Liberty’s Twilight

George Rebane

We are living in dangerous times.  Among the countries that used to be known as the ‘free world’, America is the leading jailer and the world’s title holder as the country that imprisons the largest fraction of its citizens.  The rate of criminalization and incarceration has been quietly mushrooming in the US, and is now at a level that attracts the attention of other countries, most notably our allies.  How and why is that?

The 24jul10 issue of the Economist is focused on “Rough Justice: Too many laws, too many prisoners”.  Our jails are loaded with about 2.4 million inmates, making one out of every hundred of our adults sit behind bars and one out of 31 adults being under some form of supervision ‘in the justice system’.  Per 100,000 population the US has 748 behind bars, Russia is second with 600, in third place Brazil drops down to about 240, and then it goes way down from there.  We win.  Or do we?

In America you can be thrown into jail for the damndest things as we try to live our lives in an ever-growing spaghetti bowl of regulations.  There are over 4,000 federal crimes, and many times more regulations that carry criminal penalties.  Every day more human behaviors that were legal yesterday are becoming overnight criminalized.   “(O)ver the last 40 years an unholy alliance of big-business-hating liberals and tough-on-crime conservatives has made criminalization the first line of attack” on most social problems.

And today with trillion dollar deficits, new trillion dollar social legislation, and trillion dollar regulatory injections or ‘stimulus’ packages raining down on our heads, the restrictions on our liberties are accelerating at a pace that makes child’s play of the alphabet soup programs in FDR’s National Recovery Act of the 1930s.  In the last 18 months the Obama administration has brought into being five times as many regulation spewing federal agencies than did FDR in the eight years preceding WW2.  And as some of us know, at the bottom of every stack of state regulations lies a government gun.

Why do we need so many rules to tell a supposedly free people in their own land how to behave?  Why do we need so many pages of legal code that set down myriads of criminal behaviors, and why do these rules need to multiply beyond any sense, comprehension, or reason?  Almost all of them are unknown to the people, and almost all of them are such that our natural instincts and cultural traditions are totally useless in advising us whether today this is right and that is wrong.  And tomorrow these social tools will be of even less use.

In simpler days societies relied on the traditions and customs of culture to define, direct, and constrain normative behavior.  For example, the shame that people then felt when they misbehaved served as an effective constraint on aberrant and socially destructive actions.  This allowed some fairly large and complex communities to thrive and grow as nation-states.  Visitors and minorities from different cultures knew how to deport themselves within dominant cultures.  (My own immigrant family was a typical example of this in the mid-twentieth century.)  Their choices ranged from assimilation to isolation into their own enclaves.  In no way were these minorities allowed to openly challenge the dominant culture; change was evolutionary not revolutionary.

When two or more cultures in a sovereign nation-state achieve peerage or equal power, then history records very few cases where strife and trouble are not the result.  In modern times peace in such polyglot societies has been kept by a strong central government claiming to be culturally neutral and fair to all.  Such a strong central government is faced with a situation that can be explained with the help of the figure below.

  

Suppose the light blue rectangle represents the set of all human behaviors.  Let a subset of such encouraged and proscribed behaviors for a specific culture be represented by one of the colored ellipses.  Where such behaviors are common to two or more cultures, they are contained in the overlap or intersection of the ellipses.  The figure shows a situation for a society or country that is comprised of six such differentiable cultures – C1 through C6.

The behaviors shared by all six cultures are in the blue intersection or common area in the center.  Note how small such an intersection is when compared to the totality of behaviors that are prescribed/inhibited by the six cultures.  That common area shrinks with the addition of every new culture.  And as shown, there are, of course, other subsets of shared behaviors common to complex combinations of the participating cultures.

As social animals, we all know instinctively that we like dealing with people whose beneficient behavior we successfully predict and/or control.  Being with people whose moves and reactions are unknown gives rise to stress and distrust.  The standard response of both man and animal to another critter whose behavior cannot be predicted is to either fight or flee.  Strong relationships and enduring societies could only be built upon mutual behaviors successfully predicted and reliably controlled.   For ages those benefices were the direct result of productive cultures which laid down rules of conduct that allowed people to trustingly work together, build families, generate and distribute wealth, and pass on knowledge/property to succeeding generations.  All this was relatively easy for people sharing a common culture.

