Stu-Topia

 In 1983, Leonard Peikoff as well made this explicit. The USA, he ascertained, “at root is an ideology. . . . The Founding Fathers explicitly championed a certain philosophy, which they made the basis of America’s distinctive political institutions and national character, and that philosophy to some extent survives among the citizens to this day.” And we free-enterprisers have repeatedly emphasized that this philosophy refutes everything spewed by the MAGA white nationalists. Hence, the MAGA white nationalists have a rejoinder to us free-enterprisers. MAGA white nationalists stamp their feet and cry out that the USA “is not a collection of ideas.” That’s how failed comedian turned white supremacist Sam Hyde phrases it. In his viral Twitter video with over 21 million views, over 33 thousand tweets, and over 137 thousand retweets, he moans, “There is this disturbing idea...that America is just a collection of ideas.” No, “You have to fight for not...the notion of ‘America as this collection of ideas.’ That’s not what it is.” He dismisses the Declaration and other founding documents as an empty set of words. “You’re not fighting for a paragraph” (emphasis his). 

 Rather, MAGA white nationalists maintain it’s all about blood-and-soil. But when they don’t want to admit it’s all about race for them, Sam Hyde and the other white nationalists say the USA is not about “ideas” but traditions (translation: only the traditions associated with those of their own skin color). As a case study in tradition, Hyde pontificates, “Nothing significant that gets built, gets built on an individualistic scale. The greatest things that get built: cathedrals — and, if you disagree with this, you’re just wrong . . . — cathedrals are built over hundreds of years. They’re built not just by the army of stone masons who build them but by the towns who pay for it.” And he continues, “We have hardwired group preferences, we have genetic memory, we have culture. . . . It’s so deeply embedded in us that carries on for thousands of years.” And in showing a complete lack of understanding of what culture entails, Sam Hyde adds, “This is not learned stuff.” This denigration of the Founding philosophy — denying America’s status as an idea — is a new low from the political Right, especially its members who claim to be American. Prior to Donald Trump’s initial run for President in late 2015, the USA’s political conservatives frequently gave lip service to the Founding Fathers. These political conservatives were never consistent. They conveniently evaded the fact that their efforts to unite church and State directly contradicted the words and spirit of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Joel Barlow. But these MAGA white nationalists have given up this old pretense of respecting the Founders. And, I suppose, it is best that they do. It exposes MAGA white nationalists in their fundamental anti-Americanism. Of special interest to me here is the internal contradiction in proclaiming that rather than “ideas,” America is about “culture” and traditions (“culture” and traditions of white people, apparently). The fact is that culture and traditions are, by definition, learned. More to the point: culture and traditions are expressions of ideas, and therefore traditions ultimately come down to ideas. Sam Hyde’s cry that “you’re not fighting for a paragraph” is belied by the very oath required of those serving in the federal government. The President of the United States and personnel of the armed forces do not take an oath to serve and defend Sam Hyde’s white race — “a people.” Instead, they take an oath to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution — every “paragraph” of it. More specifically, it is that insofar as the U.S. military is employed wisely against genuine threats, the U.S. military fights to defend the sort of civilian life that the “paragraph” describes.

