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The Rational Argumentator’s Eleventh Anniversary Manifesto

The Rational Argumentator’s Eleventh Anniversary Manifesto

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
August 31, 2013
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In another productive and transformative year for The Rational Argumentator, I have been able to realize a series of long-held ambitions. New and improved editions of Eden against the Colossus, The Best Self-Help is Free, and Implied Consent have all been released since TRA celebrated its tenth anniversary last year. In addition, the Guide to Stolyarovian Shorthand renders my unique system of efficient note-taking available to the public for the first time. Furthermore, numerous new articles, YouTube videos, and links to Resources on Indefinite Life Extension have been created and published, along with several new and even more remastered musical compositions.  This has been a year of rejuvenating the accomplishments of the past while also shaping the future with new creations. I continue to experiment with and implement new approaches for spreading rational enlightenment to all who are willing. My Open Badges on Indefinite Life Extension are a proof of concept of what could be possible when it comes to motivating free, open-source education that produces externally verifiable outcomes. Of course, developing and expanding the system of Open Badges in any range of conceivable subjects will require a considerable amount of time and exertion of effort. However, TRA now has an embedded system for developing multiple-choice quizzes whose completion will result in the awarding of an Open Badge.

Total eleventh-year visitation for all TRA features was 1,077,192 page views, compared to 1,302,774 during the tenth year and the peak of 1,398,438 during the ninth year. While this was a decrease, it is still a higher number than was observed during any of the first eight years of TRA’s existence. TRA’s lifetime visitation stands at 6,746,360 page views.

I attribute the recent trend in reduced visitation to a decrease in new publication activity. During its eleventh year, TRA published 208 features, compared to 306 during its tenth year. The rate of publication slowed because of an unusually turbulent year, both in terms of events that affected me directly and took me away from a more steady publication regimen, and in terms of larger attention-absorbing, paradigm-shattering developments on a world scale, such as the recent revelations of Orwellian NSA surveillance of the general population.

Still, the fact that visitation slipped by less (a decrease of 22.97%) than the number of published features (a decrease of 32.03%) shows that TRA’s content remains sought-after and relevant, perhaps especially so in light of the very troubled and troubling era in which we live, when the direct threats to our personal liberty and privacy continue to mount and to become unavoidably palpable. The message that individuals have rights, that their lives have inherent value, that no “national security” or “greater good” can trump that value, needs to be proclaimed with renewed urgency and commitment. An alternative to the status quo needs to emerge through intellectual, technological, and political innovation, and it needs to emerge sufficiently soon that the Orwellian boot on the face of mankind does not stamp it out forever. The comprehensive surveillance regime unleashed in secret by the Bush and Obama administrations has no historical parallels; it is what the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century could only have dreamed of. At the same time, an increasing disconnect has occurred between the actions of national-government politicians and anything resembling what the people actually think: witness the rampant war hysteria that the Obama administration is currently attempting to stir up for a pointless, counterproductive invasion of Syria that would already be one of the least popular military undertakings in US history.

What can be done to change the political and cultural status quo to anything resembling sanity – even the kind of sanity that could have been said to characterize the 1990s in the United States? Hundreds of distinct approaches, implemented by millions of individuals, are most certainly required.  This problem is not easy; the world took a wrong turn, probably sometime around September 11, 2001, when the fear of “terrorism” led the political leaders of the Western World to use an infinitesimal threat to justify restrictions and invasions of personal liberty and even bodily integrity, which would have been unthinkable in any other context. After the economic collapse of 2008 and the subsequent bailouts of politically connected cronies, it seemed clear that the national governments of the world have sided with the “men of pull” – as Ayn Rand would have called them – against everybody else.  A free system which rewards merit and undermines stagnant hierarchies of rent-seeking privilege was not allowed to manifest itself. Instead, the very people who caused the world to take a wrong turn remain in charge.

While changing the current state of affairs is no easy task, I can confidently say that, in a hypothetical world where all humans were philosophically inclined, informed on current events, concerned with questions of morality, and interested in continual learning and self-improvement, the wrong turn would never have been taken. In a world that suddenly found itself filled with such enlightened individuals, the harms of the status quo would quickly be undone. The goal of The Rational Argumentator is to assist such enlightened individuals, both those who already are and those who might become enlightened through their independent intellectual explorations. While we are far from a world filled with purveyors of philosophical enlightenment (in the 18th-century sense of that term), every individual who becomes a true rational intellectual and a person of moral conscience can take us one step closer in that direction.

Pervasive NSA surveillance, fortunately, is no threat to TRA, because TRA has always been a publicly accessible endeavor. As I have written previously, if  those employed by the NSA and other spy agencies throughout the world were to read information on The Rational Argumentator, this could only benefit humanity by possibly exposing these individuals to ideas of rationality and moral conscience. The truly troubling aspect of universal surveillance is that it seeks to pry into the communications that we do not wish to disclose to anyone and everyone – private e-mails, phone calls, social-media conversations, financial transactions, and search terms. It is reasonable and justified for individuals who wish to preserve a shred of privacy to change their approach toward such communications. However, as far as TRA is concerned, its work can proceed unimpeded, for its message is meant to reach as many people as possible, NSA agents or not.

However, the recent revelations of NSA spying did lead me to reconsider one matter from my March 2012 statement, “A New Era for The Rational Argumentator”. I no longer consider social-networking sites, such as Facebook or Google+, to be effective ways for individuals to create custom repositories of knowledge. While it is still the case that individuals can access content somewhat tailored to their interests through such networks, the fact remains that the networks have been co-opted through NSA backdoors into their systems. The companies running these networks are no longer benign free-market entities whose goal is to exchange value for value with their customers. Rather, the original market-oriented purpose of these companies has been subverted in favor of becoming privatized arms of the surveillance state. Perhaps these companies had little choice but to comply with requests to spy on their users; observe the fate of Lavabit, whose founder tried to stand on principle and refuse such intrusions. The fact remains, though, that it is not prudent to rely for one’s information and philosophical development solely on sources whose role to gather information about one can affect one’s life far more than any of their incidental ability to give information to one. Does this mean that one should abandon all social networks or even Facebook and Google+? I am not advocating this, though I do advocate extreme prudence on these networks. The path-dependency and network effects are too great at present for such abandonment to be a practical choice for many people, myself included. Rather, I wish to emphasize the continued importance of self-contained online information repositories that do not vary based on the visitor and do not seek to do anything to the visitor other than provide content and elicit feedback in public comments. The Rational Argumentator is just such a source, and I hope in the coming months and years to increase its rate of publication and resume its previous modus operandi of publishing both original content and some of the most thought-provoking content that has appeared elsewhere, relying on TRA’s excellent network of authors and articles published under the Creative Commons License. If I can convince you to access TRA directly (rather than only through a social network) on a routine basis as part of your quest for knowledge and edification, then my planned endeavors will be successful.

