Planeta Liberalis

Anna Świderkówna opowiadała kiedyś o rozmowie ze znajomym komunistą: „W czasie rozmowy rzucił: – Jestem ateistą. – Aha – mówię – czyli pan wierzy, że Boga nie ma. – Nie, nie. Ja w nic nie wierzę – zaoponował zaskoczony. – A mógłby pan dowieść, że Boga nie ma? – zapytałam. Usłyszałam, że go zatkało. Bo on nigdy nie pomyślał, że jego światopogląd też jest formą wiary”. W każdym światopoglądzie, w każdej filozofii istnieją pewne zdania, które przyjmuje się na wiarę. Ich prawdziwość zakłada się po prostu jako rzecz oczywistą. Każdy człowiek ma jakiś zasób nienaruszalnych podstawowych tez, pewnych punktów odniesienia, które stanowią rodzaju filtru w jego patrzeniu na świat, na siebie, na życie.

Dogmatyzm kojarzy się z postawą bezkrytyczną, utożsamia się go wręcz z zakazem myślenia. Myślenie naukowe, dojrzałe, nowoczesne powinno być za myśleniem bez dogmatu. To mit. Punktem wyjścia wszystkich nauk ścisłych są aksjomaty, czyli tezy, których się nie dowodzi. Z tych „dogmatycznie” przyjętych aksjomatów wyprowadza się drogą wnioskowania kolejne twierdzenia. Nasuwa się jeszcze jeden przykład, nieco lżejszy. Czy można uznać grę w szachy za coś, co nie wymaga myślenia? A przecież szachy mają swoje nienaruszalne, niezmienne zasady. Gracze muszą je respektować, zgodzić się na nie. Inaczej nie będzie żadnej sensownej, intelektualnej rozrywki. Dogmaty są właśnie jak te niezmienne reguły gry. Nie są szlabanami zamykającymi drogę do refleksji, ale są raczej punktami wyjścia wyznaczającymi kierunek myślenia. Zapraszają do myślenia, ale we „wnętrzu” gry. Nie jest więc tak, że mamy wybór: albo myślenie, albo dogmat. Wybieramy raczej między takim czy innym zestawem dogmatów.

ks. Tomasz Jaklewicz, Dogmat w czasach niepewności, http://goscniedzielny.wiara.pl/?grupa=6&art=1219950754&dzi=1104764436&idnumeru=1219928104

Pytanie o powołanie jest pytaniem, które ma sens w kontekście wiary, czyli relacji, jaka łączy człowieka z Bogiem. To przecież Bóg powołuje człowieka. Zrozumienie zatem pytania o powołanie zależy od rozumienia relacji z Bogiem, od rozumienia kim jest Bóg i jak On postępuje z człowiekiem.

Rozeznając powołanie bardzo często zakładamy, bardziej lub mniej świadomie, że Bóg ma już gotowy, szczegółowy plan wobec nas i że oczekuje od nas byśmy go zrealizowali.

[T]akie rozumienie powołania, powodowane nawet najlepszymi intencjami, kryje w sobie zupełnie niechrześcijański obraz Boga. Przedstawiając go nieco karykaturalnie, Pan Bóg, gdzieś w swojej tajnej kartotece, posiada ukryte akta każdego człowieka z zapisanym projektem jego życia. Do człowieka należy odgadywanie zawartości tej kartoteki. Jest to zadanie niezmiernie trudne, jeśli w ogóle możliwe, nie wspominając już o tym, że właściwie nie ma tu mowy o wolności człowieka, tak bardzo podkreślanej w chrześcijaństwie.

[T]akie wyobrażenie Boga i powołania otwiera furtkę dla niekończących się rewizji podjętych decyzji i stawia pod znakiem zapytania wierność wszelkim wyborom: bo zawsze można stwierdzić, że wcześniej nastąpiła pomyłka i dopiero teraz udało się nam rozpoznać wolę Boga. Paradoksalnie pod pozorem wiary można przemycać niewierność.

[W]olą Boga jest byśmy przez Chrystusa byli Jego dziećmi. Trudno wyobrazić sobie relację bardziej podkreślającą wolność niż ta jaka panuje pomiędzy Ojcem i dziećmi. Jedyną rzeczą do jakiej ona wzywa jest podobieństwo do Ojca i odzwierciedlanie Jego świętości. Natomiast konkretny sposób w jaki odpowiemy na to wezwanie, pozostawiony jest twórczej wolności człowieka. Właśnie odpowiedzialność i twórczość w budowaniu własnego życia jest najdoskonalszą formą realizacji podobieństwa do Stwórcy. Oczywiście w przypadku człowieka nie jest to tworzenie z niczego. Odbywa się ono na podstawie tego, kim jesteśmy, naszego temperamentu, naszych pragnień i uzdolnień, naszej wrażliwości na otaczający nas świat i wydarzenia, w których uczestniczymy. Wszystko to jest naszym udziałem w tworzeniu własnego powołania w dialogu ze Słowem Boga, które uzdalnia nas do stawania się Jego dziećmi (por. J 1,12). Wola Boga nie jest z góry szczegółowo zapisanym planem określającym kształt naszego życia.

[P]owołanie jest przede wszystkim obietnicą spełnienia głębokiego pragnienia ludzkiego serca: pragnienia życia spełnionego. To sam Bóg stwarzając człowieka składa w jego sercu pragnienie życia, jest jego Autorem, ale jednocześnie człowiekowi powierza określenie konkretnego kształtu tego życia. Abraham związał je z ojcostwem i potomstwem. Gdy ono pozostaje niespełnione, Bóg wskazuje Abrahamowi warunki jego spełnienia: wyjdź… i idź… Plan, jaki Bóg przedstawia, sięga o wiele dalej i obejmuje wszystkie ludy ziemi, ale w żaden sposób nie każe Abrahamowi rezygnować z własnego pragnienia. Przeciwnie, obiecuje jego spełnienie. W jaki sposób realizacja planu zbawienia ludzkości i spełnienie pragnienia konkretnego człowieka mogą wzajemnie się uzupełniać pozostaje tajemnicą wielkości Boga. Jedno jest jednak pewne. Nie znając własnego pragnienia, Abraham nie mógłby ani usłyszeć, ani zawierzyć wezwaniu Boga. Rozpoznanie woli Boga względem siebie, rozpoznanie własnego powołania zaczyna się od poznania i określenia własnego pragnienia życia.

