Category: Hannah Arendt

Usurpation: America’s We the People Represented According to Numbers Law is a Tool for Conviviality

3/6/2023

Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich

A 1973 book, Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich, argues our dream was to build machines to replace slaves, and instead we have become enslaved to machines.

“To formulate a theory about a future society both very modern and not dominated by industry, it will be necessary to recognize natural scales and limits. We must come to admit that only within limits can machines take the place of slaves; beyond these limits they lead to a new kind of serfdom. Only within limits can education fit people into a manmade environment: beyond these limits lies the universal schoolhouse, hospital ward, or prison.” (xii)

Fifty years on and Illich is still apt.

“The foreseeable catastrophe will be a true crisis – that is, the occasion for a choice – only if at the moment it strikes the necessary social demands can be effectively expressed. They must be represented by people who can demonstrate that the breakdown of the current industrial illusion is for them a condition for choosing an effective and convivial mode of production. The preparation of such groups is the key task of new politics at the present moment.” (114, bold added)

Illich argues the available convivial tool: “can only be the formal structure of politics and law.” (115)

Our foreseeable catastrophe is the true crisis of We the People not being represented according to numbers.

Our politics is the usurpation and its supporters.

Our law is Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the US Constitution … and its supporters.

The choice is between usurpation, which is the law of rule, and the US Constitution, which is the rule of law.

Choose.

Posted by Bryan W. Brickner

United We Stand 2020: Part 2 of Hannah Arendt, American Greatness and Constitutio Libertatis

7/20/2019

George Hammer and Ida Schiekoff's Wedding Day

Celebrate the Seventh Amendment on 7/20

Whatever great means, it includes the idea of something worth passing on.

George Hammer, my maternal great-grandfather, was born American from German immigrants.

George’s mother was born in Massbach, Bavaria, Germany and immigrated to the United States and Illinois’ Jo Daviess County with her family as a teenager in 1865.

George’s father came here as a five-year old from Zeitfeld Province, Germany (which is hard to find on a map) in the early 1850s as part of an immigrant family of five; they stayed with fellow Mennonites in New York for three years before homesteading in Jo Daviess County.

The land both families homesteaded was available because of the end of “Indian” hostilities in Illinois after the Black Hawk War. I’ve published a pamphlet that excerpts an Illinois history book (1878) with some details on how that war started and ended: see Fire-Water Ignites Black Hawk War of 1832 (and other things).

George, Ida and family (around 1920)

George wrote a few letters to a German woman in Canada named Ida Schiekoff; Ida was born in Arnhausen, Germany (in 1945 the village became Lipie, Poland) and immigrated to Canada as an 18 year-old in 1891. The two met by reading the same German newspaper and became pen pals. George then went to meet Ida and her family in Canada a couple of times; they soon got engaged, married, and moved to the family farm in Illinois. They lived a simple farm life, nothing fancier than good shelter and plenty of food, as there wasn’t any extra coin. Money showed up later, in the next generation, when their son and my grandfather, Willis (the child in the picture without a jacket), told me they started making money off the farm by selling surplus milk.

Maybe right there is a glimpse of the constitutional right within the Seventh Amendment and why it is there; it isn’t written for the rich in coin, or they would have used it: it’s there for the poor. It’s also constitutionally connected to the thirty Thousand, as the usurpation has organized the judiciary and our American sense of justice; the time to review (and amend) the Seventh Amendment, thus bringing to life its constitutional social justice bearing, is when We the People are represented according to numbers (say in 2021 or ‘22).

The same commentator that noted Arendt’s Constitutio Libertatis and honoring of the founders, also pointed out that she only thought the founders were a partial success; that is because, according to the commentator, the founders didn’t create space for We the People to participate. I don’t agree and think the evidence, our Constitution, shows otherwise; the thirty Thousand, the Enumeration, and the Seventh Amendment do provide ways for citizens to participate in their government at a “local” federal level via small districts augmented every ten years. It’s the usurpers fault, not the founders, who are keeping We the People from our constitutional greatness: us too, the people, as we haven’t shown vigilance until now.