You will see, in the coming months, the realization of still more ambitious projects, some of which are presently underway. Through all of the changes, improvements, and revitalizations of past materials, I can make you the same promises that I have made throughout TRA’s lifetime: that I will retain all content ever published on TRA; that I will continue to vigorously promote the ideas of liberty, reason, and technological progress; and that this site shall always remain a haven for high intellectualism and civilized discourse. In whatever way I can, I hope to make this magazine a valuable asset to those of us who have the most at stake in the outcome of the continuing and accelerating race between technological progress and authoritarian intervention.

Why The 2,776 NSA Violations Are No Big Deal – Article by Ron Paul

Why The 2,776 NSA Violations Are No Big Deal – Article by Ron Paul

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The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
August 18, 2013
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Thanks to more documents leaked by Edward Snowden, this time to the Washington Post, we learned last week that a secret May 2012 internal audit by the NSA revealed 2,776 incidents of “unauthorized” collection of information on American citizens over the previous 12 months. They are routinely breaking their own rules and covering it up.The Post article quotes an NSA spokesman assuring the paper that the NSA attempts to identify such problems “at the earliest possible moment.” But what happened to all those communications intercepted improperly in the meantime? The answer is, they were logged and stored anyway.

We also learned that the NSA routinely intercepts information from Americans while actually targeting foreigners, and that this is not even considered a violation. These intercepts are not deleted once discovered, even though they violate the US government’s own standards. As the article reports, “once added to its databases, absent other restrictions, the communications of Americans may be searched freely.”

The Post article quotes an NSA official explaining that the thousands of unauthorized communications intercepts yearly are relatively insignificant. “You can look at it as a percentage of our total activity that occurs each day. You look at a number in absolute terms that looks big, and when you look at it in relative terms, it looks a little different.”

So although the numbers of Americans who have had their information intercepted in violation of NSA’s own rules seems large, it is actually miniscule compared to the huge volume of our communications they intercept in total!

Though it made for a sensational headline last week, the fact is these 2,776 “violations” over the course of one year are completely irrelevant. The millions and millions of “authorized” intercepts of our communications are all illegal — except for the very few carried out in pursuit of a validly-issued search warrant in accordance with the Fourth Amendment. That is the real story. Drawing our attention to the violations unfortunately sends the message that the “authorized” spying on us is nothing to be concerned about.

When information about the massive NSA domestic spying program began leaking earlier in the summer, Deputy Attorney General James Cole assured us of the many levels of safeguards to prevent the unauthorized collection, storage, and distribution of our communications. He promised to explain the NSA’s record “in as transparent a way as we possibly can.”

Yet two months later we only discover from more leaked documents the thousands of times communications were intercepted in violation of their own standards! It is hardly reassuring, therefore, when they promise us they will be more forthcoming in the future. No one believes them because they have lied and covered up continuously. The only time any light at all is shone on these criminal acts by the US federal government is when a whistleblower comes forth with new and ever more disturbing information.

Americans are increasingly concerned over these violations of their privacy. Calls for reform grow. However, whenever Washington finds itself in a scandal, the federal government responds by naming a federal-government panel made up of current and former federal employees to investigate any mistakes the federal government might have made. The recommendations invariably are that even more federal government employees must be hired to provide an additional layer or two of oversight. That is supposed to reassure us that reforms have been made, while in fact it is just insiders covering up for those who have hired them to investigate.

Let us hope the American people will decide that such trickery is no longer acceptable. It is time to take a very serious look at the activities of the US intelligence community. The first step would be a dramatic reduction in appropriations to force a focus on those real, not imagined, threats to our national security. We should not be considered the enemy.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission.

Refutation of RockingMrE’s “Transhuman Megalomania” Video – Essay and Video by G. Stolyarov II

Refutation of RockingMrE’s “Transhuman Megalomania” Video – Essay and Video by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
August 11, 2013
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Video

Essay

As a libertarian transhumanist, I was rather baffled to see the “Transhuman Megalomania” video on the Rocking Philosophy YouTube channel of one, RockingMrE. Rocking Philosophy appears to have much in common with my rational individualist outlook in terms of general principles, though in not in terms of some specific positions – such as RockingMrE’s opposition to LGBT rights. The channel’s description states that “Above all Rocking Philosophy promotes individualism and a culture free of coercion. Views are based on the non-aggression principle, realism, and a respect for rationality.” I agree with all of these basic principles – hence my bewilderment that RockingMrE would attempt to assail transhumanism in extremely harsh terms – going so far as to call transhumanism “a mad delusion” and a “threat looming over humanity” – rather than embrace or promote it. Such characterizations could not be more mistaken.

In essays and videos such as “Liberty Through Long Life” and “Libertarian Life-Extension Reforms”, I explain that  libertarianism and transhumanism are natural corollaries and would reinforce one another through a virtuous cycle of positive feedback. If people are indeed free as individuals to innovate and to enter the economic and societal arrangements that they consider most beneficial, what do you think would happen to the rate of technological progress? If you think that the result would not be a skyrocketing acceleration of new inventions and their applications to all areas of life, would that position not presuppose a view that freedom would somehow breed stagnation or lead to sub-optimal utilization of human creative faculties? In other words, would not the view of libertarianism as being opposed to transhumanism essentially be a view that liberty would hold people back from transcending the limitations involuntarily imposed on them by the circumstances in which they and their ancestors found themselves? How could such a view be reconcilable with the whole point of liberty, which is to expand and – as the term suggests – liberate human potential, instead of constricting it?

RockingMrE criticizes transhumanists for attempting to reshape the “natural” condition of humanity and to render such a condition obsolete. Yet this overlooks the essence of human behavior over the past twelve millennia at least. Through the use of technology – from rudimentary hunting and farming implements to airplanes, computers, scientific medicine, and spacecraft – we have already greatly departed from the nasty, brutish, and short “natural” lives of our Paleolithic ancestors. Furthermore, RockingMrE falls prey to the naturalistic fallacy – that the “natural”, defined arbitrarily as that which has not been shaped by deliberate human influence, is somehow optimal or good, when in fact we know that “nature”, apart from human influence, is callously indifferent at best, and viciously cruel in most circumstances, having  brought about the immense suffering and demise of most humans who have ever lived and the extinction of 99.9% of species that have ever existed, the vast majority of those occurring without any human intervention.

RockingMrE characterizes transhumanism as a so-called “evil” that presents itself as a “morally relativist and benign force, where any action can be justified for the greater good.” I see neither moral relativism nor any greater-good justifications in transhumanism. Transhumanism can be justified from an entirely individualistic standpoint. Furthermore, it can be justified from the morally objective value of each individual’s life and the continuation of such life. I, as an individual, do not wish to die and wish to accomplish more than my current  bodily and mental faculties, as well as the current limitations of human societies and the present state of technology, would allow me to accomplish today. I exist objectively and I recognize that my existence requires objective physical prerequisites, such as the continuation of the functions of my biological body and biological mind. Therefore, I support advances in medicine, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, computing, education, transportation, and human settlement which would enable these limitations to be progressively lifted and would improve my chances of seeing a much remoter future than my current rate of biological senescence would allow. As an ethically principled individual, I recognize that all beings with the same essential faculties that I have, ought also to have the right to pursue these aspirations in an entirely voluntary, non-coercive manner. In other words, individualist transhumanism would indeed lead to the good of all because its principles and achievements would be universalizable – but the always vaguely defined notion of the “greater good” does not serve as the justification for transhumanism; the good of every individual does. The good of every individual is equivalent to the good for all individuals, which is the only defensible notion of a “greater good”.