Jeśli Bogu tak bardzo zależy na wolności człowieka, jedynym słusznym powodem kwestionowania dokonanego wyboru może być brak wolności w momencie jego dokonywania. Kościół w swojej mądrości uznaje za nigdy nie ważne małżeństwa zawarte pod przymusem, święcenia przyjęte bez wolnej woli. Oczywiście wolność człowieka jest niezmiernie delikatną dziedziną. Czasem bardzo trudno udokumentować rzeczywisty brak wolności, czasem bardzo łatwo postulować brak wolności, gdy tak naprawdę chodzi o trudność dochowania wierności. Nie są to łatwe kwestie i każdy przypadek musi być rozważany osobno z całą powagą i uczciwością. Jednak także ogólne rozważanie może pomóc uniknąć wielu nieporozumień.

Pewnie większość prób ponownego rozeznawania powołania nie różni się niczym od kryzysów wiary, których doświadczył Abraham. Zamiast wyobrażać sobie, że nastąpiła pomyłka, że nie tędy droga, że może nieopatrznie zrozumiałem, czego Bóg ode mnie chciał, potrzeba bardziej przypomnienia (anamnezy) własnego, pierwszego pragnienia. Bo to właśnie na nim zaczęło się budować powołanie. Bo Bóg je potraktował na poważnie i zaangażował się, by je spełnić. To nic, jeśli nie było do końca dojrzałe i czyste. Cały czas długiego oczekiwania Abrahama nie jest niczym innym jak jednym procesem dojrzewania jego pragnienia. Ale nie zostało ono zawiedzione.

[P]onowne rozeznawanie powołania mające na celu zmianę drogi życia na pewno nie jest postawą wiary. Ponieważ Bóg nie oczekuje od nas odgadywania ukrytych Swoich planów wobec naszego życia, w sytuacji kryzysu chodzi raczej o powrót do własnego pierwotnego pragnienia. Bo to na nim zaczęło się budować nasze powołanie.

Tomasz Kot SJ, Zrozumieć swoje powołanie…, http://mateusz.pl/mt/10lat/tk-zsp.htm

[O]ur surroundings determine not just what we think, but what we can think. We live in cities urban but not urbane, among screaming sirens, in air grayed by exhaust and wracked by the blattings of buses. The complaint is not invalid for being trite. I cannot imagine a Whitman composing in a shopping mall.

The rush and complexity of everything take their toll. As a people we might well be called The Unrelaxed. And, therefore, the Uncontemplative.

Other lives are possible, or were possible. Years ago I passed a summer in Hampden-Sydney, my small college on a huge wooded campus in then-rural Virginia. The students were blessedly gone.

Along the Via Sacra, as the only road on campus was called, under blue skies going on forever and forever there was silence, absolute silence, unless you count the twittering of birds and the keening of bugs in ancient oaks. These may be sounds, but they are not noise. They are not even music, but something before, older, earlier, better. . . . [I]t was quiet and warm and you were with your thoughts.

It was terribly unmodern. At night the stars shone in the black infinite and there was no noise. No noise. There a Thoreau could have written or Corot painted. I do not think this possible in clangorous suburban ugliness.

Scientists take things apart but, except for the greats, do not notice the whole.

People rush to Europe in search of the old, the quiet, and the pretty. Peddlers of real estate understand the urge, and hawk tranquil rural life while building the malls that will make it impossible. And so hurry comes to Arcadia. People then think of escape to the next small town. We spend a remarkable amount of time fleeing ourselves. Maybe instead we should build a place we like.

We cannot, because the nature of things is determined remotely, at corporate. We have little choice in where we live, not because we cannot move but because everywhere becomes the same.

So little remains of the local. Time was when two-lane highways wound through misty valleys in the Smokies with little towns scrunched onto the slopes of a wrinkled land and mom-and-pop restaurants, no two alike. Barstow was a desert town of desert people, and New Orleans was a city, not a theme park.

Now, no. Things are both uniform and ugly. Corporates everywhere have learned to stamp out stores, houses, developments, cheap because identical, because of the wonders of mass production, and who can tell them no? You can’t stop progress, boosters say, though I can’t see that we have had any.

And of course people want, or think they want, the noise and sprawl and franchisees. Construction does briefly provide jobs, Wal-Mart does sell power saws at low prices, and the food at Ruby Tuesday’s is good. The young like noise, and surely a store selling thirty brands of running shoes for people who don’t run cannot be a bad thing. It is only later that the boredom and emptiness set in for kids who have only the malls, never the woods. Hamsters have exercise wheels. We buy things.

Few precisely like what we have, I suppose, but how does one escape it? Perhaps they don’t sense exactly what it is they want to escape, and anyway there is nowhere else to go. In noise-ridden cities smelling of exhaust, crowded, where the stars languish obscured by smoke, the rivers run semi-poisonous and much of the populace can barely read, how can anyone think beyond the stock market and the next empty copulation? The Milnes and Donnes and Marlowes don’t exist because they can’t, and we don’t want them because we can’t want them.

Fred Reed, Other Times and Ways: Shoveling Sand Against the Tide, http://www.fredoneverything.net/Walden%20III.shtml

Until quite recently, I had assumed that the extreme ugliness of the city in which I live was attributable to the Luftwaffe.

I discovered how wrong I was not long ago when I entered a store whose walls were decorated with large photographs of the city as it had been before the war. It was then a fine place, in a grandiloquent, Victorian kind of way. Every building had spoken of a bulging, no doubt slightly pompous and ridiculous, municipal pride. Industry and Labor were glorified in statuary, and a leavening of Greek temples and Italian Renaissance palaces lightened the prevailing mock-Venetian Gothic architecture.

The City Council—the people’s elected representatives it transpired, had done far more damage to the fabric of the city in the 1950s and 1960s than had Goering’s air force.

First among the reasons for this large-scale architectural vandalism was the prolonged revulsion against all things Victorian.

