentally lose through the process of purging. Anything that I expected to value over time had to be categorized as part of a collection in order to assign it a collective value, a value through association with other examples of a type.

On the other hand, there were always a few items of unknown value. At the time they were acquired they seemed intuitively to have some value, but I wasn’t sure why. They couldn’t be categorized except as miscellaneous items, usually acquired without intention. Over time, I found when looking at these things, which at some point I might have called “treasures,” that the intuition had vanished and I could not remember what potential value they had.

After I was separated from the circumstances and viewpoint when these items were acquired, it seemed like their potential value had been imputed according to no principle. I could rationalize why they might have value, but I could not rationalize why they must have value; and this is a distinction of temporary preferences. Without the intuition in place, it was obvious that these things had not only no market value and no utilitarian application, but also no lasting attachment.

The only significance of an object representing a temporary preference is historical or archaeological. Historical significance is defined by a narrative, whether contemporaneous or retrospective. Archaeological significance is assigned based on material evidence or location, and then is placed within a historical narrative. Both are social processes of assigning meaning.

For years I would look over such items and imagine constructing a narrative around them that would give them significance. Sometimes I had boxed them up and stored them so that I wouldn’t have to figure out their significance, but then occasionally I would find them again, look at them in bewilderment, then store them again without determining their significance explicitly.

The significance of these relics was, indeed, that they were things I had kept only because, despite having no use and no value, they might have a meaning which I had not figured out yet. My account of my life, my personal mythology, included these things only because it seemed that by contemplation of them I might eventually discern a secret about myself.

But the missing element is the social construction of meaning. Without a shared narrative, there is no secret meaning, no key to understanding, no prophetic symbolism. There is only the evidence of an obsession to collect an artifact of preference — a passing feeling that has no meaning by itself. Having a hoard of disconnected artifacts does not elevate their significance; rather, it highlights a lack of meaning.

Time Narrows

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He’s sitting on a deck chair

stiffly staring out over the lake–

squeezing his mouth together–

not saying anything.

 

On the way here

I listened to a book about dying.

I don’t know what is expected because

we don’t talk about death.

 

Across the lake

the sunset light pulls down.

Time narrows and dims.

 

“I just want the pill, Dave.

The one that takes away

all the pain.”

A Tragedy of Manners

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On January 21, 2017, I knew that the election season was finally over. I breathed the fresh, clear air of a newly anointed presidential administration, knowing that at last the earth had stabilized on its axis and God was now free to do His will (God’s, that is!) throughout all of creation, unimpeded by malevolent forces in the executive branch of the US federal government.

In the past God was able to use murderous, unbelieving kings to implement His will; but in a modern democracy God has to wait for vote-counters to tell him whether His favorite two-faced paper-pusher will be in charge, or whether He will have to withdraw from the world for four years and hope for the best.

I can only dream of having so much faith in the importance of a US president to believe that he plays a significant role on a celestial level and that I participated in the vast cosmic drama by bravely pushing a button in a voting booth. Even if I believed in the great march of history, I could not believe that it relies on me personally propelling it forward.

I grew up believing that Republicans were wealthy religious bigots and Democrats were communist radicals who started all the wars in the 20th century. Sure, I had also heard the positive case for each, but basically I thought that both sounded ridiculous; and lacking a desire to identify with any particular group, I ended up gravitating to individualists. The earliest inspirational essay I can remember reading was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance,” probably in the ninth grade.

If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, — under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blindman’s-bluff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that, with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, — the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

That pretty well sums up how I see everyone who subscribes to a particular party that they always vote for. Every time the wind blows, their opinions shift to accommodate their party affiliation. They don’t actually own any of the words they say or write — everything is either dictated to them by the appropriate thought-leader, or else it is just the dumb parroting of whatever their favorite crowd is murmuring right now.

Every time I find myself agreeing with the people I like, it makes me nervous, because it means that my mind has hitched itself to my instincts and is ready to run off on its own, without the restraint of reason. Even worse, though, is the anxiety I feel when everyone I speak with agrees with me — that is a sure sign that I am likely to be deceived into believing everything I say. It is disappointing to let opinion fall victim to sentiment; but if a whole chorus is echoing my thoughts, it signifies that I am about to suffer a tragic end.

It doesn’t matter how many times I say I don’t care about political parties, because no one ever believes me. I seem so reasonable and articulate that they have to project their idolatry onto me:  They are absolutely certain that if only I read this one article or watch this one video, I will immediately start chirping away and validate all their prejudices for them. Sometimes it’s easy enough to just reassure them that I support their good intentions, and not bother them with my own opinion.

Nevertheless, I have learned over the years how to identify my own perspective — not to submerge it under some bureaucratic policy statement or some empty slogan, but to anchor it to principles. For example, my parents taught me to place supreme importance on education and reading books, but that did not cause me to make public education into a political fetish — it caused me to make learning into a personal fetish. Because I wanted to learn so much, I adored my teachers and I despised all the rowdy, ungrateful, dimwitted children I was imprisoned with in public school buildings. When I read that the brilliant John Stuart Mill had been tutored personally by his own father, I was deeply envious, and I imagined my father teaching me from his science textbooks.

This led me to be sympathetic toward homeschooling, even though my father was at heart a public school teacher. My principles did not include wanting to use legislation, courts, and police to force everyone else to behave exactly the way I wanted them to — that would be an unprincipled political objective, as far as I’m concerned. It is unprincipled not because there may be  justification for it only in an authoritarian fantasy world; it is unprincipled because politics translates personal prejudices into  policy, and I don’t have a principle of trying to force everyone to be puppets.

However, that kind of principled libertarianism assumes that somehow most of the people in a representative democracy have similar principles, so that such principles will win out in the political realm. I floated along with that illusion for most of my life, and most people would probably say it took me way too long to learn that it was an illusion. It’s obvious that politics has more to do with an intrinsic sense of personal identity and tribalism rather than any ideology or policy, but in the past I would have said that was something trivial, something to be overcome.

No doubt, though, the desire to overcome or avoid group identification is a sign of a psychological disorder. It could be a sort of narcissism, if everyone else’s welfare depended on my good will — but I have never wanted to believe that vanity supersedes duty. It could also be a sort of sociopathy, if I considered everyone else to be a means for me to achieve my ends — but I have tried being a salesman and found that I am so concerned with helping people solve problems that I cannot profit by manipulating them. Another popular sociopathy is business management — but I have seen the sociopathy of executives up close, and it made me physically ill.

It’s more likely that either I have a congenital brain disorder or that I was conditioned by the anarchic lifestyle imposed on families by a military bureaucracy. I don’t quite fit the pattern for either one, but I have found that I identify with people who do fit those patterns far better than I identify with neurotypicals or civilians.

The Truth of Democracy

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I used to be very anti-democratic. I preferred a fake objectivity that looked at politics from above, as if careful reasoning could somehow plow through the great mass of words in public policy discussions. I thought the best approach to political news was to be like a dedicated investigator untangling the threads of motivation and purpose in a bizarre murder case, with only newspaper stories as evidence.

