Mr. Jefferson's Pithy Prose

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--”

I sure wish that I could write like Thomas Jefferson did. In the opening sentence of the second paragraph of America's Declaration of Independence, quoted above, he defined the essence of what it is to be a human being, employing an economy of words that I can only envy and marvel at. Why can't I write pithy things like that? (“pithy”, meaning “precisely meaningful; forceful and brief”)

While Jefferson wrote clearly and eloquently, I'm constantly amazed at how often and how easily most people misinterpret his meaning. It's a dangerous thing to misunderstand one's own nature and the nature of one's rights. It will surely lead to the loss of the freedoms that those rights represent. A lot of damage to those freedoms has already been done due to such misunderstandings.

It's not hard to correctly discern the exact meaning of Mr. Jefferson's words. It only requires that one be paying attention to how one thinks. Here's the correct way to understand this most important of sentences, taken phrase by phrase:

“We hold these truths ...”: Jefferson doesn't pussyfoot around here. Right from the start, he's “forceful and brief”. He declares, in no uncertain terms that the words which are to follow are absolutely true. He offers no possibility for disagreement or debate here. And while it may seem arrogant of him, he even goes so far as to state that these truths apply to everyone with his use of the word “We”. It is never arrogant to assert that the truth is true, and he wasn't afraid to make such an assertion in a prominent public document.

“... to be self-evident, ...”: This phrase provides the complete justification for his previous assertion of truth. A self-evident truth is an axiom, something that we know to be true without requiring any proof, something which is necessary and fundamental to the existence of all knowledge. To deny a self-evident truth is to knowingly deny not just that truth, but all of its derived truths as well, inevitably leading to a self-contradiction. Such denial is the highest form of intellectual dishonesty. So we may proceed with the rest of this discussion with complete confidence in the certainty of Jefferson's position.

“... that all men are created equal, ...”: And this is the first of these self-evident truths. It is an undeniable, self-evident truth that all men are created equal.

Let's digress just a bit for the sake of clarity here. Jefferson wasn't being a sexist by his use of the word “men”. All men and women are created equal, of course. It's just that in the good old days of the Founding Fathers, before political correctness started oppressing our writing styles by insisting on the awkward and annoying use of phrases like “he/she”, “his or her” and such, it was universally understood that the generic use of the word “men” did not imply the exclusion of the fair sex.

But there's a far more important point that has to be made about this phrase. The use of the word “equal” in this context doesn't mean what a lot of people take it to mean. It doesn't mean that everyone is entitled to exactly what everyone else has in equal measure. It doesn't mean that stuff should be taken from the “haves” and given to the “have nots”, so that each person thereby becomes “equal” to every other person. Robin Hood isn't to be allowed among us. The word “equal” is being used here in the sense of “equivalence”, not in the sense of “sameness”. The context here is each citizen's relationship to government, not each citizen's relationship to other citizens. It's not about social programs. It's about each person being equal in the eyes of the government and of the law. It's meant to preclude granting preferential treatment to certain citizens by members of the government for any reason. The American Revolution was fought in order to abolish just such preferences, along with government sanctioned privileged classes, such as royalty, aristocracy, and nobility. If social and economic classes and “inequalities” happen to emerge from the everyday conduct of society's business, it's no concern of the government, nor does government have any authority to interfere with such outcomes. Governments may not create or destroy such naturally occurring spontaneous class differences, nor even pass laws intended to reduce those differences. None of these natural differences violates the equality of all men, as the term is used here.

“... that they are endowed by their creator ...”: Despite the use of the word “creator” in this phrase, nothing is stated or implied about any supernatural being that is involved in the affairs of men or the state. Separation of church and state is not being violated here. The mere fact that humans exist on this planet implies that they were somehow created, but Jefferson says nothing about how or why they were created. It's a statement that's entirely neutral on the subject of religion.

Well why then, did he bother to include the word “creator” in the paragraph at all, if it's completely neutral? Does it have any point at all? Oh yes indeed, it has a point to it, a crucial point, as will be explained next.

“... with certain unalienable rights, ...”: The previous phrase explained to us that the source of our rights is our creator, whatever that creator may be. What it means, and this meaning is what's crucial, is that we have whatever rights we have just by virtue of our existence. We were all created as beings that must be free to think and act as we see fit. Our rights don't have to be earned; they are a birthright. While everything else we may have must be earned, rights do not.