The Choice Is Not Traditions Versus Ideas, But Respectively of Passive Conformity to Some Ideas Versus Active Engagement With All Ideas
And, of course, even the MAGA white nationalists’ use of the term tradition is a red herring. They don’t value “traditions” in general. They disparage Islamic traditions. Even MAGA white nationalists who are Catholic are unfriendly toward the Catholic traditions of Latinos. The white nationalists only like “traditions” that they associate with their own skin color. And their skin color is just something unchosen that they just have. We can see this in Sam Hyde’s conflation of skin color with “culture.” To revisit the quotation from earlier, “We have hardwired group preferences, we have genetic memory, we have culture. This is not learned stuff. It’s so deeply embedded in us that carries on for thousands of years.” Notice Sam Hyde’s equation of “culture” with “genetic memory” and that which is innate, “hardwired.” Culture and traditions consist of sets of actions that people enact voluntarily. By definition, they are not “hardwired.” But in the warped interpretation of Sam Hyde and his many white-nationalist fans, such human actions are as innate and involuntary as skin color. Hence Sam Hyde says nonsensically, “This is not learned stuff.” To test Sam Hyde’s assertion, you can look at differences in traditions among people who are of the same racial heritage but who live in different parts of the globe. Persons of Korean descent in the USA often behave with different customs — different ideas on what is, or is not, socially appropriate — than do people in North Korea. In the USA, rap music is considered “Black culture.” But rap music was not associated with Black people in the 1940s or 1970s, prior to rap music being invented. Rap music is not as popular among Black people in West Africa as it is in the USA. That is because culture is indeed something that is not hardwired. Culture consists of customs. Every custom had to be invented by some individual. Afterward, other people adopted that custom — that is, they learned it. Every tradition that exists, began as an untraditional innovation and was therefore adopted for reasons other than “It’s a tradition.” As white nationalists love to invoke the fall of Rome in misleading ways, an observation from ancient Rome is instructive here. MAGA white nationalists love to say that the Roman Empire fell from being to open to outsiders — (white-skinned) Germanic barbarians — and the modern West will destroy itself through similar openness. And in an actual ancient Roman debate about openness to foreigners, the emperor Claudius made this important observation about traditions which these same MAGA white nationalists prefer to evade. Tacitus quotes the emperor as saying, “Everything, Senators, which we now hold to be of the highest antiquity [tradition], was once new. . . .This [new] practice [with regard to openness to outsiders] too will establish itself, and what we are this day justifying by precedents, will be itself a precedent.” This, and every other tradition, was something learned. A tradition might have begun as a practice done squarely for practical value. That was the case of Japanese people mostly eating seafood. But the custom might have begun, from the start, as a symbolic gesture. In either case, what is now called a tradition, is called a tradition — rather than only a custom or practice — because it is a gesture representing some value other than itself. Traditions are ideas. But there are two different approaches we can take to traditions and all other ideas that have ingrained themselves into the culture. We can take a passive-and-uncritical a pproach to them. Conversely, we can engage with traditions and other long-cherished ideas, which means being critical and selective about them, which requires actual thought. The passive-and-uncritical approach is to accept a tradition unthinkingly. The insinuation is that the tradition was good enough for my family, and so I should practice it, and there is no more to consider. That is the approach taken by those who say, “You should follow a tradition because it’s our tradition, and that’s that.” A variant that is only slightly more thoughtful, and which was popular among twentieth-century European political conservatives who cite Edmund Burke, is one that goes, The fact that the tradition has lasted so long, into our own day, is already proof that the tradition is time-tested and has served us well. So the fact that the custom has earned the status of ‘tradition,’ means the custom is worthy. In that respect, I am justified in saying ‘That a particular custom is a tradition is justification enough to practice it.’ And, of course, that unthinking approach is lazy. For millennia, slavery was traditional. Slavery was a tradition not merely because of its ostensive practical benefits for the slave masters, but because it represented particular ideas that were convenient for the politically-influential in general. It embodied their larger assumption that those in power have every rightful authority to domineer over others by force. In some Mesoamerican Empires, such as that of the Aztecs, ritual human sacrifice was considered an indispensable tradition. The traditional sermons delivered in the very cathedrals that Sam Hyde extols are all about ideas. And, contrary to Sam Hyde, the ideas in such sermons are due for critical reexamining. That a custom is a tradition, is indeed not justification enough. That brings us to the second approach to traditions. The second and contrasting approach is to recognize that traditions themselves must be subject to judgment and scrutiny other than “It’s a tradition.” It means embracing the realization that some traditions are good and worth preserving, whereas others are inadequate and due for abandonment, replacement, or at least modification. And that is a major role of Enlightenment philosophy. Enlightenment philosophy calls upon us to examine our traditions and select the good from the bad. 