This approach came from learning about American politics by reading newspapers in the late twentieth century, when the ideology of journalistic objectivity was promoted as an essential control on the excesses of all the other parts of society. The purpose of journalism was not only to watch out for government corruption or corporate malfeasance, but also to temper the vulgar radicalism of the “common people.” In this way, the journalist presented not merely a private point of view, but a carefully curated narrative about how a democratic society balances different interests and works everything out for the common good, without allowing a mob mentality to take over the public agenda.

However, that perspective required me to believe that whatever was written in the newspaper had a special window into objective truth. Between the reporter, the fact-checker, the copy editor, the section editor, and the editor-in-chief — all of them working together to verify details, eliminate bias, and hold each other accountable — the end result was supposed to be as true as possible. The problem is that this purely inductive method of collecting evidence, refining it to make it credible, and presenting it artfully never actually arrives at truth.

All it does is make a good story. And collecting a lot of these stories together can give a pluralistic, multifaceted story, but it is still not necessarily objective or true. It is simply the story that is agreed-upon by the majority of the journalists, newspaper owners, and trusted sources. Other people are left out of the story: the ones who can’t talk to journalists because they know too much; the ones who won’t talk to journalists because they don’t trust them; the ones who contradict the journalist’s boss; the scary people; the boring people; the crazy people; the criminal people; the ugly people; the drunk people; the inarticulate people; the dirty people; and anyone who just doesn’t fit within the little circle of what a journalist considers to be someone whose opinion matters.

When politicians allow a free press, it is because they think it works out for everyone concerned: they can massage journalistic messages to direct public opinion, but they don’t have to take responsibility for anything because it is simply being reported by a third party. Meanwhile, the public is entertained by the spectacle of democracy being played out in front of them, the feeling of identification and fake involvement in civic affairs. The self-satisfied middle-class person can sit back and ponder how wonderfully the public conversation in the press reflects both kinds of middle-class people that they know.

This system functioned reasonably well in the twentieth century as long as there were media monopolies for the most credible journalists. It worked in tandem with the venerable two-party US election system, which creates fake coalitions in order to justify peaceful transfer of power.

The US electoral system was designed by Democrats and Republicans so that a third party will always fail on a nationwide basis. In fact, it isn’t even possible for it to work at all if there are more than two large factions, since the US has no tradition of sorting out coalition leadership, as with some parliamentary systems. If a third party were to reach a level of committed support nationwide among eligible voters equal to the other two parties, that would actually disable US representative democracy, because then whoever won an election could not claim to have even the implicit support of half the electorate. The pragmatic reason for continuing US-style representative democracy is precisely because it enables an enduring narrative about how everyone comes together after an election to support the resulting government in the national interest, on the principle that it has at least a bare majority of public support.

So, it was always obvious to me that the two-party system was just a pragmatic arrangement to ensure the complacency of the populace. It worked well enough to keep politicians on their toes, insofar as they always had a “loyal opposition” in the form of the other party, which nevertheless completely agreed with them on all the important matters of governance. By maintaining the appearance of providing a choice every four years, it enabled a release of tension that might otherwise build up into some kind of revolutionary or insurrectionist movement.

All the potential leaders of any anti-government movement were sequestered in their little DC lobbyist offices or their little think-tank seminars, planning for the day when public opinion would shift again and they would get their chance to ride the wave. Those who didn’t want to play the game were marginalized as radicals or extremists and ignored. Anyone ignored on a large scale is not a credible threat to order, they are just isolated nuts. They may be very principled nuts who are happy with their self-contained rationalizations, but they are not actually part of the broader society.

This is where the so-called third parties exist. Their function is to work tirelessly to play with ideas that are unacceptable to the two major parties, but which nevertheless might get the attention of a portion of the public. In that way, if a fringe policy proposal ever does get popular opinion behind it, one or both of the major parties can just pick it up and use it after it has broad support, without sacrificing their credibility, and their voting public, beforehand. They are the bush league for ideas that seem wacky but may someday get to play in the big league. The third parties themselves will never win broadly, because as parties they are undemocratic: they can never represent, even by passive consent, a majority position.

So, anyone who has carefully thought-out and consistent policy positions, yet is unwilling to compromise for the sake of an imaginary, nationwide political coalition, will always be a loser politically. The leaders of the major parties know this, and the party hacks know it too; that’s why they spend a lot of time posturing, pretending to be virtuous in their blind, animalistic party loyalty. In every election they try to pull the third-party voters over to a major party with imaginary bargaining or emotional appeals. Eventually they lose patience and start to virtually spit on third-party voters, mocking them for their airy principles and calling them stupid and useless.

Some third-party sympathizers react by simply not voting. Not voting works to send a message, but it takes awhile. Also, the message is ambiguous, so the parties can lie to themselves about what it means: Does nonvoting mean that some people are too lazy, too happy, or too hopeless to vote?

Voting is not actually effective as a means of individual expression, because it is depersonalized and anonymous. As expression, it only matters when expressed to other people in words or images, rather than in the form of an actual “vote”; and then it just functions to let everyone know whether someone is “in” or “out” of their little ideological group.

No single vote actually affects the outcome of a national election, either, unless it happens to agree with other similar votes — which means that with the proper manipulation of groups, it would be possible to make a difference. Setting aside the concept of manipulation, what actual political function does voting have?

Voting functions to help the populace accept a peaceful transfer of power, because they believe that the results of an election represent “majority rule”, meaning that one side won the game and so everyone should accept the result and move on. Voting also functions for the governing authorities as a census:  Every election is a referendum about what kind of ruling figurehead, and what kind of ideology, will be accepted by a majority of the electorate (that portion of the population who are allowed to vote, able to vote, and care enough to vote). So, as a census, it allows the authorities to take a reading on the most effective rhetoric to justify governance and avoid insurrection or revolution.

This is how I was finally able to rationalize voting for one of two fake coalition parties with fake ideals, fake policy positions, and fake talking-head representatives: by seeing my vote as one of millions of census datapoints representing which of two possible options are the most acceptable. As with any measurement of millions of datapoints, each individual sensor can only show local conditions, and they all together reflect a general trend.

This the the truth of democracy:  It doesn’t seek truth and it doesn’t discover truth. In that sense, it is completely unprincipled. The only options it presents are the options that further the interests of the people in power. Its only purpose is to enable people with power to rule the majority through subtle manipulation instead of deadly force. Sometimes the majority fixes on a particular injustice it wants to correct, or a particular injustice it wants to perpetrate, and if the people in power want to stay in power, then they go along with it. Sometimes the people in power take a risk and move against majority opinion, but more often they don’t; the inherent imprecision and inaccuracy of measuring public opinion, and the cyclical nature of elections, make it worthwhile to take such risks. Truth is not under consideration in these scenarios.

Several years ago, I decided that if voting is simply a way of participating in a census, then there is nothing wrong with voting according to my gut feelings from the choices I was given. This was a huge insight for me: I could move with the herd in support of democracy rather than protest its mindlessness by voting third party. Even though I could not identify with a group, I could move with it instead of standing detached from it, like some kind of omniscient narrator.

Cycle of Insanity

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I’m thinking about how to vote in 2016 in a way that will annoy the greatest number of people.

Usually, the most effective way to annoy the greatest number of people is by voting third party; most people have a deeply superstitious faith in the two-party system, such that voting for a third party seems to them like some kind of blasphemous perversion of democracy.