RockingMrE states that some of the technologies advocated by transhumanists are “less dangerous than others, and some are even useful.” Interestingly enough, he includes cryopreservation in the category of less dangerous technologies, because a cryopreserved human who is revived will still have the same attributes he or she had prior to preservation. Life extension is the most fundamental transhumanist aim, the one that makes all the other aims feasible. As such, I am quite surprised that RockingMrE did not devote far more time in his video to technologies of radical life extension. Cryonics is one such approach, which attempts to place a physically damaged organism in stasis after that organism reaches clinical death by today’s definition. In the future, what is today considered death may become reversible, giving that individual another chance at life. There are other life-extension approaches, however, which would not even require stasis. Aubrey de Grey’s SENS approach involves the periodic repair of seven kinds of damage that contribute to senescence and eventual death. A person who is relatively healthy when he begins to undergo the therapies envisioned by SENS might not ever need to get to the stage where cryopreservation would be the only possible way of saving that person. What does RockingMrE think of that kind of technology? What about the integration of nanotechnology into human bodily repair systems, to allow for ongoing maintenance of cells and tissues? If a person still looks, talks, and thinks like many humans do today, but lives indefinitely and remains indefinitely young, would this be acceptable to RockingMrE, or would it be a “megalomaniacal” and “evil” violation of human nature?  Considering that indefinite life extension is the core of transhumanism, the short shrift given to it in RockingMrE’s video underscores the severe deficiencies of his critique.

RockingMrE further supports megascale engineering – including the creation of giant spacecraft and space elevators – as a type of technology that “would enhance, rather than alter, what it means to be human.” He also clearly states his view that the Internet enhances our lives and allows the communication of ideas in a manner that would never have been possible previously. We agree here. I wonder, though, if a strict boundary between enhancing and altering can be drawn. Our human experience today differs radically from that of our Paleolithic and Neolithic ancestors – in terms of how much of the world we are able to see, what information is available to us, the patterns in which we lead our lives, and most especially the lengths of those lives. Many of our distant ancestors would probably consider us magicians or demigods, rather than the humans with whom they were familiar. If we are able to create giant structures on Earth and in space, this would surely broaden our range of possible experiences, as well as the resources of the universe that are accessible to us. A multiplanetary species, with the possibility of easy and fast travel among places of habitation, would be fundamentally different from today’s humanity in terms of possible lifestyles and protections from extinction, even while retaining some of the same biological and intellectual characteristics.   As for the Internet, there are already studies suggesting that the abundance of information available online is altering the structure of many humans’ thinking and interactions with that information, as well as with one another. Is this any less human, or just human with a different flavor? If it is just human with a different flavor, might not the other transhumanist technologies criticized by RockingMrE also be characterized this way?

RockingMrE does not even see any significant issues with virtual reality and mind uploading, aside from asking the legitimate question of whether a copy of a person’s mind is still that person. This is a question which has been considerably explored and debated in transhumanist circles, and there is some disagreement as to the answer. My own position, expressed in my essay “Transhumanism and Mind Uploading Are Not the Same”,  is that a copy would indeed not be the same as the individual, but a process of gradual replacement of biological neurons with artificial neurons might preserve a person’s “I-ness” as long as certain rather challenging prerequisites could be met. RockingMrE’s skepticism in this area is understandable, but it does not constitute an argument against transhumanism at all, since transhumanism does not require advocacy of mind uploading generally, or of any particular approach to mind uploading. Moreover, RockingMrE does not see virtual copies of minds as posing a moral problem. In his view, this is because “a program is not an organic life.” We can agree that there is no moral problem posed by non-destructively creating virtual copies of biological minds.

Still, in light of all of the technologies that RockingMrE does not consider to be highly concerning, why in the world does he characterize transhumanism so harshly, after spending the first 40% of his video essentially clarifying that he does not take issue with the actualization of many of the common goals of transhumanists? Perhaps it is because he misunderstands what transhumanism is all about. For the technologies that RockingMrE finds more alarming, he appears to think that they would allow “a level of social engineering that totalitarians could only dream of during the 20th century.” No transhumanist I know of would advocate such centrally planned social engineering. RockingMrE aims his critique at technologies that have “the potential to create human life” – such as gene therapy, which can, in RockingMrE’s words, “dictate the characteristics of life to such an extent that those making the decisions have complete control over how this forms”. This argument appears to presuppose a form of genetic determinism and a denial of human free will, even though RockingMrE would affirm his view that free will exists. Suppose it were possible to make a person five centimeters taller through genetic engineering. Does that have any bearing over how that person will actually choose to lead his life? Perhaps he could become a better basketball player than otherwise, but it is just as possible that basketball would not interest him at all, and he would rather be a taller-than-average chemist, accountant, or painter. This choice would still be up to him, and not the doctors who altered his genome or the parents who paid for the alteration. Alteration of any genes that might influence the brain would have even less of a predetermined or even determinable impact. If parents who are influenced by the faulty view of genetic determinism try everything in their power to alter their child’s genome in order to create a super-genius (in their view), who is to say that this child would necessarily act out the parents’ ideal? A true super-genius with a will of his own is probably the most autonomous possible human; he or she would develop a set of tastes, talents, and aspirations that nobody could anticipate or manage, and would run circles around any design to control or limit his or her life. What genetic engineering could achieve, though, is to remove the obstacles to an individual’s self-determination by eliminating genetic sub-optimalities: diseases, weaknesses of organs, and inhibitions to clear self-directed brain function. This is no qualitatively different from helping a child develop intellectually by taking the child out of a violent slum and putting him or her into a peaceful, nurturing, and prosperous setting.

RockingMrE fears that gene therapy would allow “ideologues to suppress certain human characteristics”. While this cannot be ruled out, any such development would be a political problem, not a technological one, and could be addressed only through reforms protecting individual freedom, not through abolition of any techniques of genetic engineering. The vicious eugenics movement of the early 20th century, to which RockingMrE wrongly compares transhumanism, attempted to suppress the characteristics of whole populations of humans using very primitive technologies by today’s standards. The solution to such misguided ideological movements is to maximize the scope for individual liberty, so as to allow the characteristics that individuals consider good or neutral to be preserved and for individual wishes to be protected by law, despite what some eugenicist somewhere might think.