Since the founding of the republic, reading Enlightenment philosophy has itself become a tradition. The fact that the free-enterprise philosophy of the Founders and the rest of the Enlightenment has become a tradition in America is frequently cited by pretentious anti-capitalists as proof that such free-enterprise philosophy is conservative, stodgy, and obsolete. These pretentious people then tout their tired old Socialism and Progressivism as the hip new innovation on the cutting edge, omitting how their verbiage is broadly a repackaging of the political-economic collectivism of medieval guilds that Enlightenment liberal free-enterprise philosophy supplanted. 

Contrary to those pretentious anti-capitalists, it is the case that Enlightenment philosophy and Founders such as Thomas Jefferson have told us that free-enterprise philosophy becoming a tradition is not a basis good enough to embrace it. Once again, even these — the best of ideas — must be justified by some other, more-objective standard rather than appealing to “tradition.”

Conclusion: The Nation of the Enlightenment
Ayn Rand has observed the exceptionalism here of the USA’s founding. Sam Hyde’s fellow white nationalists wail that white people have no ethno-state of their own. The reality is that almost all white-majority countries are ethno-states founded by a single tribe. It’s called England because it was founded by the tribe after which it was named, the Angles. Yet another well-known nation is called France because it was founded by the Franks. Insofar as these tribes founded a country to maintain their traditions, the founding was based on ideas. But insofar as it was about “tradition” per se, it was from an uncritical acceptance of those ideas — of accepting them from one’s elders without question. What makes America exceptional was not only that it was founded by ideas, but by very conscious examination of, and grappling with, such ideas. Upon separation from England, Americans could have set up a new monarchy because that was the tradition of the people from whom they descended. But upon examining that form of government and comparing it against others, the Founders decided to go with institutions previously tried by the ancient Athenians and the Romans but with the aid of the newest philosophic ideas to make these institutions more liberal than what their Mediterranean forebears had conceived. Ayn Rand notes that whereas these other Western societies, including those of the Greeks and Romans, were a result of “historical accident,” the American republic was from “philosophical design.” Leonard Peikoff, too, observes, “America is the only country in history created not by meaningless warfare” nor some “geographical accident” in which some tribe like the Angles found itself, “but deliberately, on the basis of certain fundamental ideas.” Thomas Paine understood how the founding of America was more about innovation than incurious adherence to tradition. In Common Sense, the very pamphlet instrumental to inspiring the American Revolution, he reminded readers, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” And that is what the Founders did.

Enlightenment philosophy’s celebration of such curiosity is so vital to the USA’s founding that it is enshrined in our Constitution. A major impetus for the founding document’s codification of the rights to copyright and patent is that, as accurately noted in the document itself, these intellectual property rights reward and thereby “promote the progress of science and the useful arts...” The search for new developments is our American tradition but the new developments themselves, of course, begin as something that is definitionally the opposite of tradition.
Bono is right about America. America never could have become a global leader had it been only a set of traditions and, as Sam Hyde also puts it, “a people” (a tribe). As noted in a very American movie,

People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy, and I can’t do it as Bruce Wayne. As a man [and as just “a people” —S.H.] I’m flesh and blood. I can be ignored. I can be destroyed. But as a symbol? As a symbol I can be incorruptible. I can be everlasting.

Ah, but Donald Trump and Sam Hyde are trying their hardest to corrupt it. The fact that America is an idea is the source of what has made it so important and so powerful for over two centuries, prior to MAGA finally being able to threaten it. As a symbol —an idea — America carries an influence that goes beyond the sum total of its human population, those who are white and otherwise. It is as a symbol — an idea — that America inspires people the world over who are yearning for greater freedom, the exact people whom Donald Trump and Sam Hyde are trying to shut out. That is what the historian James Truslow Adams meant when he coined the American dream. The American dream is the American Idea. And America is a great symbol and great idea because it is not a symbol and idea only, but enacts its own founding philosophic values insofar as we Americans repel the ugliness of Donald Trump, Sam Hyde, and the rest of MAGA’s white nationalism. It is not those of Latin or Middle Eastern descent, but the ugliness of Sam Hyde that needs to be deported. 