In the state of Indiana, the only third party that consistently makes it onto the ballot is the Libertarian Party. Helpfully enough, most people despise libertarianism above all, because libertarian principles imply that excessive government control over society is stupid and ineffective, if not evil; and most people want to maximize the power of government to oppress and silence the people they hate.

However, the rhetoric of libertarianism has been pretty much taken over by Ayn Rand worshippers in the last few years. I had some sympathies with the people who made up Tea Party gatherings, but in general they were farcical. They tended to indulge in collectivist fantasies about the oppression of the middle class, which supposedly needed to organize street rallies in order to demand special consideration from the federal government. Then, when people laughed at them, they threatened to hold their collective breath until they turned blue, which they romantically called “going John Galt.” Their most significant actual achievement was inspiring Republican politicians to organize them as a voting bloc in order to dislodge some ossified incumbents.

I would rather have people vote according to either their material interests or their ideal principles, than according to some pragmatic calculation about “who can win” or “who will win.” A pragmatic calculation assigns a magical power of manipulation or divination to the individual voter, obscuring the fact that a vote in a mass election is nothing more than an expression of personal commitments. Each individual vote literally makes no difference to the final result; they only matter en masse. So, unless someone has awesome voodoo allowing them to manipulate millions of other people’s votes by pushing a little button in the voting booth, the average voter has to choose whether to believe that they are a skillful political operator who can multiply their influence by enough acquaintances to swing the election, or they have to figure out how to go along with the rest of the herd.

It is difficult to manipulate large numbers of voters in a geographically and culturally diverse nation, which is why parties and politicians have to use special strategies. Parties have to divide up the voters like cattle and drive them into little pens based on fake, irrelevant abstractions and wedge issues. Then they can massage smaller, more manageable groups into cohesive voting blocs by persuading them that the party is “in their pocket” and will always vote their interests, despite the absurdity of making the same cynical pitch to competing interest groups. Then, once each social group is in its little pen and focusing on the candidate, the voters have to be lulled into feeling warm, safe, and happy. One way is to use a lot of irrational symbols and slogans to make people feel complacent whenever listening to or watching the candidate; another way is to use the candidate’s clothing, height, voice, gestures, or hairstyle to communicate authority and decisiveness.

In the current election campaign, I think that Bernie Sanders is interesting only because he is articulating the suppressed desires of progressive liberals. For seven years Democrats have been whining about how Republicans have unfairly characterized Obama as a socialist; so, apparently, some Democrats are now trying to prove their point by nominating a self-identified democratic socialist.

Sanders has as much chance of being nominated as Ron Paul did: that is, no chance at all. Why would a party nominate a candidate who explicitly demonstrates the hollowness of its official rhetoric, not to mention the cupidity and hypocrisy of most of its members? In the same way Ron Paul was despised by “the party of small government,” Sanders will be pushed aside by “the party of the common people,” and his devoted followers will move on to more radical politicians in the next election cycle.

Donald Trump is interesting because he has taken advantage of some disaffected former conservatives and some gullible mass media figures in order to generate the perception that he is The Great and Powerful Oz. Like Hillary Clinton, he is absolutely unreliable and will say whatever he thinks people need to hear at the moment in order to make him appear larger than he is. Trump doesn’t challenge Republican ideology because he doesn’t care about ideology at all. I think most of his supporters are wowed by his huge public image; or they are fixated on one of his clever remarks that they mistake for a policy statement; or they are just gleefully watching him troll everyone from the mass media to progressive activists to duplicitous “establishment” Republicans.

Trump is image-oriented, not principled: He presents an updated Archie Bunker, a postmodern characterization of pre-1960s secular American culture, when loyalty to God and Country were taken for granted without having to “explain” anything by using big words or by making excuses for personal prejudices. In this way, he appeals to people whose real-life interests don’t fit neatly into the artificial little compartments created by political elites.

Hillary Clinton is a politician’s politician, someone who must win because it isn’t possible for her to exist without political validation, so she tacks whichever way she needs to in order to get it. Because of her tenacity, she is the obvious choice for anyone who is afraid of betting against the house, anyone who is otherwise powerless yet always calculating how to pick the next winner.

Ted Cruz is like the anti-Hillary, because he is equal and opposite to her. Rather than deftly managing his social networks, he is a technical politician, as evidenced by his superb political tactics and rhetoric. If he were on Survivor, he would be allowed to go to the end because the other people figured they would look better next to him, since no one actually liked him; but if he won anyway, it would be because the jury grudgingly acknowledged the effectiveness of his manipulations.

So, in the Indiana primary I am voting for Ted Cruz out of respect for his well-crafted ideology and his skillful gamesmanship, even though he cannot possibly win Indiana, the party nomination, or the general election. He is not flexible enough to scoop up a majority of Republicans, much less a broad base of voters nationwide. Based on the current polls, saying that I am voting this way in the primary will guarantee disturbing the peace of the maximum number of other voters.

The Gift of the Holy Sport

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I live in Indiana, where basketball, football, and racing are widely popular. Yet, I am agnostic with regard to spectator sports. I don’t deny that great teams and great athletes exist, or that sports are generally harmless to watch, but I have never personally experienced salvation by watching sports.

Spectator sports are often beneficial for their followers and the society that allows and encourages them, and people who criticize sports for being a waste of time need to realize that much of what anyone does is a waste of time. Not only that, much of what any society supports is practically useless, since its primary function is to promote cohesion and complacency, not well-being.

Nevertheless, I simply have no use for spectator sports. I am alternately amused and annoyed by all the painted and dressed-up folks who come out on game day: They hoard all their little relics; they make their big pilgrimages; they rehearse their chants and rituals; they venerate their idols; they start stupid arguments with followers of rival teams.

So, here I am in the middle of this religion, the Church of the Holy Sport, that I don’t like and that I think is only for losers who have too much leisure time, too much money, and not enough brains. And these nutcases are constantly evangelizing to me and preaching to me and praising their idols for all these imaginary superlative qualities.

I’ll tell you what:  I feel imposed upon. I feel like I am somehow immoral because I don’t care about their idols. Every time I see some ordinary sports fan wearing “the uniform,” I think that if someone wanted to do any crime or terrorism at all, they should dress like that, because no one would ever suspect them of doing anything antisocial. I guess this is what it’s like to be on the outside of a religious majority.

The funny thing is that church-religion doesn’t seem nearly as popular as sports-religion. I know there are lots of churchy religious performances and rallies and TV shows, but none of them are as commonplace, as well attended, or as heavily supported by local business and government as sporting events are. Maybe it’s different in certain areas of the US or in other countries, but where I live, publicly supporting any sport is way more important than publicly supporting any church.

I think I’ve only been “witnessed to” by a Christian stranger twice in my life. Both times they were very polite about it, and when I told them I agreed with them, they said goodbye. Maybe they just wanted an atheist to argue with, but on the other hand, only an argumentative atheist would have responded with a hostile attitude. So, I’ve always been baffled by people who complain about having Christianity forced on them.

After considering the comparison to sports worship, I guess I’m willing to admit that some people may make themselves a big target with regard to non-sports religion. And if they already have some problems with society not affirming them enough or with society not looking enough like they do, they might get kind of resentful and start whining about persecution against atheists. But until their favorite atheist TV show is pre-empted by a televangelism crusade, I just don’t think I’m going to feel sorry for them.

Why Ask Why?

