In Santa’s Defense

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Amid Christmas carols and jingle bells and the spread of Christmas cheer, somewhere, there's often a scrooge off by himself muttering “Bah! Humbug!” For example, in a recent December, this article by John Kerkhoff and Kyle Griesinger characterized Christmas morning as “merely the sentencing phase of a kangaroo court overseen by an out-of-touch tyrant at the North Pole.” Scrooge would have been pleased.

In fact, most don’t know this, but among Scrooge’s many objections to Christmas, one has always failed to get a mention. It was probably thought apocryphal, but I put to you that it is as real as Santa himself, and it goes something like this: “We have an annual right to Santa’s property unless and until it is forfeited by our own bad behavior. Justice demands due process to decide what The People will do with Santa’s stuff! Until then,” says Scrooge, “we must boycott Christmas! It’s a bunch of nonsense! Hubbub! Milk and cookies should not be given to the miserable old saint but thrown at him!”

I know. I agree. Scrooge was probably just angling for some of that cheap naughty-list coal. And it probably worked, so it makes sense that others might try the same tactic today in order to get coal around burdensome government regulations. So, probably Kerkhoff and Griesinger aren't true scrooges. They were just being clever, and it must have worked again because, recently, their efforts were recapitulated on twitter! Transparent as the effort is, it still calls for someone to rise up in Santa’s defense. That's where I come in.

First, Santa evaluates behavior in a blameless manner. Kerkhoff and Griesinger disagree and accuse the old saint of spying for his intel, but that position is ill-informed. As it came out in court, Santa’s workshop is invisible because it exists in the dream world (see Miracle on 34th Street (1994)). Santa spends a lot time there, so when he sees someone, yes, it is probably when they sleep because it's in the dream world. He can tell when people wake just by their logging out of the dream world, as it were. So, neither case entails that he resorts to spying! And, for goodness sake, where’s the need? For all we know, Santa’s nigh-angelic role in this world positions him to get information straight from heaven. Or, he might get it straight from us in the dream world. After all, who remembers all of their dreams? So, no, Santa need not resort to controversial measures to get his information, and furthermore, there is no case against the accuracy of his assessment. There is no case against the accuracy of a magical saint with unimaginable resources.

Besides all that, Santa need not explain his gift choices to anyone. It is a matter of charity. It's a matter of one man’s choice about what to do with his own property. There need be no jury, and there should be none. Santa has rights, too, and even the most presumptive communist regime cannot claim authority over Santa or the labor of the elves.

Furthermore, Santa enjoys freedom of thought. If privately deciding that someone's behavior is bad counts as a lack of due process, where is Santa’s due process? His opponents have already ruled against his behavior. Have they robbed him of due process? No. They need no jury to formulate their own opinions, and neither does Santa.

So, Santa’s charity is just. South of the pole, scrooges may clamor to steal via the state and bark at those who object, but that just shows the North Pole's ways to be vastly superior. Rather than reward bad behavior and risk spoiling the whole world rotten, Santa practices prudent generosity. (If only the U.S. followed his example in foreign aid!) While America is vexed by litigiously crazy federal agencies assuming every (theoretically separate) power and court role they can in pursuit of their victims, Santa’s nonstate society is naturally immune to such troubles. Contrary to the opinions of some, the peoples of earth could stand to be a great deal more like Santa and the North Pole.

Merry Christmas.

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… (see “About”). Get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Roll for Development

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This is a bit of my episode with Paddy of Paddy's Parlor Games in which he walks us through his thoughts on how gaming and homeschooling can go together. Hear the whole episode below. Enjoy. -P

Penjammin: [G]aming is conducive for a lot of things for childhood development in general, including some things . . . like basic arithmetic and arts and crafts and stuff like that too. That's what I'm hearing. It sounds like it's true. Are there other ways to try and shoehorn the curriculum into the story of the game? But that's what it [would be]. It's kind of artificial. It's shoehorning, but maybe that's not necessarily bad as long as you don't do it too much. I wanted to mention that. But first I was thinking. We were talking about reading the manuals of the game, learning the system and the rules of the game and how that can be kind of technical and good for reading comprehension. Do you remember bulletin board games? Like, I don't know *laughs* what the age difference here is between us, but – the bulletin board systems and stuff? Do you? Before the internet?

Paddy: No, I don't think –

Penjammin: That's a compliment to you, so you're welcome.

Paddy: Ha. Thanks.

Penjammin: There was a thing where you would get your modem, and it would dial up at 2400 bauds per second or whatever, and then you would call this computer, and you could exchange messages and such. It's a bulletin board system. But they also had like text based games. They're called door games . . .

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… (see “About”). Get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Conscientious Objection

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This is a bit of my latest episode in which I respond to Tom Woods and Dave Smith's episode on a libertarian objection to voting Trump. Hear the whole thing below. Enjoy. -P

Hey, this is Pen up at the front here. I have a few introductory thoughts that should help set the forthcoming in good order. This is a response to Dave Smith and Tom Woods talking about why someone might have felt inclined to vote Trump, including themselves. Their conversation covers a lot of important stuff, so it merits some response, and a few really important points (maybe) went unaddressed, so I'm going to respond and contribute to the conversation, for whatever it’s worth. Election day has now passed, but I think that make this a better time to do this because it gives people less to get worked up about. “You’re going to talk people into not voting for-” That objection has passed. So there's that.