I witnessed a striking example of this revulsion in my own household. My father, a communist and therefore predisposed to view the past in a lurid light, especially by comparison with the inevitable post-revolutionary glories to come, had bought several Victorian paintings at Sotheby’s during the war for ten shillings each. (Communists are not necessarily opposed to taking advantage of a temporary depression in prices.) He kept them in the loft of the house. Then, one day in 1960, quite arbitrarily, he decided that they were taking up too much space—unlike the tins of fruit he had stockpiled during the Korean War in the expectation that it would escalate into the Third World War, and which were now beginning to explode, but which he kept forever. He took all the paintings except one and put them on a bonfire, an act which I knew even at the age of ten to be one of terrible barbarism. I begged him not to do it, to give the paintings away if he didn’t like them—but no, they had to be destroyed.

Then there was the modernist arrogance about not only the Victorian past but all the centuries that had gone before—my city swept away many eighteenth-century buildings along with Victorian and Edwardian ones.

The architects thought that modernity was a value that transcended all other virtues; they thought they could wake the country from its nostalgic slumber, dragging it into the twentieth century by pouring what seemed to them the most modern of building materials—reinforced concrete—all over it.

[W]hat was decent housing? A civil servant, Parker Morris, provided the answer: a certain number of cubic yards of living space per inhabitant. The Ministry of Housing adopted the Parker Morris standards for all public housing; they governed the size and number of rooms—and that was all.

Even allowing for the roseate glow that the passage of time lends to experience, what my patients tell me of the streets where they grew up does not vindicate the reformers.

[A] sense of community did exist in these streets of little red houses, to such an extent that people who came from more than a few streets away were regarded as strangers, almost as foreigners. No doubt the community feeling resulted in a certain small-mindedness, but it also meant that life was not then the war of permanently inflamed egos to be found in Corbusian housing projects—egos inflamed by the fact that the inhabitants have been, and continue to be, treated so transparently by social policy makers as faceless, interchangeable, passive ciphers that the only way to assert their individuality is to behave antisocially.

The idea that happiness and well-being consist of the satisfaction of a few simple physical needs, and can therefore be planned on behalf of society by benevolent administrators, is . . . bleakly mocked.

[T]he buildings themselves . . . are, with a vengeance, Le Corbusier’s „machines for living in”—though perhaps „existing in” would be more accurate. The straight line and the right angle reign supreme: no curves, no frivolous decorative touches, no softening materials add warmth to the steel, glass, and concrete.

The people who inhabit these apartments are utterly isolated. All that connects them is the noise they make, often considerable, which permeates the flimsy walls, ceilings, and floors. They are likely to be unemployed and poorly educated, socialized neither by work nor by pastimes. Single mothers are housed here, guaranteeing the impoverishment of their children’s social environment: and in Britain we are now into the second generation of children who know no other environment.

No civic or collective life is possible in such conditions, and so there are no standards of conduct: every man’s whim is law, and the most physically powerful and ruthless is the one who sets the tone and makes the rules. When a patient of mine was suspended by her ankles from the window of her 11th-floor apartment by her jealous boyfriend, no one noticed or considered it his duty to intervene. She herself was unaware that there was anything morally reprehensible (as against merely unpleasant) about her boyfriend’s conduct.

[N]o desert hermit was ever more alone than the inhabitant of an English housing project.

When I aired my thoughts about public housing to a British architect—to whom, in my heart, I ascribed some of the collective blame for the calamitous situation he at once shot back, „Yes, but do sties make pigs, or do pigs make sties?”

I suspect that there is, as my father used to say, a dialectical relationship.

Theodore Dalrymple, Do Sties Make Pigs, http://www.city-journal.org/html/5_3_a4.html

Sacred architecture, like the faith it seeks to represent in three-dimensional form, should reflect its own tradition. Each church should be a work of art in which one finds references to and acknowledgment of previous greatness. The Church remembers the Council of Nicea and the Last Supper every time she celebrates the liturgy. Likewise, every time she builds a church she remembers the holy places of her tradition. The church building is an anamnesis, or a participation, in the representation of the holy mountain, of the tent of meeting, of the Temple in Jerusalem, of Golgotha, of the upper room, and of sacred buildings throughout the centuries.

[T.S. Eliot wrote:] „Tradition … cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense … the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. … No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone: you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.”

This „historical sense” requires the architect to immerse himself in great architecture. He studies buildings the way the theologian studies texts: through careful analysis and interpretation. Like the disciple, the Classicist looks to treatises and paradigms that draw him into the architectural tradition and shed light on the present. Today the architect can cut his teeth on a wealth of information on great works of the past. He himself must be willing to investigate the deep and broad architectural stream, and relearn tradition before seeking to innovate. Poetry comes only after competence in prose. And architectural innovation comes only after competence in the language of architecture.

Classical architecture is a large extended family of buildings that bear a visual resemblance to one another. The classical architect, then, has it „in his blood” to design within a proven tradition, and he has excellent advisors. The great works of the past are his forbears and advisors. He bounces new ideas off these masterpieces and tries to learn from them how they solved similar problems. When he designs, it is not just for himself or for today; he designs for and in conversation with the Classical architects who have gone before him. He designs for the future, aware that others will come and continue the conversation.

Catholicism is an Incarnational religion and in its architecture there should be an appreciation of the human body. As people created in His image, aware of Christ’s willingness to clothe Himself in flesh and blood, we recognize the goodness of the body.

The traditional church building is anthropomorphic: modeled on Christ’s body in its general form, embodying the saints and martyrs in its elements, and expressing the Church and its beliefs through iconography. The analogy of the body in the church is an accessible and profound way to understand the meaning of the Universal Church. The analogy grows out of the early Christian tradition of building churches over the graves of saints or on holy ground where a saint lived or was martyred.

Figurative painting and sculpture are central tools for the aims of Classical architecture. The Hebrew and Christian saints are witnesses worshipping with us, and the church’s iconography makes us aware of their presence. The traditions of placing images of the four evangelists at the crossing, or sculptures of the saints on the facade or retable of the material church, remind us of the true construction of the spiritual Church. Paintings and statues of saints remind us we are part of the mystical body of Christ. The church as body is a beautiful way to conceptualize the building in which people are baptized into Christ’s body, partake of His body and blood, become one body with another, and finally have their body delivered by the Church into its eternal home.

