AGRARIAN JUSTICE

AMERICAN CRISIS 2017

Tom Paine and the Ironies of Social Democracy

The 2011-12 Dewey Lecture in Law and Philosophy, recorded on February 29, 2012, was presented by Elizabeth Anderson, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Rawls Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, University of Michigan.

To skip the introductions start the video to 6:55.

Professor Anderson begins speaking of Thomas Paine in detail around 16:30.
 

TAX TIME - a forecast for dollars and democracy

As I used TurboTax this year to file my 2008 returns I was mesmerized by the floating green digits in the upper right corner of the window. This number represented the amount of my money the federal government would return to me this year. This floating variable turned filing into a game where I, the player, tried to see how much a I could legitimately deduct to maximize that green number. What I find disheartening about this popular system of "doing your taxes" is the absence of social-consciousness. Of course the dollar amount of the return is important to each filer but the number that should also be highlighted and in bold is the amount of money the government will actually keep. If everyone were keenly aware of this number maybe they would feel a desire to see to it that Uncle Sam spend it wisely.

I had heard the IRS was going to write their own freeware to help taxpayers e-file with ease, but because of much lobbying TurboTax convinced them not to in exchange for offering their most basic service free to customers. I laud the IRS for attempting a threat on the free market of tax preparation swindlers and I think those eager software programmers over at the IRS might still have a future.

In the movie Stranger than Fiction the character Ana Pascal (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) refuses to pay the portion of her taxes going to government works she feels contradict her moral values (i.e. IRAQ). Rather than not paying a portion of her taxes what if she lived in a world where she could tell her government exactly which government programs she'd like her taxes spent on? To serious politicians the idea of line item taxation might seem juvenile and silly but in reality there is no reason a program written by the IRS as an addendum to TurboTax could not be put into action.

Here is the idea...

After e-filing your taxes a window shows up with the amount of money to be kept by the government displayed along with two buttons. Button 1 says, "I give my federal representatives the right to decide how to spend the money paid by me in the form of Tax for the year ----." Button 2 reads "I wish to appropriate the money paid by me in taxes to the federal programs of my choosing." If the user clicks button 1 the return is filed and the user goes on having a pleasant Sunday. If the user clicks button 2 then a cascade of buttons ensues. The first page might say "I allocate X% of my total withholdings to -(a drop down list of all the departments of the federal government - defense, education, interior, etc. etc.) After passing this initial breakdown step the user would have the option of ending it or continuing to further breakdown precisely how they want their money spent. For example, say a person wanted their withholdings to go to research on Parkinson's disease they could theoretically go as far as allocating that money within the NIH. At every level of allocation the user would maintain the ability to stop and be done, allowing legislatures to step in and finish the decision making process for them. The degree of participation could be anything from 0 to 100%. What would be accomplished by this? First, a heightened awareness of what exactly the government does would permeate all who participate to even the slightest degree, and second and most importantly, this would provide real power to the people in prioritizing our national agenda. I don't know what this experiment might look like but I predict that defense spending would decline precipitously while investment in education, infrastructure, and agriculture would spike.

In the age of the internet this kind of people-powered taxation mechanism is possible. It is merely a matter of prying the power from the citadel in Washington where amassed power has grown to a sickening head over two centuries while our fledgling democracy has come into adolescence as a nation. If the founders knew what level of personal connection would someday come through this thing we call the internet they would have advocated a mechanism as I have just proposed. This mechanism fits soundly into the enlightenment precept that "Government can only be empowered by its citizens."

If you like this idea do what my grandmother always did, write your congress person and forward this article to anyone you think might listen by copying this URL into an email.

Sincerely,
Your fellow tax payer

Franklin a Fleming?