Why is this such a crucial point? It's crucial because our very survival as individuals and as a species depends upon it. Our nature, i.e., the way we were created, is such that we must survive by our wits, our intelligence. We're too physically inadequate to survive otherwise. We are neither the largest, the strongest, nor the fastest of creatures. We are however, the most intelligent of creatures, and quite fit for survival, provided we are free to make our own judgments and choices concerning the manner in which we wish to survive. Thus, what occupation, religion, mate, friendships, etc. we are to have must be freely chosen by each one of us without being harassed about those choices by the state, or by other people.

While our high degree of intelligence ensures that we are quite fit for survival, we all still make mistakes, lots of them. We're very fallible creatures. Most of the time we survive our mistakes, but a mistake can on occasion be fatal. Such is the risk inherent in our existence.

Should an individual leave his survival up to the judgment of other, equally fallible, individuals? Sadly, the vast majority of people do just that. They assume that another person, or group of people somehow have come upon some magical source of superior wisdom that enables them to have a means of making higher quality choices for them that carry less risk than their own judgments carry. It's erroneously assumed by many that if a majority agrees upon a course of action, that the risk of pursuing that course is then somehow lessened, or that it is less risky than any alternatives. People who engage in such magical thinking are only all too happy to surrender their rights, their freedom, their autonomy to some person, group or majority that they believe somehow knows better then they themselves do, the best way for them to live their precious lives. Self-reliance is a rare commodity these days, it seems.

Well ok, so we have these rights. Now what if someone wants to take them away from us, or what if we wish to freely choose to give them up or to turn them over to another person. Well, Jefferson's careful choice of the word “unalienable” tells us that this is impossible. You see, since our rights were given to us by our creator, not the government, or another person, there's no way to get rid of them. These rights are unalienable, we were created with them, just as we were created with arms, legs, brains, etc. None of those things can be alienated, or separated from us. When people speak of situations where they've “lost” their rights, or that someone has taken their rights from them, what they actually mean is that someone has forcibly interfered with their freedom to exercise their rights, i.e., has impeded their free will. No person, and no government, can take away another's rights. One's rights are as much an inseparable part of him as are his thoughts and feelings.

Implied in this phrase and the previous one is the fact that we don't obtain our rights from the state. No government can endow a person with his rights, nor can it nullify them. Jefferson makes clear that our unalienable rights were given to us by our creator as part of our creation. While the state cannot nullify, or take away anyone's rights, it can and does impede the freedom of certain people to exercise their rights by means of incarceration or even execution, in the case of those who have interfered with the exercise of the rights of others, i.e., criminals. The state may properly act in such a manner when a criminal has violated another person's rights. This is the only circumstance in which a government may violate another's rights. If it does so in any other circumstances, then the member(s) of the government participating in such actions are themselves criminals.

“... that among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ...”: Here Jefferson is not specifying all of the rights that each person has, he's merely listing a few of the most fundamental ones. Certainly the right to life is paramount. If we don't have that one, then we have no need of any of the others. And liberty is the precondition for all of our other rights. Without liberty, no one can exercise any of the others. And since the only rational purpose of any human life is happiness, then we must have the right to freely pursue that happiness.

Notice that Jefferson does not state that anyone has a right to happiness itself, only that everyone has the right to pursue his own happiness, however he chooses to define happiness for himself. Happiness is guaranteed to no one, but since it is a potentially attainable state for everyone, each of us must have the right to pursue it unimpeded by the actions of another person or of the state, or it almost certainly will become unattainable for all of us.

Since Jefferson only listed three of the most fundamental rights, what then are the others? Surely he recognized that there must be others, or why would he have used the words, “among these rights”? What are these other rights? Who decides what rights we have, the majority, the state? Absolutely not. Rather than quibble incessantly about what rights we do and don't have, we can simply state that we each have the right to think, say and do anything we choose. But since we know that “all men are created equal”, then we know that the only limit upon each of our rights is the equal rights of others. Given a little bit of thought, one can easily see that it's pure perfection.

Since each of us has rights to all things, limited only by the equal rights of others, and since individual persons are the only beings that have rights at all (because they are the only beings which have need of them), it's clear that Mr. Jefferson intended that governments should have no rights at all, and that a government's only proper function is to protect the rights of each of its citizens.