The situation is different in a society made up of non-assimilative multiple cultures.  Such a society needs rules and a code of conduct that covers needed behaviors not common to its participating cultures.  These rules are put in place, communicated, and enforced by the governing state.  Every participating culture subordinates some of its customs and freedoms, and is compelled to tolerate such others so as to keep the peace and allow a modicum of intercourse to take place in the population.  Such state enforced rules are indicated by the encompassing red circle in the figure.

That some level of friction and stress still remains in such a multi-cultural society is evident by the behavioral sets of each culture that are not yet covered by the state’s laws and regulations – i.e. those outside the reach of the red circle.  And imposition of additional frictions and constraints not inherent to any of the participating cultures is indicated by the areas in the red circle not included in any of the ‘culture ellipses’.  This is the situation that has obtained in every country with multiple cultures each seeking to retain their heritage and prerogatives.  America is there now.

The attempts to alleviate such residual frictions and bring more and more of the interactions among the people into ‘harmony’ are achieved by making ever more laws and regulations to cover and ‘solve’ problems that arise as time goes by.  If we now introduce into this mix additional pressures to address issues such as social safety nets, unequal treatment of minorities, uniform social justice, and equalizing opportunity or achievements, then the generation of government dictates and strictures is accelerated.  This means that the red circle of covered behaviors grows as shown in the figure below.

   

At this stage, the growth of government dictated conduct and behaviors consigned to criminality gains a life of its own.  This is fueled by the demands of every aggrieved class or culture to maneuver for benefices paid for by someone else.  Again, to the extent that we continue to promote non-assimilating cultures and invite the increase of such populations, we must increase the domain of common rules, i.e. government, into literally every aspect of our lives.  Graphically this is indicated by the enlarging red circle finally overreaching the behavioral norms of every participating culture, and imposing  on everyone something that has in the past been hailed as ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat'.

In such a state of affairs liberty will have been sacrificed for equality at some putative common denominator level.  The impossible lie of ‘liberte, egalite, fraternite’ then will give way to the truth of no liberty, government favored inequalities, and the total absence of mutual trust and the brotherhood it engenders.  In full bloom it was last seen in the Balkans of the 1990s, and now we are living through its upheavals in Iraq.

We, on the other hand, seem to take great comfort in the firm belief that America will never be witness to such an endgame.

Comments

[Todd Juvinall]

The example of Yugoslavia comes to mind for me. We see the result of a neutral central government, using force to maintain a boundary. When the people had enough they split into ethnic an cultural boundaries, of course after destructive violence and genocide. America was the place of promise for people escaping those places where a Yugoslavia was predominant. Our problem now is approaching critical mass.

We have removed shame from the culture so the 60's hippie philosophy of anything goes is predominant. The fact we incarcerate people at high levels is because of this philosophy and the lack of consequences for even the most heinous crimes. The fragmentation of our culture into its component parts, rather than the assimilation into a "American" culture is leading to demise if we don't turn things around.

[George Rebane]

Yes, the Balkans have been a poster child of the failure of unassimilated multi-culturalism. The remaining fragmentation yet to occur is the total break-away of the Muslim Kosovars from Serbia, which is still creating international heat and could break into renewed violence if the Orthodox Serbians insist on reinstituting their provenance. Stratfor has an update on this here http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20100722_kosovo_consequences_icj_opinion

[Fred]

An interesting and thoughtful comment. During our travels in the western United States over the past five or six years we have frequently wondered why our country has so many prisons. The large number of prisons and imprisoned is indicative of something fundamentally wrong. Something is terribly out of balance when we incarcerate so many of our citizens. I wasn't aware of the ranking numbers mentioned in your post. Your comments provide a useful structure for thinking about this problem.

[Todd Juvinall]

When a man puts sand in a bog on his own property and is prosecuted and jailed for that, then one can understand why we are so messed up.

[Paul Emery]

I agree that it's a good idea to cut back on the number of laws. Let's start with the de-criminalization of marijuana by supporting Prop 19 in November's ballot. It's the so called marijuana initiative , a bit of a oxymoron. Polls are pretty even on this right now and support is strong from the Libertarians. Less laws, less government.

[D. King]

George Said...

"Yes, the Balkans have been a poster child of the failure of unassimilated multi-culturalism."

I was in that war and am still licking my wounds.
(will be for the rest of my life!)

Heavy post George.

Anger precludes me from engaging in a rational
discussion of this subject.