Thomas Paine came to America largely through his connection to Benjamin Franklin. Franklin provided Paine a critical letter of introduction which Paine presented in Philadelphia upon his arrival in 1774. The stories of these founders are tightly woven and many works attributed to one or the other may have been the result of conversations between the two. While Paine was the son of a staymaker (one who crafts corsets), Franklin was the son of a candle and soap maker. But the threads of their philosophical connection coalesce further as Franklin's ancestry is uncovered by modern historians. The Belgian paper Flanders Today reveals Franklin's ancestors were of Belgian (more specifically Flemish) descent. Franklin's DNA meandered to America from Flanders by way of England’s second largest city at the time - Norwich. This city is situated close to the North Sea and a "historic hotbed of religious dissent." The city was flooded with Flemish emigrants in the 1560s - mostly protestant weavers. They were fleeing persecution by a Spanish duke. Among these sartorial religious refugees were Benjamin Franklin's maternal great-great-grandparents. Though his grandfather Peter died 16 years before his birth, Franklin's writings reflect how he came to embody the "decent plainness and manly freedom" exemplified by his grandfather. The connection between clothes making and the ancestral trade of Franklin and Paine is more than serendipitous. Perhaps during the post-Renaissance middle class outgrowth crafting cloths for common people bound makers to their market and helped foster the memetic roots that would eventually rip arbitrary authority from the throne of England and place it squarely in the hands of the people. It might do the America of 2009 some good to once again start making clothes and furniture and all the myriad consumables that constitute CULTURE.

Founding Words

"The greatest threat to our democratic experiment will not come from those who would openly oppose us, but those who will silently follow us."
~Thomas Paine

An excellent site to reacquaint ourselves with the LIVING American genome.

Thomas Paine Day 2009 - Celebrating a Revolutionary

Happy Birthday to Thomas Paine: an American Revolutionary and ABOLITIONIST.

In preparing for this day I have been reviewing several pieces written by and about Thomas Paine. Inevitably the Wikipedia article about him comes up as the top hit when submitting his name to the Google gods. Upon reading this entry I felt like I was wandering through a reader's digest version of the biography by Craig Nelson. But one passage about Mr. Paine puzzled me for days and has led me down a rabbit hole of hearsay and speculation. The passage includes the assertion that Thomas Paine's "fervent objections to slavery" led to his exclusion from power during the early years of the Republic. This assertion was made by the historian John Nichols and was questioned in the Wikipedia entry, saying it was "dubious" and needed to be discussed. Have historians tried to suppress the opinions of Thomas Paine regarding slavery? Why is the abolitionist article "African Slavery in America" which was first published in the Pennsylvania Magazine, no longer listed as being penned by Paine when it once was assigned to him? This article was published in the periodical during Paine's tenure there and is of content that echos his opinions expressed elsewhere. Where is the evidence that he did not author this article? These are some of the questions that still loom regarding Paine as an abolitionist. It is perplexing to me that a writer lauded for his clarity could be ambiguous regarding his opinions on an issue as monumental as slavery. The answer came to me as I was reading a collection of his writing last week. In a letter Paine sent to the medical guru among the founding father's (Benjamin Rush) Paine pronounces his opinions on the slave trade. The letter is dated March 16th 1790 and was sent from Paris.

"I wish most anxiously to see my much loved America - it is the country from whence all reformations must originally spring - I despair of seeing an Abolition of the infernal trafic in Negroes - we must push the matter further on your side the water - I wish that a few well instructed Negroes could be sent among their Brethren in Bondage, for until they are able to take their own part nothing will be done..."

Further, Paine authored the preamble to the 1779 Pennsylvania proposal to abolish slavery in that state. Tom Paine died alone and destitute with no money to his name and little respect amongst his contemporaries. He knew that his opinions about universal fairness and opposition to the stranglehold of organized religion over the minds of the masses would not make him popular, but he held his opinions without apologies until his death. Nearly 200 years have since passed, and nine days ago President Barack Obama vindicated this "better angel" of history by quoting Paine's words during his historic inauguration. I can think of no better way to celebrate the lives of those that forged the ideals that enable the "great experiment" that is the United States to continue evolving than by breathing life back into the words of people like Thomas Paine; forgotten by the writers of history but not by the makers of history.

Thomas Paine Quoted in Obama's Inauguration Address

Though not mentioned by name, the hand that penned some of the last words of President Obama's Inaugural speech belonged to Thomas Paine. Taken from his work entitled The American Crisis #1, the following words remind us that even when held at the brink of despair, hope has and will rally these United States to survive and thrive.

"Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive ... that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it."

Thomas Paine was not mentioned by name perhaps because of the controversial stigma that came to be associated with his character later in life along with the publication of his treatise criticizing all established religions of the world The Age of Reason. This caused his image to reflect poorly in the minds of some of the United States greatest leaders. Teddy Roosevelt once labeled Paine a "dirty little atheist." Though, Paine was in fact a self proclaimed deist believing in one God.

As a president cognizant enough to mention non-believers by name in his inaugural speech begins the immense task of rebuilding a nation torn apart by fear it is my hope that the subtleties of the founder's intellects will be explored and extolled once again.

As for the climax of the inaugural speech; it came for me with the following paragraph.

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more."

This extends a friendly hand to the planet while echoing the wise words of Benjamin Franklin when he said.

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

With the promise of the still waters of peace on the horizon may this be attained swiftly and with minimal human suffering.

The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776

On the birthday of Benjamin Franklin I think it appropriate to review a particularly progressive collaboration between he and Thomas Paine - the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776. This document is considered by some historians to be the most "democratic" legislation to emerge from revolutionary America. This was the first legislation drafted that directly echoed the Declaration of Independence and further enunciated and protected the freedom of every person to "natural rights" including the right to worship "according to the dictates of their own conscience." Also, the language of this document presents a situation wherein all men, no matter race or creed were free to vote. This being penned in 1776 was a little too radical for the time. In 1790 it was amended by conservatives in that state to be more inline with the other state's constitutions.

From the preamble it is clear that this document serves as a universal template for an evolving government. It also highlights the balance of consciousness Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine had. Though they did not agree on the extent to which to renounce religion themselves they did understand the significance of embedding religious freedom in the legal genome of posterity's government.

"We, the representatives of the freemen of Pennsylvania, in general convention met, for the express purpose of framing such a government, confessing the goodness of the great Governor of the universe (who alone knows to what degree of earthly happiness mankind may attain, by perfecting the arts of government) in permitting the people of this State, by common consent, and without violence, deliberately to form for themselves such just rules as they shall think best, for governing their future society; and being fully convinced, that it is our indispensable duty to establish such original principles of government, as will best promote the general happiness of the people of this State, and their posterity, and provide for future improvements, without partiality for, or prejudice against any particular class, sect, or denomination of men whatever, do, by virtue of the authority vested in us by our constituents, ordain, declare, and establish, the following Declaration of Rights and Frame of Government, to be the CONSTITUTION of this commonwealth, and to remain in force therein for ever, unaltered, except in such articles as shall hereafter on experience be found to require improvement, and which shall by the same authority of the people, fairly delegated as this frame of government directs, be amended or improved for the more effectual obtaining and securing the great end and design of all government"

Read the rest here.

Thomas Paine on The Writer's Almanac.

On the 233rd anniversary of the publication of Common Sense, Thomas Paine's famous pamphlet is commemorated by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac. This pamphlet explained the reasons the American colonies should declare their independence from Britain and was originally published anonymously. It sold roughly 500,000 copies in its first year. Thomas Paine did not profit from the sale of his work and donated all the proceeds to provisioning the continental army thus illustrating the old adage - the pen is mightier...

Does the Dalai Lama condone human sacrifice?

Disclaimer: After extensive research on this claim I have found no evidence of human sacrifice practiced or condoned by the current Dalai Lama. However, this claim was used in an attempt to convince me that Tibet is better off because of Chinese rule. The image to the right appeared in this week's issue of Nature, and reminded me of a debate I once had and all the memories of this most grueling disagreement came flooding back.

This article speaks of the Dalai Lama's desire and enthusiasm for interaction between Buddhists and scientists. Proponents of this type of scientific/spiritual collaboration make the point that, unlike western religions, Buddhism is unencumbered by an anthropomorphic deity in the sky and actually embraces empiricism over blind faith. An argument is made; in order to accomplish the "greatest good" an alleviation of human suffering is needed, a goal which Buddhism and science share.

