As an example of what the previous sentence purports, this article would likely have included Suber’s description of the problem of self-amendment, “Some legal rules govern the change of other legal rules. But even these “rules of change” (as Hart calls them) are changeable, usually by higher level rules of change. When a rule of change is supreme within its own system (as a constitutional rule of change probably is), then it is changeable, if at all, only under its very own authority. The paradox of self-amendment arises when a rule is used as the authority for its own amendment. It is sharper when the rule of change is supreme, sharper still when it is changed into a form that is inconsistent with its original form, and sharpest of all when the change purports to be irrevocable.” in addition to, or perhaps in place of, some other description the author thought of.

This is about self-reference and law (which in addition to being stated several times in the article is also the title). But this is also about the mischief the author perceives is possible when engaging in self-reference. Using sentences, such as this one, in articles, such as this one, to highlight instances, such as this one, where in the exact same words or word, phrases or phrase, such as this one, mean exactly the same thing in theory but in context, such as this one, have drastically different consequences is an effective tool, the author believes and with which I happen to agree, to emphasize that we do not live in a logical vacuum and where all rules must be flexible. Is it oxymoronic to have insisted that flexibility must be a “must” in the previous sentence? Did the author mean to use “ironic” instead of “oxymoronic” in the last sentence? Would Suber have even asked these last three sentences in the article he wrote?

Though, when you first began this sentence ten words ago, you may not have given any thought to the notion that legal philosopher Alf Ross holds should be true of any legal system, that that which is logically impossible must be legally impermissible, I guarantee by the end of it in, three words from now, you will have. What do you think of this? What did “this” mean in that question? How did you know? Who are you and why are you reading me? What is this all about? This is about self-reference and law (which in addition to being stated several times in the article is also the title).

Remember when we were thinking about what this article would be like if its author were replaced by a better author earlier in this article? Oh those were the days, and we even included an example “The principle that what is logically impossible must be legally impossible may be philosophically arrogant and ignorant of legal history, but it is not a simple mistake. It is a new variation on the theme of natural law. Instead of finding that human law depends for its validity on an eternal moral law, this version makes it depend on an eternal logical law. One of the most persistent and persuasive objections to traditional natural law theory applies as well to the new version. If human law can be immoral without ceasing to be law, it seems it can be illogical without ceasing to be law. Law has its own tests of what is law, and those tests validate much that is immoral and illogical. To decide that a transcendent moral or logical test supersedes the legal tests, and can invalidate what is otherwise law and validate or enact what is otherwise utterly tacit, is to transform law into morality or logic and unduly diminish its historical and social dimensions. It is to assert that law reflects human thought and community only at their best and never also at their worst. It is to assert that somehow this human construction has had an immaculate conception, and is never touched by human unreasonableness, historical contingency, and interest.” that showed how much better it would have…wait a minute, that putz of an author this article has copied and pasted something different into the quotes and is refusing, nay, has refused to change it.

But can our all-knowing, all-powerful author really be as inflexible as that? Indeed, the question to be asked is “How can any system, such as God or the author or constitutional amending powers, which is to be omnipotent, irrevocably limit itself?” The next question to be asked is “Has it been?” but that is an entirely related interest which should end at that period. Has it been? What about now? Remember: This is about self-reference and law (which in addition to being stated several times in the article is also the title). So, in context, such as this one, is it possible to make a rule that is effectively unchangeable, for instance by included a clause that says “this law (which is a part of system A) be unchangeable (by system A)”? Consider for yourself, can an author refuse to change an article even once the author “has refused to change it” written inside of it?

The author would like to remind you at this point that we do not live in a logical vacuum and to prove this will assert that we do live in a logical vacuum. He’ll show you again by asking you again “can an author refuse to change an article even once the author “has refused to change it” written inside of it?” in the next sentence. Not this one, the next one. Can an author refuse to change an article even once the author “has refused to change it” written inside of it? Did he or did he not show you his point and how could you possibly tell one way or another? I suspect this has something to do with showing that even though a law may state it cannot be changed or possibly even claim to be immutable, in reality, which is not a logical vacuum (logical vacuum meaning throughout this article, even though this is the last time it will be used, that there exists only logical operations with no logical inconsistencies), this is not only not so but can never be so.

