#rights:

[rastronomicals]

2:30 AM EDT October 21, 2024:

Can - "Yoo Doo Right" From the album Anthology 1968-1993 (1994)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

Originally from Monster Movie, released in August 1969

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[gravitascivics]

JUDGING LIBERATED FEDERALISM, XVI

This blog, with this posting, continues its presentation of a political model, liberated federalism, by describing and explaining its last component, the studied association.  To date, it has reviewed the other two components, the community and participating entities.  By doing this presentation, the model depicts a liberated federal perspective of an arrangement of parties, be they individuals or collectives.

         Not all arrangements are associations.  The term association, as used in this account and as Philip Selznick[1] uses it, refers to those arrangements that are formal in that they are initiated by a compact or a covenant.  It is an ideal union of entities with federalist characteristics.  

Of course, the national, all-embracing association is the federal union of the people and states of the United States of America as designated by the United States Constitution, its compact.  That association as well as the associations that make up the state governments and the local governments are, in the ideal, communal democracies as defined by Selznick. The liberated federalist perspective views these public or private associations (such as ideal corporations) as serious commitments by the entities that comprise them.

The association has certain attributes:

 One, as stated earlier, is organized under the provisions of a compact or covenant laying out its structure, processes, and to some degree, its functions.  

Two, a qualified majority rule provision that aims at broad range consensus before acting.  

Three, a strong provision for guaranteeing the rights of minorities, be they individuals or groups, within conducting its processes and distribution of material values.

Four, a clear purpose or set of purposes for its existence that is publicly stated.

Five, a fraternal ethos that respects the dignity and integrity of each of the entities that comprise it and a felt commitment of inclusion for those entities.

Six, a covenant of reason upon which its moral standing rests.  The covenant of reason includes agreement over a deliberative process of decision-making, a provision of critical review of its decisions and actions, and a set of collective interests that reflects its purposes as well as its standing as an association.

 In addition, the association has an overarching responsibility to uphold the communal well-being of the community in which it resides.  To review and further explain these attributes, a short elaboration of each one follows.

         The compact or covenant refers to the formal agreement arrived at by the entities involved.  The entities of an association formulate a compact/covenant by the drawing up of such an agreement.  The agreement contains the elements identified by Danial Elazar, identified earlier in this blog as it described the model parochial/traditional federalism. In order to review Elazar’s characterization of a compact/covenant, the following two quotes are offered:

 Covenantal foundings emphasize the deliberate coming together of humans as equals to establish politics in such a way that all reaffirm their fundamental equality and retain the basic rights … Polities whose origins are covenantal reflect the exercise of constitutional choice and broad-based participation in constitutional design.  Polities founded by covenant are essentially federal in character, in the original meaning of the term (from foedus, Latin for covenant).[2]

And:

 [The old covenants followed a recurring format or model which was] … an historical prologue indicating the parties involved, a preamble stating the general purposes of the covenant and the principles behind it, a body of conditions and operative clauses, a stipulation of the agreed-upon sanctions to be applied if the covenant were violated, and an oath to make the covenant morally binding.[3]

 But what about compacts?

Donald Lutz points out that the distinction between a covenant and a compact is that a covenant calls upon God to witness the agreement and a compact does not.  In the current more secular world today, the common form is to utilize a compact.[4]  In either case, the formulation of the compact or covenant calls for a bit of soul searching.  It demands that entities involved seriously consider the consequences of such an act, due to the nature of the commitment involved.

The entities must be fairly certain that they share enough moral understanding, commitment to founding values, and philosophic principles in relation to the purposes of the union so as to handle the inevitable internal disagreements and conflicts.  In addition, there should be at least some minimum level of emotional commitment among the entities since the union will most likely be for a significant amount of time.  

Therefore, compacts and covenants should not be drawn up for frivolous reasons.  As Elazar describes these unions, the commitment is for the duration of the concerns involved.  In terms of a national union and institutional arrangements as marriages, the commitment is perpetual or for a lifetime.

The next identified attribute, qualified majority rule, holds that a raw majority rule arrangement in collective decision-making format should be avoided.  One problem with such an arrangement is that there is a possible, if not probable, danger to minorities.  Majority rule should be limited by constitutional parameters or provisions, as stated earlier in this blog in regard to equality.  Each minority and each individual is entitled to protection from the majority.  

Basic rights, as identified by the Bill of Rights, serve as an appropriate starting point.  Citing Selznick again, the reciprocal advantage characteristic of this model – its reciprocal nature – calls on a meaningful reality that (1) allows an opportunity to improve one’s position significantly, and (2) sets up a cooperative mode of social interaction.[5]

This posting’s review will end here.  Next, this blog will address the purpose or set of purposes a covenant or compact sets out for a people to achieve.  This might, for good reasons, remind readers of the Preamble of the Constitution, the set of purposes the founders identified in the nation’s founding compact.