Transhumanism is about giving each person the power to control his or her own destiny, including his or her genotype; transhumanism is certainly not about ceding that control to others. Even a child who was genetically engineered prior to birth would, with sufficient technological advances, be able to choose to alter his or her genotype upon becoming an adult. Just as parental upbringing can influence a child but does not determine a person’s entire future, so can genetic-engineering decisions by parents be routed around, overcome, ignored, or utilized by the child in a way far different from the parents’ intentions. Furthermore, because parents differ considerably in their views of what the best traits would be, engineering at the wishes of parents  would in no way diminish the diversity of human characteristics and would, on the contrary, enhance such diversity by introducing new mixes of traits in addition to those already extant. This is why it is unfounded to fear, as RockingMrE does, that a transhumanist society which embraces genetic engineering would turn into the society of the 1997 film Gattaca, where the non-engineered humans were excluded from non-menial work. Just as today there is no one hierarchy of genotypes and phenotypes, neither would there be such a hierarchy in a society where genetic engineering is practiced. An even greater diversity of people would mean that an even greater diversity of opportunities would be open to all. Indeed, even Gattaca could be seen as a refutation of RockingMrE’s feared scenario that genetic modification would render un-modified humans unable to compete. The protagonist in Gattaca was able to overcome the prejudices of his society through willpower and ingenuity, which would remain open to all. While the society of Gattaca relied on coercion to restrict un-modified individuals from competing, a libertarian transhumanist society would have no such restrictions and would allow individuals to rise on the basis of merit alone, rather than on the basis of genetics.

RockingMrE further expresses concern that the unintended consequences of genetic manipulation would result in viruses that reproduce out of control and “infect” humans who were not the intended targets of genetic engineering. This is not a philosophical argument against transhumanism. If such a possibility even exists (and I do not know that it does, as I am not a biologist), it could be mitigated or eliminated through careful controls in the laboratories and clinics where genetic engineering is performed. Certainly, the existence of such a possibility would not justify banning genetic manipulation, since a ban does not mean that the practice being banned goes away. Under a ban, genetic engineering would continue on the black market, where there would be far fewer safeguards in place against unintended negative consequences. It is much safer for technological innovation to proceed in the open, under a legal system that respects liberty and progress while ensuring that the rights of all are protected. Certainly, it would be justified for the legal system to protect the rights of people who do not wish to undergo certain medical treatments; such people should neither be forced into those treatments, nor have the side effects of those treatments, when they are performed on others, affect their own biology. But libertarian transhumanists would certainly agree with that point of view and would hold it consistently with regard to any technology that could conceivably impose negative external effects on non-consenting parties.

RockingMrE thinks that “it is essential that the creation and destruction of life be protected by a code of morality that respects and recognizes natural law – natural law being values derived from nature.” He describes one tier of this natural system as comprised of relationships of trade, “where all individuals have unalienable rights derived from natural action, but free of coercion and the initiation of force, voluntarily associating with one another for mutual gain.” He then says that “only this sort of philosophy can truly prevent nihilists from justifying their evil intentions to play God and […] destroy or alienate any individual that doesn’t adhere to a rigid set of socially engineered parameters.”  The latter statement is a severe misrepresentation of the aims of transhumanists, who do not support centrally planned social engineering and who are certainly not nihilists. Indeed, transhumanist technological progress is the very outcome of voluntary individual association that is free from coercion and the initiation of force. I wonder whether the “fierce defense” envisioned by RockingMrE would involve the initiation of force against innovators who attempt to improve the human genome in order to cure certain diseases, enhance certain human faculties, and lengthen the human lifespan. It is not clear whether RockingMrE advocates such coercion, but if he does, then his opposition to the emergence of these technologies would be inimical to his own stated libertarian philosophy. In other words, his conclusions are completely incompatible with his premises.

Toward the end of his video, RockingMrE uses the example of three-person in vitro fertilization (IVF) as an illustration “of how far down the road of transhumanism we are”. What, dare I ask, is wrong with three-person IVF? RockingMrE believes that it is a contributor to “gradually destroying the natural definition of parenting” – yet parenting is a set of actions to raise a child, not a method of originating that child. If RockingMrE has any problems with children who are brought into this world using three-person IVF, then what about children who are adopted and raised by parents who had no part in their conception? Is that not even more removed from parents who contributed at least some of their genetic material? Furthermore, IVF has been available in some form since the birth of Louise Brown in 1978 – 35 years ago. Since then, approximately 5 million people have been created using IVF. Are they any less human than the rest of us? Have we, as a species, lost some fraction of our humanity as a result? Surely not! And if similar consequences to what has already happened are what RockingMrE fears, then I submit that there is no basis for fear at all. New techniques for creating life and enhancing human potential may not be in line with what RockingMrE considers “natural”, but perhaps his view equates the “unnatural” to the “unfamiliar to RockingMrE”. But he does not have to personally embrace any method of genetic engineering or medically assisted creation of life; he is free to abstain from such techniques himself. What he ought to do, though, as a self-professed libertarian and individualist, is to allow the rest of us, as individuals, the same prerogative to choose to use or to abstain from using these technologies as they become available. The shape that the resulting future takes, as long as it is based on these freedom-respecting principles, is not for RockingMrE to decide or limit.

Against Monsanto, For GMOs – Video by G. Stolyarov II

Against Monsanto, For GMOs – Video by G. Stolyarov II

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The depredations of the multinational agricultural corporation Monsanto are rightly condemned by many. But Mr. Stolyarov points out that arguments against Monsanto’s misbehavior are not valid arguments against genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as a whole.

References

– “Against Monsanto, For GMOs” – Essay by G. Stolyarov II
– “Monsanto – Legal actions and controversies” – Wikipedia
– “Copyright Term Extension Act” – Wikipedia
– “Electronic Arts discontinues Online Pass, a controversial form of video game DRM” – Sean Hollister – The Verge – May 15, 2013
– “Extinction” – Wikipedia

A House Divided Over NSA Spying on Americans – Article by Ron Paul

A House Divided Over NSA Spying on Americans – Article by Ron Paul

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The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
August 10, 2013
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In late July 2013, the House debate on the Defense Appropriations bill for 2014 produced a bit more drama than usual. After hearing that House leadership would do away with the traditional “open rule” allowing for debate on any funding limitation amendment, it was surprising to see that Rep. Justin Amash’s (R-MI) amendment was allowed on the Floor. In the wake of National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about the extent of US government spying on American citizens, Amash’s amendment sought to remove funding in the bill for some of the NSA programs.

Had Amash’s amendment passed, it would have been a significant symbolic victory over the administration’s massive violations of our Fourth Amendment protections. But we should be careful about believing that even if it had somehow miraculously survived the Senate vote and the President’s veto, it would have resulted in any significant change in how the Intelligence Community would behave toward Americans. The US government has built the largest and most sophisticated spying apparatus in the history of the world.

The NSA has been massively increasing the size its facilities, both at its Maryland headquarters and in its newly built (and way over-budget) enormous data center in Utah. Taken together, these two facilities will be seven times larger than the Pentagon! And we know now that much of the NSA’s capacity to intercept information has been turned inward, to spy on us.