Great means that something is worthy of being passed on, of giving to others as a legacy. The former Germans Hannah Arendt and Ida Schiekoff, and the children of German immigrants, like George Hammer, left us an American legacy. American immigrants are greater than the usurpers, and the usurpation of our right to representation, according to numbers, keeps us from our constitutional legacy … and that ain’t great America.

*Next Up: 17 September, US Constitution Day 2019, and Johnny Reb and Gus Yank Revisit Mount Horeb.

Posted by Bryan W. Brickner

2020: Part 1 of Hannah Arendt, American Greatness and Constitutio Libertatis

6/9/2019

American Greatness

Hannah Arendt said she wasn’t German.

The Germans didn’t want her anymore, ‘cuz, you know, they went nuts.

Why’d they go nuts?

One reason for sure is that American greatness was ignored.

Ask yourself, “How did Hitler come to power?” And the answer has to include the constitution Woodrow Wilson offered to Germany at the end of World War I.

Why didn’t Wilson offer the Germans a constitution like ours, like the one George Washington and the founders made?

Where’s the thirty Thousand?

Where’s the Enumeration?

Not in Wilson’s constitutional offering, so how could it be great? This is no small matter, given what happened to Hannah Arendt and millions of others.

When Arendt got to America she wrote about revolution. One commentator noted something new about her thoughts: “The new paradigmatic political actors are the American Founders, whose debates and deliberations concerning the drafting and adoption of the Constitution are presented by Arendt as every bit as exemplary as anything in Homer or Thucydides.”

As exemplary as anything in Homer or Thucydides: in other words, American greatness is not found in the boom-boom of rebellion and the 4th of July; American greatness is found in the law of revolution, the US Constitution, and 17 September.

*Next Up: A celebration of the 7th Amendment on 7/20 with Part 2 of Hannah Arendt, American Greatness and Constitutio Libertatis.

Posted by Bryan W. Brickner

We the People and Others: What Would Jesus Do… Deport the Catholics?

3/1/2018

Romans 12:17-21, The Book of the Is (page 40)

Reductio ad absurdum

Sure, the Jesus reference in the title is absurd, but there are defining similarities between Jesus and the Dreamers: because of their parents, both were born somewhere and then live somewhere else.

A Roman Immigration Officer might have asked Jesus some interesting questions, like:
“Who is your father?”
“Immaculate conception?”
“Where is your papyrus showing a Bethlehem birth?"
“You say ‘Three Wise Men’ were witnesses?”
“And what kind of work are you doing in Nazareth these days?”

Or one could read Romans for a Jesus-inspired Christ-like teaching that a constitutional We the People might try to enact; others, Martin Luther for example, have found inspiration and reverence in Paul’s counsel.

There is also the parable Jesus told about The Good Samaritan: this parable supports The Great Commandment (how one should live).

So what would Jesus do?

The teachings of Jesus are a political goal not represented by usurpation. Something like “The Good ‘Merican,” given the Great Commandment, seems the logical goal of a Christian United States of America. By representing We the People in Congress according to numbers, that is, by the law, we would find out what Jesus-inspired ‘Mericans would do … good and/or otherwise.

*Next Up: 9 April and Usurpation Day 2018, Ex Falso Quodlibet / From a Falsehood, Anything (Follows).

Posted by Bryan W. Brickner

Jesus of Nazareth, Miracles and Faith in Arendt Footnotes #9

11/21/2017

Arendt Footnotes #9

The power of faith was the crux of the argument between Martin Luther and Rome. In this passage and footnotes from Arendt’s The Human Condition, the teacher (didaskalos) Jesus of Nazareth is honored; Arendt compares the insights of Jesus to that of Socrates: Socrates for teaching “the possibilities of thought” and Jesus for teaching that “action is, in fact, the one miracle-working faculty of man.” Arendt highlights scripture, as Luther did, to show that Jesus taught a human power (faculty) “to perform miracles in faith.”