The Roman Catholic Church is timeless, enduring and permanent. So the church building is a prolepsis, or anticipation of the future; a three-dimensional introduction into the heavenly kingdom. It promises us future glory, and is a place which should make us desire to „dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” In expressing the inexpressible, the mysterious, the beatific vision, the church is a place of eternity amidst the suffering and temporality of life. In liturgy and private devotion we partake of the heavenly liturgy in which we will worship eternally, the heavenly banquet in which we shall feast forever. Surrounded pictorially by the heavenly banquet, with saints and angels painted on the ceiling, in the decoration of the walls, or as icons in the side chapels we come in contact with the eternal. The building is an act of eternal worship, which participates in the worship of heaven. As a prolepsis of eternity it must be timeless, transcendent, beautiful and durable.

The Christian life is a journey towards the heavenly home. Our architecture is eschatological; it looks forward to the new heaven and the new earth. An architecture of journey should transport us out of ourselves and into God’s presence. The church can articulate this journey beginning with the siting and design of the exterior, which should call out to us. The facade is a heavenly ladder, or a gate of heaven through which we must pass. The colonnades of the nave line our procession towards the eternal. The dome of the crossing, the generous apse and the reredos draw us up into heaven and are decorated as such. The triumphal arch separating the sanctuary from the nave is a threshold towards the eternal. Our journey towards Christ is like our procession to the altar, the place where heaven breaks into our world. From the sanctuary we receive eternity in the Eucharist and in his word.

The church is eschatological. A place designed for the future, timeless and universal rather than stylish. A car assembly line must be retooled to stay competitive, but church architecture must speak to its time and beyond its time. It should seek to be undatable, the same yesterday, today and forever.

All cultures have sought to capture beauty in their art and architecture. While the concept of beauty is debased today, the Church continues to uphold the beauty of God’s house as the ideal. Beautiful things go beyond mere fashion or superficial interest. Architectural beauty should reflect God’s creation, particularly man created in his image. Classical theory defines beauty as the correspondence of the parts with the whole, from which nothing can be added or taken away.

Catholicism and Classicism are discriminating, with high standards of excellence. These standards are the perfection of the eternal. The architect is called to be perfect as his heavenly Father is perfect.

The church, a building for the eternal, seeks durability, so as to be used by future generations. It is an investment in the faith of our children and so should be built with great care. . . . The church building is an offering to the eternal, so we employ the best materials and the finest construction techniques. The House of God should, always and everywhere, be fashioned in a way superior to the best public buildings or houses. It should be a model building for the neighborhood or the town, and as it endures it will continually speak of eternity and transcendence. [John Cardinal Newman said:] „[T]hey remain, those holy places, where they were: for the Church abides for evermore, and her Temples, in their deep foundations, and their arching heights, are her image and manifestation.”

Duncan G. Stroik, The Classical Moment, http://www.stroik.com/pubs/pdf/TheClassicalMoment.pdf

Political power – the capacity and legal sanction to aggress against others – is integral to political office. A State official, libertarian or not, has considerable power over defenseless citizens. It is disingenuous to claim that one aspires to political office but does not seek power. Power is a defining characteristic of political office.

A politician can get together with his neighbors (other politicians) and vote to rob people, and he can bring the force of law to back up this vote.

I don’t want anyone to have political power, regardless of his supposed good intentions. I object to the political office itself and to its legitimized power.

Should the wise maxim often quoted by libertarians, „Power corrupts,” now be amended to read, „Power corrupts – unless you are a libertarian?” It is not clear to me why libertarians are any less susceptible to the temptations of power than the ordinary mortal.

We should seek to abolish the mechanism whereby one individual, in virtue of political office, can employ legitimized aggression against other individuals.

„Elect me to office,” proclaims the libertarian politician, „give me enormous power over you and your property, but rest assured that I shall abstain from using this power unjustly.” I reply: You have no right to such power in the first place – and as a libertarian you should know this. You should be denouncing the very office to which you aspire.

[L]ibertarians must stand firm against all Senators, all Presidents, and so forth, because these offices and the legal power they embody are indispensable features of the State apparatus. After all, what can it possibly mean to oppose the State unless one opposes particular offices and institutions in which State power manifests itself?

The fight against the State is not merely a fight against naked power – the battle would be much easier if that were so. The essence of the State is not aggression per se, but legitimized aggression. The State uses the sanction of law to legitimize its criminal acts. This is what distinguishes it from the average criminal in the street.

We must strip the State of its legitimacy in the public eye. We must persuade people to apply the same moral standards to the State as they apply to anyone else. We need not convince people that theft is wrong; we need to convince them that theft, when committed by the State in the name of taxation, does not differ from theft when committed by an individual. We need not persuade people that murder is wrong; we need to persuade them that murder, when committed by the State in the name of war or national defense, does not differ from murder when committed by an individual.

To run for or support candidates for political office is to grant legitimacy to the very thing we are attempting to strip of legitimacy.

The vote sanctifies injustice. If the libertarian message is to be truly radical – if libertarians are to lead the fight, not only against this or that injustice, but against the political system that perpetuates and legitimizes injustice – then we must condemn voting altogether. A libertarian cannot use the vote for his own end, as if the vote were morally neutral. The vote is the method by which the State maintains its illusion of legitimacy.

I maintain, therefore, that no person has the moral right to vote. To vote a person into office is to give that person unjust authority over others. To vote for a presidential candidate is to grant to that person the legal sanction for injustice.

Hasn’t it ever struck you as paradoxical how libertarians who are innovative when it comes to free-market alternatives, can be so pedestrian and orthodox in the area of political strategy. I mean, libertarians never tire of outlining plans for free-market roads, sewers, utilities, charities, schools, police forces, and even courts of law. When our critics ridicule free-market education, for instance, we encourage them to expand their thinking and to reject the notion that just because government has provided something in the past, it must continue to provide it in the future. Fresh, imaginative thinking is the key here.

[I]t’s not true that laws have to be repealed in order to be rendered ineffective. There are thousands of laws on the books today which are virtually dead, because the public would not tolerate their enforcement.