As NSA expert James Bamford wrote earlier this year about the new Utah facility:

“The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.”

But it happened anyway.

In late July we have seen two significant prison-breaks, one in Iraq, where some 500 al-Qaeda members broke out of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, which the US built, and another 1,000 escaped in a huge break in Benghazi, Libya – the city where the US Ambassador was killed by the rebels that the US government helped put in power. Did the US intelligence community, focused on listening to our phone calls, not see this real threat coming?

Rep. Amash’s amendment was an important move to at least bring attention to what the US intelligence community has become: an incredibly powerful conglomeration of secret government agencies that seem to view Americans as the real threat. It is interesting that the votes on Amash’s amendment divided the House not on party lines. Instead, we saw the votes divided between those who follow their oath to the Constitution, versus those who seem to believe that any violation of the Constitution is justified in the name of the elusive “security” of the police state at the expense of liberty. The leadership – not to my surprise — of both parties in the House voted for the police state.

It is encouraging to see the large number of votes crossing party lines in favor of the Amash amendment. Let us hope that this will be a growing trend in the House – perhaps the promise that Congress may once again begin to take its duties and obligations seriously. We should not forget, however, that in the meantime another Defense Appropriations bill passing really means another “military spending” bill. The Administration is planning for a US invasion of Syria, more military assistance to the military dictatorship in Egypt, and more drones and interventionism. We have much work yet to do.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission.

Why Won’t They Tell Us the Truth About NSA Spying? – Article by Ron Paul

Why Won’t They Tell Us the Truth About NSA Spying? – Article by Ron Paul

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The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
August 10, 2013
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In 2001, the Patriot Act opened the door to US government monitoring of Americans without a warrant. It was unconstitutional, but most in Congress over my strong objection were so determined to do something after the attacks of 9/11 that they did not seem to give it too much thought. Civil liberties groups were concerned, and some of us in Congress warned about giving up our liberties even in the post-9/11 panic. But at the time most Americans did not seem too worried about the intrusion.
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This complacency has suddenly shifted given recent revelations of the extent of government spying on Americans. Federal politicians and bureaucrats are faced with serious backlash from Americans outraged that their most personal communications are intercepted and stored. They had been told that only the terrorists would be monitored. In response to this anger, defenders of the program have time and again resorted to spreading lies and distortions. But these untruths are now being exposed very quickly.

In a Senate hearing this March, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Senator Ron Wyden that the NSA did not collect phone records of millions of Americans. This was just three months before the revelations of an NSA leaker made it clear that Clapper was not telling the truth. Pressed on his false testimony before Congress, Clapper apologized for giving an “erroneous” answer but claimed it was just because he “simply didn’t think of Section 215 of the Patriot Act.” Wow.

As the story broke in June of the extent of warrantless NSA spying against Americans, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers assured us that the project was a strictly limited and not invasive. He described it as a “lockbox with only phone numbers, no names, no addresses in it, we’ve used it sparingly, it is absolutely overseen by the legislature, the judicial branch and the executive branch, has lots of protections built in…”

But we soon discovered that also was not true either. We learned in another Guardian newspaper article last week that the top secret “X-Keyscore” program allows even low-level analysts to “search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals.”

The keys to Rogers’ “lockbox” seem to have been handed out to everyone but the janitors! As Chairman of the Committee that is supposed to be most in the loop on these matters, it seems either the Intelligence Community misled him about their programs or he misled the rest of us. It sure would be nice to know which one it is.

Likewise, Rep. Rogers and many other defenders of the NSA spying program promised us that this dragnet scooping up the personal electronic communications of millions of Americans had already stopped “dozens” of terrorist plots against the United States. In June, NSA director General Keith Alexander claimed that the just-disclosed bulk collection of Americans’ phone and other electronic records had “foiled 50 terror plots.”

Opponents of the program were to be charged with being unconcerned with our security.

But none of it was true.

On August 3, 2013, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard dramatic testimony from NSA deputy director John C. Inglis. According to the Guardian:

“The NSA has previously claimed that 54 terrorist plots had been disrupted ‘over the lifetime’ of the bulk phone records collection and the separate program collecting the internet habits and communications of people believed to be non-Americans. On Wednesday, Inglis said that at most one plot might have been disrupted by the bulk phone records collection alone.”

From dozens to “at most one”?

Supporters of these programs are now on the defensive, with several competing pieces of legislation in the House and Senate seeking to rein in an administration and intelligence apparatus that is clearly out of control. This is to be commended. What is even more important, though, is for more and more and more Americans to educate themselves about our precious liberties and to demand that their government abide by the Constitution. We do not have to accept being lied to – or spied on — by our government.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission.

If You Like the Surveillance State, You’ll Love E-Verify – Article by Ron Paul

If You Like the Surveillance State, You’ll Love E-Verify – Article by Ron Paul

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The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
June 30, 2013
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From massive NSA spying, to IRS targeting of the administration’s political opponents, to collection and sharing of our healthcare information as part of Obamacare, it seems every day we learn of another assault on our privacy. Sadly, this week the Senate took another significant, if little-noticed, step toward creating an authoritarian surveillance state. Buried in the immigration bill is a national identification system called mandatory E-Verify.

The Senate did not spend much time discussing E-Verify, and what little discussion took place was mostly bipartisan praise for its effectiveness as a tool for preventing illegal immigrants from obtaining employment. It is a tragedy that mandatory E-Verify is not receiving more attention, as it will impact nearly every American’s privacy and liberty.

The mandatory E-Verify system requires Americans to carry a “tamper-proof” Social Security card. Before they can legally begin a job, American citizens will have to show the card to their prospective employers, who will then have to verify their identity and eligibility to hold a job in the US by running the information through the newly created federal E-Verify database. The database will contain photographs taken from passport files and state driver’s licenses. The law gives federal bureaucrats broad discretion in adding other “biometric” identifiers to the database. It also gives the bureaucracy broad authority to determine what features the “tamper-proof” card should contain.

Regardless of one’s views on immigration, the idea that we should have to ask permission from the federal government before taking a job ought to be offensive to all Americans. Under this system, many Americans will be denied the opportunity for work. The E-Verify database will falsely identify thousands as “ineligible,” forcing many to lose job opportunities while challenging government computer inaccuracies. E-Verify will also impose additional compliance costs on American businesses, at a time when they are struggling with Obamacare implementation and other regulations.

According to David Bier of Competitive Enterprise Institute, there is nothing stopping the use of E-Verify for purposes unrelated to work verification, and these expanded uses could be authorized by agency rule-making or executive order. So it is not inconceivable that, should this bill pass, the day may come when you are not be able to board an airplane or exercise your Second Amendment rights without being run through the E-Verify database. It is not outside the realm of possibility that the personal healthcare information that will soon be collected by the IRS and shared with other federal agencies as part of Obamacare will also be linked to the E-Verify system.