 
Both approaches to tradition — the incurious approach of Sam Hyde and the other Great-Replacement white nationalists versus the curious approach of the Founders — involve ideas. But note that the latter involves much more thinking and, hence, ideas play a much more active role. As Ayn Rand noted, the USA was founded not only upon ideas, but upon very conscious engagement with them. And that is why this latter approach to tradition is anathema to Sam Hyde and other white nationalists screeching about a “Great Replacement.” Were Sam Hyde’s fellow white nationalist, Richard Spencer, to establish a new explicitly white-separatist “ethnostate,” such an ethnostate would also be founded upon ideas. But those would be putrid ideas that have already shown themselves to have the worst consequences, and which Sam Hyde and Richard Spencer haven’t faced objectively. By contrast, the American republic is founded on ideas that have proven themselves to be good — ideas such as freedom of peaceful action for the individual of any “race,” especially those from India whom Sam Hyde demands be expelled from our labor market. The fundamental choice is not between “tradition” and “ideas.” Nay, it is, respectively, whether we passively go with the sloppy half-baked racist ideas that Sam Hyde favors, or go enthusiastically with the ideas of individual rights and, yes, “racial” diversity, which withstand rational scrutiny and which Sam Hyde thus rejects arbitrarily. The verbiage of Sam Hyde and other white nationalists does not consist of actual arguments but instead of a litany of slogans. “Demography is destiny.” “Don’t be a soy-boy.” “Go Woke, go broke.” “You can have a welfare state or you can have open borders. You can’t have both.” “You’re a cuck.” “I was red-pilled.” “It’s White Genocide.” “It’s the Great Replacement.” These amount to thought-stopping clichés. A thought-stopping cliché is a tactic of a dangerous mind-control cult. When they notice underlings beginning to question the cult leader’s arbitrary dictates, the underling’s supervisors recite pithy slogans to them to quell them and preempt them from weighing pros and cons of what they are presented with. The sloganeering is the “cliché” part, and the preemption is the “thought-stopping.” Technically, thought-stopping clichés are themselves ideas, but they are the sort of ideas intended to precluded further thought and further inquiry, as all such rationalizations do. They are stale, simple ideas crafted to discourage people from philosophizing more sophisticated, more advanced ideas into their heads.

Sam Hyde and the other white nationalists, of course, would have us embrace their racism unthinkingly, going as far as conflating customs and traditions and culture as being as inherent as skin color — “This is not learned stuff.” Bothering to examine the facts about culture, tradition, and the learned-versus-unlearned is what immunizes someone against Sam Hyde and the other white nationalists. In that respect, Sam Hyde and the other white nationalists are correct to hate the fact that America was founded upon “ideas.” The fact that some people still bother to think is a fact that prevents Sam Hyde and other white nationalists from winning over the rest of the population, white-skinned and otherwise. And, on at least some implicit level, Same Hyde and the other white nationalists notice this.

 

“People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy, and I can’t do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man I’m flesh and blood. I can be ignored. I can be destroyed. But as a symbol? As a symbol I can be incorruptible; I can be everlasting.”
—Batman Begins

 

Fiction and representational art are not literal, and so many famous people have said half-jokingly that fiction and representational art are “lies.” In his book Sein Language, Jerry Seinfeld quipped that he appreciates how bookstores are divided by section “into fiction and nonfiction. In other words, these people are lying, and these people are telling the truth. That’s the way the world should be.” Likewise, in an interview for the May 1923 issue of The Arts, Pablo Picasso said, “We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand...” Similarly, in Minima Moralia, Frankfurt school neo-Marxist Theodor Adorno pronounced, “Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.” Seinfeld is half-joking. Picasso and Adorno think they are being clever and cute in stating a paradox that good art is both a lie and the truth. None of these people are entirely serious in saying good art is a lie. But what bothers me is that they do, on some level, believe it, otherwise they wouldn’t think this is such a funny irony. Their phrasing is woefully misleading. I do think there is a funny irony here, but not the one they believe. The actual funny irony is this:

1. Our ancestors came to experience and interpret sensory stimuli in a manner they knew to be nonliteral. That is how symbolism arose.
2. It is through this cognitive process that we have gained a greater understanding of what happens literally.