Hannah Arendt
The Human Condition
Section 34: Unpredictability And The Power Of Promise
(246-7)

“In the language of natural science, it is the ‘infinite improbability which occurs regularly.’ Action is, in fact, the one miracle-working faculty of man, as Jesus of Nazareth, whose insights into this faculty can be compared in their originality and unprecedentedness with Socrates’ insights into the possibilities of thought, must have known very well when he likened the power to forgive to the more general power of performing miracles, putting both on the same level and within the reach of man. (footnote #84)”

Footnote 84
“Cf. the quotations given in n. 77. Jesus himself saw the human root of this power to perform miracles in faith – which we leave out of our considerations. In our context, the only point that matters is that the power to perform miracles is not considered to be divine – faith will move mountains and faith will forgive, the one is no less a miracle than the other, and the reply of the apostles when Jesus demanded of them to forgive seven times in a day was: ‘Lord, increase our faith.’”

Footnote 77
“Matt. 18:35; cf. Mark 11:25; ‘And when ye stand praying, forgive, … that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.’ Or: ‘If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses’ (Matt. 6:14-15). In all these instances, the power to forgive is primarily a human power: God forgives ‘us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.’”

*Next Up: Sunday 26 November and Thereat part IX, Gus Kotka and Johnny Reb On Our Way Now.

Posted by Bryan W. Brickner

Usurpation Day 2017: Augustine, Freedom and Arendt Footnotes #8

4/9/2017

Usurpation Day 2017: Arendt Footnotes #8

Two hundred and twenty-five years ago, on 9 April 1792, Congress initiated the representation usurpation we still live under, the one against We the People and our birthright, constitutional representation according to numbers.

Usurpation of representation is illegal, immoderate and unconstitutional.

Usurpation of representation is a stolen American birthright.

Usurpation of representation is an act of war against We the People.

Speak your birthright America: for those who believe in the US Constitution, let 2020 begin today.

Hannah Arendt
The Human Condition
Section 24: The Disclosure Of The Agent In Speech And Action
(177, bold added)

To act, in its most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin (as the Greek word archein, “to begin,” “to lead,” and eventually “to rule,” indicates), to set something into motion (which is the original meaning of the Latin agere). Because they are initium, newcomers and beginners by virtue of birth, men take initiative, are prompted into action. [Initium] ergo ut esset, creatus est homo, ante quem nullus fuit (“that there be a beginning, man was created before whom there was nobody”), said Augustine in his political philosophy. (footnote 2) This beginning is not the same as the beginning of the world; (footnote 3) it is not the beginning of something but of somebody, who is a beginner himself. With the creation of man, the principle of beginning came into the world itself, which, of course, is only another way of saying the principle of freedom was created when man was created but not before.

2. De civitate Dei xii. 20.

3. According to Augustine, the two were so different that he used a different word to indicate the beginning which is man (initium), designating the beginning of the world by principium, which is the standard translation for the first Bible verse. As can be seen from De civitate Dei xi. 32, the word principium carried for Augustine a much less radical meaning; the beginning of the world “does not mean that nothing was made before (for the angels were),” whereas he adds explicitly in the phrase quoted above with reference to man that nobody was before him.

Next Up: Saturday April 15th and a 2020: Tax Day Disses Our Revolution and Abraham Lincoln.

Posted by Bryan W. Brickner

Mental Pictures: Spring and Summer 2017

4/4/2017

Mental Pictures 2017

Here is a blogging mental picture for spring and summer 2017. Three pamphlets: electricity and serotonin, another on Mosby’s Gettysburg, and then one on Martin Luther and popes. We’ll revisit PubMed for cannabinoid and serotonin news and continue with our 2020 visualizations … and more footnotes from Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition.

Thanks all and ever higher!

Next Up: Sunday 9 April, Usurpation Day 2017, and an Arendt Footnotes on Beginnings.

