Stardate 20020808.1133

(Captain's log): In many places, some of which claim the conceit of "civilization", there is a deep suspicion bordering on contempt for the opinions and even the intellect of the common man. Better in those nations that an elite, well-educated and cultured and politically sophisticated, establish the political policies of the nation, and that the ill-educated, uncultured, and politically naive plebes simply follow along where they are led by their betters. In many of those nations elections do get held, but always with trepidation, and to the extent possible with the choices being presented to those naive voters being carefully arranged ahead of time by the elite to make sure no dangerous alternative can be selected by the plebes in their foolishness.

And yet, the plebes can still on occasion shock the elite, as happened in the French Presidential election. While certain extremist fringe candidates were available on the ballot, "of course" only Chirac and Jospin were significant candidates and "of course" they would be the winners of the first round and fight it out in the runoff. The French voters thought otherwise, and Jospin went down in flames.

And in the US, good Jacksonians who were following the news felt the warm glow of schadenfreude at seeing the elite get their noses pushed in by the plebes. We in the US have constructed our system under the assumption that any ruling elite, whether overt or shadow, will inevitably become inbred and corrupt, and that we the common men and women of the nation are the true source of all power. The primary reason for the First Amendment is to level the playing field in the discourse on government policy. It bans a state religion because the experience was that state religions inevitably got involved in state policy, literally issuing decrees ex cathedra, ostensibly pretending that their opinions came from God (or whatever other deity was involved). It preservation of the rights of free speech, free press, and freedom of assembly are intended to let anyone who wants to discuss political issues do so, and to try to spread their opinions to others in hopes of influencing events.

Freedom of the Press was perhaps the most critical piece of that puzzle, because at the end of the 18th century, the printing press was the cheapest form of effective mass communication available. And just as private ownership of firearms by Americans had been a critical factor in the military victory over Great Britain, the private ownership of printing presses and the use of them to produce and distribute political diatribes against the King's Government had been a critical factor in helping to galvanize support in the colonies for revolution and independence. Could Hamilton and Madison have made the difference they did if they could only spread the ideas from The Federalist Papers by word of mouth? The power of the printing press is that it is a "force multiplier" for political opinions.

Still, even then printing presses were a significant capital expense, and paper and ink cost a great deal on an ongoing basis. Though freedom of the press broadened the ability of disparate voices to participate in public debate on the issues, it was an imperfect solution and many voices had little access to broad communications channels to get their messages out.

The extent to which the US has relied on the opinions and fundamental wisdom of the common man instead of elite self-selected "opinion makers" has varied over time; it's always been a struggle. But by and large the common man has maintained his hold and his influence over the course of the nation, because our electoral system is less susceptible than some others to manipulation by the organizers of the elections.

When the Third Circuit Court was asked to rule on a legal challenge to the Communications Decency Act, which attempted to establish a legal basis for a Federal power to censor the Internet, the Court was faced with the fact that the extent to which the government may infringe First Amendment rights varies depending on the specific characteristics of a given communications medium, according to previous precedent. For example, it is inherent in broadcast television that there are a limited number of channels available, since spectrum is not an infinite resource. The courts had ruled that since the government controlled allocation of spectrum, and since there was a substantial limit on the amount of information which could flow through television, that the government had a legitimate and compelling interest in controlling the content, to try to make sure that as broad a range of opinions had access to that medium as was practical. The government has also used that power to control material which would be considered broadly offensive, which is why it is exceedingly rare to see naked breasts on broadcast television.

But the courts had also ruled that the government had no equivalent interest in controlling cable TV. There is no inherent limit on the bandwidth in that medium, and as a result the government doesn't need to interfere in order to make sure that a wide variety of messages are delivered. (The presumption is that government interference is disallowed by the First Amendment unless there's a compelling reason for it.)

With respect to the Internet, the government tried to argue in front of the Third Circuit Court that the legal precedent of television should apply and that the government should be granted strong powers of control over content. The plaintiffs in the case, a coalition represented by the ACLU, argued that the proper legal precedent was newspapers, where the government has virtually no control at all.

The Third Circuit Court decision, later upheld 7-2 by the Supreme Court, considered the dual criteria of bandwidth and barrier-to-entry as the basis for this decision. What it determined was that the Internet is, by its nature, the most democratized medium of mass communication the world has ever seen, and that it has the ability to fulfill the role that free press could only partially fulfill of giving almost everyone direct ability to participate in political debate. The barrier to entry is even lower than for newspapers and the potential bandwidth even higher and thus the Court ruled that the Internet deserved even more protection than newspapers from government interference. Their conceptual model was that a web site was the modern electronic equivalent of a soap box in the town square, providing as many citizens as possible the opportunity to directly contribute to the public debate.

And I am doing so.