[L]ibertarians should breed a thorough and uncompromising disrespect for the government and its laws. We should tell people, in no uncertain terms, that decrees of the government have no moral legitimacy whatever – that they are on par with decrees of the mafia. We must work to minimize and demystify the State. Of course, there is the practical problem of avoiding penalties, and individuals may choose to obey particular laws in order to escape punishment. But a government that must rely entirely on fear cannot long survive. All governments must cloak themselves in legitimacy in order to win the passive acquiescence of their subjects. Libertarians must seek to dissolve this aura of legitimacy. We must tell people: you have certain rights, period; and what the government does cannot change that. The government is a thug and a thief; be on your guard, watch it with caution, for it is powerful. But do not be awed by it. Do not grant it respect or moral sanction. Treat it as you would any villain.

George H. Smith, Party Dialogue, http://www.voluntaryist.com/nbnb/party_dialogue.php

[The Lord of the Rings] is about the evils of power. More precisely, the book aligns itself against power – not „economic power” or „social power”, but specifically political power.

[J.R.R. Tolkien wrote:] „You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: and allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power.”

The Lord of the Rings is the epic journey to destroy the One Ring, which symbolizes power – and this is very clear when you understand that the Ring not only confers power but also imposes serfdom on the wearer. The man who wears the Ring becomes a slave at the same time as he is made supremely powerful.

This is an allegory for what actually happens in our world every day: rulers, even well intentioned and idealistic ones, are ruled themselves at the same time. They are ruled by consensus and by the spasmodic hunger to acquire yet more power than they already have. This is why the state has never been limited, as the classical liberal thinkers had hoped it would be – because the people in charge of keeping the power of the state limited never do so.

It does not matter what stirring words a politician uses to legitimize his actions; he is inside a vicious circle he can’t escape.

[J.R.R. Tolkien wrote:] „My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) – or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy.”

In Tolkien’s vision, the power is always evil – a good power cannot even exist. Since the very beginning, the good guys own the Ring. Since it is the most powerful weapon in the world, many of them ask why it can’t be used against Sauron, the Dark Lord. Even though the Ring was forged by him and undoubtedly it is evil, yet it could help to pursue a good end, they suspect. This is an extraordinary way to ask the question: could the means be subordinated to the ends? Can a good end be pursued by evil means? Tolkien answers that no, evil means can only bring to an evil end – no matter if the original intentions are good.

[J.R.R. Tolkien wrote:] „If we could get back to personal names, it would do a lot of good. Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and the process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people. If people were in the habit of referring to ‘King George’s council, Winston and his gang’, it would do a long way to clearing thought, and reducing the frightful landslide into Theyocracy.”

Alberto Mingardi, Tolkien v. Power, http://mises.org/story/899

Pan Bóg ustanowił małżeństwo, aby wypełnić swój plan miłości. Małżeństwo jest zadaniem do spełnienia. Toteż należy zawierać małżeństwo z osobą, która to zadanie może spełniać. Małżonkowie mają być dla siebie darem, mają być sobie nawzajem oddani. To wielkie i odpowiedzialne zadanie.

[...] największym wrogiem małżeństwa są oczekiwania, jakie narzeczeni z nim wiążą. Ktoś mógłby zapytać: jak to? Czy nie wolno mi mieć żadnych oczekiwań? Wolno, oczywiście! Problemem jest, czy są warunki, aby te oczekiwania zostały spełnione. Tymczasem oczekiwania bardzo często są budowane na wyobrażeniach, które nie mają odniesienia w rzeczywistości.

Człowiek zawsze jakieś oczekiwania ma. Rzecz w tym, że w pojęciu oczekiwania nie mieści się osobisty wysiłek, aby te oczekiwania się spełniły.

Nie chcę dawać rad. Po prostu mam prośbę. Pomyślcie o waszych dzieciach. Pamiętajcie, że będą się one uczyły czwartego przykazania! Warto sobie uświadamiać, że chłopak jest możliwym ojcem i że jego dzieci będą miały takiego ojca, jakim jest on dziś chłopakiem. Dziewczyna jest możliwą matką. Jej dzieci będą miały taką matkę, jaką jest ona dziewczyną. Wszystko, co dziś robicie, robicie na rachunek swoich dzieci. Czy będą mogły być z was dumne? Proszę, byście tak się zachowywali, by mogło to być wspaniałą drogą dla waszych dzieci.

Chęci to za mało, Rozmowa z o. Karolem Meissnerem OSB, http://www.opoka.org.pl/biblioteka/Z/ZR/km_zareczyny.html

People think they know what they want but they generally dont. Sometimes if they’re lucky they’ll get it anyways. Me I was always lucky. My whole life. I wouldnt be here otherwise. Scrapes I been in. But the day I seen her [my wife] come out of Kerr’s Mercantile and cross the street and she passed me and I tipped my hat to her and got just almost a smile back, that was the luckiest.

People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they dont deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things. I dont recall that I ever give the good Lord all that much cause to smile on me. But he did.

Loretta told me that she had heard on the radio about some percentage of the children in this country bein raised by their grandparents. I forget what it was. Pretty high, I thought. Parents wouldnt raise em. We talked about that. What we thought was that when the next generation come along and they dont want to raise their children neither then who is goin to do it? Their own parents will be the only grandparents around and they wouldnt even raise them.

Here a year or two back me and Loretta went to a conference in Corpus Christi and I got set next to this woman, she was the wife of somebody or other. And she kept talkin about the right wing this and the right wing that. I aint even sure what she meant by it. The people I know are mostly just common people. Common as dirt, as the sayin goes. I told her that and she looked at me funny. She thought I was sayin somethin bad about em, but of course that’s a high compliment in my part of the world. She kept on, kept on. Finally told me, said: I dont like the way this country is headed. I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion. And I said well mam I dont think you got any worries about the way the country is headed. The way I see it goin I dont have much doubt but what she’ll be able to have an abortion. I’m goin to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she’ll be able to have you put to sleep. Which pretty much ended the conversation.

I think if you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics. Maybe he did. I told that to somebody at breakfast the other mornin and they asked me if I believed in Satan. I said Well that aint the point. And they said I know but do you? I had to think about that. I guess as a boy I did. Come the middle years my belief I reckon had waned somewhat. Now I’m startin to lean back the other way. He explains a lot of things that otherwise dont have no explanation. Or not to me they dont.