The argument that I had surrounding the motives of the current Dalai Lama, the content of his character, and the nature of his religion began in part because of my blindly fervent defense of this man and the religion for which he stands. This argument is pertinent to the Dalai Lama's apparent interest in science because it took place inside a laboratory. My antagonist consistently claimed that the people of Tibet are wholly better off because of the occupation and that Chinese rule had made the more barbaric practices of “lamaism” (as he called Tibetan Buddhism) illegal. He went so far as to claim that the lamas (the high priests that surround the Dali Lama) had practiced human sacrifice up until the 1950’s.

Before I begin the explanation of the conclusions that followed I would like to preface the discussion with the introduction to Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason.

"I put the following work under your protection. It contains my opinion upon religion. You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it. The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall."

-Thomas Paine

Understanding why my friend held the opinion he did about the Dalai Lama required that I listen intensely to what he had to say precisely because it was so different than my own. The argument between he and I remained civil but lasted for 3 months after he had sent me an e-mail (I found the text on the web here) with the claims of human sacrifice backed by scholarly references. One such claim specifically accuses one of the high priests of Tibetan Buddhism or Gelug lama of making a large loaf of bread called a "torma" out of the following ingredients.

Torma (cake) made of buckwheat and blood;
1.) Five different sorts of meat, including human flesh;
2.) The skull of a child of an incestuous relationship, filled with blood and mustard seeds;
3.) The skin of a boy;
4.) A bowl of human brain in blood;
5.) A lamp filled with human fat with a wick made of human hair;
6.) And a dough like mixture of gall, brain, blood and human entrails.
In the same text it accuses the lamas of sacrificing their own subjects as recently as 1950.

"In AD1950 summer the Gelug lama made a huge torma of roughly three-yard high, claiming that the powerful demon Kshetrapala was invocated and sealed in it. They burnt it outside Lhasa town and bluffed Tibetans into believing that the demon as well as his accomplices was released to destroy the deity behind PLA, which was claimed to be a 'nine-headed Chinese demon'."

My initial instinct was to laugh at these accusations as Chinese propaganda, but I wanted to be as thorough as possible in the investigation. I inter-library loaned these references. Some came from obscure private libraries at Harvard. The only evidence I could find in all my research was reference to ancient Tibetan texts describing human sacrifice as part of the old "bon" mongolian traditions that mixed with Buddhism in the 1300s (de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Rene: Oracles and demons of Tibet, the cult and Iconography of the Tibetan protective deities, Katmandu 1993). I found no modern evidence for human sacrifice in Tibetan Buddhism anytime close to 1950. My mentor stuck to his ideas though and we agreed to disagree, but I did learn that Tibet was not the Shangri-La that it is normally portrayed as in western media. However, the Dalai Lama has demonstrated that he is setting an example for the other religious leaders of the world both by appearing in this week's issue of Nature with a pipette in his hand and by being quoted as saying "Should science prove some Buddhist concept wrong, then Buddhism will have to change." Reestablishing the tarnished reputation of science will help our world emerge from the land of make-believe it seems to be now inhabiting.

Art Church

The Church of Beethoven in Albuquerque, New Mexico is described by NPR here.

"I have struggled so long in the arts. It's like you're crying in the wilderness. You're saying, 'Look at all this incredible music that really isn't getting out there to the extent that it should.'"
-Felix Wurman

He says he wants this idea to spread with Churches of Mozart, Chopin, Bach, Schubert, and Rachmaninoff. But why limit the idea to music and why call it a church. Gatherings celebrating music, writing, and visual arts of secular content could be the next step in the interconnectedness of the web manifesting in the real world.

This story reminded me of an article I read in Time magazine entitled "Sunday school for atheists." My favorite tidbit from this story was the description of the children singing songs like "I'm Unique and Unrepeatable, set to the tune of Ten Little Indians." Though I don't think organizations like these should be advertised as "for atheists only." Thomas Paine believed in one God just not any of the stories written about God over human history. A forum for people who want to socialize their children without having to sign up and take oaths to a code of beliefs should be more widely available in our United States under its metaphorical banner of FREEDOM.