While I could, I suppose, purchase a photocopier and use it to print and distribute my political opinions locally, I would never have the ability to gain the kind of widespread distribution I actually have. For a quite reasonable amount of money (only about $2000, all told) I was able to purchase my own web server and set it up in my home. I pay about $200 per month for a broadband connection to the Internet, and as a result I have created an electronic publication of political commentary known as USS Clueless which I fully own and completely control, by which I can distribute my opinions to an audience of thousands living all over the world. There's never been anything like this; and it scares the willies out of the elitists who think that information needs to be controlled because it is dangerous.

I'm a populist. I believe that our nation operates best when major government policies are decided after vigorous public debate on the issues, and a vital part of that is for undecided citizens to have available a wide variety of arguments for different points of view. They can then read as many as desired, evaluate what they say and compare how well they make their points. Even better is if the advocates engage in direct debate, with each trying to point out the weaknesses in the other's case, and each in turn answering those objections as well as can be. As this process continues, more and more citizens will come to a conclusion about the issue, and eventually a national consensus will emerge, which should then guide our policy. This process has long taken place in the print media of newspapers and magazines, but only a few were able to contribute (though many could read) because of economic realities. Now, for the first time in history, almost anyone can become their own publisher, as I have.

I'm a populist because as a good Jacksonian I have fundamental faith in the good sense of my fellow citizens, in combination with a deep distrust of any kind of elite who claim the mantle of superior knowledge and wisdom. Thus I use this platform to describe and justify my views on the issues of the day, and to the extent that I do a good job, I may influence others to agree with me. Even with this platform, I only reach a vanishingly small fraction of my fellow citizens, but I am not trying to do this alone. I consider myself part of a team effort. I am one voice among many, contributing analysis and opinion, and though my contribution is small it is very real, and the whole is made up of many such small parts.

What surprises some people is that I consider the opposing voices also to be part of that team. The one thing I wish to avoid at all costs is for citizens to make up their minds after only hearing one side of an issue, even if it is mine. That is the standard tactic of an elite trying to control an unruly mob; you only tell them what you think they need to know, and make sure they never hear anything else, and then they'll believe it. The flip side of that is the clear apprehension that if they are permitted to hear multiple points of view that they may make the "wrong" decision, come up with the "wrong" answer.

Who is to say which is the right answer? Well, for the elite, it's obvious that they themselves do. As a good populist, I reject that notion, and what I think is that it is the commoners themselves who should make that determination.

I don't believe in absolute unfettered majority rule, and neither did the founders. The government is assumed to express the will of the people, and the Constitution imposes substantial limits on what the government can do, and thus what centralized authority is capable of doing to carry out the wishes of the people, precisely to minimize the tyranny of the majority. The primary limit is that the majority not be permitted to silence minority opinions, or to impose orthodoxy of thought or behavior on individuals. We call that "liberty", and it can only exist if we have the legal ability to think, speak and act in ways which do not agree with our neighbors. If my neighbor wants to dye his hair green and wear a ring in his nose, I may think that he looks damned stupid but I also believe it's his right, even if I might find it offensive.

But within those limits, within the areas where we have accepted the idea of majority rule, I think that the consensus which emerges from this process is indeed the right answer, even if it gives some members of the elite hives. (Schadenfreude is such a guilty pleasure.)

I favored the war in Afghanistan. I favor war in Iraq. I hate the prospect, but I consider all the alternatives to be even worse, and I believe that the longer we wait, the worse the cost of the war (to us) will be, and since I consider such a war unavoidable then the sooner the better. But entering a war is a major political decision and it unquestionably should happen only with emergence of public consensus, based on reasoned understanding of the issues by the public, which I believe can best be fostered by public debate. After Pearl Harbor, no such public debate was needed to create a consensus for war against Japan, but since I'm advocating a preemptive attack against another nation instead of a direct response to a direct attack by that nation, then we have the luxury of time for a debate, and an obligation to engage in one.

And I have been trying, off and on, to engage those who strongly disagree with me in such debate for months now, largely fruitlessly. Perhaps I chose the wrong forum to issue my challenge, given that those on the other side of the political fence who participated there at the time also tended to subscribe to a whole mishmash of post-modern multicultural dogma, to the extent that we couldn't even come to an agreement about the fundamentals of epistemology, let along tackle the actual political issues. At the time I dismissed those epistemological concepts as "Berkeley Rules", and in reaction I was myself dismissed as a bully and an insensitive boor who didn't understand what a social gaffe it was for me to actually tell someone that they were wrong about something and to try to prove it to them and everyone else.

The entire concept of debate seemed to be invalid under pomo multicult dogma. While that dogma seemed to accept the inevitability of disagreement, it also decided that everyone should recognize that all opinions were equally valid, and that any attempt to try to demonstrate otherwise was a violation of the rules of engagement. There seems to be a sort of a pomo equivalent of Godwin's Law, which says that "anyone who says someone else is wrong, is wrong." Even worse, that they're beneath intellectual contempt and that their arguments should be rejected and ignored irrespective of their merits. Essentially, the mere fact of disagreement proves that it has no merit.