This sentence claims the following paragraph has no meaning outside of this article. This sentence claims the previous sentence is false while claim the sentence that follows is true. This sentence claims that the first sentence of this paragraph is true. This paragraph, this sentence claims, shows that within the context of a law or article or paragraph, certain things may make sense but if taken out of their actual context or improperly juxtaposed or its meaning extracted by inappropriate means (such as imagining if Peter Suber had written this parenthetical comment), then it will quickly fall into Quine’s paradox of “yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation” yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation. The author thus contends that unfortunately systems can only be understood within themselves and yet can only be understood outside themselves, the very flaw of all variations of formalism. Would you really know what the hell was meant by any of this if instead of this article you met all these sentences coming from the mouth of an unbathed individual on your local bus route? This sentence claims to be a segue to the next paragraph.

This sentence claims to be a segue from the previous paragraph. And though I have (and so has the author and so has the little neurons fleeting about your head and thus so have you, dear reader!) contended that this is about self-reference and law, it seems that I (and the author and you!) have strayed off of this topic. Would Peter Suber have done that? Though this counterfactual conditional may be a good rhetorical tool, I answer it by saying it cannot be answered. Has it been? I think Suber might have included “Central to many theories of democracy is the view that law is legitimate only when endorsed by the consent of the governed. [...] One of the most important and indicative manifestations of consent is the people’s willingness to use the mechanisms of legal change, especially the supreme power of constitutional amendment. [...] Use and non-use of the amending power will not really indicate consent unless the procedure is fair and neither too difficult nor too easy. But to change the fairness and difficulty of the amending procedure are virtually the only reasons to amend the amendment clause. Hence, self-amendment will almost always affect our ability to assess the people’s consent to be governed by their constitution and the people’s power to alter legal conditions to meet their consent.” though our current author might leave such sentiments out of the article completely.

Hence, this article concludes, that what cannot be allowed within a legal system is not logical inconsistencies but in fact immutable unacceptablities. The only rule that is unchangeable in any formal legal system is this one, “the only rule that is unchangeable in any formal legal system is this one, enclosed in quotes and placed in the middle of its own explication” enclosed in quotes and placed in the middle of its own explication. What that little linguistical flight of fancy is intended to show is that there is no such thing as an unchangeable law as that would mean that laws could be interpreted simply by that format rather than by their content. That would be like trying to understand an article about self-reference by only noting its self-referential nature! No author in his write mind wood right like that, especially won with an I four homophones, like the one making me right now. Oh, he finished me. In fragments.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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If one is the voluntary citizen of a country (or a club or whatever) they agree to follow the rules of that country (or club or whatever). That is, they are responsible for abiding by the laws and in a sense agree to be punished should they “break the law.” But an implicit assumption is this agreement is that it is possible to know and follow all laws. If a body of law is unknowable–if one person is simply not capable of learning every law–is the citizen still responsible if he breaks that law?

The two solutions that I’ve thought of is:

1) Yes, of course he is responsible. Simply failing to learn a law cannot be held as an excuse for failing to follow it anymore than not taking driving classes excuses one from running into other cars. In this tact I believe we see law as not words written on a piece of paper but as a visceralization of “nature rights.” We already know that murder and rape and stealing are bad…they are violations of property rights that (the vast majority of) people inherently acknowledge.

2) No, get with the real world. The amount of laws on the books are entirely too much for anyone, let alone the average citizen, to come to know and comprehend. Admiralty, agricultural, aviation, banking, bankruptcy, civil rights, constitutional, consumer, corporate, criminal, education, elder law, employment, entertainment, environmental, estate, family, general practice, immigration, intellectual property, labor, liability (of all sorts), malpractice (of all sorts), media (of all sorts), military, municipal, personal injury, real estate, securities, taxation, trusts, wills…not mention all the ones I cannot think of and all the subspecialties (FDA, EPA, IEEE, etc..) that many people simply cannot think of. And these are just the laws on the books, these are the vast pieces of legislation that get passed everyday throughout the country: federal, state, county, city, district, neighborhood. There is just simply too many laws for any one person to know, thus, you cannot “fairly” be said to be responsible for every single one.

1′s Response) That’s just tough shit. Just because something’s hard doesn’t mean you get a free pass. If you don’t like it, leave.

2′s Response) Once again, get back in the real world: there’s no place for me to go. Should everything just be “tough shit” simply because a bunch of people have conspired to screw my life over?

I do not know which side I should come down on. Thus is life.

Thoughts?

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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What they were complaining about this time is that the personal information of a few College of Liberal Art potential-fillers-of-the-empty-seat students had been blacked out. They called it redacted because it sounded scarier. What information, what crucial, vital, essential pieces of information needed to be shared with the world and whose being blacked out was a violation of LAW and which was done with NO PRECENDENCE!? The students’ addresses, student numbers, telephone numbers, email addresses, and cumulative GPAs.

