Racism, Nationalism, Sports... It's Just a Game!

Recently Mr. Sepp Blatter, head or FIFA, stated that racist incidents during games should just be shrugged off by the players. They should just 'shake hands', he said, and all will be well. Because it's just a game after all. Here is a report with the part of the interview which started this controversy. People as high up as the British PM David Cameron have condemned Mr. Blatter for his statement and many have called for his resignation. Now I fully agree that FIFA is a strange corporation-type structure which seems corrupt in many ways. But there is certainly some truth in Mr. Blatter's words. Namely, SPORTS ARE JUST A GAME. I myself am a passionate sports fan, but I would not presume to ever say that sports are of any importance in the world. Sports are fun to play, fun to watch, and it can be fun to support a team or player. But what I see in the so-called 'world or sports' is just madness. Why are there racist incidents in the first place? Because someone is crazy enough about sports to abuse someone else racially over being a supporter or player of another team! This is a fanaticism bordering on that we see all the time with nationalism and patriotism - two concepts I have widely condemned on this blog.
Sports fanatics have a lot in common with nationalistic patriots and religious zealots. I tend to think people who hold a sports team as an actual value in their lives are somewhat deranged. I certainly support a team and am a loyal supporter, but I do not have any negative feelings toward supporters of other teams. I do not have any violent urges to abuse others over their own sports preferences. True, when my team loses I feel a bit bummed, and when it wins I feel happy, but none of my feelings are ever 'over the top'. But it is not so with the average raging sports fan. All this gets even more conflated when we talk about National Sports Teams. There irrational national pride mixes with sports fanaticism and creates a truly frightening combination.
In America this sports fanaticism is introduced more or less by forcable indoctrination through the school system. Each individual is pretty much destined to support the team of their local high school and then college. Nobody really seems to realize how totally out of proportion our response to simple sports has become. Colleges and universities invest millions in sports despite this having no educational value whatsoever. This is done, I assume, to breed loyalty among the student population. Young people, especially nowadays, are very susceptible to outside influence because they seem to be a bunch of nihilists (this is an empirical statement I am making after quite a few years of observation in a number of countries where I have lived). Nihilists with no principles always need some higher ideal to hang on to and give their life meaning. And those ideals are proposed by people who are all too eager to control and exploit the unknowing: States, Patriots, Relgious sects, or Secular sects (which I consider mainstream sports to be).

George Orwell wrote that "Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting." I think we need to think about this. Sports are just a game people! And let's leave it at that.

Creepy Poppy Day - Spencer is right, as always

The "British people" (i.e. the tax serfs of the UK government) have been celebrating the memory of their military dead (i.e. the government's cannon fodder), especially those who died in recent interventions in the Middle East (i.e. genocidal expeditions of Mr. Tony Blair). To be honest I have had enough of seeing people all wearing poppy flowers on all their clothes, cars, and other property. I guess the poppy has a similar function to the ribbon in the USA. In that both are symbollic ways of glorifying mass murder. Maybe it is something about being raised in a Polish family, I don't know, but I have a thourough disgust for war. Even warlike rhetoric sickens me. I have no respect for any soldiers who died on missions in the Middle East in recent years. They were guns-for-hire who lost their gamble. And if these wars consisted of states fighting states, I may have a neutral stance here. After all, why would I favor one mafia ahead of another? But currently all I see is state (i.e. mafia) armies (i.e. groups of goons) attacking innocent civilian populations. Furthermore, the American government has created concentration camps (we don't know how many in total, but one of them is actually official - Guantanamo) where Afghani goat-herds are being kept and tortured for months and years at a time. The people who freed the Nazi extermination camps after World War II are now establishing similar facilities themselves (maybe not designed for mass murder, but certainly designed for kidnapping, torture, and sometimes probably assassinations).
Just because a man puts on a silly uniform does not mean he is not required to abide by the basic rules of ethics. Green or blue clothes do not entitle you or me to shoot, kill, kidnap, murder, enslave, steal, rape, pillage, or occupy. But the government seems to think it does. Maybe someone should show up at Tony Blair's house wearing green-yellow camo and show him what waterboarding feels like?