[1] Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth:  Social Theory and the Promise of Community (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992).

[2] Daniel J. Elazar, “Federal Models of (Civil) Authority,” Journal of Church and State 33 (Spring 1991):  233-234.

[3] Ibid., 244.

[4] Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism (Baton Rouge, LA:  Louisiana State University Press, 1988).

[5] Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth.

[longreads]

How Concerned Citizens Drove a Neo-Nazi Out of Rural Maine

Christopher Pohlhaus planned to build a fascist training compound in the woods of rural Maine. The local journalists, veterans, lumberjacks, and policymakers weren't having it.

Pohlhaus, 37, is a former U.S. marine, an itinerant tattoo artist, and a hardcore white-supremacist influencer. He is loud and hostile, and proud to be both. His voice is pitched surprisingly high, and he has a slight Southern drawl. He has a large body and small bald head; a blue-black tattoo crawls up the right side of his face, from his chin to his forehead. Over the years, Pohlhaus has collected thousands of social media followers, who know him by his nickname: Hammer.

Hammer had been living in Texas for a few years when, in March 2022, he bought the land in Maine. He told his followers that he was going to use it to build a haven, operational center, and training ground for white supremacists.

Check out our excerpt of The Atavist’s latest blockbuster story. 

[whatisonthemoon]

A Brief Outline of Moon’s Friendship with Jerry Falwell

△ Pictured: Fallwell in the back of the speaker during a press conference in support of Moon in the early 80s

One might think a friendship between Moon and Jerry Falwell, one of the most well-known American evangelists and political commentators, to be bizarre, but in the 1980s, Moon was able to have friendships with influential leaders that “technically” believed he was an anti-christ. Sharing their retrograde values and class interests, Moon inserted himself into the emerging Religious Right by pumping millions into their groups and initiatives, even co-founding a slew of organizations with leading lights of the Religious Right. Despite having warned his listeners as late as the previous year about Moon's duplicity, Falwell met with Moon around this time in the early 1980s and forged an intimate alliance. Moon saw Falwell as the means to conservative Christians' acceptance of himself and his message into larger society. In return, Falwell was drawn by the emphasis on traditional family values and anti-communism he heard from Moon. Over time, the two worked on an array of projects, establishing the Coalition for Religious Freedom, which still exists and laboriously works to “defend worldwide religious liberty.”

One of the most controversial areas of their relationship was the gifts and funding that Moon provided to Falwell's organizations, with critics accusing Moon of attempting to buy influence and gain access to powerful political and religious leaders with his wealth. Some also accused Falwell of taking money from the leader of a cult and thus compromising his own moral and theological integrity.

Falwell continued to support Moon and the Unification Church publicly throughout the 80s. He spoke at a few of their gatherings and also officiated at Moon's wedding in 1982. 

In the late 1980s, Falwell encountered financial troubles and eventually closed several of his organizations. Because Falwell's ability to fund Moon's organizations began to wane, a riff between the two leaders occurred, but by 1995, Moon and Falwell met again in Uruguay, where they had a series of meetings over their past differences and discussed ways to work together in the future.

Their 1995 reunion marked an important turning point in the evolution of their relationship: putting aside the bitterness of their past battles, both leaders focused on their shared goals of defending traditional family values and opposing communism. Moon also financially supported Liberty University, a Christian university established by Falwell, during the period when it faced bankruptcy.

Related posts below

Moon at the National Prayer Breakfast

Chicago Tribune: Clerics Urge Pardon for Rev. Moon (1985)

Private Groups Step Up Aid to ‘Contras’ (1985)

The Unification Church Seeks Influence, Acceptance Among the Political ”Christian” Right (2009)

The Chicago Evangelist Who Held a Gospel Revival to Stop a Strike

Ford OKs Missionary Use By CIA, Hatfield Opposes It (1975)

Say NO to Revival Hal Lindsey: Writing Books Warning of Anti-Christ Uniting World Religions and Governments, and Supporting Rev. Moon

Magazine Says Tim LaHaye Received Help from Unification Church (1986)

[389]

PORTO ROCHA

[nanaluvbug]

��🥪🌶️🥭 The Ravening War portraits  🧀🥪🌶️🥭

patreon * twitch * shop  

[ID: a series of digitally illustrated portraits showing - top left to bottom right - Bishop Raphaniel Charlock (an old radish man with a big red head and large white eyebrows & a scraggly beard. he wears green and gold robes with symbols of the bulb and he smirks at the viewer) Karna Solara (a skinny young chili pepper woman with wavy green hair, freckled light green skin with red blooms on her cheeks. she wears a chili pepper hood lined with small pepper seeds and stares cagily ahead) Thane Delissandro Katzon (a muscular young beef man with bright pinkish skin with small skin variations to resemble pastrami and dark burgundy hair. he wears a bread headress with a swirl of rye covering his ears and he looks ahead, optimistic and determined) Queen Amangeaux Epicée du Peche (a bright mango woman with orange skin, big red hair adorned with a green laurel, and sparkling green/gold makeup. she wears large gold hoop earrings and a high leafy collar) and Colin Provolone (a scraggly cheese man with waxy yellow skin and dark slicked back hair and patchy dark facial hair. he wears a muted, ratty blue bandana around his neck and raises a scarred brow at the viewer with a smirk) End ID.)