You know, the stuff one doesn’t generally doesn’t want to see floating around on blogs run by anonymous people who use the word “redacted”.

When a commenter responded to the post by saying, “I dont think you are being fair. Censoring home addresses and phone numbers is perfectly understandable before they are confirmed. Let’s try not to be unreasonable guys” one of the VisLupiEstGrex people retorted:

“This is isn’t about fairness. This is about the plain meaning of the law. The Senate has never before, to our knowledge, redacted such information [...] I do not believe it is unreasonable to make a reasoned argument backed by legal authority. It may be unfair that this is public material, but it is not declared by law to be private.” (emphasis added)

But this couldn’t be more completely wrong. Laws have no authority in and of themselves. Laws derive their only power, their only sway insofar as people are willing to uphold those laws. There are laws against jay walking and speeding, but how many times have you broken these laws even within the past week? Would all the VisLupiEstGrex people be willing to say they never drank underage, never drove over the speed limit, have, in fact, stopped at every “Stop” sign 100% everytime they’ve seen one?

Of course they shouldn’t have to say they’ve done all those things: those things are pointlessly stupid laws in many instances. Dumb laws should be ignored. Bad laws shouldn’t be followed simply because they’re laws. They are first and foremost “bad” which makes whatever it is they advocate lose any sense of “necessity.” Don’t ever be fooled into thinking there is such a thing as a “necessary evil.” There isn’t. Such a ploy is only held up by those too weak to carry meaningful ethical principles.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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Assemblyman Harry Mortenson (D-42) has introduced the long anticipated “Castle Doctrine” self-defense measure in Nevada. Assembly Bill 288 would allow a person to use deadly force against an aggressor so long as the person using deadly force “(a) is not the aggressor; (b) has a right to be present at the location where deadly force is used; and (c) is not engaged in criminal activity at the time the deadly force is used.”

Chalk one up for the good guys.

If this bill is passed, it will allow citizens to defend their property with deadly force if “the circumstances [are] sufficient to excite the fears of a reasonable person and that the party killing really acted under the influence of those fears and not in the a spirit of revenge.” If this bill is passed, it will allow the self-sufficiency of the citizenry and no longer require that someone first try to run for help from the state before trying to kill his killer. If this bill is passed, it will allow for a strong defense in the protection of private property, which is, simply, a defense of people. If this bill is passed, it will be one crucial win for everybody and one crucial loss for criminals.

This bill effectively allows people to defend themselves without fear of retribution from the government, it is an outstanding heralding of property rights, and gives people the strength to stand on their own two feet. The law should always be in favor of the law-abiding citizens. It is unfortunate that so many people have made careers out of the semantical issues involved in the tricky word play of the legislature. But for all the gloomy rulings and poor laws handed down everyday from the government, it is exalting to feel that one ray of hope and behold that one moment of clarity when something so simple and pure and true is upheld.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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Not only that but you must tell the government exactly what you are growing and when you are growing it. It’s not a big step to force farmers to tell the government what they’re growing (I mean, what do they have to hide?) and say it’s in the name of public health. That is why this bill is so dangerous…it’s coming in under the radar.

The bill leans heavily towards destroying a blossoming organic market (though it never explicitly says so) in favor of more industrial methods. Namely, the only people that can really afford to cooperate with this bill are the larger farms that have the time and money to implement all these changes.

Linn Cohen-Cole over at OpEdNews puts it very succinctly:

The bill is monstrous on level after level – the power it would give to Monsanto, the criminalization of seed banking, the prison terms and confiscatory fines for farmers, the 24 hours GPS tracking of their animals, the easements on their property to allow for warrantless government entry, the stripping away of their property rights, the imposition by the filthy, greedy industrial side of anti-farming international “industrial” standards to independent farms – the only part of our food system that still works, the planned elimination of farmers through all these means.

This minor step towards nationalizing farming (the government knowing everything about all farms everywhere) is just another one down that road to serfdom. Literally the government is tying people to their land. I do not know what else to call it. And as the footsteps fade away, and we walk down that road, we can do nothing but weep for our lost freedoms.

One nice thing about the bill–I guess–is that “Any person that commits an act that violates the food safety law (including a regulation promulgated or order issued under the food safety law) may be assessed a civil penalty by the Administrator of not more than $1,000,000 for each such act.”