Those who dismiss these concerns as paranoid should consider that the same charges were leveled at those who warned that the PATRIOT Act could lead to the government collecting our phone records and spying on our Internet usage. Just as the PATRIOT Act was only supposed to be used against terrorists but is now used to bypass constitutional protections in matters having noting to do with terrorism or national security, the national ID/mandatory E-Verify database will not only be used to prevent illegal immigrants from gaining employment. Instead, it will eventually be used as another tool to monitor and control the American people.

The recent revelations of the extent of National Security Agency (NSA) spying on Americans, plus recent stories of IRS targeting Tea Party and similar groups for special scrutiny, demonstrates the dangers of trusting government with this type of power. Creation of a federal database with photos and possibly other “biometric” information about American citizens is a great leap forward for the surveillance state. All Americans who still care about limited government and individual liberty should strongly oppose E-Verify.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission.

The Hubris of Neo-Luddism – Article by Franco Cortese

The Hubris of Neo-Luddism – Article by Franco Cortese

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The New Renaissance Hat
Franco Cortese
June 19, 2013
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One of the most common anti-Transhumanist tropes one finds recurring throughout Transhumanist rhetoric is our supposedly rampant hubris. Hubris is an ancient Greek concept meaning excess of pride that carries connotations of reckless vanity and heedless self-absorbment, often to the point of carelessly endangering the welfare of others in the process. It paints us in a selfish and dangerous light, as though we were striving for the technological betterment of ourselves alone and the improvement of the human condition solely as it pertains to ourselves, so as to be enhanced relative to the majority of humanity.
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In no way is this correct or even salient. I, and the majority of Transhumanists, Techno-Progressives, and emerging-tech enthusiasts – I would claim – work toward promoting beneficial outcomes and deliberating the repercussions and most desirable embodiments of radically transformative technologies for the betterment of all mankind first and foremost, and only secondarily for ourselves, if at all.
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The ired irony of this situation is that the very group that most often hails the charge of Hubris against the Transhumanist community is, according to the logic of hubris, more hubristic than those they rail their charge against. Bio-Luddites, and more generally Neo-Luddites, can be clearly seen to be more self-absorbed and recklessly selfish than the Transhumanists they are so quick to raise qualms against.

The logic of this conclusion is simple: Transhumanists seek merely to better determine the controlling circumstances and determining conditions of our own selves, whereas Neo-Luddites seek to determine such circumstances and conditions (even if using a negative definition, i.e., the absence of something) not only for everyone besides themselves alive at the moment, but even for the unquantable multitudes of minds and lives still fetal in the future.

We do not seek to radically transform Humanity against humans’ will; indeed, this is so off the mark as to be antithetical to the true Transhumanist impetus – for we seek to liberate human wills, not leash or lash them. We seek to offer all humans alive the possibility of transforming themselves more effectively according to their own subjective projected objectives; of actualizing and realizing themselves; ultimately of determining themselves for themselves. We seek to offer every member of Humanity the choice to better choose and the option for more optimal options: the self not as final subject but as project-at-last.

Neo-Luddites, on the other hand, wish to deny the whole of humanity that choice. They actively seek the determent, relinquishment, or prohibition of technological self-transformation, and believe in the heat of their idiot-certainty that they have either the intelligence or the right to force their own preference upon everyone else, present and future. Such lumbering, oafish paternalism patronizes the very essence of Man, whose only right is to write his own and whose only will is to will his own – or at least to vow that he will will his own one fateful yet fate-free day.

We seek solely to choose ourselves, and to give everyone alive and yet-to-live the same opportunity: of choice. Neo-Luddites seek not only to choose for themselves but to force this choice upon everyone else as well.

If any of the original Luddites were alive today, perhaps they would loom large to denounce the contemporary caricature of their own movement and rail their tightly spooled rage against the modern Neo-Luddites that use Ludd’s name in so reckless a threadbare fashion. At the heart of it, they were trying to free their working-class fellowship. There would not have been any predominant connotations of extending the distinguishing features of the Luddite revolt into the entire future, no hint of the possibility that they would set a precedent which would effectively forestall or encumber the continuing advancement of technology at the cost of the continuing betterment of humanity.

Who were they to intimate that continuing technological and methodological growth and progress would continually liberate humanity in fits and bounds of expanding freedom to open up the parameters of their possible actions – would free choice from chance and make the general conditions of being continually better and better? If this sentiment were predominant during 1811-1817, perhaps they would have lain their hammers down. They were seeking the liberation of their people, after all; if they knew that their own actions might spawn a future movement seeking to dampen and deter the continual technological liberation of Mankind, perhaps they would have remarked that such future Neo-Luddites missed their point completely.

Perhaps the salient heart of their efforts was not the relinquishment of technology but rather the liberation of their fellow man. Perhaps they would have remarked that while in this particular case technological relinquishment coincided with the liberation of their fellow man, this shouldn’t be heralded as a hard rule. Perhaps the they would have been ashamed of the way in which their name was to be used as the nametag and figurehead for the contemporary fight against liberty and Man’s autonomy. Perhaps Ludd is spinning like a loom in his grave right now.

Does the original Luddites’ enthusiasm for choice and the liberation of their fellow man supersede his revolt against technology? I think it does. The historical continuum of which Transhumanism is but the contemporary leading-tip encompasses not only the technological betterment of self and society, but the non-technological betterment as well. Historical Utopian ventures and visions are valid antecedents of the Transhumanist impetus, just as Techno-Utopian historical antecedents are. While the emphasis on technology predominant in Transhumanist rhetoric isn’t exactly misplaced (simply because technology is our best means of affecting and changing self and society, whorl and world, and thus our best means of improving it according to subjective projected objectives as well), it isn’t a necessary precondition, and its predominance does not preclude the inclusion of non-technological attempts to improve the human condition as well.

The dichotomy between knowledge and device, between technology and methodology, doesn’t have a stable ontological ground in the first place. What is technology but embodied methodology, and methodology but internalized technology? Language is just as unnatural as quantum computers in geological scales of time. To make technology a necessary prerequisite is to miss the end for the means and the mark for a lark. The point is that we are trying to consciously improve the state of self, society, and world; technology has simply superseded methodology as the most optimal means of accomplishing that, and now constitutes our best means of effecting our affectation.

The original Luddite movement was less against advancing technology and more about the particular repercussions that specific advancements in technology (i.e., semi-automated looms) had on their lives and circumstances. To claim that Neo-Luddism has any real continuity of impetus with the original Luddite movement that occurred throughout 1811-1817 may actually be antithetical to the real motivation underlying the original Luddite movement – namely the liberation of the working class. Indeed, Neo-Luddism itself, as a movement, may be antithetical to the real impetus of the initial Luddite movement both for the fact that Neo-Luddites are trying to impose their ideological beliefs upon others (i.e., prohibition is necessarily exclusive, whereas availability of the option to use a given technology is non-exclusive and forces a decision on no one) and because they are trying to prohibit the best mediator of Man’s ever-increasing self-liberation – namely technological growth.