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Here is an in-depth report on the problem of functional illiteracy:

Published July 04, 2009 09:00 pm –

Literacy: 1 in 7 adults has problems

By Dave Stafford, Herald Bulletin Staff Writer

ANDERSON — Nearly 14 percent of Madison County residents lack basic literacy skills. It’s a disadvantage that dramatically raises their likelihood of incarceration and lowers their chances of earning a living.

It’s also a problem that affects people of all ages and in all stations in life.

“There’s just no rhyme or reason as to why people don’t learn to read,” said Ginger Mills, executive director of the Madison County Literacy Coalition. “So many of our learners have high school diplomas. … We have a lot of learners who have retired from General Motors.”

On the other end of the age spectrum, new emphasis is being placed on babies, pre-kindergartners and the building blocks of learning.

This is how a tough, insightful, professional journalist usually works: Present the hook (a social problem); quote an expert who gives an authoritative opinion, but don’t cross-examine them; then change the subject to how the government will make everything better by starting a new program that ignores the problem.

In this case, the problem is adult illiteracy. That is, the entire population is required by state law to attend school, or obtain an equivalent education (not really the same thing), through age 16. Most of them graduate from public high school. A majority of the population has the capacity to read at an eighth grade level, but some don’t read at the eighth grade level, even though they attended public school for at least ten years and may even have graduated.

What are we to make of this? “There’s no rhyme or reason” why the system could possibly fail. It’s a mystery, and it’s best not to look too closely, or you might see something you don’t like. So, instead let’s talk about how to make sure that toddlers are better prepared before they get to public school; maybe that way they will accidentally learn something later on in the “black box” of public school. It’s a black box because we can’t actually know what happens inside it, so we must control what happens outside of it, in the home. The parents are the cause of the public schools’ failure to teach children how to read, but nobody is blaming them; the government is going to help them prepare their children for the black box, since they are understandably incompetent and irresponsible.

The reporter goes on to point out how parents can help their children learn to read while they are in public school. Sometimes journalists even quote schoolteachers saying how necessary it is for parents to help, because without the parents’ help they can’t educate children at all. So, apparently parents’ help is necessary for the licensed teachers to perform the function of education, which only the licensed teachers are authorized to do, since it is so hard that parents cannot possibly do it. Right, I got it now.

What is the single greatest thing that public school teachers can do to help children learn how to read? Should they take more graduate classes in the discourse of early learners in proactive settings enabled by interactive technologies that affirm positive multicultural role models? Er . . . no. Here is the surprising new idea:

A key to Robinson’s success was individual attention and monitoring student progress. “It’s indescribable, really,” Cassaundra Day said of the importance of individual tutoring. Day was a reading buddy at Robinson and is also director of literacy services at the Madison County Literacy Coalition. “It makes an incredible difference.”

Day said that even schools’ reading recovery programs can sometimes fall short because students might receive individual attention for only a limited amount of time during the school day.

Although this strategy seems to work in some public schools, it is not recommended for an unlicensed, unqualified parent to try this at home. It might be dangerous for the child’s self-concept as a worker drone dependent on the beneficent government bureaucracy to compensate for the ideological shortcomings of his parents.

Ultimate Trump

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For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God. . . .
(1 Thessalonians 4:16)

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. (1 Corinthians 15:51-52)

I would think that the above excerpts, especially the lines from “One Corinthians,” would be among Donald Trump’s favorite verses, since they mention him by name, associate him with the return of Jesus Christ, and suggest that after the final vote the faithful will be incorruptible winners.

Is that a superficial reading that takes a few words out of context and uses them to generate fake warm-fuzzies in voters? Yes, of course. Welcome to the 2016 US presidential campaign!

Just before the 2016 Iowa caucus, Trump pulled out from a debate among Republican presidential candidates. A blogger asked whether the actual reason was not because the female moderator was unfair, as Trump said, but rather because Trump did not want to debate a genuine principled conservative such as Ted Cruz.

I don’t think Trump was concerned about contending with genuine principled conservatives, since polls have shown that a lot of “conservative” Republican voters don’t seem to care about principles:

Why Trump Is Winning Over Christian Conservatives | TIME

[N]ational polls suggest that Donald J. Trump has forged a real connection with this voting bloc. In a recent New York Times/CBS News survey, the Republican frontrunner earned the support of 42% of evangelicals, far outpacing the rest of the GOP field, including his top rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who garnered 25%. A January NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll also showed Trump with the deepest support among white evangelicals, at 33%. . . .

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, believes many evangelicals feel “beaten down” by political correctness, especially on issues such as gay marriage. “Now they see Donald Trump, who is taking on that same elitist politically correct mindset and not backing down,” Perkins says. “They find common cause in this guy, even though he comes from a completely different world.”

In an election driven more by foreign policy than social issues, “fear is dominating more than faith,” Perkins continues. “Fear of what has happened to our nation, and fear of what may happen. . . .”

“It’s almost impressive, his disregard—he doesn’t even pretend to have a sophisticated position on questions of faith,” says Stephen White, fellow in the Catholic Studies program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “If Trump wins the nomination, he will have demonstrated that social conservatism is an unnecessary part of the Republican coalition, he will pull the rug out from social conservatism as it relates to the Republican Party.”

The Real Reason Trump Is Winning Evangelical Support: They’re Just Not That ‘Religious’ | ThinkProgress

Trump has continued to garner hefty support from evangelical voters, even as prestigious theological conservatives such as Russell Moore — head of the political arm of the Southern Baptist Convention and an actual reverend — openly criticize his candidacy as out-of-step with evangelical beliefs.

Donald Trump Divides God’s Voters – The New York Times

A good segment of evangelical voters appear to have blithely abandoned both the Christian-nation candidacy of Mr. Cruz and the kinder, gentler social conservatism of Mr. Rubio in favor of Mr. Trump, who is unabashedly ignorant of the biblical imperatives that form the foundation of evangelical culture and politics. That Mr. Trump is a Presbyterian and not evangelical is not the issue. It’s that he doesn’t pretend to understand evangelicalism, or even his own mainline Protestantism, failures that would have been, in recent elections, disqualifiers for evangelical Republican voters.

Yet for months, polls have shown Mr. Trump attracting a quarter to a third of white evangelical support. A Pew Research Center survey released on Wednesday found that half of white evangelicals believe that Mr. Trump would make a “good” or “great” president. Although Mr. Cruz and Mr. Rubio are viewed by more voters as “religious” than Mr. Trump is, both run behind him among white evangelicals as a potentially “good” or “great” president. . . .

Mr. Trump’s standing among evangelicals shows just how little those issues matter to a good many erstwhile culture warriors, at least when picking a president. If he turns out to be their standard-bearer, this once-cohesive movement will have to spend this election season asking itself what it really means.

So, what could possibly be going on here? Have all the “principled conservatives” decided to just vote for whoever promises them to “make the trains run on time”? That sure is how it seems to me.

There is an old tradition in American politics, in which “grass-roots” movements are cultivated as a way to get people excited about politics. A political party takes up populist issues and political candidates start talking about them. The people feel better, because it seems as if politicians are listening to them; and politicians feel better, because it seems as if a lot of people really like them for saying the right things. Everybody is happy, at least for awhile.