In short: it is through a mental methodology in which we understand sensory stimuli in a nonliteral manner, that we gain complex knowledge over what does happen on the literal level. This essay is about semiotics — the study of symbols. I thank Asher Wolfstein for introducing me to the term. Before then, the most I had known of academic study of this topic was silliness from The Da Vinci Code about “Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon.” As for the men I quoted above, here is the source of the confusion: “lies” are being conflated with every interpretation that is “nonliteral.” Every symbolic representation of events is nonliteral. Hence, the fallacious syllogism goes, “Symbol representations of events — such as fiction and realistic paintings — are not what happened literally. Lies are not what happened literally. Therefore, symbolic representations of events — such as fiction and realistic paintings — are lies.” While it is true that all lies are nonliteral, it is it not true that everything nonliteral is a lie. And to the degree that use of the nonliteral in communication might be a form of tricksterism, there is another fashion in which this can be phrased. It is that all liars are tricksters, but not all tricksters are liars. 

A lie is told under the following circumstances. Person 1 presents to Person 2 some claim that is not true literally but which Person 1 intends for Person 2 to interpret as the direct literal truth. Fiction honestly presented as fiction — and this includes performances by stage magicians — does not consist of lies, as the art is not presented as the literal truth. Yet I will argue in this essay that though artworks are not the literal truth, an art piece resonates with you when you interpret it as dramatizing some principle that you interpret as being true literally. There is an entire profession or discipline of artists who are tasked with depicting reality for the purpose of providing scientific understanding. A wildlife painter is supposed to paint animals and their environments accurately. Our knowledge of extinct prehistoric animals is far from perfect and complete. But the job of “paleo-artists” is to portray prehistoric animals in a manner that is up-to-date and consistent with what is known at the time about these beasts. A well-shaded painting of a Tyrannosaurus with three fingers on each hand might be quality art, but it would not be quality paleo-art; the T. rex having three fingers on each hand instead of two is a glaring inaccuracy to scientists. Let’s say that for a book that is to be educational for children, an artist provides a detailed and accurate painting of a male lion. The purpose is to convey to small children what a lion looks like. For the painting, the painter did not use a direct photo reference. Instead, the painter consulted many different photos of many different individual male lions. Hence, the lion shown in the painting is not based on any one male lion in particular. Is the painting a lie? No. It is a symbol, and it is a symbol that conveys accurate-enough information to children on what a lion looks like. Symbolism occurs when X is not Y literally but X still represents Y in your mind. As noted in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, symbols are inherent to the use of concepts. A concept is an abstracted symbol representing all particular instances of an entity or event, all grouped together by their shared traits relevant to that which defines the concept. The concept “dog” encompasses all dogs that have ever lived and will ever lived, both ones you have observed and ones you haven’t, and includes all breeds. The concept “dog” is symbol for all dogs that exist literally. And the word “dog” symbolizes, in your mind, the concept of “dog.” And it’s not the case that these words are only for communicating oneself with others. Rather, you gain clarity from introspecting to yourself with these words. Languages are sometimes presumed falsely to be no more than tools of communication. But first they are tools of thought, of thinking to oneself. You use words to communicate with others but, even more importantly, you use them to communicate with yourself. Symbols