[70sscifiart]

One of my favorites by Paul Lehr, used as a 1971 cover to "Earth Abides," by George R. Stewart. It's also in my upcoming art book!

[layla-keating]

#thistension

XO, KITTY — 1.09 “SNAFU”

[nevver]

No one wants to be here and no one wants to leave, Dave Smith (because)

[rastronomicals]

9:41 PM EDT September 30, 2023:

Pussy Galore - "Whitenoise" From the album Right Now! (1987)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

File under: Pigfuck

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[gravitascivics]

JUDGING LIBERATED FEDERALISM, XIV

At present, this blog has been reviewing a model of governance and politics not suitable for political science research, but for guiding curricular efforts in the study of civics and American government.  The model is entitled liberated federalism and is composed of three main components:  the community, participating entities, and the studied association.  The model is ideal – how things should work, and in which societies should strive to achieve its proposed relationships.

         The last posting shared two conditions the model points out that the community should exhibit:  “functioning community” and “cultural commitment to federalist values.” This posting will move on to a third condition; it will describe and explain a “set of functioning and interacting institutions.”

         This condition transcends governmental or formal settings and extends to the social sector of a community.  This has a universal quality as Robert Putnam describes the viable political role the social associations in Italy have played in the northern provinces of that nation.  They have made the social life of those areas enjoy more civic minded communal environments.[1]  This condition, in turn, played a vital role in allowing the regional governmental structures of those provinces to be significantly more successful than those of the southern ones, at least until the last years of the last century.

         Such social arrangements allow and promote the levels of trust and friendliness necessary to encourage social capital:  a community marked by citizens willing, in a spirited fashion, to take an active part in citizenry duties, believe in egalitarian relations, and maintain a trusting and cooperative mode of political intercourse.  Again, this condition is applicable to different levels of society, from small associations to the national community.

         The fourth condition of an ideal community is “community with a moral primacy.”  The inclusion of this condition refers to the reality that societies are made up of kinships, relationships, and historical patterns that define the natures of these communal elements.  Inherent in these conditions are moral attributes that transcend the public and private social context that entangle the individual. The creation of laws, in Lockean terms, is meant to perfect these realities.

         This morality is the basis of the society’s claim to being “civilized” as Philip Selznick would point out.[2]  This moral primacy of a community, at times, enforces its position on the fates of individuals.  As stated earlier in this blog, conscription during war time is such a case.  Most often, there is an on-going tension, especially in environments where the natural rights perspective holds predominant sway between the claims of rights by the individual and the community’s claim to moral primacy.

         While parochial/traditional federalism perspective – an earlier version of federalism that was dominant in the US until the years after World War II – gave theoretical respect to the claim of the individual, the history of the early republic is filled with cases where the majority engaged in tyranny in different forms.  

There was not a more compelling case than the mistreatment of African Americans with the institution of slavery and the highly discriminating practices which are practiced to this day, but there were also the ample examples of the mistreatment of the indigenous population, Jews, Catholics, women, and other minorities being the victims of such tyranny.[3]

         The liberated federalist model differs in that the balancing of individual rights and the concerns of the majority are given high priority.  It favors judicial review, although it questions certain decisions the courts have rendered as being too much in favor of individuals.  The fulcrum for balancing the claims is shifted from the strong individual position, which is currently the case under the natural rights view, to a more communal position in which the individual is expected to play an active role and is central to federalist thinking.

         Under the liberated federalist model, the individual is not left to his or her devices to engender the high levels of cognition necessary to formulate a moral system of thought.  The nation’s recent history under such a regime suggests that the result is an individual bewildered by the moral questions of the time. This federalist perspective, on the other hand, expects individuals to engage in communal moral questions by an active participation in such issues.

         These types of experiences provide the opportunities to develop morally:

 Without appropriate opportunities and supports, the quest for moral well-being may be confused, frustrated, and aborted; the telos [the sought after ends] may be experienced as dim and incoherent rather than clear and compelling.  Therefore, the injunction to follow nature must be sustained by a worked-out theory of what the natural end-state is and why it is worthy of our striving.[4]

Due to the centrality within the liberated federalist perspective of developing a moral person, rights become paramount.  Selznick goes on to point out that morality is a product only within a free person, one who chooses, through rational decision-making, to do moral things.