Then, after it turns out that the wheels of bipartisan bureaucracy turn really slowly and democratically elected politicians can’t really work miracles, the excited people get a little frustrated. At this point, the political parties are supposed to find a more believable politician who can make better promises; but they can only put off fulfilling the promises for so long:

Donald Trump’s appeal to evangelicals is real: David Brody

Trump is resonating within the ranks of the “sick and tired.” Evangelicals are fed up with politicians telling them one thing and doing another. We saw this play out in the 2004 presidential election. The GOP establishment pleaded with evangelicals to get out and vote, promising that in his second term, George W. Bush would champion a Federal Marriage Amendment constitutionally limiting marriage to a man and a woman. They showed up in droves, and then the issue was dropped like a hot potato. They’re sick and tired of being lied to and played like pawns.

Mark J. Rozell: How Trump’s winning the religious right – NY Daily News

Ever since the rise of the modern evangelical conservative, or “religious right,” political movement about four decades ago, these activists in the GOP usually have backed either one of their own (Pat Robertson, Mike Huckabee) or an establishment Republican who pledges support for their agenda (Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney). The “fellow travelers” never win, so no gain there.

The establishment types sometimes win, but once in office they focus their agendas on the economy, foreign policy, fighting wars, fighting terrorism — and they then tell the religious conservatives to be patient because social issues just can’t be the focus right now.

In either scenario, the evangelical conservatives end up burned. Their past four decades of political activism have produced both a realistic assessment of the chances of fellow travelers to win the White House (none), and a deep disdain for establishment Republicans who say the right things in the primaries but always revert to mainstream agendas in office.

The frustration level among evangelical conservatives is wide and deep at this point. They don’t know who to trust, and some have suggested exiting political activism altogether and putting their energies instead into their communities where they feel they can make a difference.

This sentiment is understandable when considering the amount of dedicated effort the activist core of the movement has devoted to the Republican Party and its nominees, only to have marginal progress on the social agenda at the national level. From their standpoint, mainstream politicians use them, powerful institutions — government, media, public and higher education — are aligned against them, and political correctness is running amuck.

What they believe to be a “Christian nation” is, they think, being turned upside down.

Republican Self-Destruction is Fun to Watch but Bad for Us All

The rise of Trump is not an accident. Erick Erickson of the popular RedState blog was succinct: “The Republican Party created Donald Trump, because they made a lot of promises to their base and never kept them. . . .”

For half a century, the history of American conservatism has been a story of disappointment and betrayal. Conservative leaders have denounced decades of change, pledging what would amount to a return to the government and economy of the 1890s, the cultural norms of the 1950s and, in more recent times, the ethnic makeup of the country in the 1940s. But no conservative administration — not Richard Nixon’s, not Ronald Reagan’s and neither of the Bush presidencies — could live up to the rhetoric that conservative politicians regularly deploy to rally their supporters.

. . .the victories Republicans have won over the decades have produced neither the lasting electoral realignment that conservative prophets keep predicting nor the broad policy changes that the faithful hope for. For the rank-and-file right, the sense that their leaders have failed them and the political system shortchanged them has created a cycle of radicalization.

With each disappointment, movement conservatives have blamed moderation and advanced an ever-purer ideology, certain that doing so will eventually bring them the triumphs that have eluded them over and over.

This rift has widened to the point that many “business conservatives” have abandoned any pretense about supporting social conservative issues, and the Republican Party is following the money.

So what is the brilliant electoral strategy that the Trump campaign has hit upon? It is nothing other than a populist strategy that was recommended long ago to Pat Buchanan by Sam Francis:

How an Obscure Political Advisor to Pat Buchanan Predicted the Wild Trump Campaign

To simplify Francis’ theory: There are a number of Americans who are losers from a process of economic globalization that enriches a transnational global elite. These Middle Americans see jobs disappearing to Asia and increased competition from immigrants. Most of them feel threatened by cultural liberalism, at least the type that sees Middle Americans as loathsome white bigots. But they are also threatened by conservatives who would take away their Medicare, hand their Social Security earnings to fund-managers in Connecticut, and cut off their unemployment too. . . .

The political left treats this as a made-up problem, a scapegoating by Applebee’s-eating, megachurch rubes who think they are losing their “jerbs.” Remember, Republicans and Democrats have still been getting elected all this time.

But the response of the predominantly-white class that Francis was writing about has mostly been one of personal despair. And thus we see them dying in middle age of drug overdose, alcoholism, or obesity at rates that now outpace those of even poorer blacks and Hispanics. Their rate of suicide is sky high too. Living in Washington D.C., however, with an endless two decade real-estate boom, and a free-lunch economy paid for by special interests, most of the people in the conservative movement hardly know that some Americans think America needs to be made great again. . . .

What is so crucial to Trump’s success, even within the Republican Party, is his almost total ditching of conservatism as a governing philosophy. He is doing the very thing Pat Buchanan could not, and would not do. And in this, he is following the advice of Sam Francis to a degree almost unthinkable. . . .

What so frightens the conservative movement about Trump’s success is that he reveals just how thin the support for their ideas really is. His campaign is a rebuke to their institutions. It says the Republican Party doesn’t need all these think tanks, all this supposed policy expertise. It says look at these people calling themselves libertarians and conservatives, the ones in tassel-loafers and bow ties. Have they made you more free? Have their endless policy papers and studies and books conserved anything for you? These people are worthless. They are defunct. You don’t need them, and you’re better off without them.

When I first started hearing snippets of Trump rhetoric second-hand over the past year, I recognized how he was echoing previous right-wing populist campaigns. During the George W. Bush administration, I  had spoken to many people in the Patriot Movement who had been excited about Republican politics during the Reagan years, but who had become increasingly bitter and angry after repeated disappointments. They had spoken glowingly about candidates such as Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, and Ross Perot, but they despised George H. W. Bush and many congressional Republicans. They tended to become more vocal during Democratic administrations, but had kept quiet during the George W. Bush years because they didn’t want to lose a chance for progress on their issues within the Republican Party. In this presidential election season, Trump has identified the soft spots in Republican populist support that most of the professional politicians were afraid to poke.

There is a similar problem within the Democratic party, in which some left-wing populists are rejecting the disappointing neoliberalism of Hillary Clinton for the democratic socialism of Bernie Sanders. I don’t see a whole lot of difference between Bernie Sanders 2016 and Ralph Nader 2000, except that Sanders, like Trump, is willing to work within the established party apparatus. However, Sanders has a disadvantage in that he can hardly attract anyone from the right. Trump ultimately has an electoral advantage, apparently, since in polls he seems to attract supporters who are not traditionally conservative or Republican, as well as attracting disaffected conservatives and the far-right.

UPDATE:

I wrote the above post prior to the New Hampshire primary. After the primary, more columnists started to fall in line with the populist narrative about a general failure of Republican leadership; for example, see Nicholas Kristof’s bitter tirade. On the other hand, some sources on the fringe are quite consistent in their message, as in this Washington Examiner article:

[In response to a question about why so many members of the New Hampshire state Republican power structure were unable to recognize the extent of Trump’s support.]

“I think like most establishment Republicans, they thought if they kept promoting the narrative that Trump was a passing fancy and he would collapse, it would happen,” Gargiulo told me. “But this phenomena is the result of 25+ years of failed promises and lackluster leadership over multiple administrations from both parties. People have had it, and those in power don’t want to accept the reality they can no longer maintain the status quo.”