I suppose it's hardly a surprise that the philosophical underpinning for this weird attitude has come out college departments of literature and similar cultural studies. To a great extent, in those fields there isn't any practical way to sort out the validity of differing opinions. (To some extent, the reason why is that those opinions have no practical value.)

Professors of science or engineering would never consider anything that foolish. As an engineer, I face validation of my ideas by real world test all the time, and any successful engineer soon learns that the universe doesn't respect our opinions. If we think something will work, and we're wrong, then it won't work and we have to redesign it. It's as simple as that. Believing really hard, or getting insulted, won't change that because the universe doesn't care.

As a result we unsophisticated spartan mechanists tend to have very practical attitudes about the extent to which opinions are valid. We know full well that some are not, and that time spent giving them credence is time wasted. The sooner invalid opinions are identified and discarded, the sooner you can ship. The value of any idea is its practical ability to be applied to the real world and cause change, whether in the form of a product or in the form of political consensus guiding government policy, and if you use the wrong ideas, your result will suck.

The most important step any working engineer takes in the process of professional maturation is to tone down his ego about three steps, and to recognize that when someone tells him that his design won't work that it is a friendly gesture to be valued, not an insult to be resented. (This step is usually quite traumatic for new college grads.)

And by the same token, public debate on political issues cannot be bound by the idea that each side has to pretend that both opinions are valid, just in order to avoid hurting anyone's feelings. The goal of the debate is to create a consensus, and for that to happen all the alternatives but one have to be discarded, on some basis or other. The goal of any given advocate in the debate is to try to make it so that his position is the survivor, by trying to make it strong and by pointing out the weaknesses in all the others. It is inherently adversarial.

It is, perhaps, ironic that most of those in that forum didn't seem to think that my opinions were valid or needed to be respected. I suspect that's mostly because I was refusing to play by the rules; since I was assaulting the deep dogma, I was no longer protected by it and could be insulted with impunity. (And even though I ceased participating there entirely months ago, I am still a favorite target of gratuitous insults which, not at all surprisingly, rarely address the issues I raise.)

Of course, argumentum ad hominem betrays the real attitudes of those who use it in two ways. First, it's a commonly held feeling that someone retreats to ad hominem when they can't deal with the issues on their merits: if you can't argue the issue, try to discredit the other advocate. This is a sign of desperation. One who is confident in his position on the issues won't feel the need to use tactics of this kind.

But it also often betrays an even deeper prejudice; a wish to actually silence the other side. This is anti-populism manifest; it shows a belief that the other ideas, though wrong, are persuasive and dangerous and that the foolish commoners can't be allowed to hear them for fear that they will be convinced by them. And indeed, you nearly always find argumentum ad hominem riding hand-in-hand with argumentum ad verecundiam, appeals to authority.

At its most pathological, argumentum ad hominem can show up as mockery, sometimes at a level of pettiness that defies belief. I've always felt that such tactics reflect far more on those who use them than on their intended targets. They reek of schoolyard arguments between kids screaming insults at each other; they have no place in a national debate about issues of life and death.

While this process of debate is for the benefit of my fellow citizens, to permit them to decide what they want their government to do, nothing says that the participants in the debate must be Americans. It is completely legitimate for those in other lands to get involved in hope of influencing our decision, since whatever we decide to do will certainly affect them, too. Of course, as with all debate they may well damage their own causes more than help them by the kind of rhetoric they use. While I don't feel the need to gratuitously insult my opponent in a debate, it would be the height of rudeness to prevent him from disqualifying himself through his own stupidity or ineptitude or demonstration of ignorance of the true issues.

So in the belief that my position in the debate is strong, and in the belief that my fellow citizens are not unwise and not only don't need to be protected from opinions disagreeing with my own but indeed need exposure to them, over the next few days I shall channel the shade of Diogenes, raise a virtual lantern, and seek an intellectually honest antiwar voice in the blogosphere. I expect my search to be long and ultimately fruitless, but one never knows.

My search will be haphazard; I will begin with a small number of sites I have found in my refers, who have linked to me and posted arguments against those I posted about the war in the last few days. Like all blogs, each of them has a list of links to other sites that they recommend, and I'll use those to try to find others. It should be pointed out that each is responsible only for his own voice; none has any obligation to defend, or even to agree with, anything that any of the others say. Linking to someone doesn't represent unconditional endorsement of their views, and the opinions of those on the anti-war side are no more unanimous than are those of us who favor a war in Iraq.

We shall hope to see cogent arguments against an attack, proposals for credible alternative strategies, a willingness to debate the issue on its merits, and a fundamental subscription to the idea that free and open debate is always good, and that one benefits from exposure to opposing opinions even if one is not convinced by them, for in analyzing them one also analyzes one's own position and will come to understand it more fully. Thus are opinions converted into convictions, and then into confident action.

That's straight out of the writings of John Stuart Mill, one of the two philosophers in history (along with Bertrand Russell) that I most respect and who have most influenced me.