I want to say up front that I do appreciate these gents. I am criticizing their take, not them. I've been a fan of Dave Smith since seeing him on youtube videos of the insult comedy stuff at the Stand in New York. I can't remember if I'd heard of him liberty-wise before that or- that was my early memories of Dave-Smithery. Tom Woods is my gateway drug into libertarianism, so I very much appreciate his work. And really, who says it like Tom? And, mostly I agree with him on stuff. So having said all that, I want to get started with the disagreement, and there is one particular consideration I want to highlight up here at the front. I think it helps bring all of this into focus. It may sound trite at first, but just hold on. Hear me out. Here it is:

Opposing Harris did not require voting Trump. A candidate can be shown to be horrible (and Tom and Dave do a great job of that in their episode) and that, showing them horrible, that helps drive their success down to the point where they don't get elected. One can bring a candidate's success down somewhat, at least a single vote's worth. (That’s a low bar right?) They can bring the [opposing] candidate down a vote's worth instead of voting. How much does a single vote do, especially in a non-swing state? Maybe nothing . . .

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… (see “About”). Get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Better Libertarianism

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This is a bit of my episode with Iowancap in which we discuss how Libertarianism might be served by considering how various schools of ethics relate. Hear the whole episode below. Enjoy. -P

Penjammin: I was just reading For a New Liberty by Rothbard, and his last chapter is a strategy for liberty . . . He makes one caveat in there that I thought was really fascinating and perhaps a little controversial, which is really what you're saying. The idea that– well, a conservative in Congress might prefer some sort of a policy compromise or a trade where they get a little bit of this, a little bit for that. Whereas a libertarian who might want agree with the conservative on the boon, you know, that's to be had (maybe lower taxes or something), but they won't also say, “okay, but for this, what we're going to do is we're going to introduce a new act of aggression by Washington, DC against the people.” I'm not going to positively support that. I'm going to hold principle. The goal is always not to be incrementalist or gradualist, but to have the whole thing now. But with that hope, you know, firmly in place, there's you accept gains as they come. You're not going to tell them no. But he always had that caveat. It's like, “but I'm not going to vote positively against my principles. I will accept gradual movement towards them, but I will not vote against them.” . . .

Iowancap: Yet, I think there there is also an idea where, sometimes you do go for less bad. Sometimes that is the move. I think. In fact, I suddenly realized, Pen, that this all worked out perfectly because I realized that it was that phrase that I told you that I really loved, that you said, that actually launched all this thinking for me.

Penjammin: Okay.

Iowancap: And that is when I saw it, it was in a in a group chat, I saw that you made the statement: The means must be worthy of the ends.

Penjammin: Yeah.

Iowancap: And I think that is really what I'm talking about. Yes, we should keep in mind the ends. We need to keep the goals in mind. And, we shouldn't live purely principally and say, “but let's not look at what works. Let's not look at strategy, let's not look at tactics. Let's not look at reality.” At the same time, we have to always keep our principles in mind because if the means are not worthy of the ends, then you could start asking the question: “Are we really going where we think we're going?”

Penjammin: Yeah.

Iowancap: Especially as a Christian, I think that's very important because obedience to the law of God, obedience to the gospel and to Christ's commands, that is ultimately a winning strategy, even if short term it is not.

Penjammin: Right. I mean, we've already won.

Iowancap: And so I think that's really where this whole tension of principles and strategy is so important. Yeah, let's look for strategic ways to get the gospel to go out. Let's look for strategic ways to accomplish and to carve out the freedom to do the work that the church needs to do. And yet, if we at any point find ourselves going against the law of God with a sort of ends justify the means sort of mentality, then– if the means are not worthy of the ends, then we should question whether or not the means are actually going to get us to the ends that we think we're going toward.

Penjammin: Yes, because that's how you trapped. I think when you play the game, you get played by the game. It doesn't work in the long run. And, that's how I think about third-party voting as well. But I'll leave that for another time.

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… (see “About”). Get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Better Conservatism

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This is a bit of my episode with Iowancap in which we discuss Trump and conservatism. Hear the whole episode below. Enjoy. -P

Iowancap: At the Flyover Libertarian, which is the parent podcast, I guess you could say of The Anarchist Bible Study. On that show, we did an episode 23, Trump is a bad conservative is the title of it, but we kind of generally talked about conservatism broadly. And Penjammin, when we talked about getting him on the live stream tonight, he said he wanted to talk a little bit about what I said on that. I think that's what you were saying, right?

Penjammin: Yeah because I'm, you know, just such a bad fan that I haven't got to watch it yet. So now, if I have you here personally, I can get the scoop straight from the horse's mouth or whatever. It's an interesting subject to me in general, so I'd love to hear what your thoughts were.

Iowancap: Yeah. Just to give a brief kind of overview of that (and I recommend any anyone who wants to hear more to go over to The Flyover Libertarian podcast on — well, pretty much any app that you find, the anarchist Bible study, so whatever you're listening to this on or watching this on, go find the flyover libertarian on that same platform and watch episode 23 or listen to episode 23) — kind of the overview is we started by talking about how Trump had put up a page with his achievements, and we looked at that page and asked, so how many of these things are really things that . . . classical conservatism would really be excited about? And we said there's not a lot. But really, it got into some of my concerns, I guess, with conservatism in general . . . and ways in which I think libertarianism can help conservatism to be better.

Penjammin: Yeah ok.

Iowancap: And so one of the things that I said…

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… (see “About”). Get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.