Support for these claims can be found in the secondary literature. For instance, in Luddites and Luddism Kevin Binfield sees the Luddite movement as an expression of worker-class discontent during the Napoleonic Wars than having rather than as an expression of antipathy toward technology in general or toward advancing technology as general trend (Binfield, 2004).

And in terms of base-premises, it is not as though Luddites are categorically against technology in general; rather they are simply against either a specific technology, a specific embodiment of a general class of technology, or a specific degree of technological sophistication. After all, most every Luddite alive wears clothes, takes antibiotics, and uses telephones. Legendary Ludd himself still wanted the return of his manual looms, a technology, when he struck his first blow. I know many Transhumanists and Technoprogressives who still label themselves as such despite being wary of the increasing trend of automation.

This was the Luddites’ own concern: that automation would displace manual work in their industry and thereby severely limit their possible choices and freedoms, such as having enough discretionary income to purchase necessities. If their government were handing out guaranteed basic income garnered from taxes to corporations based on the degree with which they replace previously manual labor with automated labor, I’m sure they would have happily lain their hammers down and laughed all the way home. Even the Amish only prohibit specific levels of technological sophistication, rather than all of technology in general.

In other words no one is against technology in general, only particular technological embodiments, particular classes of technology, or particular gradations of technological sophistication. If you’d like to contest me on this, try communicating your rebuttal without using the advanced technology of cerebral semiotics (i.e., language).

References

Binfield, K. (2004). Luddites and Luddism. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Franco Cortese is an editor for Transhumanity.net, as well as one of its most frequent contributors.  He has also published articles and essays on Immortal Life and The Rational Argumentator. He contributed 4 essays and 7 debate responses to the digital anthology Human Destiny is to Eliminate Death: Essays, Rants and Arguments About Immortality.

Franco is an Advisor for Lifeboat Foundation (on its Futurists Board and its Life Extension Board) and contributes regularly to its blog.

Universal Surveillance: PRISM and the Litmus Test for Liberty – Video by G. Stolyarov II

Universal Surveillance: PRISM and the Litmus Test for Liberty – Video by G. Stolyarov II

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 Will enough Americans respond with outrage and exercise their First Amendment rights to bring an end to the totalitarianism-enabling NSA PRISM surveillance system?

References
– Petition to Pardon Edward Snowden
– “Rand Paul planning class action lawsuit against surveillance programs” – Aaron Blake – The Washington Post – June 9, 2013
– “In the Face of Universal Surveillance: PRISM and the Litmus Test for Liberty” – Essay by G. Stolyarov II
– “PRISM (surveillance program)” – Wikipedia
– “Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations” – Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras – The Guardian – June 9, 2013
– “Google, Apple, Facebook & AOL Deny Participating In Alleged NSA “PRISM” Program” – Danny Sullivan – Marketing Land – June 6, 2013
– Project Meshnet
– DuckDuckGo
– “How Scared of Terrorism Should You Be?” – Ronald Bailey – Reason Magazine – September 6, 2011
– “Futile Temporary Totalitarianism in Boston” – Article by G. Stolyarov II
– “Russian politico: U.S. ignored Tsarnaev intelligence at its own peril” – By Cheryl K. Chumley – The Washington Times – June 4, 2013

In the Face of Universal Surveillance: PRISM and the Litmus Test for Liberty – Article by G. Stolyarov II

In the Face of Universal Surveillance: PRISM and the Litmus Test for Liberty – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
June 11, 2013
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Ladies and gentlemen, most of what do you using the Internet or your phone is being tracked by the National Security Agency via its PRISM surveillance program.  If you thought you could take measures to escape such monitoring, it is too late; the program has been operating, clandestinely, since 2007. It took the heroic courage of Edward Snowden, a former CIA and Booz Allen Hamilton employee with access to information about the full depths of this travesty, to reveal this astoundingly invasive operation to us six years later. Snowden has – at the risk of his own comfort, his income, his freedom, and possibly his life – given us the invaluable knowledge that the world is quite unlike what most of us thought it to be. Glenn Greenwald, the perceptive Guardian journalist and long-time defender of civil liberties, is also a champion of human freedom, dignity, and justice, because of his outstanding work in publicizing these abuses before a worldwide audience.

Even I – despite my strong libertarian convictions and considerable skepticism of centralized authority – could not have imagined that virtually all of the large technology companies to whom I had entrusted large amounts of my personal information – Google, Facebook, Skype, Microsoft, YouTube – were participants in the surveillance, enabling the NSA to build covert backdoors into their systems to steal the most confidential possible personal information. From e-mails, to search histories, to credit-card transactions – all of this is within the NSA’s reach; all of this could be used to destroy the reputation and life of anyone suspected of being a threat. It is only by the mercy, or the oversight, or the higher priorities, of our political masters that any of us retain vestiges of the freedom we think we have.

Upon finding out about the massive scope of this surveillance, I struggled to figure out what I could do to regain any expectation of privacy that I had even a week ago. If only one or two private companies had “partnered” with the NSA to facilitate the indiscriminate monitoring and data collection,  it might have been possible, with a few judicious restructurings of one’s habits, to avoid any services of those companies. But it seems that almost all of the major players on the Internet – the ones into whose hands hundreds of millions of us voluntarily (and, in retrospect, foolishly) entrusted vast amounts of personal data – are participants. Apart from taking the drastic (and, in many respects, self-undermining) step of ceasing to use most of the tools of the Internet and mobile technology altogether, one can do very little right away to insulate oneself from the surveillance, and even if such insulation were possible, the data already collected by the NSA are a sunk cost. It is not clear whether these companies chose to involve themselves in PRISM voluntarily, or whether they were browbeaten into it by the NSA and the Obama administration, as a price they needed to pay for being allowed to remain successful and relatively unhampered by politically motivated persecution. The companies are certainly not helping their case by denying all knowledge of their evident involvement in PRISM, using near-identical phrasing (composed by whom, I wonder?) which only prevents them from explaining any elements of their participation which might have been involuntary.

While it would have been supremely satisfying for me to simply disassociate myself from any of the companies implicated in the PRISM surveillance, they are, at present, embedded too deeply into the fabric of our lives. A gradual, evolutionary process will need to occur to enable individuals to discover ways of taking advantage of all the benefits of networked technologies, while preventing the present centralization of Internet activity from ever occurring again. The Meshnet project for creating a decentralized Internet is an intriguing concept supporting this goal.  Also helpful are anonymous search engines such as DuckDuckGo, which I have begun using in place of Google. Over the coming weeks, months, and years, it would benefit us all to think of creative ways to avoid the unwanted disclosure of our private information through the centralized Internet behemoths. As for information that we intend to be public, there seems to be no harm in disclosing that anywhere. The NSA and even Barack Obama himself may read The Rational Argumentator and watch my videos without any objections from me; indeed, this would do them much good. But I draw a clear line between the public and the private aspects of my life, and I intend to be the one who draws that line.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but some conspiracies are indeed real, and in this case, the conspiracy theorists were right. Right, too, were those who proclaimed for years that the Obama administration represents a fundamental undermining of basic American values – to which I will add that this administration is opposed to basic human values of liberty, privacy, dignity, and the presumption of innocence. This is not routine political malfeasance; it is the wielding of an overarching apparatus of monitoring – a prerequisite to complete social control – that the KGB of the Soviet Union and the Stasi of Communist East Germany could not have dreamed of possessing. Those oppressors of old had to use actual human beings to monitor political dissidents – which severely limited their reach. The default data harvesting and algorithmic mining of the PRISM program does not require a human being to find spurious “associations” with alleged threats – based solely on combinations of keywords or contacts within one’s social networks.