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I just wrote over 2,000 words explaining what Thomas Jefferson said in less than 40. although I explained his pithy prose, I did not elaborate upon them. His writing stands on its own when properly understood.

What saddens me is that I had to explain his words at all. It shouldn't have been necessary, given that he expressed nothing but self-evident truths, but the people of the United States have long ago forgotten the self-reliant act of thinking for themselves, and have left the meaning of his magnificent words to be twisted beyond recognition for them by politicians and philosophers. I hope it's not too late to turn things around, and for each of us to rediscover the true meaning of our Declaration of Independence.

© 2004 by Bernard Schneider. All rights reserved.

What the Hell Kind of a Choice is This?

Bush or Kerry? What the hell kind of a choice is this?

I'm reminded of something that Joe Garagiola once said in another context (he was announcing a baseball game at the time):

"... It's like being strapped in the electric chair and being given the choice of AC or DC."

I also like what Michael Badnarik (2004 Libertarian Party presidential candidate) said in a similar vein:

"If you were in prison and you had a 50% [chance] of lethal injection, a 45% chance of going to the electric chair and only a 5% chance of escape, are you likely to vote for lethal injection because that is your most likely outcome? If you continue to vote for the Democrats or the Republicans, you are committing political suicide!"

© 2004 by Bernard Schneider. All rights reserved.

The Top Ten Things That Are Ruining Major League Baseball

I'm a bona-fide baseball fan. I just love the game. I've been a Yankees fan since the day I was born. But I'm getting more and more disgusted with what's become of the game with each passing season. Here are 10 reasons why:


10. Ballplayers As Role Models - I've admired many ballplayers over the years, especially when I was growing up, most of them Yankees of course. Joe Dimaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Willie Mays, ... they all meant a lot to me. But I couldn't care less about their off-field activities or behavior.

My ticket to the game gives me the right to watch the players play the game. It doesn't give me the right to make judgements about their personal lives. If a player does some thing off the field that's offensive or distasteful to me, I am of course entitled to my opinion of it, but it really has nothing to do with baseball games.

Once, when I was a teenager, I went to a game at Yankee Stadium. After the game, I waited outside the players' entrance to see some of the Yankees up close and personal. I saw Don Larsen, the only player to ever pitch a perfect game in a world series, leaving with four beautiful young ladies, two on each arm. Did I feel disappointed and disillusioned by a Yankee's playboy style? Hell no, I was just envious.

Its not a ballplayer's responsibility to live his life by my personal standards of behavior. His only responsibility to me is to play the best game of baseball that he can in return for my price of admission. What he does before the umpire yells "Play ball!" and after the last out is made is none of my business.

I just don't know if Pete Rose really ever gambled on baseball games, but I've never personally seen any evidence to suggest that he ever did. Anyway, I just don't care. Pete Rose played baseball with more dedication, intensity, passion, heart, and integrity than anyone who ever played the game before or since, And he got more base hits than any player in history, more even than Ty Freakin' Cobb. For those reasons, and only for those reasons, the guy belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Is's important to remember that baseball is a game; not a morality play, just a game.


9. Broadcasters' Cute New Terminology - Baseball announcers and commentators like to draw attention to themselves by making up really stupid new terms. Home runs have become ''dinger's" or "jacks". Of course for a while, it caught on, and pretty soon nearly all of them started calling home runs by their new stupid names. Funny, but I don't recall ever hearing any real true baseball folks use those words. Fortunatly, they've recently fallen into disuse, and a home run is now mostly just called a homer.

A few years ago, the announcers for the Colorado Rockies, Drew Goodman, and his overly talkative sidekick, George Frazier, decided to start calling strike outs "punch outs". I wonder if they thought they were announcing prize fights. I wonder if they had any idea of how stupld they sounded.


8. Managing With Pitch Counts - What's gained by having a starting pitcher's performance limited by putting him on a pitch count? I think that the theory is that almost any pitcher gets too tired to continue pitching after throwing about 100 pitches as hard as he can, and at that point he should be taken out for a relief pitcher. How does any manager or pitching coach really know this is true?

I think the theory is flawed. Every pitcher is different in his abilities and endurance. While pitcher A's strength might be an overpowering fastball, pitcher B's might be his pinpoint control at speeds well below the speed of sound. Obviously, pitcher B should be able, all other factors being equal, to throw well over 100 pitches effectively, while pitcher A could easily become worn out well before he pitches 70.

