Much is being made in some circles about this “9 Principles, 12 Values” thingie being bandied around by Glenn Beck. So as I am in the grip of insomnia yet again, I though I would run my sleep deprived eyes down that list and see how I would stack up were I an American politico, presumably running not under the Republican Elephant Banner but some sort of vaguely libertarianish ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ Rattlesnake Flag or maybe a Star-Spangled Hippopotamus Vexillum (I did warn you I was sleep deprived)…
The 9 Principles
1. America Is Good.
– America is a nation-state and even the least bad nation-state can never be more than a necessary evil. It is the nature of the beast.
2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
– Nope and she ain’t … but “Hail Eris” just in case.
3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
– Um, Glenn ol’ buddy… this 9/12 shtick is addressed to politicians, no? And anyway, I think I strike the right balance between honesty and tactical duplicity.
4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
– The family is a pretty good idea, so yeah, but in truth I am pretty much owned by my other half as she can be pretty scary when she wants to be.
5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
– Justice is blind and achieving it is a vital life objective … the law on the other hand is not just blind but rather prone to be deaf, dumb, stupid and as often as not utterly malevolent. So yes, it needs to be applied to politicians good and hard.
6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
– Hell yeah.
7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
– Amen to that.
8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
– Indeed.
9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.
– Quite so. In theory. Sort of.
The 12 Values
* Honesty
– Great idea, at least with people likely to reciprocate.
* Reverence
– Very overrated… to me ‘reverence’ is something that I only feel when confronted by a juicy medium rare Argentine steak or a 10mm that never jams.
* Hope
– Essential.
* Thrift
– As politics is about Other People’s Money and Liberty… utterly essential.
* Humility
– Nice but hardly essential.
* Charity
– Also nice but how does this fit into politics? You cannot be charitable with other people’s money.
* Sincerity
– Indeed and anyone who can fake that has chosen wisely in their decision to pursue a career in politics.
* Moderation
– To quote Barry Goldwater… “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
* Hard Work
– Essential and I intend to hire people capable of doing exactly that.
* Courage
– Essential in all things.
* Personal Responsibility
– The cornerstone of all moral calculus.
* Gratitude
– I would be grateful to get a few hours sleep at some point tonight.
hehe nice punchline
The impression I get is that these 21 items have little to do with politicians, and everything to do with individuals. In most cases it isn’t important whether a politician shows, say, personal responsibility, so long as they help craft a system that expects it of the populace. Naturally you might hope that someone exhibiting such qualities would be more likely to enact them, but that’s not a given.
With that in mind the ‘oddity’ of charity makes some sense – while limited government assumes that many things will be dealt with better by the market, there’s still a gap to be filled by charitable giving, so the more charitable the populace the easier it is for the overall system to work.
“So as I am in the grip of insomnia yet again…”
I used to have that – lots of regular running was my cure. Reading didn’t work for me at all.
Glenn Beck: very much a mixed bag, isn’t he?
The trouble with much of that list is that it’s too damn Christian. There’s no sense in alienating people who might otherwise be fellow travellers by long-windedly answering the question “what would Jesus do?”
“America is good” does not mean the American GOVERNMENT Perry.
It means the ideas and principles of civil society.
Of course this means society will only be good if people try their best to be honest (and …..).
Hence the various principles of moral conduct – the struggle each person has to be as decent as they can be (a battle within oneself that has to be refaught every day – of course that is true for an alcoholic-who-is-not-drinking-today like Glenn Beck, but it is also true for everyone else).
Where you can have a dispute with Glenn Beck is the religous element.
As Fransisco Suarez put it “natural law is God’s law – but if God did not exist, natural law would be exactly the same” (by the way this has nothing to do with the use of language if people do not like the term “natural law” then substitute the term “moral principle” or “honour” or any form of language you prefer).
And, no, the nine principles and twelve values are not even primarily directed at politicains – who mostly “stink on ice”.
They are directed at everyone.
Of course if a politician (such as Senator De Mint) says “I agree with them” that is fine – but that also means the politician is setting himself up for a fall, for no serious moral standard is easy to keep up (“we are all sinners” – is the old way of expressing that truth).
The modern “liberal” point of view is to laugh at the “hypocrisy” of those people who fail to live up to the standard of morality.
But to have no honour is worse that failing.
It one falls into sin (to use the old word), and one will, it just means that one has to work to make amends as best as one can – and to sin less today than one did today, and to sin less tomorrow than one did today.
It is easy to laugh at this (very easy indeed), but trying to live an honourable life is what a person must try to do.
Unless they are happy to end up like Obama.
“President of the United States, good health, attractive wife and family, the vast majority of the world praising your name…… what is wrong with that?”
What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?
That is something an athiest can understand (if they try) just as much as a religous person can.
Whilst I am waiting for my longer comment to turn up I will just say that the primary focus of the 9 Principles and 12 Values is NOT politicians.
“But do you agree with them Paul?”
Well the religious element is not a problem for me (although as I explain in my longer comment an honourable man need not be religious).
I do not live up to them of course – but I do believe in them (all 9 and all 12).
Even “moderation” – not in objectives (such as the pursuit of justice), but in personal conduct.
This includes political conduct – for example in the incredibly unlikely event that I had some real political power it would NOT be right to have my enemies slaughtered even though they are socialists.
Control of one’s own passions (including hatred – a powerful emotion in me) is the old defintion of positive freedom (before its meaning was mutated to mean welfare benefits), and it is essential.
Gorgeous.
