At the core, Kony 2012 is a propaganda meme spread by the Invisible Children political-activist group. Their 30 minute Youtube video has received well over 55 million views in just a few days. Now, if you watch the video you would be completely justified in feeling mortified and stupefied by the violence discussed therein – everyone ought to feel such things when aggression is used against the innocent. Nonetheless, you need to know what it is really about. As Shaun Connell has well noted:

Like many “youth” targeted movements these days, the focus of the video is extremely vague about what exactly social media “activists” are supposed to do, while making it seem incredibly romantic and important that the social media users have the ability to click the “share” button to help their organization become more famous. It’s a clever way to get users pumped up on powerful soundtracks and clips to click the share button. And it’s worked.

Don’t get me wrong, Joseph Kony has definitely caused a lot of suffering, although I think it is probably a stretch to call him the most evil man alive today as IC wants to imply. I can think of others who might deserve that title more. Even George W. Bush is indirectly responsible for far more deaths and more destruction than Kony could ever hope to accomplish. It is remarkable that we tend to forget such perspectives in the face of rock music and catch phrases.

Kony is ultimately a small fish in a large pond of African warlords, not extraordinarily different from the others. We have to look through the Invisible Children propaganda – they are just a publicity organization that wants to get money so they can lobby the government to start another violent conflict. Sure, it would be nice if Kony were not around anymore, but we should not point the U.S. government’s guns at U.S. citizens’ heads to extract the wealth and lives necessary to do it. Moreover, removing Kony will not do much good because somebody else will inevitably rise to take his place. Don’t think that the Ugandan government is an improvement either.

Africa is a mess, and another war is not going to help.

Non-interventionism is still the solution. We can do a lot better by allowing free passage of goods and people to let people escape and thwart their economic controls over the area. Missions of mercy that get the innocent out will accomplish far more than missions of war which will only result in more death, especially of the innocent. The United States should not police the world, as it has done little good in any continent where it has been tried. We cannot expect that the results will be better this time.

Yes, Kony is a bad guy. No, we shouldn’t get politically involved. We should never forget the deadly lessons of past interventions.

——

P.S. Shaun Connell has written an excellent piece on this Kony 2012, and I highly recommend you check it out.

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Say No to Kony 2012

However, I was pleased to see the following clip of Stossel on the O’Reilly Factor, where Stossel defends Ron Paul and begins to sound pretty good on issues of foreign policy. It was rather funny, honestly, to hear Stossel say that Ron Paul is “right on everything” – including foreign policy. While Stossel doesn’t talk about jus in bello (ethics during war), where I had the biggest problem with him before, he has the right idea on jus ad bellum (justification for war). Take a look, it’s entertaining to watch that snake O’Reilly squirm and look like an idiot trying to pronounce Keynes’s name to say the least.

I should note, though, that there was a Federal Reserve in 1920. They just didn’t do much in that recession, and thus it lasted for less than a year.

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Is John Stossel becoming anti-war?

The second segment is on war and society. Boaz’s first statement isn’t terrible; he says war is bad for a variety of reasons. It is costly and does not accomplish anything, and he even blames American occupations as the cause of terrorism. Then Boaz completely refutes Stossel’s suggestion that surge was a good idea. Good for him, that’s correct. But then the Q&A session starts (starts at 3:40) and I just about hit the ceiling.

A students asks, “True or false: slaughtering innocent people is never justified.” Stossel, without missing a beat, says that we “had to kill innocent people to end World War 2.” Really? Regulating aspirin? Oh no! That’s an attack on liberty! Incinerating a city full of civilians whose government is trying to surrender? Fully defensible. Fire-bombing Dresden just because it’s a German city? Fully defensible. But gee whiz, if nuking a city into oblivion isn’t wrong, is there any killing in war that is not justified?

Boaz counters the original question by saying that “slaughter” is a charged term and we need to rephrase the question. Even granting that Boaz’s first counter is true, that the question is loaded, his answer that follows is horrifying. Essentially, he argues that killing innocent people probably is justified if it leads to creating freer countries. “Self-defense and national independence are basically the only reasons” that killing innocents is justified. So he is implicitly affirming exactly what Stossel said. I don’t care that he said it “should not be undertaken lightly,” trying to justify deaths of innocent people is always taking an issue too lightly.

I’m kind of a fan of a certain principle of morality, one stating that you do not get special privileges to do certain immoral things if the “circumstances” are right. Killing innocent people is one thing only: murder. You don’t get a free pass to kill innocents so long as “freedom” is in sight. So, an innocent British traveler dies in the American Revolution because an American soldier became angry? Murder. No special rights because you’re a “freedom fighter.”

And if you concede that innocents die in every war, then you have only one conclusion to draw: War is mass murder. Get it?

I’ll give Stossel some grace considering he has not been very exposed to our philosophy except in limited amounts. He is not being thoughtful toward the issue. Perhaps he would come around just as he did on free markets given a substantive and fair presentation of the information. I met him in Austin about a year ago and I think he is a good fellow, and I truly hope he can figure out this critical principle of libertarianism.