What's lost from the game is complete game victories. In the past, a good pitcher would pitch lots of complete games each season. It wasn't unusual for a pitcher who had a 20 win season to have 13 or 14 of those victories be complete 9 inning efforts.

Sandy Koufax has long since retired, and Pedro Martinez is still active, but Koufax won 142 complete games in his distinguished career, while Montinez has only 37. If he continued to pitch for the rest of his life, Pedro still wouldn't come close to Sandy's total.


7. Organ Music and Other Offensive Noises - Besides the just plain annoying sound of the organ, music is out of place at a baseball game. After a good play, fans should be able to relish it and discuss it without being distracted by the din of the organ. If I want to listen to organ music, I'll go to church. By the way, I'm a huge music fan as well as a huge baseball fan.

Other kinds of noise during a game are also out of place. Things like "Charge!!!", "Day-O!!", and the "Mexican Hat Dance" have nothing at all to do with baseball. Yell and scream and boo all you want, but let's save the cheerleading for football games, OK? The noise sounds a hell of a lot better when it's disorganized anyway.


6. Batters Can't Bunt Any More - It's every batter's responsibility to perform a well executed bunt when the situation calls for it. Bunting is a fundamental baseball skill, yet in this day and age, very few players can do it well. A manager should be able to count on a batter's bunting skill, no matter who he is, even a power hitter. There are three situations that may call for a batter to lay down a bunt:

1. It's a close game, with a runner on first and less than two out. The batter should he able to lay down a sacrifice bunt precisely enough so that the fielder has no other play but to first base, thereby moving the base runner into scoring position.

2. Again, late in a close game, with a fast runner on third and less than two out, the batter should be able to squeeze the tieing or winning run in. There's nothing more exciting than seeing your team win in the bottom of the ninth on a suicide squeeze play.

3. To get a base hit. This is the only case where the batter is required to be a fast runner.

Its always been the case that pitchers are expected to bunt frequently when there is a runner on first base. This is because pitchers are usually weak hitters anyway, so they might as as well sacrifice a runner to second instead of swinging away and making an empty out. But even pitchers these days are pretty bad at bunting. Managers often seem to lack confidence in their hitters' bunting skills, with much justification. Often they'll waste a pinch hitter to swing away in a situation that calls for a sacrifice bunt because they're just not sure their pitchers can pull off a bunt. How often do we see half hearted or just plain awful bunting efforts? Badly placed bunts seem to be more the rule than the exception.

Phil Rizzuto was the best bunter I ever saw. He was small, fast and agile, and more often than not, he'd end up safe at first. Mickey Mantle, who was not small at all, but just as fast and agile, would often forgo his imressive power swing to artfully drag a bunt down the first base line for a single. And Mickey could do it from either side of the plate.

What I think Mantle and Rizzuto had in common was that they both practiced bunting a lot. I'd love to see some evidence that today's players were doing the same.


5. Analysts In the Broadcast Booth - They talk way too much. It's yada yada yada after every single pitch.

When I was a kid, I used to listen through the earphones of a home made crystal radio to baseball broadcasts. There was only one announcer, and he usually kept me very well informed about what was going on down on the field without any help from a sidekick.

On television, there's even less need for spoken commentary than there was on radio. I know baseball pretty well, so I don't need anyone telling me how many fingers the pitcher placed across how many seams on each and every pitch.

Those analysts in the booth, they should just shut up. Better yet, they should just stay home.


4. Infielders Not Tagging Second Base On Double Plays - Believe it or not, there is an official rule book for major league baseball, and it doesn't say that the second baseman or shortstop only has to come close to touching second base on a double play. He's required to actually touch the base with some part of his body while the ball is in one of his hands, and do it before the base runner touches that base with some part of his body. Then he may proceed to throw the ball to the first baseman to make the second out of the play.

Making the play at second base and then relaying the ball to first base on a double play requires a great deal of skill. The agility, coordination, speed and timing involved are possessed by only a few great athletes, and even they need lots of practice. When umpires call the runner out at second base, and the infielder hasn't actually touched the base reduces the level of skill required by a huge amount. Any mediocre player can get a cheap two outs that way.

Because they're difficult to execute (or should be) double plays should occur relatively rarely. But because of today's sloppy execution and even sloppier umpiring, they occur way too often. I recently saw a playoff game in which one of the teams made 6 double plays! And that didn't happen because of the teams excellent defensive skills either.