ADE
I would define the hypocrite not as one who fails to live up to his stated ideals but rather as one who does not try to live up to them. Failure may be forgivable, if a genuine attempt was made.
Of course that is great as a definition, but in the real world we then spend all of our time debating whether politician x tried and failed or merely pretended to try, having already decided to fail.
The nifty ability to to re-spawn if killed and turn water into wine and duplicate loaves of bread really quickly suggests to me that Jesus probably did not need to have much grasp of mundane economics, so “what would Jesus do?” might not be that useful a question unless you too are possessed of supernatural powers.
Paul Marks at 10.29am – thread hero.
“It is easy to laugh at this (very easy indeed), but trying to live an honourable life is what a person must try to do. Unless they are happy to end up like Obama.”
That comment is as true as it is destined to be misunderstood and immediately blotted out in the unlikely event that it should ever get picked up on commie radar.
Just another example of how most viewpoints, left or right, do have elements of freedom and liberty. But all have “trojan horse” elements that leave the person who espouses such a list open for supporting Statist thuggery.
In very general terms, everyone wants the same thing, it’s just a very large sum of people are willing to use Force to make sure their perceived method of getting there wins out. Everyone is perfectly free to pursue their dreams as long as the dream pasts muster and the method is approved, and so the 80% of the list that sounds good to everyone as sound and reasonable is tainted by the 20% that is unique to the individual. The 20% dictates the mode and method of the “freedom” nested in the agreeable 80%.
It all boils down to the desire to create a homogenity in the population first, then freedom will be rolled out. Unfortunately we are caught in the crossfire of multiple idealogies who are fighting tooth and nail to have their 20% gain ascension, be in place long enough to meld the masses into a homogenous lump, and then freedom will descend -the proverbial dictatorship of the proletariat that will move us on to paradise on earth. Unfortunately we are at stage one with a multitude of idealogies whose only success is making sure the State grows and grows to be as strong as possible when the glorious takeover actually happens. They are all compromising with each other in the short term with the result of an ever expanding State not officially owned by anyone. The scary part is we are heading, still, into very dark economic times and some idealogy will stand forth very soon and the Leviathan has been forged and ready for use for whoever wins.
I’m undecided about the “pledge.” It reads like the Boy Scout Law. Which isn’t a bad thing, on balance, I guess. Except for the part about family and spouses: my family and marriage were points very much supportive of the Khmer Rouge notions of family life.
And America is a good thing. How else would you know where the Atlantic ended and the Pacific began?
As for the insomnia, nd air conditioner or humidifier or other white noise source, and 50mg of diphenhydramine HCl[1] washed down with a shot (ONLY one shot) of Woodford Reserve does wonders.
[1] Don’t do this if you’re allergic to allergy medicine.
@Paul Marks
I don’t think you can be quite so sweeping when characterizing the liberal point of view on hypocrisy. I’m sure there are many liberals who act exactly as you describe, but in my experience you missed a key element for many. If someone on my street begged a judge for leniency when their son is being convicted for drug trafficking I might disagree with what they’re doing, but I’d have no thoughts of hypocrisy. If they’d moralized in public about being tough on drug crime, I’d be thinking hypocrisy. And if, as was the case for Duke Cunningham, the person had made a career in part on being tough on crime, and had publicly said things like “those who peddle destruction on our children must pay dearly” then I would feel very comfortable in accusing him of hypocrisy.
The same thing applies to Mark Foley, who worked vocally against child exploitation despite his now well-known personal interest in the issue. And for purposes of balance, the same is true of Elliot Spitzer, who claimed to be a moral champion despite his own moral failings. In fact that’s a great example, as I don’t object to his use of prostitutes at all, only to his hypocrisy.
The Communists in Cambodia were opposed to families standing up against the state.
PaulH.
Yes there are decent liberals (even by the modern definition of “liberal”).
So perhaps it is well that the hard core left have gone to back to calling themselves “Progressives”.
Even a hundred years ago “Progressive” meant swine.
Perry,
Compare your 9-12 analysis to my post written back in August.
Glenn Beck is crazier than a shithouse rat, but the Fort Worth Libertarian Party held their collective noses and joined forces with his group for one rally.
http://thewhitedsepulchre.blogspot.com/2009/08/libertarians-and-9-12-project.html
Glenn Beck is, um, a little odd. I’ll grant that.
And most of the folks here can probably find common ground on most of the Scout Oath and Law, er, 9-12 values. But I think they were intended to be followed by normal non-NPD people, not politicians, in the hope that a population that practiced them would sprout a political establishment to match.
Of course, we’ve grown a political establishment influenced half by the smarmy self-righteous pricks who joined the Student Council while I was getting stoned across the street in high school, and half by the people who call 911 because they couldn’t get their mcnuggets or Junior won’t do his homework. (And a distressing amount of overlap too.) And this is where I lose my faith in democracy, from the thought that these people vote.
Obsessing about the purity of one’s allies is a terrible way to win anything. But you may still be able to associate only with fellow objectivists on the forced march to the re-education camp.
BTW, Perry, 10mm is soooo 1980’s. But a department not far from me issues the Colt Delta Elite (or did, anyway, don’t ask me why) and seems to like it.
Glenn Beck can be a bit odd – for example he points to “Gandhi” as an example of conduct, but normally carries a firearm.
However, what sort of man do you think would react to the vast forces of collectism and corruption (normally the same forces or allied) and think (and do) “head down CHARGE”.
Glenn is no more insane than I am – although many people might not think that this is particularly sane.