are inherent in this. Symbols are integral to rational thought itself. You may remember the silly painting of a pipe that has the caption “This is not a pipe.” By that, the painter meant it is not a pipe literally; it is a symbolic representation of a pipe. There is great variation in how precise symbols can be in how they depict the entities they represent. The word snake does not come very close in providing a visually accurate representation of a snake, but a wildlife photograph of one usually does. Both of those are symbols. Earlier I mentioned a drawing of a T. rex that inaccurately places three fingers on each hand. That is a symbol of a T. rex, but that symbol is less preferred by scientists than a drawing that more accurately places two fingers on each hand. That some symbols are less accurate than others is not a fault of symbolism per se. In the marketplace of ideas and communication, the symbols that are inadequate in how closely they represent the truth can be replaced by ones that do it better. How our ancestors came to understand symbols might have gone this way. There are animals that camouflage to avoid being eaten by predators. Jackson’s chameleons are an example. When an animal in front of you has camouflaged successfully, it means that you are looking at the animal literally in front of your face and yet you do not notice it. Rather, you misinterpret the animal as part of the scenery. When our ancestors discerned that animals are capable of camouflage, that was a big deal in the history of epistemology. It meant our ancestors came to an important realization. That was that someone can interpret and experience a sensory stimulus in a manner other than what is happening literally. In the case of the chameleon in front of you escaping notice, what is happening literally is that the chameleon is in front of you. But, in your interpretation, it as though the chameleon were absent. It matters a lot for our ancestors to come to understand that someone can interpret and experience a sensory stimulus in a manner other than what is happening literally. That is because that is what a symbol is. It is what happens when you are engrossed in an exciting work of fiction. If you are engrossed in an adventure novel, you react emotionally as though you were there on the adventure. But what happened literally was that you spent hours staring at a series of standardized markings on sheets of paper. If a camouflaged animal successfully escapes your notice, then you never learn that this particular interpretation of the event was different from what happened literally. By contrast, when you read a novel that you love, you know consciously that the events described did not happen literally. But, in both instances, the interpretation and the experience of the sensory stimulus were something other than what happened literally. And insofar as a clever handling of a truth that is far from obvious might be tricksterism, this understanding about camouflage might be considered an instance where tricksterism is not a form of scientific fraud but instead a clever advance in disciplines related to science. When I first wrote the above, I thought I might have been the first to make that connection. However, in a 1998 book on popular science, biological anthropologist and neuroscientist Terrence W. Deacon also argues as much. Accurate chemical formulae discovered by scientists are all symbols. But they convey what happens literally. The formula showing how the chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen creates water is a symbol. But that is also what happens literally. By definition, symbols are nonliteral. But, when used properly, they help us understand what happens literally. That is the true funny irony in this: the fact that we can experience and interpret stimuli in a manner that is nonliteral has given our species has an unprecedentedly complex ability to comprehend what happens literally.

And, of course, fiction is also not literal but only literary. Yet I argue that, to the degree that you are emotionally attached to an artwork, it largely rests upon your interpreting some aspects of the artwork you do deem to be true literally.
 