These old people I talk to, if you could of told em that there would be people on the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses speakin a language they couldnt even understand, well, they just flat out wouldnt of believed you. But what if you’d of told em it was their own grandchildren? Well, all of that is signs and wonders but it dont tell you how it got that way. And it dont tell you nothin about how it’s fixin to get, neither.

Where you went out the back door of that house there was a stone water trough in the weeds by the side of the house. A galvanized pipe come off the roof and the trough stayed pretty much full and I remember stoppin there one time and squattin down and lookin at it and I got to thinkin about it. I dont know how long it had been there. A hundred years. Two hundred. You could see the chisel marks in the stone. It was hewed out of solid rock and it was about six foot long and maybe a foot and a half wide and about that deep. Just chiseled out of the rock. And I got to thinkin about the man that done that. That country had not had a time of peace much of any length at all that I knew of. I’ve read a little of the history of it since and I aint sure it ever had one. But this man had set down with a hammer and chisel and carved out a stone water trough to last ten thousand years. Why was that? What was it that he had faith in? It wasnt that nothin would change. Which is what you might think, I suppose. He had to know bettern that. I’ve thought about it a good deal. I thought about it after I left there with that house blown to pieces. I’m goin to say that water trough is there yet. It would of took somethin to move it, I can tell you that. So I think about him settin there with his hammer and his chisel, maybe just a hour or two after supper, I dont know. And I have to say that the only thing I can think is that there was some sort of promise in his heart. And I dont have no intentions of carvin a stone water trough. But I would like to be able to make that kind of promise. I think that’s what I would like most of all.

Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men, 2005

Let me begin with the definition of a state. What must an agent be able to do to qualify as a state? This agent must be able to insist that all conflicts among the inhabitants of a given territory be brought to him for ultimate decision-making or be subject to his final review. In particular, this agent must be able to insist that all conflicts involving himself be adjudicated by him or his agent. And implied in the power to exclude all others from acting as ultimate judge, as the second defining characteristic of a state, is the agent’s power to tax: to unilaterally determine the price that justice seekers must pay for his services.

The market demand for intellectual services is not exactly high and stable. Intellectuals would be at the mercy of the fleeting values of the masses, and the masses are uninterested in intellectual-philosophical concerns. The state, on the other hand, can accommodate the intellectuals’ typically over-inflated egos and offer them a warm, secure, and permanent berth in its apparatus.

However, it is not sufficient that you employ just some intellectuals. You must essentially employ them all, even the ones who work in areas far removed from those that you are primarily concerned with: that is philosophy, the social sciences and the humanities. For even intellectuals working in mathematics or the natural sciences, for instance, can obviously think for themselves and so become potentially dangerous. It is thus important that you secure also their loyalty to the state. Put differently: you must become a monopolist. And this is best achieved if all educational institutions, from kindergarten to universities, are brought under state control and all teaching and researching personnel is state-certified.

But what if the people do not want to become educated? For this, education must be made compulsory; and in order to subject the people to state-controlled education for as long as possible, everyone must be declared equally educable.

The overwhelming majority of state supporters are not philosophical statists, i.e., because they have thought about the matter. Most people do not think much about anything philosophical. They go about their daily lives, and that is it. So most support stems from the mere fact that a state exists, and has always existed as far as one can remember (and that is typically not farther away than one’s own lifetime). That is, the greatest achievement of the statist intellectuals is the fact that they have cultivated the masses’ natural intellectual laziness (or incapacity) and never allowed for the subject to come up for serious discussion. The state is considered as an unquestionable part of the social fabric.

The first and foremost task of the intellectual anti-intellectuals, then, is to counter this dogmatic slumber of the masses by offering a precise definition of the state, as I have done at the outset, and then to ask if there is not something truly remarkable, odd, strange, awkward, ridiculous, indeed ludicrous about an institution such as this. I am confident that such simple, definitional work will produce some serious doubt regarding an institution that one previously had been taken for granted.

Assume a group of people, aware of the possibility of conflicts; and then someone proposes, as a solution to this eternal human problem, that he (someone) be made the ultimate arbiter in any such case of conflict, including those conflicts in which he is involved. I am confident that he will be considered either a joker or mentally unstable and yet this is precisely what all statists propose.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Reflections on the Origin and the Stability of the State, http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe18.html

[T]he United States is already a police state. Every state law, no matter how petty or important, has as its final punishment your imprisonment or death – should you decide to resist it to the bitter end. This is true of all states, everywhere, at any time.

If a state cannot convince its subject population to comply with its laws, it must initiate violence to enforce its will. The failure to use force will ultimately lead to the breakup of even the most monolithic state.

The reason that I argue that „every state is a police state” is that it is inherently the nature of the state to establish a compulsory monopoly of defense services over a given geographic area. Property owners who prefer no protection, or prefer to protect themselves, or prefer to hire other protective agencies are not allowed to do so. It is also in the nature of the state to obtain its revenues from taxation – a compulsory levy on the inhabitants of its territory. Every state depends on taxation to finance itself. If you don’t pay your taxes you will be imprisoned and/or your property will be confiscated.

All you need to know about states is that every state is a police state. Some have more edicts than others; some have fewer – but they all have laws that you must obey or suffer the consequences.

Even the most benign states violate the rights of peaceful people to be left alone. Even if there is no income tax, there are import and excise duties, sales and use taxes, and property taxes. If you want to opt out, you can’t unless you want to face the barrel-end of a gun. If you birth your children at home, the state wants to get involved. You are required to register their births. If you want to erect a building dedicated to your religion or your business you are required to get a building permit. If you want to homeschool your children you are required to report to governmental authorities.

. . . common sense and experience teach that if one takes care of the means that the end will take care of itself. The only way to avoid the police state is not having a state at all.

Carl Watner, Every State a Police State, http://www.voluntaryist.com/forthcoming/policestate.php

Mały ma 11 lat, ale wygląda na 9. Pierwszy raz pojawił się półtora roku temu. Przychodził do sklepu napraszając się o ulotki do rozdawania za pieniądze. Najczęściej zarabiał myjąc szyby, trzepiąc dywaniki samochodowe albo sprzedając jagody. Pewnego dnia zaczęliśmy rozmawiać.