Paul Emery Said…

“Let's start with the de-criminalization of marijuana…”

Cool dude. We can drive down the price of Mexican pot.
Pass the Doritos bromigo!
Hey Paul, George "The Pusherman" Soros agrees with you!

http://tinyurl.com/2a8pakv

[Paul Emery]

George

I have questions about this statement

"Again, to the extent that we continue to promote non-assimilating cultures and invite the increase of such populations, we must increase the domain of common rules, i.e. government, into literally every aspect of our lives."

First you're observation seems to imply that someone or something will make the determination about what cultures are non-assimilating. Are you prepared to name some of these cultures?

Once they are identified then what course of action do you propose that will avoid you're theory that "In such a state of affairs liberty will have been sacrificed for equality at some putative common denominator level"

The Balcans, in my opinion are a different situation than our country. I'll chip in on that when I have time.

[Paul Emery]

sp Balkans- I need a proofreader

[Mikey McD]

actually the legalization of pot will actually increase the number of laws (and GO's to enforce them). Instead of 1 law making it illegal, now they will micromanage when, how, where one can medicate oneself. War on drugs has been an utter disaster and unquestionable waste of time, money and effort.

[Todd Juvinall]

That is true Mikey, they just trade cops for revenue agents. Both pack.

The Balkans are a perfect example of what our country is becoming. Prove me wrong Paul.

[Paul Emery]

Mikey

Prop 19 has nothing to do with medication. It legalizes recreational use of marijuana in the state of Calif subject to local jurisdiction. Of course, it will still be illegal on the Federal level but hey....let's here it for states rights. Currently the polls show this to be a very close race. Can you explain how legalization will create more laws?

[Paul Emery]

Todd
I don't pretend to be a historian but let me try to explain as best I can.

Balkanization refers to the break up into ethnic and religious territories of the former country of Yugoslavia which was largely a manufactured Confederation of independent states and territories that had massive cultural and religious differences that evolved over hundreds of years. The Ottoman empire controlled Orthodox Christian states such as Greece and Serbia for hundreds of years leaving a legacy of hatred and revenge that continues to this day. At the end of WWII Tito was a communist strongman leader who kept the Confederation together as a defense against Stalin who wanted to gobble up Yugoslavia like he did the rest of Eastern Europe. True, Yugoslavia was a Communist Country but if maintained a certain amount of independence from Stalin and, under Tito pursued to a considerable degree, it's own path.

Stalin was aware that the "country" of Yugoslavia was a hotbed of ethnic and religious differences that he didn't want to deal with so he allowed Tito and Yugoslavia to continue their independent path.

Tito was a dictator but also a national hero from his years as a freedom fighter against the Nazi's in WWII and he was able to keep the country together until he died around 1981.

Without a dictator such as Tito to hold things together Yugoslavia dissolved and after much conflict that continues to this day, reverted back largely to ethnic and religious boundaries.

That is a completely different history than what we have since, with the exception of Native Americans we all came from somewhere else and we do not have hundreds of years cultural and religious territories to deal with.

I spent several time in Yugoslavia in 1982 shortly after Tito's death and even then the question was only when things would explode.

The closest thing we have to that situation is our history with Mexico which could possibly be discussed in that context. Native Americans nations were victims of America's Manifest Destiny, as it was taught to me in school, meaning they were a weaker nation over run by a more powerful ambitious nation.

My history may be a little incomplete but I hope you see my point

[George Rebane]

Paul, there is no implication in my essay that such an agent either exists or is necessary to make such a determination. The current rate of incarceration, the population of our prisons, and the militant demands for extended rights to fugitive illegal aliens in our country attest enough that the non-assimilation of cultures problem is already mature and growing in America.

Each society with a dominant culture has a natural assimilation rate for impinging cultures. If the rate of immigration is below this, then the new cultures will be assimilated and the society remains stable. If that rate is exceeded then the new cultures will not assimilate and, as they grow, will each seek peerage with the existing culture(s).

I can propose no “action” to counter this state of affairs beyond what you find on these pages. A logical and probably futile attempt would be to seal our borders to a trickle, and hope that we can slowly assimilate those already here. But this would require a broad acceptance of the thesis that I have presented in this post. As long as the left dominates, this will not be possible.