How Good Fiction Is True
When I was in the fifth grade, my teacher waxed enthusiastically about how fiction is rich with symbolism. However, I still did not comprehend what that meant. When someone talked about symbolism in art, I thought it meant the artist being pretentious and purposely hard-to-understand. What came to mind was a hipster splashing a blotch onto a canvas and announcing, “This is the human condition. This spatter of paint dramatizes the capitalist oppression of the masses.” But symbolism does not have to be that way. Alternatively, a deliberate symbol in a story is especially successful if it can be taken at face value as just part of the story while, on another level, it can be recognized as demonstrating something deeper at work. A case study in such symbolism is in Citizen Kane. Charles Foster Kane is married and he keeps getting richer. But his emotional bond to his wife is weakening. We are treated to a montage that shows, over the years, Kane eating dinner with his wife at a long table. Each spouse is on the other end of the long table. Every time this happens, the table is longer and Kane is shown being even more callous toward his wife. If we take this only straightforwardly, it makes sense: we see that as Kane gets richer over the years, he can afford to purchase an even longer table. But this represents something more abstract: the growing length of the table represents the growing emotional distance between Kane and his wife. Both because of the aforementioned obscurantism of many “modern artists,” and because I made the conflation that only that which is literal is real and true, I thought that symbols were all “fake” and too far from being straightforward. That is a variant on the fallacy discussed in the opening of this essay. But when what you know to be a work of fiction is emotionally gripping to you and sticks with you, it is because you implicitly interpret that story to be true on a deeper level. My go-to example is the movie Back to the Future. We know that in real life, you cannot travel back in time in a DeLorean. But, in real life, people do have a difficult time relating with their parents and do wish there was a way to be able to meet them on mutual terms. In real life, nerds are subjected to bullying. Confronting these issues directly is usually so painful that we prefer to avoid them. But when explorations of these issues are repackaged in a more-fantastical setting, that creates some degree of psychological distance that makes it more manageable, mood-wise, to confront them. George McFly does not exist on a literal level. But his story is a symbolic representation that gives us an idea of how we can address the topic of bullying: either continuing to submit to the bullies or stand up to them. The latter approach is riskier but it is ultimately more meaningful. The first part of what Picasso said is misleading. Art is not a lie. Art is a symbolic representation. And not all symbolic representations are lies, just as an accurate painting of a male lion is not a lie even if the painting is not based on any one particular male lion. And when an artwork stirs your emotions, it is because you interpret it as a symbolic representation that faithfully conveys a principle that is true. When a cherished memory of an artwork lingers in your mind, it is because, at least on some emotional level, you judge it implicitly as using symbols to convey a truth about human psychology. Science communication consists of using nonliteral means to elucidate on what happens literally. Likewise, when you enjoy artwork, it is because, on some level, you experience it as a nonliteral means of dramatizing what you interpret to be true literally. Even an account of true events can be a symbol. The story of the persecution of Galileo is a series of events that happened literally. But when people cite the example of Galileo, it is to present it as a case study of something that might still happen today. They are warning that, once again, there might be similar instances of someone being mistreated for telling the truth. As this happens, the account of Galileo and his punishment are symbols of similar injustices that might be repeated but should not be. What happened to Galileo, happened literally. But in the context of today’s society, you are not Galileo literally. Still, if there is a danger that you might be punished for speaking the truth, Galileo can be a fitting symbol for you and your situation. As you are not Galileo literally, but your situation might become comparable to his in the relevant context, the use of Galileo as a symbol can convey to you and others the literal nature of your situation. Once again, presentations that are nonliteral can convey accurately a fact that is literal. Yes, as words are tools of cognition and comprehending reality, that applies to language as a whole. I could eat something that kills me. My meal could poison me or cause me to choke to death. But in the end, it is the case that I eat to live. Likewise, people often use language to tell lies. But as language is instrumental to knowing reality at all, it is ultimately the case that language is the tool for learning, processing, and transmitting the truth. The same principle applies to imagination. As I have written before, the Wright brothers needed vibrant imaginations to conceive of the airplane. Imagination is imperative for deducing causal connections between separate events, and imperative for all long-term decision-making.  As I said in my earlier essay, though people often use their imaginations to indulge in delusions, imagination is really the tool for adhering to reality. And I can make an addition to all of the above. Hipsters have given us the impression that symbolism in art is about being nebulous and cryptic in message. But I hope I have established in this essay that, overall, symbolism in art is ultimately about providing information and ideas with the utmost clarity.

Ten years ago, if on social media you talked about a strange event that happened to you, often someone would quip, “Show pictures or it didn’t happen.” Well, I notice that when they want to denigrate something or someone, anti-capitalists on social media use a thought-stopping cliché that I identify as “Privilege, or it didn’t happen.” That is, if you’re praising an achievement of someone whom the anti-capitalist dislikes, the anti-capitalist will chime in that the person was able to achieve such primarily due to the person possessing, before the fact, some social privilege that other people lack. The most common type of privilege is having been born to a family with more money than other people. But there are other types of privilege — white privilege, male privilege, even able-bodied privilege.