To all British citizens I raise this appeal: Think carefully before you put on that poppy. Remember the millions of dead men, women, and children in Iraq and Afghanistan. And remember what probably the greatest British citizen ever, Herbert Spencer, once said of British soldiers who took part in the British-Afghan War in the 19th Century: "When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves."

Using Children to Illustrate Morality

I have been arguing for a long time now that our morality that we use and reference in everyday life should not be any different than that morality which we teach to children. I have recently also heard this said by Anarchist philosopher Stefan Molyneux. He is one of the few people who seem to understand that there is a deeply disturbing double-standard in our ethics. Namely, we apply different ethical standards to our interactions in the private sphere and in the so-called public sphere. So here are some sample scenarios where we can clearly see this as illustrated by children.
Scenario 1: When a child plays in a common play area with other children in the park, they all bring their own individual toys. They can then share the toys, trade them, or just play with their own toys excluding those of other children. If a little boy really wants the toy of another kid, the parents can encourage him to ask the other child to let him play with it or borrow it. They certainly will not take the toy from the child to whom it belongs and give it to their own kid. And they will not instruct their child that it is okay to steal the toys of other children. This applies even if the other child has many more toys than our own child. Just because the other kid has more toys and doesn't want to share them is not a valid reason to steal them and encourage our child to take them. If I heard any parent behave in such a way, I would be outraged.
And yet this is precisely what happens when the State takes money from the rich and gives to the poor. The people with more "toys" are robbed just because they have more stuff. We do not look at why some have more, or why the poor have less. All we do is redistribute the goods. This is a fundamental inconsistency.
Scenario 2: This scenario is from my own family. When I was a little boy, my parents didn't have a lot of money and couldn't buy me that much stuff. What they did though is give me a little bit of money once in a while which I could save up and maybe buy myself some nice toy sometime down the road. They did the same for my sisters. As a child I often tended to be somewhat hedonistic, as all children essentially are until they learn otherwise. I would sometimes spend my money on ice cream and candy, and didn't save up enough to buy nice toys. My sisters, though younger, caught onto this earlier. They gave up the candy in order to buy some cool stuff which lasted. I can't say I was pleased about this - after all they now had toys and I had zilch. But this did not cause my parents to take my sisters' toys and redistribute them between all three of us! Instead, my parents told me I should have saved my money, and that is what I did from that day forward. So, once again, why is this so different from what we see the State doing?! The State takes from those who save and feeds hedonistic habits among other members of the population. I have seen this happen with my own eyes! In the UK now, for example, there are more than 300,000 households where neither of the parents has ever held a job. And these households produce a lot of children, you can be sure of that!
Will the welfare moms and dads in those households teach their children that stealing on the playground is wrong? If so, they should be aware they are shamelessly doing the same thing. Except, as adults, they should know better.

Just dump the “Euro”