How Boaz can hold such contradictory thoughts in his head, though, is downright baffling. I would plead with him to reconsider such positions. Liberty means liberty for all.

Dear Christian reader, I hope we will not make the same mistakes in our own thinking, lest we fall prey to the next justification for mass murder.

UPDATE: This post is getting a lot of traction right now due to it being highlighted in places like LewRockwell.com and others, so I just want to make absolutely clear that I still think Students for Liberty is a fantastic organization and I am not implicating them at all in this particular breach of libertarian principle. I also hold a lot of respect for the work that Stossel and Boaz have done and I am urging them to become better by talking openly about this.

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John Stossel and David Boaz at the SFL International Conference

“I believe when any institution, including FoxNews undertakes steps which increase the likelihood that Americans and American allies will be killed, there’s something profoundly wrong with the system.”

Well if that’s the case, Newt, we should just arrest the entirety of the Federal Government. You continue to suppress our liberties by engaging in unconstitutional and immoral wars all across the globe, thereby making us less free and less safe. It is your fault that every American has an increased likelihood of being killed than they did twenty years ago, not Julian Assange.

And of course, the Judge defends the First Amendment and the freedom of the press. Long live FreedomWatch (and Wikileaks)!

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Judge Napolitano pwns Newt Gingrich on Wikileaks

Communicating the same principled message in multiple mediums means a larger potential audience. In the past, somewhat dependent on the specific culture, ideas were transferred through spoken language, dance, and later, through books. Though they still play a role, other mediums, such as the Internet, television, and music, must too be broached as people access content via their preferred medium. This does not mean we have to rework our message but only add it to the larger conversation at different points. Otherwise, it’s as though we’re absent from the conversation entirely. For example, government bloat and hypocrisy provides ample fodder for The Daily Show, South Park, Stossel’s 20/20 [now he hosts “Stossel” on the Fox Business Network], and Pen and Teller’s: Bull****!, shows that influence the worldview of millions. And the same anti-bureaucracy, pro-freedom message can just as easily be communicated through Internet radio shows (like Free Talk Live), blogs (like The Austrian Economists), podcasts (such as Bureaucrash’s Podcrash), and webzines. If your interests and skills lie in one of these mediums, you can help reinforce those already countering pro-state rhetoric.

Technology helps us bypass traditional gatekeepers. The age of media being controlled by a handful of barons in bed with government is over (for one example of the harm this sort of relationship brought, read up on William Randolh Hearst, Harry Ansligner, and the criminalization of marijuana). We live in a time where the proliferation of technology has allowed virtually anyone, anywhere to share their ideas with others, whether via a blog post, uploaded video, Twitter message, or shared song. This empowers you, the individual, and threatens the status quo: the power of government and its frequent accomplice, the mainstream media. You no longer have to submit an op-ed to a newspaper editor and hope that they’re open-minded enough to run your piece. Instead, you can ignore them completely and share your thoughts with others via the Internet. Much to the chagrin of mainstream media companies, prominent blogs have readerships that rival the largest circulated newspapers. Using an inexpensive video camera, Joe Sixpack can create and post a video on YouTube that generates more views than movies released by mammoth Hollywood companies. Anyone with a microphone, a computer, and some free software can host a podcast.

Prominent cultural figures hold enormous sway. Like it or not, many folks take cues from the singer of their favorite band, a controversial radio talk show host, a graphic artist, or a documentary filmmaker. These figures could very easily introduce tens of thousands or millions of others to the ideas of liberty. Even if they just plant a seed, it’ll help to nudge their fans just a little bit more toward the ideas of freedom.

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Culture

The radio show is broadcast in Austin on 90.1 and 100.1 FM. But since most of you don’t live in Austin, if you’re interested you can listen live at Rule of Law Radio.

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Radio Show Tonight!

Neil Postman is a cultural observer and critic, educator, and communications critic at New York University. His well-known book Amusing Ourselves to Death gives us a chilling reminder of how much the media we use on a regular basis affect our thought patterns. In particular, Postman’s main concern is the effect of television on public discourse. It is not the entertainment value of television that concerns him so much as the elevation of television as a primary conveyor of what is considered “the truth.” He was keenly aware of the power of the media to influence at a basic level how people think and feel about the world around them. Considering how much we as libertarians criticize the mainstream media for capitulating to the State at every turn – whether the left or the right – Postman helps us get behind the medium itself to understand the epistemology. We can then see that while Orwell’s 1984 is still of great concern, perhaps the even greater danger is the Huxleyan vision from Brave New World.

“Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity, and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture.”

The Medium is the Metaphor

Part 1 of the book is a fascinating exposition of epistemology – how we come to know what we know. The media we use is an integral part of the equation. Media helps build the structures of thought, and thus thought communication. Postman writes:

“When Galileo remarked that the language of nature is written in mathematics, he meant it only as a metaphor. Nature itself does not speak. Neither do our minds or our bodies or, more to the point of this book, our bodies politic. Our conversations about nature and about ourselves are conducted in whatever ‘languages’ we find it possible and convenient to employ. We do not see nature or intelligence or human motivation or ideology as ‘it’ but only as our languages are. And our languages are our media. Our media are our metaphors. Our metaphors create the content of our culture.”