I wrote a letter in response, which the Honolulu Star-Advertiser published on March 4. First I will show the version the newspaper printed. Below that I will provide the version I sent to the newspaper.

The big-governism interpretation of the Social Contract, as advanced Rousseau and Hobbes, is implicitly a rebuttal to any free-enterpriser’s objection to intrusive governmental action. We free enterprisers advocate a constitutional liberal republican Night Watchman State. Free-enterprisers recognize what is the fundamental distinction between action that is governmental versus action that is nongovernmental. Civilians are supposed to be peaceful. True, sometimes the government can delegate some authority to specific private citizens to carry out specific forms of violence. That is what the Confederate States of America did for private slaveholders — delegate to them the authority to wield violence against slaves. But, for the most part, except for such cases, violence by private citizens is unlawful. Hence, when Private Citizen A initiates the use of force against Private Citizen B or her private property, it is proper for the government to apply retaliatory force against Private Citizen A. In contrast to private citizens, the ability to threaten and exercise violence against those who oppose its will, is inherent to the institution of government. If you break the government’s laws, the government will punish you. The more you resist compliance in receiving the punishment, the more the government will escalate the degree of physical coercion. That applies even if the initial penalty is a civil fine. Someone who consistently refuses to discharge a civil fine is deemed to be In Criminal Contempt of Court. The government does send armed men after those who are in criminal contempt. Someone who resists police too vigorously will be met with violence. That is the reason for deaths that come from altercations with police. The institution of government is in contrast to the peacefulness that is expected of private civilians. As noted by Mohandas Gandhi, the very nature and job of government — as an institution — is to threaten violence on those who oppose its will. And this violence by the State is at least tacitly authorized by a large enough proportion of the citizenry. That tacit approval is part of the Social Contract argument of Rousseau and Hobbes. However, as we shall see, that tacit authorization is not as strong a foundation for ethical argument as Rousseau and Hobbes presume it to be. Governmental action is ultimately enforced at gunpoint. For that reason, we free-enterprisers caution that governmental action must be applied only sparingly. Governmental action is only justified properly in response to violence against person or property that someone has started. The State is right to intervene against physical battery, and to stop and punish rape and murder. It is also to intercede against one party poisoning another, whether this poisoning is intentional or not. 

Moreover, you cannot live your life peaceably and sustain yourself if others can exercise force to deprive you of control over your physical possessions. Hence, a State is right to penalize property damage, vandalism, and theft. The category of “theft” properly includes violation of a content-creator’s intellectual property rights. Fraud, contract breach, and even defamation are indirect methods whereby a perpetrator deprives innocent victims of their-needed control over their private property. Consequently, the State is right to quash fraud, contract breach, and defamation. What makes a contract breach so wrongful is pertinent here. The wrongness of an actual breach of contract, after all, is invoked implicitly in support of the version of the Social Contract foisted by Rousseau and Hobbes. Suppose that Steve and I forge a contract. Steve agrees to relinquish ownership over his car to me. In exchange, I perform a peaceful service for him. First Steve hands me the car keys and I drive off with his automobile. Then I never perform the service. The ultimate result, then, is theft. It is physical coercion in two respects. First, Steve relinquishes control over the car to me only upon fulfillment of a particular condition: that I perform the service. In the absence of my fulfillment of the condition, I am physically possessing and maneuvering the car against Steve’s consent. And there is a second, more subtle, use of force. Steve handing me the car keys was only willful on the condition that, upon the the mutually-agreed future date, I perform the task Steve wanted. As I failed to perform the service, Steve handing me the car keys was ultimately not something to which Steve consented. Here, Steve placing the keys in my hands was a form of physical force — I manipulated Steve into making bodily movements that did him harm. When the government comes after someone for having breached contract, then, the government is merely retaliating against the party that started the force. This understanding of contracts, as we shall revisit, is twisted in the version of Social Contract ideology that is propounded by Rousseau and is implicitly invoked by modern politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.