Rozmowa 3:

– Aaaa, miałem tu u pani kupić coś na walentynki mojej jednej mamie, ale kupiłem już takie serce co się składa i białą różę. A drugiej mamie to chyba… no właśnie nie wiem.. chyba jej nie kupię…

– A z którą mamą mieszkasz?

– Z przybraną teraz, z prawdziwą to kiedyś mieszkałem, ale nie pamiętam tego, bo mnie od niej szybko zabrali. Babcia mi opowiadała… że ona dawała mi alkohol jak byłem bardzo mały… No i jeszcze, że jak miała mnie w brzuchu, to tłukła brzuchem o kant stołu, żebym urodził się martwy…

Postaliśmy tak przez chwilę cicho.

– Mimo wszystko fajnie, że się urodziliśmy i żyjemy, co nie? Niektórzy nie mogli się urodzić… – odpowiedziałam.

– Hmmm, no tak… A czy to prawda, że mamy dwa życia?

– A kto ci tak powiedział?

– Ksiądz.

– W pewnym sensie miał rację.

– I to następne życie będzie lepsze??

– Na pewno.

– To po co jest TO życie?!

Rozmowa 7:

– Wiesz Mały, mnie nikt nic nigdy w życiu nie dał – moralizuję.

– Naprawdę nic nigdy pani nie dostała???

– No… To znaczy w sensie, że na wszystko musiałam sobie ciężko zapracować.

– A to zaraz! – woła Mały i wybiega ze sklepu.

Po chwili wraca i wręcza mi… tabliczkę czekolady.

– Teraz już pani coś dostała!

– Dziękuję!

– A teraz już muszę lecieć, bo mama kazała mi być w domu o 19.00!

– No widzisz! Mama się o ciebie bardzo martwi! Chyba jednak nie jest taka zła!

– No nie jest… – śmieje się Mały.

Izabela, Niechciane dzieci: „Rozmowy z Małym”, http://notoryczna.salon24.pl/28381,index.html

Morgoth is not ‘invoking’ evil or calamity on Húrin and his children, he is not ‘calling on’ a higher power to be the agent: for he, ‘Master of the fates of Arda’ as he named himself to Húrin, intends to bring about the ruin of his enemy by the force of his own gigantic will. Thus he ‘designs’ the future of those whom he hates, and so he says to Húrin: ‘Upon all whom you love my thought shall weigh as a cloud of Doom, and it shall bring them down into darkness and despair.’

The torment that he devised for Húrin was ‘to see with Morgoth’s eyes’. My father gave a definition of what this meant: if one were forced to look into Morgoth’s eye he would ‘see’ (or receive in his mind from Morgoth’s mind) a compellingly credible picture of events, distorted by Morgoth’s bottomless malice; and if indeed any could refuse Morgoth’s command, Húrin did not. This was in part, my father said, because his love of his kin and his anguished anxiety for them made him desire to learn all that he could of them, no matter what the source; and in part from pride, believing that he had defeated Morgoth in debate, and that he could ‘outstare’ Morgoth, or at least retain his critical reason and distinguish between fact and malice.

[Morgoth said:] ‘I am the Elder King: Melkor, first and mightiest of all the Valar, who was before the world, and made it. The shadow of my purpose lies upon Arda, and all that is in it bends slowly and surely to my will. But upon all whom you love my thought shall weigh as a cloud of Doom, and it shall bring them down into darkness and despair. Wherever they go, evil shall arise. Whenever they speak, their words shall bring ill counsel. Whatsoever they do shall turn against them. They shall die without hope, cursing both life and death.’

But Húrin answered: ‘Do you forget to whom you speak? Such things you spoke long ago to our fathers; but we escaped from your shadow. And now we have knowledge of you, for we have looked on the faces that have seen the Light, and heard the voices that have spoken with Manwë. Before Arda you were, but others also; and you did not make it. Neither are you the most mighty; for you have spent your strength upon yourself and wasted it in your own emptiness. No more are you now than an escaped thrall of the Valar, and their chain still awaits you.’

‘You have learned the lessons of your masters by rote,’ said Morgoth. ‘But such childish lore will not help you, now they are all fled away.’

‘This last then I will say to you, thrall Morgoth,’ said Húrin, ‘and it comes not from the lore of the Eldar, but is put into my heart in this hour. You are not the Lord of Men, and shall not be, though all Aida and Menel fall in your dominion. Beyond the Circles of the World you shall not pursue those who refuse you.’

‘Beyond the Circles of the World I will not pursue them,’ said Morgoth. ‘For beyond the Circles of the World there is Nothing. But within them they shall not escape me, until they enter into Nothing.’

‘You lie,’ said Húrin.

‘You shall see and you shall confess that I do not lie,’ said Morgoth. And taking Húrin back to Angband he set him in a chair of stone upon a high place of Thangorodrim, from which he could see afar the land of Hithlum in the west and the lands of Beleriand in the south. There he was bound by the power of Morgoth; and Morgoth standing beside him cursed him again and set his power upon him, so that he could not move from that place, nor die, until Morgoth should release him.

‘Sit now there,’ said Morgoth, ‘and look out upon the lands where evil and despair shall come upon those whom you have delivered to me. For you have dared to mock me, and have questioned the power of Melkor, Master of the fates of Arda. Therefore with my eyes you shall see, and with my ears you shall hear, and nothing shall be hidden from you.’

Now when Túrin learned from Finduilas of what had passed, he was wrathful, and he said to Gwindor: ‘In love I hold you for rescue and safe-keeping. But now you have done ill to me, friend, to betray my right name, and call down my doom upon me, from which I would lie hid.’

But Gwindor answered: ‘The doom lies in yourself, not in your name.’

J.R.R. Tolkien & Christopher Tolkien, The Children of Húrin, 2007

Schoppe był coraz bardziej zdenerwowany, to się dawało wyczuć.

– Nawet słowo „ciąża” nie przechodzi panu przez usta! – krzyknął cienko.