The “bias” of a medium upon a culture is unseen yet deeply felt. Nowhere is the difference more clearly seen than between typography and television. In a culture characterized by print, thought processes will tend to organize themselves into a similar linear and logical order that is seen on the pages of books. Proper use and expression of words becomes the norm. This was the state of America during the founding era and lasted, for all intents and purposes, until the late 20th century. It was the culture enriched by the likes of Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Paine, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain. Postman explains how widely available print media constructed the culture of America.

“And Now . . . This”

Television, as a different medium, changes the metaphor. Postman says, “Television has achieved the status of ‘meta-medium’ – an instrument that directs not only our knowledge of the world, but our knowledge of ways of knowing as well.” It is no longer a pseudo-mystery but is in the background of everywhere we go and everything we see.

And thus, we come to Postman’s primary criticism of how television is used and what it affects negatively: in religion, in education, and in news and politics. Most of the Christians I routinely interact with understand his criticism of religion distinctly well. The so-called “televangelist” movement certainly diminishes the depth of theological discourse throughout Christendom. It is presented primarily as entertainment, losing what makes religion a historic, profound, and sacred human activity. Instead of spiritual transcendence, the preacher is tops. “God comes out as second banana.” (Given, this is not universally the case but it is certainly the right characterization.)

The educationists can be heard praising the television medium as “the future of education” just as often today as when Postman wrote initially in 1985. “We face the rapid dissolution of the assumptions of an education organized around the slow-moving printed word, and the equally rapid emergence of a new education based on the speed-of-light electronic image.” Postman’s harshest criticism is reserved for those who would dumb us down in deference to the lowest common denominator.

I know of no libertarian that does not clearly see the vacuous nature of television news programs. Moreover, this flows straight into the political arena. There was once a time when the President of the United States could walk down the street without people recognizing him, simply because no one knew what the president looked like. Now, however, “looking presidential” is just as important, perhaps more important, as knowing the Constitution or having good ideology. This is the power of television: to put the superficial and unimportant into the forefront.

Culture is Dead! Long Live Culture!

Neil Postman can almost come off as a Luddite by the end of Amusing Ourselves to Death, but his criticism should still be heeded. It is not simply that Postman despises the very pixels of your new 42 inch LCD panel. On the contrary, he admits that as entertainment it is excellent and quite fun. I don’t think he is even saying that no serious message can ever be conveyed through television or a movie (or else he would be throwing all theatre out the window as well). No, the main message is a warning that serious messages are easily lost within the medium, and there is great danger when matters of utmost seriousness are couched as mere entertainment.

Amusing Ourselves to Death truly helped coalesce many disjointed thoughts in my own mind about the usefulness, or lack thereof, of the television medium. I cannot recommend this book highly enough to those of you who observe culture with a watchful eye, and wish to respond accordingly to a trend that we intuitively understand to be negative in the long run.

We should be careful to remember that the war of ideas will not be won, and certainly victory in the same will never be preserved, using images rapidly flashing on a screen. Even as we are excited that our modern heroes of freedom, like Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, and Tom Woods, are receiving incredible interview opportunities on the news, we need to remember that we will not win by merely playing their game. This culture is dying, in part because of how lost public discourse is becoming. It’s our turn to come in and rebuild culture – for the cause of liberty and of Christ.

Buy Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death from Amazon.com and support LibertarianChristians.com.

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“Amusing Ourselves to Death” Book Review

Obama’s New Theocracy | The Beacon

The depiction of Barack Obama as the new, secular, American messiah began with his full approval during his presidential campaign and led directly to the spectacle of his coronation/inauguration. In what can only be described as a delusional, self-righteous pronouncement of himself as the new messiah (”the chosen one”), Obama has stated that: “We are the ones we‘ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” [emphasis added]

The second includes a well-known quote from Lewis about “theocracy”:

C.S. Lewis on the Evil and Corruption of Theocracy

I fully embrace the maxim (which . . . borrows from a Christian) that “all power corrupts.” I would go further. The loftier the pretensions of the power, the more meddlesome, inhuman, and oppressive it will be. Theocracy is the worst of all possible governments. All political power is at best a necessary evil: but it is least evil when its sanctions are most modest and commonplace, when it claims no more than to be useful or convenient and sets itself strictly limited objectives. Anything transcendental or spiritual, or even anything very strongly ethical, in its pretensions is dangerous and encourages it to meddle with our private lives. Let the shoemaker stick to his last. Thus the Renaissance doctrine of Divine Right is for me a corruption of monarchy; Rousseau’s General Will, of democracy; racial mysticisms, of nationality. And Theocracy, I admit and even insist, is the worst corruption of all.

—From The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays, by C.S. Lewis

Now, be sure to distinguish the difference between “theocracy” as Lewis expounds and the direct rule of God, as in the time of biblical Israel. Of course, Yahweh is the Great King of the Universe and ultimately we Christians believe that God rules all. Lewis, however, is talking about “faith-based statism,” which is an awful, terrible system.

David Theroux is the founder and president of the Independent Institute.

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Obama’s New Theocracy