Illegal and Privately Owned

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11/30/02

There’s a story going around the Patriot movement, those folks who call Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush “phony conservatives.” Apparently, some hucksters have been passing around “paper money” from a private company, claiming that it’s worth something even though you can’t redeem it for anything real.

They call themselves “the Federal Reserve System.” Maybe you’ve seen some of their “greenbacks” floating around. Well, in case you haven’t heard it, here’s the story.

The Federal Reserve System has been around since 1913, when the U.S. Congress set it up to distribute money through the Federal Reserve banks. The money is printed by the (U.S. federal government) Bureau of Engraving and Printing, then sold at cost (around 3 cents per bill) to the (privately owned) Federal Reserve banks, which pay for them by buying U.S. government securities, that is, by making long-term loans to the U.S. Treasury Department.

Then the Federal Reserve banks loan their Federal Reserve notes to other banks at an interest rate set by the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board (the “Fed”).

If you get one of these notes, you can’t take it back to a Federal Reserve bank and exchange it for anything else, although they might give you a toaster for opening a new account. The only thing you can do with a Federal Reserve note is use it to pay your debts, and the U.S. government guarantees that your creditors have to accept it in payment. That’s why they print that statement on the front of all the notes: “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” Without that it wouldn’t be worth, well, the paper it’s printed on.

 

Alternatives

Throughout the United States, more than 30 currencies besides Federal Reserve notes are also circulating. Most of these alternative currencies are strictly local, such as the Ithaca Hours, which can be used only in Ithaca, New York. Most of them are also based on intangibles such as a specific number of hours worked. Only one is commodity-based and used nationwide, the American Liberty Dollar.

The Liberty Dollar has a “$10 silver base,” meaning that every 10 Liberty Dollars entitle the bearer to claim one ounce of silver sitting in a vault in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho.

These Liberty Dollars, in various denominations, look a lot like the bank notes issued in the 1800’s by state-chartered banks, with elaborate filigree artwork around the edges framing an image of the Statue of Liberty and a statement by the issuer. You can also get coins about the size of the old silver dollars but a little thicker.

Liberty Dollars are issued by NORFED, a nonprofit organization based in Evansville, Indiana. NORFED stands for the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the Internal Revenue Code, and the ultimate purpose of this currency is to bring the Federal Reserve System crashing to the ground, along with its “collection agency,” the Internal Revenue Service. According to NORFED’s founder, Bernard von NotHaus, they now have over $300,000 in circulation.

So where are they? Bernard says there are at least 850 Redemption Centers around the country where someone will exchange your debt-backed Federal Reserve notes for silver-backed Liberty Dollars on a one-for-one basis. It isn’t that hard to find a Redemption Center nearby. The hard part is finding someone who will take Liberty Dollars in payment for goods or services.

Why would any business take payments with notes that aren’t “legal tender”?

The only way to answer that question is to visit some businesses that actually accept Liberty Dollars. According to Bernard, the best person in Indiana to talk to is a “flaming patriot” in Peru, Indiana, named Clayton.

 

The Agent

I arrive at Clayton house in Peru at around 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, October 19. The road to Peru is marked by fields and fields of unharvested corn turned brown by an unusually dry summer.

Clayton’s modest ranch house is easily located by watching for the huge, 20-foot diameter fir tree partly obscuring the front. I pull up a slight incline into the open spot in the worn gravel driveway in front of a divided two-car garage painted dark brown. A dirty gray 1993 Honda Accord is parked to the right. It’s adorned with bumper stickers on three sides, saying “I pledge allegiance to one nation under God,” “Pray for America,” and “American Liberty Currency.”

Hiding behind the fir is a narrow wooden-plank-covered walkway leading to the front door. I ring the doorbell and wait. A thin, gray-haired man answers the door.

Clayton is a spry 69-year-old with bifocals, balding, with slightly elongated ears. His wispy gray-and-white hair is combed straight on the right side, while on the left side a lock of gray hair curls down across his temple, and some shorter hair on the side flips up in a cowlick. “I combed my hair this morning, but you can’t tell,” he would later say.

Clayton is wearing a green t-shirt over an ivory oxford button-down shirt, open at the collar, one lapel sticking out a little. On the front of the t-shirt, block letters spell out, “ASK ME ABOUT THE MONEY BACKED BY GOLD & SILVER”; the back says, “DO NOT STEAL-THE FEDERAL RESERVE AND THE IRS DO NOT LIKE COMPETITION-BOTH ARE ILLEGAL AND PRIVATELY OWNED.” He’s wearing greenish-gray faded cotton cargo pants and brown leather shoes with black soles.

Clayton leads me through an unlit living room to a small kitchen. He motions for me to sit down at a round table, facing toward the refrigerator, while he sits down at the opposite side.

Clayton looks over a paper with a list of NORFED Liberty Merchants on it, planning our itinerary. Of the 13 on his list, 5 have been crossed off. Three from one family moved to North Carolina; another moved to Lasalle, Kentucky; yet another had recently died.

Clayton has been busy promoting himself as an independent candidate for Miami County sheriff, as indicated by a flyer on the table printed in block letters reading, in part, “RUNNING FOR OFFICE, NOT BUYING IT”. Clayton finishes the itinerary and goes back out through the living room.

As we leave, Clayton shuts the door without locking it, and leaves one garage door open. We get in his Honda, which has a NORFED brochure taped to the rear passenger-side window.

Noticing a Liberty Dollar on the passenger-side floor, I hand it to him and he casually tosses it on the dashboard, where there are a couple of envelopes, one of them an open #9 envelope containing a sheaf of Liberty Dollars. Some Federal Reserve notes are rolled up in a white plastic cup in the cupholder. An open bag of Starburst Fruit Chews sits between the seats.

 

The Contractor

Just after turning north out of his housing development onto State Road 19, Clayton turns sharply left down a freshly graveled driveway. At the bottom of a small hill down from the road, the area in front of an double-wide freestanding garage is filled with vehicles: an ATV, a small boat on a trailer, and at least four pickup trucks. Clayton pulls hard to the right behind a small one-story house with white siding.

Clayton opens the rear door into a cluttered enclosed back porch. Among the many coats hanging up to the left, a couple of camouflage hunting jackets stand out, and a piece of a hunting bow lies on the floor. He knocks on the inner door and a blond woman in a bathrobe appears through the curtained windowpane. Opening the door, the gaunt, bleary-eyed woman recognizes Clayton and shouts behind her, “It’s Clayton!”

As we step in, she returns to cooking breakfast at the stove to our right. Clayton steps to the right of the kitchen table as a burly man with short blond hair, somewhere in his 30’s, appears from the left and greets us. After shaking hands, Bill and I sit down at the table in the center of the room.

Over Bill’s shoulder, a giant boar’s head stares straight at me from the far wall of the living room, and I notice a bearskin splayed across another wall over the TV.

Bill and his wife have just gotten up, after coming home late last night from a funeral down in Kentucky. The enticing smell of bacon and eggs frying starts to fill the room.

Bill owns a construction firm and NORFED calls him a “Liberty Merchant” because he advertises that he accepts Liberty Dollars as payment for services. In fact, he has written a letter to the editor of the Peru Tribune urging other merchants to accept Liberty Dollars.