I want to chip in with a few obvious observations on the recent mania involving the Euro-currency, the Euro-zone, and Euro-bail-outs for Greece and (possibly) Italy. As a rule, whenever I see the prefix “euro” before any word, I identify it as Newspeak for something. The word “euro” always sounds nice and positive to us Europeans because we love the Old World. My eyesight is not blurred by this bias, however, because I am also a huge fan of the New World. Whatever you might say about America, it is the only place on Earth where an ambitious experiment of freedom was at least attempted. So when I watched the old propaganda news (on the BBC, of course) last night, I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at all the silly observations journalists, politicians, and other experts were making with regard to the Euro-crisis. The Euro-currency is about to collapse. There is talk about kicking Greece or several other states out of the Euro-zone in order to save it, but this will be avoided at all costs by the Euro-crats in Brussels and Berlin. Why? Because doing so would be admitting defeat for the European Union project. It would seem that Europe was not ready for a common currency and common economic planning after all. And another thing that this crisis is doing also worries the Brussels crowd – there is visible animosity arising inside some nation states towards others. Many Germans (the people who contributed somewhat to dire situations in other states by controlling the Euro) are claiming that the Greeks are ungrateful and refuse to give the Achaeans any more money. Two bail-outs should be enough. The Greeks, meanwhile, are starting to feel tired of the name-calling and want the Germans to stop running their lives. I am starting to think the only thing that could change this political climate is some silly distraction. Maybe Mr. Silvio Berlusconi should start thinking about finding another teen lover or throwing another Bacchanalian orgy for former heads-of-state in one of his private mansions. Distracting the Euro-citizenry might score him a few points with other Euro-crats and will certainly boost his rating among the Italian Don Juan constituency.
But, in all seriousness, all reasonable people know that this is all a futile game. The Euro is doomed. The only way to save it would be to raise interest rates and no Euro-zone country can afford that at the moment. Even Germany would have to declare bankruptcy if interest went up another 10% or so, and we all know that Italy, Ireland, or Portugal can only take afford another 1% at most. All states have essentially defaulted on their debt already; it will never be paid or paid in hyper-inflated toilet paper money. This is true for European states and the United States as well.

So I say let’s just dump the Euro already. Joseph Goebbels once said that "If you repeat a lie enough times it will become the truth". Repetition of falsehoods is indoctrination. And if all this Euro-stuff is one thing, it is un-European. Europe is beautiful because it is diverse. A single unified Continental state you say? I say let a thousand Liechtensteins and San Marinos bloom.

Prenatal Debt Slavery – Get on it Vatican!

In today’s world we still have one seemingly possible way of becoming a slave. Eliminating the current situation of tax serfdom has to be our priority, of course, but it is no reason for neglecting other terrible side-effects of state action. One such effect is debt slavery. And the debt slavery which results directly from state action is the enslavement of the young and the unborn – people who are not allowed to make decisions for themselves. If I decide to make myself a debt slave, so be it. I may deserve it. But forcing someone else to become such a slave is another thing entirely. The state borrows money and uses its future income (in the form of IOU’s) as collateral. This means that responsibility for money spent today is deferred onto people who will have to pay it off in the future. Children being born with into debt are essentially forced to pay for the folly of their ancestors. In private relations such a scheme would be unacceptable. I cannot buy a car by giving the car dealer a piece of paper which says that in twenty years my son will pay for it. Not only does it sound ridiculous, it is also deeply immoral. Some people have told me that I am not correct and that the current situation is more akin to when a parent dies and leaves his child a house with a mortgage on it. But this is not right either. Firstly, when a parent buys a house I don’t think he/she expects that the child will have to pay for it. It is more of an accident that the parent died before he was able to pay the whole thing off. Furthermore, an inheritor of a property with a mortgage can choose to not pay it and forfeit the property to the lender. Our children will not be able to do that with the state (at least not legally). And lastly, what we are leaving our children here is analogous to me leaving a useless wooden shack with no plumbing to my children only for them to find out that there is a million dollar mortgage on it – an amount that is multiple times the value of the shack. No reasonable human being would be expected to take such a deal; forfeiting the property would be a much better idea. The children are not obliged to pay off my debts because they did not voluntarily accept responsibility for them. This is all very clear.
There is also another moral argument to be made here, and another opportunity presents itself for me to lobby the Catholic Church, of which I am now a former member but still a great fan. So, if Catholics are so against abortion, which they claim to be, why don’t they oppose taking away other rights of the unborn? The right to life is important, but the right to life is not really anything other than the right to upkeep our bodily functions and our body is also part of our property. After all, what use is the right to life if the life we live is that of slavish servitude and dependence? The right of private property is an important part of the Catholic tradition. Therefore I think the Pope should condemn all public debts as stealing from the unborn, an action equivalent to abortion.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence."