The system works by focusing on all those within a few “degrees of separation” from the central suspects. You could have a phone number that differs by a digit from that of a terror suspect; if someone within that suspect’s network calls you by accident, you might be flagged as a suspect, too.  Sheer curiosity about certain subjects, visitation of certain sites, mention of certain topics in e-mails or private video chats and text messages, could get you flagged. It is not a matter of doing nothing wrong and thus having nothing to hide. With this much data, taken wildly out of context as is always possible with algorithmic data-mining systems, any person’s behavior can be construed as having nefarious motivations. Any sufficiently inconvenient individual can be portrayed as an enemy by Leviathan. This is why no American is safe from his own government unless the wholesale dismantling of the PRISM system and any related surveillance measures occurs. An executive order from Obama could achieve this, but it is doubtful that Obama would issue such an order. Massive public outrage, from within and outside the United States, might, however, set in motion the political processes that would discredit this heinously intrusive system. This is no time to cower in fear, to hush up the expression of one’s honest thoughts because one is unsure about the consequences. Now, more than ever, it is essential for every one of us to make full use of our inalienable First Amendment rights.

The extensive surveillance apparatus in the hands of the administration can be readily deployed to create actual totalitarianism with the snap of a finger. For a small-scale proof of concept, witness the frightening lockdown and militaristic mobilization that occurred in Boston in the wake of the Tsarnaev brothers’ bombings – which, as must be emphasized, the same apparatus of total surveillance and police-state response failed to prevent despite repeated warnings from Russian intelligence.

And yet I know that I am not an enemy. Neither are you. Most of us are peaceful, productive citizens of purportedly free nations. We wish harm to no one and wish only to lead our lives in peace, prosperity, and self-determination. I – and hopefully you – exercise the inalienable basic human right of free speech, a right enshrined in the American First Amendment, a right for whose defense the American Founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Edward Snowden knows what it means to make such a pledge, and what its consequences can be in a world ruled by might rather than by right. This is why it is imperative that he be pardoned, if charged, for any alleged “crimes” that the U.S. government perceives him to have committed.  If you do nothing else, please go to WhiteHouse.gov and sign the petition requesting his pardon. This is, after all, Constitutionally protected speech. If the administration begins to persecute those who signed the petition, then it would be clear that this country is too far gone. Moreover, if Edward Snowden should meet an untimely end, from whatever apparent cause, I would have no doubts of the origins of his demise, and it would also be clear that this country is too far gone.

But I do not believe that this country is too far gone, yet. We may be teetering on the brink of totalitarianism, but I have hope that the fundamental decency of the American people – and the residual adherence in this country to founding American principles – will overcome the depredations of the current American government. Another vitally important project that calls upon the participation of as many Americans as possible is the class-action lawsuit spearheaded by Senator Rand Paul against the NSA PRISM program. (You can sign up to join the lawsuit here.) I have been critical of Rand Paul’s stances (particularly his endorsement of Mitt Romney) in the past, but on the issue of NSA surveillance, he is perhaps the most powerful ally that friends of liberty have within the United States, and we need all of the allies we can get right now. If Rand Paul can help to dismantle the Orwellian apparatus of the NSA, then any of his past errors of judgment would pale in comparison.

Nearly forty years ago, Richard Nixon lost his office because he authorized spying on a few political opponents. Those were the days! Barack Obama and his administration, often with the explicit support of many Members of Congress, have for years authorized and condoned spying on hundreds of millions of Americans and even more citizens of other sovereign jurisdictions – individuals over whom the United States has and ought to have no legitimate power whatsoever.  What will be the result of these disclosures for Barack Obama’s tenure in office? The principles of justice suggest strongly that Obama should resign or be impeached and then removed from office, for his transgressions in the realm of surveillance alone are orders of magnitude greater than those of Nixon. Along with Obama, all of his senior executive officials should resign, in addition to senior Members of Congress from both parties – including Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Dianne Feinstein, Mike Rogers, and Peter King – all of whom have expressed unequivocal support for the violations of our Constitutional rights via the PRISM program, and some of whom have even stated that Edward Snowden is guilty of treason. Yet these politicians are the ones who have violated their oaths of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I do not mean to single out any one wing of the two-party establishment which has created the Orwellian security state in the U.S. after September 11, 2001. Leading Republicans, including many who held prominent posts in the Bush administration, deserve plenty of the blame for laying the groundwork for the PRISM system. What is needed is not a mere change in political parties (for that achieves nothing), but a change in the fundamental understanding of the role of government, held by those in government.

But will the impeachment or voluntary resignation of Obama and some of the other most powerful people in the United States – indeed, in the world – realistically occur, or will they be able to successfully portray their completely unbidden intrusions into all of our lives as being “for our own good”? Will they frighten and bamboozle us into believing that we need their monitoring of our lives, which we know to be lived innocently, in order to protect us from the threat of terrorism which, according to Ronald Bailey of Reason Magazine, is four times less likely to kill any of us than a lightning strike?  With a surveillance program this pervasive – one so clearly endorsed by officials from both parties, from the very top down – it is unlikely that the powers that be will merely decide to sacrifice a few of their subordinates and let them take the blame for this gross violation of the privacy of many (perhaps most) human beings.  It appears that the American elite has been backed into a corner; either it will vigorously defend the PRISM system as a united front – or it will need to capitulate to human decency and acknowledge the gross moral failures involved at the highest levels.

The outcome will depend on how much public outrage arises. Are Americans going to passively roll over and accept an Orwellian level of surveillance as a fait accompli, or will they let their profound displeasure be known? I, as an American citizen, do not approve of this intrusion into my personal life by the very elected officials and their appointees who are supposed to function as the guardians of freedom. I urge all Americans to use peaceful methods of speech, petition, and creative advocacy to express their absolute disapproval of PRISM. Moreover, I hope that foreign governments and their citizens will send a strong message to the Obama administration and Congress that the monitoring of innocent persons outside America will, likewise, not be tolerated. Whether or not PRISM will continue is the litmus test for liberty in the United States, and perhaps in the remainder of the world as well. The outcome of this series of events will determine whether might or right will shape the future of humankind.