[Paul Emery]

Thanks George for explaining you're position. Assuming this is a long term problem and not a recent one I need to ask what did the Republicans do about it when they controlled the Legislature and Presidency for six years?
Blaming it on the dominate left seems to ignore the inaction during this time unless you consider the Bushies to be part of the left. Where was the outrage when Bush ran for re-election in 2006?

[George Rebane]

I cannot argue for the Bush (or any preceding) administration. My published record shows that I believe that Bush and his predecessors were wrong about illegal entrants who are fugitives in our country. (The labeling of them as 'illegal immigrants' is destructive to solving the problem and leads to conversations like this one.) As an immigrant who became a naturalized and assimilated citizen, my outrage toward illegal entrants and unassimilating cultures has been longstanding and constant. I cannot speak for the others, but I am passionate about America and its progress as a exceptional sovereign nation-state that continues to serve as a beacon to the world on the art of the possible for beneficial governance.

[Todd Juvinall]

Paul Balkanization was there way before Yugoslavia. I use Yugoslavia as an example of Balkanization.

Regarding your term "legislature" for the federal system. I believe it should be Congress.

[RL Crabb]

A purely American culture may be harder to achieve in the 21st century. The world is moving, much more so than at any time in history.

An interesting example might be the Sikhs, who live in great numbers just to the west in Yuba/Sutter counties. I don't spend much time down that way, but when I do visit, I see a lot of turbans. They appear to have a regular slot on public access TV in that area also. Anyone had any experience in that area?

[George Rebane]

Bob, a fellow exec with me at Bizrate.com was a Sikh. We were friends and had many stimulating lunches together. He wore a handsome turban and had never shaved his beard which he did keep meticulously trimmed. (The Sikhs tuck their long parted beards up into their turbans.) This man was a gentleman's gentleman, educated and well read. He was also a loyal American and wanted to make sure that no one mistook him for a Muslim. While totally assimilated in affairs of the daily round, he and his ethnic fellows did fastiduously follow their traditions, which, of course, required them to spend their 'off hours' within communities of their own culture. But I had not the slightest doubt that, would America come under assault, he'd grab gun or cudgel and man the ramparts by my side.

[Russ Steele]

I highly recommend reading Mexifornia, by classicist, military historian, and farmer Victor Davis Hanson for an understanding of the problems that we face in California. From a Claremont Institute review of Mexifornia here:

He concludes we are faced with four choices. Of the first two, we could insist on rapid cultural immersion; we could take massive steps to close the border. Given current inaction, neither seems realistic. But Hanson prefers a third alternative: do both. The "more radical and holistic solution would be to adopt sweeping restrictions on immigration and put an end to separatist ideology along with the two-tier legal system for illegal aliens." Given our failure of nerve, we are faced with the horror of the fourth possibility: Mexifornia—an "apartheid nation, with great distances between its elite and mass, which threatens all prosperity and turns the state into the poorest part."

[George Rebane]

For a broader view, 'The Next 100 Years' from Stratfor's George Friedman.
http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2009/02/the-next-100-years.html and http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/great-divide/

[Paul Emery]

Todd

In the context of the conversation you asked me to prove you wrong. I was using the term Balkanization to refer to the chaos that occurred In that part of the world when Tito died and there was no powerful central government to hold Yugoslavia together and it broke apart into smaller countries with largely pre 20th Century boundaries. I am not aware of that word being used to describe what happened there hundreds of years ago. You said "The Balkans are a perfect example of what our country is becoming." We don't have the hundreds of years of territorial and religious history to support that point of view.

[George Rebane]

The fragmentation of a territory into contentious small nation-states and/or fiefdoms is referred to as balkanization (lower case). The Balkans (upper case) were balkanized already in ancient Greece days.

The North American continent has centuries, if not millenia, of balkanized history. That was the way of the Indian nations as they constantly fought each other. This territory has been one contiguous nation-state for only an instant in its long history of being inhabited by humans.

[Mae]

George,
Thank you so much for this insightful and eloquent post. I plan to share it with family and friends. I'm so tired of feeling continually on guard just raising my family. From the height of my retaining walls to the helmets my toddlers don't wear when they ride their bikes, I'm constantly breaking the law. I give birth in secret so CPS won't take my kids when I refuse the hep c (an std) vaccine for my newborn. This disgusting state of affairs erodes human dignity and squashes any strivings for self-reliance. It makes me ill. Maybe Bolivia would be a better place to raise children in the principles of freedom.