The Catholic Church is Weak and Corrupt

I see more and more people within the libertarian community expressing the view that religion is dangerous and that churches are instruments of evil. While this is to some extent correct, I would like to calm everyone down. Until relatively recently I considered myself a member of the Catholic Church. I also notice that it is the Catholic Church which gets attacked most often by libertarians (despite the fact the Catholic Church is actually the most libertarian of all churches). And the reason I left the Church was not that it was forcing people into anything or doing unlibertarian things. In fact, my reason was precisely the opposite. The Catholic Church hierarchy is not doing what it should be doing. It is not condemning evil people for doing evil things and it is not expressing or enforcing its views. Being a libertarian I am a strong believer in the power of ostracism, and I think we should all exercise that power. The Church should, in my opinion, be more consistent. It's positions on many issues are jumbled and incoherent. Furthermore, Church members (especially the clergy) are not doing what I think they should be doing - pointing our evil. We have lots of Catholics who seem to agree with some Church doctrines and completely ignore others. I personally know Catholics in the United States who vote for pro-choice political candidates or socialists of all kinds. These people are not not good Catholics and they should be condemned for what they are doing. But the Church refuses to do so. Today's Catholic intellectuals represent a pathetic mockery of their Scholastic predecessors.
I do not know if this situation is the result of the times - maybe religion as a whole is becoming outdated and is in its death throes? Nobody looks as majestic on their death bed as they did in the days of their youth (with the possible exception of King Elessar). Or maybe the reason is the same as the one in government - too many cushy beaurocratic jobs and the double-standard in judging behaviour. Either way, the Church needs urgent reform which I doubt will take place. Religion, just like the political sphere of life, has to be dismantled down to the personal and private level, where individuals will have control.

Is Abp. Rowan Williams really a Christian?

Since moving back to America, I have observed quite a few people wearing all kinds of small items (usually bracelets) with the letters "WWJD" on them. I found out this abbreviation stands for "What would Jesus do?". It is a way of reminding people who claim to be Christian about the importance of their religion in making everyday decisions. You are faced with a problem and you ask yourself - what would Jesus do? Now I'm pretty sure members of the clergy shouldn't need little bracelets to be able to think like this, they are supposed to be thinking about Jesus all the time anyway. So I was very surprised the other day when I heard that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, spoke out in support of the Occupy Movement protesters who argue for higher taxes on the rich and on the finance industry. I don't really know why he would support such a thing, any economist worth his salt knows this kind of motion will cripple the industry, increase intrest rates and prices across the board, and drive jobs overseas. But there is also an important moral question here (which has nothing to do with the Archbishop's apparent ignorance of basic economics).
Namely, the question is: What would Jesus do?
Now I was raised Catholic and I've read the New Testament quite a few times - and nowhere in there did I see any reference to Jesus telling people they should take the property of others in the name of justice. And this is exactly what the new tax would do. In fact, even its proponents acknowledge this. They call the tax the "Robin Hood Tax", and we all know that Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor (after taking a certain comfortable provision for himself, of course). Abp. Williams should be able to explain to me how he can defend stealing. Thou shalt not steal was still in the Decalogue the last time I checked. Maybe the Archbishop needs to order a little "WWJD" bracelet for himself.
Jesus was a great man, and his followers, Christians, built a great civilization. Christians are generous and they respect human rights, such as the right of property. Christians do not coerce others and they have a respect for the Law (The Law as Frederick Bastiat defined it). This is why their civilization grew so great, it was peaceful and prosperous when compared to other cultures on this Earth. Jesus told others to give their property to the deserving poor - he did not instruct anyone to steal in order to support themselves or others who had less material wealth. Jesus was the patron of beggars, not of robbers. I hope all Christians who still claim to be faithful to him remember this one day.

To quote the Jesus himself: "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me." (Matthew 19:21).
Sacrificing oneself for the sake of others is often a great virtue (when not taken to extremes). But sacrificing others for the sake of the poor is akin to human sacrifice, something Jesus would never be able to condone - he was a pacifist.