It's often been said that "baseball is a game of inches", yet I've seen umpires call runners out at second when the infielder missed tagging the base, not by mere inches, but by more than a foot. This practice strikes a big blow against the integrity of the game.


3. Umpires Redefining the Strike Zone - The rule book is quite explicit and very clear on where the strike zone is. It also makes clear how much latitude the umpires have in redefining it: they have none.

Most major league umpires violate the rules and set the strike zone in ideosyncratic fashion. Nowhere in the rule book does it give umpires permission to espress their individuality when calling balls and strikes.

Whenever an umpire fails to observe the strike zone, only two explanations are possible. Either he's incompetent, in which case he deserves to be fired, or he's cheating, in which case he belongs in jail.

It's common knowledge that umpires give the "benefit of the doubt" on "close" calls to certain pitchers, e.g., Tom Glavine or Greg Maddox. This is clearly cheating, and the fact that the baseball commissioner obviously condones this practice, means that he is knowingly a part of the fraud.

This practice of the umpires, not the Black Sox scandal or Pete Rose's alleged gambling, is the most destructive fact of baseball history, and no one (exept for me, of course) is speaking out about it. Gamblers aren't destroying the ''integrity of the game" nearly as much as the umpires are.


2. Playing Rap Music Between Innings - They're playing this rap shit in Yankee Stadium. In Yankee Stadium, for crissakes!! That's as disrespectful as farting in church, and just as sinful.

1. Wild Card Teams - The greatest evil of them all is the practice of allowing teams that haven't earned them, places in the playoffs.

Major League Baseball officials and owners like to brag about how hard they work to preserve the "integrity of the game". But no sport can claim to have the slightest bit of integrity at all when it allows losers to be declared as champions, as has happened several times in recent years. A team has to earn its place in the World Series by first winning its division outright over the course of the entire season, and then by defeating all of the other first place teams that it faces. Second place teams are just that, second place teams. They aren't legitimate playoff teams.

It's been said many times, and it is true, that any team can beat any other team in a short series. That's easy to do. Hell, it isn't hard at all to find numerous occasions during a season where a last place team has swept the eventual first place team four games straight. Winning a short series isn't hard. Winning an entire season, then winning a short series againt another team that also won it's season ... that's hard.

Second place teams are not entitled to "do-overs". Their seasons should be over ... period. While first place teams clearly have to be the very best over the entire season, second place teams only have to hang on at the end of the season, and they get a shot at a few short playoff series. That's not integrity; it's just a convenience for the team owners, who think they have figured out a way to compensate for the artificial imbalance in the number of divisions they have created.

Well, if I'm going to complain about things, then don't I have an obligation to suggest a better way to do it? Hell no, I don't. I didn't create the problem, so it's not my responsibility to solve it. I don't know, and I don't care how it gets fixed, just as long as they get the @&^%*&# wild card teams out of the playoffs.

Any wild card team that wins four out of seven World Series games is not by any stretch of the imagination a legitimate World Champion. That means that the Boston Red Sox did not legitimately win the American League pennant by beating the Yankees in four of seven games. They never did what is required to earn that pennant. The Yankees beat the Red Sox, and all of the other teams they faced all season long, and thereby earned its place in the playoffs by finishing in first place. I don't mind the Yankees losing a playoff series, as long as they lose it to another first place team, i.e., another team that earned it's place in the playoffs.

The Red Sox will continue to be saddled with The Curse of the Bambino until the day comes that they actually win the American League East division, and stand in first place in that division at the end of a complete season, as the Yankees have done so many times.

The time has come for Major League Baseball to stop glorifying losers.

© 2004 by Bernard Schneider. All rights reserved.

What's This "Absolute" Thing All About?

"The Absolute", a term often used by mystics, is something that has puzzled me ever since I first heard about it. It has connotations of the immutable, the eternal, God, wholeness, and oneness.

I've got a better idea. Let's just say that "The Absolute" is just plain old reality; the one and only reality. And it's whole too. You can't have more of it than there is, and you can't have less of it than there is either.

Reality is absolute. It isn't subject to anyone's wishes or whims. One can have illusions about reality, but one can do nothing to cause those illusions to be real.

© 2004 by Bernard Schneider. All rights reserved.