Ordo ab Chao

I have been reading the afore-mentioned book recently and have been struck profoundly by some of the writings. I wish to briefly mention a few of them here.

The first passage that strongly resonated with me was a description of a time when Thoreau was put in jail for non-payment of taxes: “I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and THEY were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.” I love this! It is so true that the State can force a body to do what they desire it to, but they cannot force a man’s mind to do anything. This is an idea that is also eloquently expressed in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

The second passage that I want to share today is in a similar context. Thoreau has been ordered by the law to pay a tax/tool to a church which he never attended. He writes a letter to the town clerk saying “I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society which I have not joined.” He then goes on to write “If I had known how to name them, I should then have signed off in detail from all the societies which I never signed on to; but I did not know where to find a complete list.” We are said to be members of various societies every day that we did not consciously agree to, not the least of which is the State. I was never asked to participate in the social contract that makes our society; rather, it is presumed and forced upon each of us without our explicit consent.

Thoreau is one of the fathers of non-violent resistance to government. His example inspired men like Martin Luther King, Jr. to rise up in their own non-violent ways to defy the State’s power to control their lives. The more I read of Thoreau’s writings, the more inspirational he becomes to me.

Well I had no intention of doing so, but yesterday I went out and bought an Apple iPad. I’m happy to say that I love it so far, and am even writing this blog entry from the WordPress application. My favorite part about it is that I can sync my Google calendar with the native calendar, which is new since I last played with my iPhone. (Upgraded to a Google Droid a while back.) I’m also loving the Appigo ToDo application, which is even better on the iPad than it was on the phone. I even like the Kindle reader, though I will have to try reading for a long period of time before I can see if it will really replace the actual Kindle. Anyway, I’m back in the Apple iCult for now.

DonorsChoose.org is a charitable giving organization that I have been contributing to for a few years now, and I just wanted to take a minute and say how great I think it is. It’s one of the few charities that offers donors the opportunity to choose exactly what their contributions are spent on. The “projects” are all proposals from public school teachers. You can search and identify particular projects based on your own criteria: poverty of the classrooms, subject matter, age groups, etc. are all searchable items, and the descriptions of the projects let you know exactly where it goes.

Education is such an important thing for children to get, and especially in high poverty areas they just don’t have the same chance. I believe strongly that this is the kind of cause that individuals should be able to solve and the government should stay out of, and this is one of the areas where I “put my money where my mouth is.”

I hope you’ll take a look at the site and see if it’s the kind of thing you would be interested in supporting as well.

That’s right, I’m finally done with school. Today I graduated from Utah Valley University with a Bachelor of Science in Political Science with a Minor in Computer Science. It’s been a very enjoyable experience, and I have learned a lot, and (I hope) helped others in my classes to learn as well.

I haven’t decided whether I will try to extend my schooling further yet, but it is an option. For now, I am going to finish up getting my real estate license and relax for a bit.

I’ve also decided that I’m going to build a personal library of top-quality books that have influenced the world, particularly those of a political or philosophical nature. I have read a great deal of portions from these books during my school work, but I can not say that I have read all of these books. It is my goal to now be able to say that.

Last week I bought a new bicycle, a Trek 4300 with disk brakes. I took it out for a brief spin after putting it together, but nothing too significant, since I wanted to buy a helmet first. It was the first time I had been on a non-motorized bike in years, and I was a bit unstable, but pretty quickly figured it out.

Fast forward to today… I went for the first real ride on the new bike. Let’s just say it kicked my ass. I probably only rode five or so miles, but there were a lot of hills. When I was climbing the main big hill on my chosen route I thought my heart and lungs were going to explode. I’ve been exercising a lot more regularly since I had heart surgery a few months back (usually doing cardio six days a week). But all that cardio just wasn’t enough to prepare me for that hill. At the end of my ride my legs were just burning and rubbery. I cam home and basically went straight to a nap.

But now I’m feeling better, and certainly glad I bought the bike. It’s going to be great exercise and a good addition to my workout routine to break things up.

Welcome to my new and improved blog. Okay, maybe not really improved, but at least managed by somebody else’s server, time, and money.

I chose the name for this blog for two reasons. First, I believe in the principle of spontaneous order arising from the chaos of many individuals making independent decisions in their own self interests. Second, I hope that out of the random chaos of my musings on different topics, some ordered thinking or coalescence of thought will arise spontaneously. I also wanted to have a really cool, pretentious-sounding Latin title for my blog. It must be the wanna-be-lawyer in me.

Update: I have also imported all the posts from my old blog site into this one, so none of the goodness has been lost.

Tonight I had the experience of a lifetime. I was able to attend the final game of the 2009 Stanley Cup playoffs, and (more importantly) I was able to see MY team – the Pittsburgh Penguins – win the Cup.

I decided Wednesday night that I would try to get a ticket, and I was actually able to find one online through the Red Wings ticket exchange. It wasn’t cheap, but I figured that this kind of opportunity doesn’t come along all that often. I bought the ticket, a plane ticket, booked a hotel and a rental car, and less than 24 hours later, I was off.