Posted by Bryan W. Brickner

Whiskey222: American Power and Hannah Arendt

10/29/2016

Hannah Arendt, American

The Human Condition
Action, section 28: Power and the Space of Appearance
Pages 199-200

“That civilizations can rise and fall, that mighty empires and great cultures can decline and pass away without external catastrophes – and more often than not such external ‘causes’ are preceded by a less visible internal decay that invites disaster – is due to this peculiarity of the public realm, which, because it ultimately resides on action and speech, never altogether loses its potential character. What first undermines and then kills political communities is loss of power and final impotence; and power cannot be stored up and kept in reserve for emergencies, like the instruments of violence, but exists only in its actualization. Where power is not actualized, it passes away, and history is full of examples that the greatest material riches cannot compensate for this loss. Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities.”

*Next Up: A phenomena pamphlet, What if Vietnam Never Happened? Foresight and Hindsight in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, on Friday 11 November.

Posted by Bryan W. Brickner

2020: Constitutional Decadence, the Public Realm and Bruce Dold of the Chicago Tribune

5/9/2016

2020 Constitutional Representation

Value

Hannah Arendt’s value clarity was noteworthy; to requote: “Value is the quality a thing can never possess in privacy but acquires automatically the moment it appears in public.”

The thirty Thousand and Seventh Amendment are both public, so how is it they exhibit so little power?

Jean Baudrillard (political theorist) adds a bit to Arendt’s value definition with the “fourth order” and the workings of the hyperreal; Bruce Dold of the Chicago Tribune comes to mind as an example of a hyperrealist; our Constitution is clear (see picture above) and yet First Amendment corporations remain silent.

Silence concerning the representation of We the People according to our numbers is Constitutional decadence.

*Next Up: 9 June and a 2020, US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ numbers quote (and Gus and Johnny return on Juneteenth).

Posted by Bryan W. Brickner

Wealth of Nations: Adam Smith and Arendt Footnotes #7

5/1/2016

Arendt Footnotes

Durability

Value always means value in exchange.

The Human Condition
Section 22: The Exchange Market
(163-4, bold added)

In this process from isolated craftsmanship to manufacturing for the exchange market, the finished end product changes its quality somewhat but not altogether. Durability, which alone determines if a thing can exist as a thing and endure in the world as a distinct entity, remains the supreme criterion, although it no longer makes a thing fit for use but rather fit to “be stored up beforehand” for future exchange. (footnote 30)
This is the change in quality reflected in the current distinction between use and exchange value, whereby the latter is related to the former as the merchant and trader is related to the fabricator and manufacturer. In so far as homo faber fabricates use objects, he not only produces them in the privacy of isolation but also for the privacy of usage, from which they emerge and appear in the public realm when they become commodities in the exchange market. It has frequently been remarked and unfortunately as frequently been forgotten that value, being “an idea of proportion between the possession of one thing and the possession of another in the conception of man,” (footnote 31) “always means value in exchange.” (footnote 32) For it is only in the exchange market, where everything can be exchanged for something else, that all things, whether they are products of labor or work, consumer goods or use objects, necessary for the life of the body or the convenience of living or the life of the mind, become “values.” This value consists solely in the esteem of the public realm where the things appear as commodities, and it is neither labor, nor work, nor capital, nor profit, nor material, which bestows such value upon on object, but only and exclusively the public realm where it appears to be esteemed, demanded, or neglected. Value is the quality a thing can never possess in privacy but acquires automatically the moment it appears in public.

30. Adam Smith, op. cit. [Wealth of Nations], II, 241.

31. This definition was given by the Italian economist Abbey Galiani. I quote from Hannah R. Sewall, The Theory of Value before Adam Smith (1901) (“Publications of the American Economic Association,” 3d Ser., Vol. II, No. 3), p.92.

32. Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics (1920), I, 8.

*Next Up: Monday 9 May and a 2020: Value, the Public Realm and Bruce Dold of the Chicago Tribune.

Posted by Bryan W. Brickner