         And one can add, with the strength of the current natural rights view, it would seem extremely impractical to attempt to retreat to a time when there was callous disregard for individual rights. The lasting contribution of natural rights is the clear foundation it laid down for enduring respect for individuals and their rights.

         Of particular concern is the treatment of ethnic minorities.  The argument is made in this account that federalist arrangements are a viable and promising way of handling significant ethnic diversity.  These arrangements allow heterogeneous populations to work out functional and viable interactions by allowing each group to maintain its purposes, that its members acquiesce, through respect and appropriate behavior, those values that legitimize the union of a community and define its basic procedures – or what one can call the US’ Constitutional formula.

         In terms of an arrangement that encompasses the union of a nation, such an acquiescence entails seriously felt value issues, but this is judged a matter of national cohesion on which the system of toleration depends.  For example, immigrants who come to this nation from non-modern, traditional societies will most likely bring with them values that are antithetical to values central in a modern industrial economy.[5]

         Alex Inkles writes on this point:

 One fact seems unmistakable; indeed it seems to come as close to being a law as anything to be observed in social science.  As individuals move up the scale of individual modernity, whether judged by objective status characteristics or by psychological attributes, they regularly become more informed, active, participant citizens.  With exceptional regularity, increasing individual modernity is associated with voting, joining public organizations and participating in public actions, interacting with politicians and public figures, taking an interest in political news, and keeping up with political events … [S]tudies in the United States … found modernity to be strongly associated with lack of alienation and non-anomic feelings.[6]

 Inkles, though, goes on to point out that while an individual’s behavior in an industrial-bureaucratic system might be somewhat affected by a participatory environment in the political realm, it does not necessarily have implications in other social realms.  In most cultural concerns, there is no legitimate reason to sacrifice cherished beliefs, customs, or norms.

         The point is that under a federalist arrangement that heavily encourages individual participation in political processes, it would not interfere with the individual in his or her dealings in other realms of his or her living arrangements and, therefore, other connections as ethnic affiliations can be (even encouraged) to be maintained.

         As a matter of fact, the alliance to subcultural groups could promote associational memberships that are seen as desirable in a federalist atmosphere.  When those groupings, in turn, see the advantages of the entailed equality inherent in federalist arrangements, they might more readily favor the political values upon which such arrangements are founded or at least give them lip service as they provide the basis for their legitimate participation in the communal democracy.

         These activities are seen under the liberated federalism model as meaningful, as they are described in transcending language. That meaningfulness is enhanced as real political gains are experienced, and demands are satisfied.  And with that, this account completes its review of the component, community.  It will next address participating entities.

[1] Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work:  Civic Tradition in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). While this citation is dated, this recent quotation from a travel site indicates the differences between north and south Italy are pretty much still the case:  “They’re so different that you might as well be comparing two entirely different countries!”  See “North Italy vs. South Italy:  A Complete Comparison (n.d.), accessed July 22, 2023, https://travelsnippet.com/europe/italy/north-italy-vs-south-italy/.

[2] Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth:  Social Theory and the Promise of Community (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992).

[3] For example, see Isabel Wilkerson, Caste:  The Origin of Our Discontent (New York, NY:  Random House, 2023).

[4] Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth, 151.

[5] Dinesh Bhugra and Matthew A. Becker, “Migration, Cultural Bereavement and Cultural Identity, World Psychiatry, 4, 1 (February, 2005), accessed July 22, 2023, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1414713/.

[6] Alex Inkles, Exploring Individual Modernity (New York, NY:  Columbia University Press, 1983), 21-22.

[foodffs]

Noodles with Lamb Sauce (Laghman, 新疆拌面) Xinjiang laghman features chewy noodles served with a bold and rich lamb and tomato sauce that is bursting with flavor.

Recipe: https://omnivorescookbook.com/recipes/uyghur-style-noodles-with-lamb-sauce

[lesserknownbots]

CJ from Hello World (MSPFA) by phasedsun?

[389]

PORTO ROCHA

[shitakeo33]

よく「発明は1人でできる。製品化には10人かかる。量産化には100人かかる」とも言われますが、実際に、私はネオジム磁石を1人で発明しました。製品化、量産化については住友特殊金属の仲間たちと一緒に、短期間のうちに成功させました。82年に発明し、83年から生産が始まったのですから、非常に早いです。そしてネオジム磁石は、ハードディスクのＶＣＭ(ボイスコイルモーター)の部品などの電子機器を主な用途として大歓迎を受け、生産量も年々倍増して、2000年には世界で1万トンを超えました。

世界最強「ネオジム磁石はこうして見つけた」（佐川眞人 氏 ／ インターメタリックス株式会社 代表取締役社長） | Science Portal - 科学技術の最新情報サイト「サイエンスポータル」