I got to Detroit late Thursday night, checked into an airport near the airport, and the Friday morning I headed into downtown Detroit. I had lunch at the Hockeytown Cafe, and then walked down to Joe Louis arena. There was a party at the riverwalk next to the stadium. I hung out there for hours, listened to some bands, and watched some planes doing some racing and aerobatics over the river.

The game was MOST EXCELLENT. It was by no means a given that the Pens would win. There were some tense moments, particularly in the third period. As the buzzer sounded signaling the end of the game, there was a half-second of disbelief, and then the moment hit me!

I snapped as many pictures as I could, met some very nice Red Wings fans, and some very nice Penguins fans as well. The negative stories that I had heard about Detroit prior to coming turned out to be not true at all. Everyone I ran into during my stay was friendly, in spite of me wearing the wrong colors.

What an awesome trip! Go Penguins!

My brother is having this pretty funny blog war with his wife right now. It’s pretty amusing to see all the back and forth. Who knew blogs could be such a big deal?

If you haven’t been following the news for the past few years, you probably think I’m talking about China or Russia, or some third world country. Oh would that it were so. Unfortunately, I am writing about America, supposed to be the land of liberty and of the free, and a place where the rule of law governs, rather than the rule of will.

But as you know if you follow the news, police here in the good ole USA have let power go to their heads a bit too much. I myself had an encounter with the long arm of the law recently. Before I go into the details, however, I want to lay down some background. Following are a set of articles and videos from online about police abuse of power. All of these incidents (and hundreds of others that you can find in seconds) have led me to believe that police officers cannot be trusted any more than a common thug.

My run-in with the police happened a few weeks ago at the Provo city gun range. A group of friends were there shooting and apparently some other shooters didn’t think we should be there. We explained to them that we had a key, and told them they could lock the gate on the way out since we could let ourselves out. Apparently they decided to call the police, who appeared on the scene as my brother was driving down to the front gate to let another friend in.

The first police car pulled to the side of his truck, while the second car pulled in front of him. The first officer got out and stepped to the side of the vehicle and my brother rolled the window down. (So far so good.) The second officer then gets out of his car with a shotgun, walks toward the vehicle while visibly chambering a shell. He walks to the side of the vehicle and jerks the door open to stand there menacingly. He didn’t actually point the shotgun at the occupants, but it was definitely a threatening situation.

Meanwhile, I am standing about 200 yards away watching this with the rest of our group. When the first officer got out of his car, I kind of rolled my eyes and thought, “those morons called the police but once they find out the situation they’ll leave and we’ll go back to shooting.” When the second officer gets out and pulls a shotgun, my adrenaline level shot through the roof. Now I’m thinking, “oh s**t, this moron is about to shoot my brother.” Now the real problem is that I’m standing there with a rifle wondering if I need to do something to protect my brother from a cop who seems a bit out of control.

Fortunately, the whole situation ended without any further incident. But the police officer started a huge potential escalation when he introduced force and coercion where none had previously existed. One day he will threaten somebody and that somebody will react the wrong way. The officer may end up dead, and of course the person who shoots him will probably end up dead too. Two lives will be destroyed because this guy doesn’t have any thought or communication skills.

Police officers like this need to be disciplined, and trained, but more often the reaction is to rally around the troops and pretend that nothing is wrong. That way will simply lead to more problems. Officers should also be held to the same standard as the rest of the populace – “rule of law” anyone? When an officer shoots someone they should go to prison. When they threaten to manufacture evidence they should be fired.

Chicago Police Officer Attacks Female Bartender
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49kgG0s7lVk

Baltimore cops V.S. skateboarder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GgWrV8TcUc

Fresno Police Officers Violent Arrest of a Homeless Man
http://www.ksee24.com/news/local/39403357.html?video=YHI&t=a

BART Shooting – UPDATED!!! NEW angle of the shooting!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKKQ-gzc_Yw

Brett Darrow Case: Cop Fired After Fury Against Motorist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3GlEe1kCHA

Man says Provo police beat him
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,705283031,00.html

Well, as I just posted in the other blog category I voted on the way to work this morning. But I have to confess: I had evil thoughts while I was doing so. Let me explain…

Utah has decided to use electronic voting machines. I have seen a number of reports on television, and written sources, that have talked about the many numerous security problems with these voting machines. In spite of the fact that a federal office was created eight years ago to certify that these machines are good, NONE of them are certified.

Now the hacker in me just can’t let that go without thinking of cracking it. It would be SO cool to exploit the vulnerabilities in the system and get a write-in vote like “Mickey Mouse” elected. Of course I’m not going to do this because I’d rather not go to jail, but HOW AWESOME WOULD IT BE?!?!

I have the feeling that problems in government only get fixed when they are FORCED to fix them. This would be an excellent way to force their hand on one issue.