Bill says that a lot of people still don’t know about it, even though it has had positive write-ups in the local newspaper. To this, Clayton sardonically notes that the problem is that “50% of the county doesn’t take the local paper,” and Bill agrees.

Bill supports the Liberty Dollar because it’s backed by gold and silver, unlike the Federal Reserve notes. He would take them as full payment for a job, but he doesn’t think there are really enough in circulation yet. “The thing I had a problem with is most people only want the silver,” he complains. They trust the coin, an ounce of .999 pure silver, more than the paper; but people mostly want them as souvenirs.

Clayton interjects that about $3,000 of the silver is out in the county, as well as about $2,000 of the silver certificates, but not much of it is being circulated.

In fact, the only way a currency can be sustained is by constantly using it. In some places, merchants won’t accept the Liberty Dollar because they can’t use it to pay their own expenses. However, Peru has a wide variety of Liberty Merchants, including a hardware store, a grocery, a sub shop, a florist, a computer store, a furniture store, and a car repair shop.

The sizzling on the stove stops, signaling that it’s time to say goodbye.

 

The Hardware Store

Other Liberty Merchants are less enthusiastic about promoting the Liberty Dollar, as we find at the hardware store, the florist, and the meat market.

The hardware store, an older brick building fronting Peru’s main north-south street, is owned by Dave. After parking in the back alley and wandering among the crowd of customers and sales clerks for several minutes, we finally find Dave stocking shelves near a doorway.

Dave is medium-height, with a thin face and black hair receding from his brow. As he speaks to us, his face is framed by the bright light from the door behind him. Despite being listed by NORFED as a Redemption Center, Dave has nothing to say about Liberty Dollars.

Clayton stands quietly, looking down at the floor, while Dave explains tensely that he doesn’t really do much business in Liberty Dollars and doesn’t really know anything about them. Dave keeps looking down at something in his hand, then over at a silent, expressionless Clayton, then to me. He admits that he will accept Liberty Dollars, but he insists that he doesn’t really believe in them, doesn’t do much with them, and was reluctant to get into it in the first place. So, why does he accept them if he doesn’t believe in them or know much about them?

“Because of him,” Dave snorts, pointing at Clayton.

We thank him and leave. On the way out, Clayton remarks that the NORFED brochure disappeared from Dave’s counter awhile ago. Clayton had also recently asked a couple of clerks he didn’t know whether they took Liberty Dollars, and they had said no.

We go out to Clayton’s car parked in the back alley. Once in the car, we make small talk.

“For all I know, you could be CIA and setting me up,” he says to me at one point. I try to reassure him by telling him that I had once considered working for the National Security Agency, but I was too lazy to finish their 20-page application.

 

The Flower Shop

Clayton guns the engine as we zip around the corner, then down a residential side street to a florist shop, a tiny A-frame storefront beside a white-roofed greenhouse.

Inside, we make our way through a jungle of plants to a service counter with a cash register. Under the counter’s glass top are several informational items about gypsy moths. “Don’t give a gypsy moth a free ride,” one says prominently.

About ten feet back from the counter, a middle-aged woman named Tracy is bending over a large pot arranging flowers. She agrees to talk while she works. She first became interested in taking Liberty Dollars last summer, in 2001, after talking to Clayton.

Clayton later tells me how he had first learned about Liberty Dollars at an anti-tax rally in summer 2001, then he brought some back home to show people. The local newspaper, The Peru Tribune, featured him in a story about Liberty Dollars and named him as a distributor, even though he wasn’t at the time. But after the article, people started asking him about it, so he signed up. Tracy immediately shows her concern that accepting Liberty Dollars is seen as a tax protest.

“I think that more people would get involved in it if they wasn’t so scared of the IRS. I just finished up my audit last month, and it started last year.” The IRS agent had shown up unannounced at the shop just recently. “She didn’t look like no IRS person . . . they look pretty normal.” Clayton remarks that it must have been around that time that Tracy took the NORFED brochure and sample Liberty Dollar off her counter. After some more small talk, we say goodbye.

Later, I ask an economics professor, Steven H. Russell, if there is any tax advantage to using an alternative currency, or if it is even a viable tax evasion strategy. He said that most people trying to evade taxes do all their transactions in cash, and that they could do so just as well with Federal Reserve notes as with an alternative currency.

 

The Meat Market

Around the corner and down Main Street is a meat market, an unassuming white building with three soda machines out front. Inside, it is small, but clean and attractively lit. A meat display counter takes up most of the center of the store. Bill is middle-aged, with a receding black hairline and a fairly intense look as he portions out ground beef behind the counter.

He is too busy to talk, he says, and besides, he hasn’t taken any Liberty Dollars in six months. He took it for awhile, but it didn’t work out. Bill has the same tension in his voice that Dave had.

Clayton remarks that it was mainly Bill’s mother who took the Liberty Dollars, when she was running the cash register. I thank Bill for his time and we leave.

Outside, Clayton expresses skepticism that Bill has not taken any Liberty Dollars in six months, since he just redeemed 22 Liberty Dollars from Bill a few days ago. He notes that the meat market is important because it is the only independent grocery in town. Besides, he says, they have the best beef.

 

The Sub Shop

From Bill’s, Clayton drives east on Main, then south on Broadway, back toward the hardware store. At first noting that there are no parking spaces on either side of the street, he suddenly pulls a U-turn to the left and whips into an open space on the east side of the street across from the hardware store. Thankfully, I’m wearing my seatbelt.

“I probably shouldn’t have done that,” he says. “Although sometimes I’ll see a cop down the street and I just want to piss them off.”

The parking spot is directly in front of a sub shop, a narrow storefront with a haphazardly lettered sign above it. Inside, behind a long deli counter, we find Shirley, a short, round-faced woman. Her answers are terse but friendly, with just a hint of a smile over her calm demeanor.

Shirley has taken Liberty Dollars for almost two years. She does it because “they’re backed . . . and the Federal Reserve notes aren’t.” She occasionally walks across the street and uses them to buy trash bags at the hardware store. The hardware store is about as far as Shirley would go for anything, anyway.

We thank her and say goodbye. On the way out, I pick up a business card promoting Clayton’s campaign for sheriff. On the back it says, “Support the U.S. Constitution-Serve and Protect the People-No Interference from Outside.”

Clayton is running against a Republican and a former Republican who, spurned by the Democratic Party, is running as an independent. The Republican wins, and Clayton ends up with about 173 votes. Based on the cost of flyers and business cards, Clayton later figures he spent about 30 cents per vote.

 

The Furniture Store

Clayton drives south on Broadway to a furniture store. The sign on top is in disrepair, but inside the showroom floor is crowded with furniture.

We had stopped here earlier in the day, but they had been too busy. Now, Danny is just finishing with a customer. Looking around, it’s hard to miss several water-damaged ceiling tiles scattered over the showroom.

Danny’s mother, a late-middle-aged woman with blonde hair in an elegant wave, comes over to greet us. She engages in small talk with Clayton for a few minutes, but after casually remarking that the government is controlled by Satan, she looks straight at me and says self-consciously, “Now you’re probably thinking that this is the most conservative place you’ve ever been in.”