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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If I wish to trade you my pen for your tie, we are part of a market. Not the capital M Market, but a market all the same. I trade you my pen because I value your tie as greater than my pen, and you value my pen as greater than your tie and are willing to part with it. Now say instead I pay you five dollars for your tie and you pay me three dollars for my pen…now they do not have the same value, but they have values that we both agree to and are willing to trade for. In this case, I trade you five pieces of paper for your tie and you give me three pieces of paper for my pen.

Now suppose somebody else does not wish for this transaction to occur. Do they have a right to prevent it? No. Even if this person uses the argument that I will regret my trade later, it will hurt me, I will be sad, it is not in my best interest, they have no right to actually prevent this trade. This person’s critiques may be valid: I may in fact regret it later (maybe your tie is lame and my pen is awesome). This, however, is no reason to prevent two consenting adults from voluntarily trading. Thus, the person unaffected by our market is the one who is not part of the trade. They can be said to be outside of the market.

Since a person unaffected by a voluntary trade has no right to prevent this voluntary trade, whence comes this power to prevent it?

As a concrete example, say you have never been to a bowling alley. You’ve never bowled, but hey, maybe you think you wouldn’t like it anyway and you decide never to go to one. Perfectly fine. It is your right to go to a bowling alley and conversely it is also your right not to go to a bowling alley. The problem arises when you say that other people are not allowed to go to bowling alleys. Even if bowling alleys are immoral, disgusting, wrong, and the people who go to them are awful scum of the earth (which I, personally, do not believe), you have no right to prevent people from going to bowling alleys, by means of force. If you want to make a website that tells of the evils of bowling alleys or talk to the owners about what you feel is wrong with this cesspool they’re running (and they are willing to listen), then that too is perfectly fine. So long as you do not agress against the rights of others, then you are free to do as you wish.

Or at least that’s the way it should be.

It should be that way because if bowling alleys were bad and people did not like them, people would not go to them, they would lose money, go out of business, and no longer be around to bug anyone (how many encyclopedia salesmen have you seen recently?). The market course corrects to punish those enterprises that consumers do not like and rewards those that consumers do like. You don’t need laws to tell people what to do: you need people and freedom.

If people do not like trans fats then it would be in the interest of restaurants to not serve trans fats. Given the same tasting food, for the same price, but one is more healthy, people would be more inclined to buy the healthy product. Hence, the companies that sell the healthy stuff will gain more market share, while those that sell crap (at the same price) are likely to go under. You do not need the State for this: you need people and a free market.

And this exactly what we have seen. Many restaurants were well on their way to phasing out trans fats. And that’s great, but…

It doesn’t matter if restaurants were getting rid of them by themselves…
It doesn’t matter if the state had nothing but the best of intentions…
It doesn’t matter if trans fats are dangerous…
It doesn’t matter even matter if the majority, say even a vast majority of citizens were in favor of this law…

THIS LAW IS WRONG.

It would be too easy to blame California’s government or its voting citizens or all of its citizens… Yes, they should be ashamed of themselves. But so should we. We as thinking, loving, caring people; as people capable of speaking out; we simply as people, should be ashamed of what has been carried out in our name, in our health, and in our face. Though there may be nothing we can do about this law now (indeed, there is nothing we can do), we must not give in to evil, but strive ever more boldly against it. A perfect society may never come about, will never come about, but as Sisyphus struggled more defiantly against the gods in pushing his boulder to the peak of the mountain, we too must–in the face of those who would break us through petty vanity or oblivious banality–try to push our boulder, our society to its height.

And it all begins with one little push.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2008.
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It is, in fact, a violation of the First Amendment.

To force a doctor to say “that the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being,” is not only unconstitutional and immoral, but wrong in just about every sense of the word.

It is, in fact, a violation of a doctor’s right to practice medicine.

If a doctor does not believe this to be true, if he does not believe that removing a fertilized embryo from a woman is not the terminiation of life of a “living human being” then he cannot be forced to say so. Even if he did believe this to be true, that abotion = murder, a law cannot compell him to say so to a patient. The government has no right to interfere in the doctor-patient relationship.

It is, in fact, a violation of the right for consenting adults to partake in a capitalistic act.

If patients wanted to hear that abortion was murder, they would go to doctors who believed so and said so and those doctors who did not believe this to be true and did not tell their patients would have less patients, thus less customers, and thus less of the market. Thus the population of doctors would be slowly but surely replaced by those that believed abortion is killing rather than the those that did not. And all of this would be accomplished without the intervention of the State.

It is, in fact, up to the patients and the doctors to decide what they want to discuss, not the State, nor any other third party.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2008.
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