– Hm? – zdziwił się dziadek. – Ależ przechodzi, i to gładko. Ciąża. Ciąża. Widzisz?

Babcia omal nie roześmiała się w głos. Józinek mógłby się założyć, że ona teraz wbija sobie paznokcie w przedramię – już dawno zauważył, że zawsze tak robiła, kiedy trzeba było koniecznie zachować powagę.

– Natomiast – ciągnął dziadek, a po jego minie widać było, że się rozeźlił – z pewnym trudem przechodzi mi przez usta zwrot „ciąża mojej wnuczki”. Zwłaszcza gdy go uzupełnię określeniem „nieślubna”. Ale to pewnie dlatego, że jestem taki staroświecki.

– Chyba jesteś – wtrąciła Babi. – Dzisiaj wiele jest samotnych matek, które dzielnie sobie radzą, skoro nie mogą liczyć na pomoc ze strony swoich mężczyzn.

– …a jeszcze trudniej przechodzi mi przez usta – dziadek nie dawał się sprowadzić z raz obranego szlaku – taka oto fraza: „nieślubna ciąża mojej wnuczki, której zaufanie zostało dotkliwie zawiedzione”.

– Ja niczego nie zawodziłem! – zakrzyknął nerwowo Fryderyk. – Odwrotnie! To Róża mnie nie uprzedziła, że może zajść w ciążę!

– Ta możność nie należy do szczególnie wyjątkowych w świecie kobiet, o ile mi wiadomo – odrzekł na to Ignacy Borejko, sztywno i z godnością. – Przy dopełnieniu, rzecz jasna, pewnych niezbędnych warunków.

Babcia zacisnęła mocno usta i roziskrzonym wzrokiem spojrzała w sufit.

– A jeśli mowa o słowach, których tu się nie używa – atakował dalej Fryderyk Schoppe – to wspomnę o słowie „seks”.

– Już jest obowiązkowe? – zainteresowała się babcia.

– …Może gdyby częściej się tego słowa używało w domu Róży, nie byłoby teraz tej niespodzianki!

– Czy sugerujesz – zapytał dziadek lodowato – że owa niespodzianka spotkała cię dlatego, że nie dość często używamy tu słowa „seks”? Mój Fryderyku, przyczyną ciąży, jak uczy biologia, nie jest niedostatek określonych słów, lecz zgoła co innego.

Słowna szermierka była specjalnością dziadka. Schoppe został zapędzony w sam róg planszy. Umilkł jak idiota.

Dziadek natychmiast dostrzegł swą przewagę i wykorzystał ją bez ociągania.

– Dlaczego mielibyśmy – zastanawiał się dalej z wyraźną przyjemnością – chodzić po domu, i to przy gościach, wypowiadając słowo „seks”? – w dodatku częściej niż dotąd? Co właściwie kryje się pod tym określeniem – czy życie płciowe homo sapiens? Jeśli tak, to, nie trudząc się bynajmniej nazywaniem rzeczy po imieniu, zyskaliśmy w tej dziedzinie życia wiele dobrego: nie tylko trwale nas uszczęśliwiło, ale i poważnie wzbogaciło. Mamy cztery córki i dziewięcioro wnucząt, a teraz urodzi nam się pierwsze prawnuczę. To będzie wielka radość.

– Małe dzieci tak ślicznie pachną – przypomniała sobie babcia.

– Lecz oczywiście, nasza satysfakcja nie manifestuje się na co dzień bezustannym wypowiadaniem słowa „seks” – kontynuował dziadek ku wyraźnej uciesze babci. – Czytałem, że im częściej ktoś wypowiada słowo „seks” lub jego synonimy, czy też określenia tematycznie zbliżone, tym więcej wzbudza wątpliwości; obsesyjne nawracanie do tego tematu świadczy bowiem najczęściej – a potwierdzi ci to każdy lekarz – o dotkliwym niedosycie w tej dziedzinie.

Babcia miała spiżową twarz i dłoń zaciśniętą na przedramieniu.

– Media – rozpędzał się dziadek – nadużywają dzisiaj twojego ulubionego słowa, zaspokajając gusta masowej publiczności, co jak zwykle przekłada się na czysty zysk. Lecz, Fryderyku, życie płciowe, wbrew powszechnej opinii prostaków, nie jest jedynym ani nawet najważniejszym celem naszego bytowania na tym globie. Nie będę rozwijał tego nowego wątku, bo zabrnęlibyśmy zbyt daleko w filozofię, dodam jednak, że jeśli mielibyśmy w tym domu potrzebę częstszego nazywania tego, co nas łączy, używalibyśmy raczej słowa „miłość”. Lecz, naszym zdaniem, dyskrecja jest jedną z oznak dobrego wychowania i miłą zaletą, zwłaszcza w tej materii, którą poruszyłeś. – Spojrzał spod oka na Fryderyka Schoppe i dorzucił: – Choć chętnie przyznaję, że nie wszyscy na świecie są tego zdania.

Schoppe milczał, zmiażdżony.

Józinek był szczerze dumny ze swego dziadka: puścił on tekst może przydługi, ale za to skuteczny. Potęga wymowy! – to jednak jest coś. Miło było popatrzeć na jej efekty.

Ale to jeszcze nie był koniec.

– Nie byłeś przesadnie entuzjastyczny, gdy ci Róża wyjawiła swą nowinę – prawda, młody przyjacielu? – zapytał dziadek po okresie dźwięczącej w uszach ciszy.

Amant Róży momentalnie ożył.

– Entuzjastyczny? – krzyknął. – Czy byłem entuzjastyczny?! Właśnie przyznano mi stypendium w Stanach! Zrobiłem dwa lata studiów w rok i co?! – miałbym teraz to wszystko poświęcić?! Przecież ja nawet nie zarabiam! Mieszkam kątem u rodziców, w bloku! Nie mam teraz czasu i możliwości na zakładanie rodziny.

– Mój drogi – wkroczyła babcia. – Jeszcze tego nie rozumiesz, ale ty już ją założyłeś. Nie ożenisz się z Różą, wyjedziesz do Stanów, lecz cóż z tego? – twoja rodzina i tak będzie na świecie.

Małgorzata Musierowicz, Język Trolli, Łódź 2004, s. 179-182