I assure her it isn’t, citing my familiarity with shortwave talk radio hosts like Alex Jones, who has a lot worse things to say about the government. It turns out that Danny is a big fan of shortwave talk radio, especially Alex Jones and John Stadtmiller.

Danny comes over, dressed in a green knit shirt and black dress pants, and we start a spirited discussion of various populist and constitutionalist topics. At one point his father, a small, gray-haired man who has been moving mattresses across the showroom floor, stops and tells Danny to keep it down while customers are around.

While we are talking, Clayton notices the time, then opens up a little black pouch on his belt. Taking out a finger-sticker, he pricks the side of his left forefinger, then holds a small glucose meter to the blood droplet. Clayton later tells me that he was diagnosed in June 2002 with diabetes.

Danny has taken Liberty Dollars since the summer of 2001, because “it’s the perfect currency,” since it’s backed by gold and silver. Once he took 90% of the purchase price of a chair in Liberty Dollars, from Jesse, who runs a car repair shop.

Danny is about six feet tall, with mostly black hair and a little gray, swept back, and he has a slight overbite. Occasionally when he’s talking, he’ll draw uncomfortably close and his brown eyes get very intense. After expressing his concern about the state of the world, he concludes by saying, “out of all this debris chaos, maybe we can get back to where we were.”

As more customers start to come into the store, we make our way to the front door, then thank Danny and say goodbye.

 

The Car Repair Shop

It would be another three weeks before I speak to Jesse, owner of an auto repair shop. By then the corn has been harvested, and the fields are full of broken brown cornstalks. Jesse’s place is south of town on State Road 19, in the middle of the brown cornfields.

On the way to Jesse’s place, Clayton had handed me a printout of an email from Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas’ 14th district. Clayton doesn’t own a computer, but a friend printed it out for him. Rep. Paul goes on at length against war in Iraq, the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, and of course, the Federal Reserve and the IRS. Rep. Paul is obviously not popular among Republicans, despite having the distinction of the “most conservative voting record in Congress,” according to a conservative watchdog group.

A similar disdain for the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act is found in an essay by Bernard von NotHaus, on the “Nazi-ification of America.” It is Bernard’s only writing on the NORFED website that briefly veers away from monetary policy, but curiously, there are no links to it from the home page. You have to search for it with Google.

Clayton pulls into a long gravel driveway running alongside a large two-story white house, then parks along the left side in the grass, just past a U.S. flag on a 20-foot flagpole. Walking toward the large double-bay mechanics’ garage, I notice the same 40-foot TV antenna tower that everyone else in this area seems to have. Yet, there is also a large satellite dish behind the garage.

We walk around a red truck parked in front of the open south bay. Its hood is up and a heavyset middle-aged man in a blue jacket is directing a taller, thin young man in forcing water through the truck’s cooling system.

No one acknowledges us as the older man hurries back and forth between the truck and the tool chests in the shop. The younger man, in worn, faded Carhartt jeans, busies himself over the truck. Finally the older man stops to talk with Clayton, barely glancing at me. He is about six feet tall, with a large pot belly covered by an IU t-shirt showing through an unzipped blue Carquest quilted jacket. His beefy face is topped with a faded gray striped Snap-On knit cap pulled down over his ears, and he’s wearing medium-sized chrome frame glasses.

Eventually, satisfied with the younger man’s work on the truck, Jesse heads to the back of the shop, followed closely by an old white hound dog named Molly. He enters a tiny, 6′ x 10′ office, just wide enough to fit an old, green, steel desk pushed to the back. A Compaq Presario monitor and keyboard sit on the cluttered desk, with the CPU tower on a short file cabinet to the right. Above the CPU, hanging from a vertical pipe, is a sign stating, “We supported 4-H Livestock Sale-Miami County 4-H Fair.”

Jesse is poring over a computer printout showing hotels along the route from Peru to Frederick, Maryland. Jesse and Clayton discuss various options for lodging near the county fairgrounds, where a rally is to be held before a protest march in Washington, D.C. This is to be the grand finale of a cross-country “Freedom Drive” protesting the Federal Reserve System, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S.A. Patriot Act, and the war against Iraq.

Jesse asks Clayton if I’m going, and I shake my head no. Jesse turns to me and addresses me for the first time. He tells me to sit down, pointing to an open five-gallon paint bucket serving as a trash can. I hesitate, noting that it has no lid; not wanting to seem discourteous, I sit down.

Of course, now I’m lower than Jesse in his office chair, and I’m somewhat uncomfortable perched on the edge of the lidless bucket. Jesse looks directly at me with his broad face and steel-gray eyes and asks why I’m there.

After I explain that Clayton has the largest collection of Liberty Merchants in the state, Jesse seems satisfied. He says he has been taking Liberty Dollars for about one and a half years, because he wants “to try and eliminate the IRS.”

He tells several stories of his run-ins with the IRS, including one that details why they owe him $23,000 that he intends to get back. Jesse has various epithets for the IRS, including “scumbags,” “ruthless,” “evil,” and “the devil in disguise.”

Out in the open garage bay, a family of four shows up and asks Jesse for some coffee and hot chocolate. Jesse ushers them into a mini-mart attached to the garage. After the family leaves, I ask Jesse the price of a fountain Coke.

“Sixty cents,” he says. I hand him a Liberty Dollar. He gives me forty cents.

“We don’t collect sales tax,” he says, then goes back out into the shop.

Later, at the the sub shop, Shirley refuses to add state sales tax to the list price on a bag of chips. “Just a dollar,” she says. “A lot of people try to give me the five cents, but I don’t take it.”

 

The Economics Professor

Sitting in his cramped office at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Associate Professor of Economics Steven H. Russell is a little bemused by the story of the Liberty Dollar. He has never heard of it before, and he is surprised that it is legal, particularly with regard to banking laws.

Although NORFED specifically addresses questions about legality from the point of view of the Secret Service and the Treasury Department, it doesn’t refer to banking regulations. In fact, the promotional video that Bernard von NotHaus distributes to Redemption Centers shows him holding a sign saying, “Be your own bank!”

Of course the Federal Reserve banks are privately owned, but they supposedly return most of the profit from loaning out Federal Reserve notes back to the U.S. Treasury Department.

Steven Russell is also surprised that American Liberty Currency is not “fully backed,” that is, that $10.00 in Federal Reserve notes buy only one ounce of silver, or less than $5.00 worth.

“That aspect of it shocks me. I would think that if you were serious about trying to create an alternative currency, and your philosophy was, well, we want to have a silver standard or a gold standard, you’d want to have a currency that was fully backed.”

Of course, NORFED is doing more than just putting a currency into circulation; they are also lobbying for the repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the Internal Revenue Code. Is that the only way to get rid of the Federal Reserve System?

“The Federal Reserve System was created by Congress, so it’s not in the Constitution (the Federal Reserve Act of 1913), so if Congress ever got sufficiently upset at what the Federal Reserve was doing, they could change the Federal Reserve Act or they could even get rid of the Federal Reserve System.”

He acknowledges that with a currency system that is not on a gold standard, inflation rates can be arbitrarily set by the Federal Reserve System. If the inflation rate were to get up to, say, 20%, a commodity-backed alternative currency might become very popular. Until then, he thinks it will be restricted to those who are using it for ideological reasons.

That includes Clayton, who believes that he can change the system from the ground up.