Much of our understanding of the universe, or of human society, arises from the pursuit of three basic questions: where did it all come from, where is it all going, and what rules are in place while we are here? These questions dominate our inquiries in philosophy, the sciences, religion, the study of social systems, and other areas. These questions are implicit in the theme of this conference: "Refounding of America." We are gathered here to ask these questions. We have a sense that America got off to a pretty good start, but that things got fouled up along the way. We want to know if there might be a way of changing course for the future. Is it possible for us to rediscover older, valued principles – or to discover new ones – so as to make of our society something other than its present destructive, butcherous, tyrannical, and otherwise dehumanizing system of practices?

     Western civilization in general, and the American branch of it in particular, is in a state of turbulence. Our social systems no longer work the way we expect them to. The institutional order is in a state of collapse, with particular attention focused on the state, which no longer enjoys popular approval. In an effort to forestall its decline, the political establishment has resorted to a declaration of war against the rest of the world. The mantra has become vocalized in the playground logic: "if you're not with us, you're against us." [That phrase has been misstated. What it really says is "if you're not with the U.S., you're against the U.S."] With virtually no objection from either of America's two major political parties (who, after all, are nothing but fronts for the political establishment) we now have an imperial president who rules by whatever momentary whim appeals to him; who picks and chooses from congressional legislation those portions he wishes to follow; who determines the enemy du jour upon which to visit the weaponry and troops that can reduce cities to rubble within days, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children whose only "offense" was to have been targeted for destruction. Such practices are rationalized on the grounds of a "war on terror" designed to solicit the support of Boobus Americanus for its own subjugation.

     In furtherance of this spurious "war," the state has enacted all kinds of legislation aimed at increasing surveillance of Americans, allowing for government agents to enter people's homes without their consent or knowledge to search for whatever interests them, restricting travel, increasing the likelihood of military rule within the United States, abolishing habeas corpus, expanding police powers, and other tyrannical practices. All of this is in addition to the largely unchallenged authority of the state to incarcerate "suspects" without a right to a trial or appeal to the courts; to conduct secret trials; to torture people – even transporting such victims by corporate American jets, to foreign countries who are more adept at torture techniques. So enthusiastic was Congress for this so-called "war on terror," that it passed the "Patriot Act" – with overwhelming support – even before the proposed legislation had been drafted!

     The political establishment knows, full well, that this make-believe "war on terror" is, in fact, a war on the American people; a war to preserve the existing political order. As most Americans continue to sit up, beg, and roll over on command, and to carry their own leashes in their mouths, those who run the political establishment are aware of its own impending decline and fall, and recognize that only an all-out, draconian reign of terror – facilitated by what the state, itself, has deemed a "permanent" war against "terror" – is capable of reversing the decentralizing influences that are bringing down Plato's beloved pyramid. Such dynamics are what underlay Randolph Bourne's observation that "war is the health of the state," as well as Pogo Possum's lament that "we have met the enemy, and they is us."

     One of the unexpected casualties of all this has been the doctrine of "constitutionalism." Those who put their faith in the idea and practice that governmental power could be limited (and individual liberty protected) through written constitutions, have had to face the truth so well expressed by Anthony de Jasay: there is no way – constitutional or otherwise – to keep a sizeable number of people from doing whatever they want to do.

     De Jasay's comments do not provide any startling revelations. Before the US Constitution was ratified, the anti-federalists were well aware that Americans were being asked to buy into a dangerous system. Anyone who bothered to read this document could tell of its tyrannical implications: Congress was given the power to "make all laws which shall be necessary and proper" for fulfilling all powers created in the government [this provision has been given a very broad interpretation, expressed in some cases as whatever legislation is "convenient" for such ends]. Congress was also given the power "to lay and collect taxes," to "pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare," and the authority to "regulate commerce among the states," a power so broadly interpreted as to give Congress power over virtually any aspect of the economic life of the country. In 1942, in the case of Wickard v. Filburn, the Supreme Court upheld legislation that allowed the federal government to regulate the amount of wheat a farmer could grow for use on his own land. In defining the scope of Congress's "commerce clause" powers, the court reasoned that whether an activity is local in nature may help to determine whether Congress intended to regulate it. Congress, in other words, is to be the judge of its own powers! Meanwhile, our current president has, on a number of occasions, publicly embraced the idea of being a dictator, "so long as I'm the dictator," a position echoed in his self-referential role as "the decider." These are just a few of the more significant examples of the seemingly unencumbered exercise of constitutional power by government.

     Meanwhile, in the executive branch of government, advocates of an imperial presidency have, for a number of years, insisted upon the president enjoying certain "implied powers," including what has come to be known as "executive privilege." Those who continue to believe in the myth of a constitution of "limited powers," are often heard to defend such unexpressed presidential authority. There is no mention of "implied powers" or "executive privilege" anyplace in the Constitution. To argue for such implied authority makes no more sense than contending that the Second Amendment gives individual citizens the "implied right" to shoot government officials!

     Over in the judicial branch, the Supreme Court – as early as Marbury v. Madison in 1803, took unto itself a power nowhere spelled out in the Constitution: the power of judicial review, usurping the authority to determine the constitutionality of legislation enacted by Congress.

     A brief review of constitutional law cases reveals that, far from government having been delegated limited powers, it enjoys an expansive grant of authority which, in turn, has been given a very broad interpretation favorable to the political establishment.

     What about those provisions known as the "Bill of Rights," those liberties it has been the supposed purpose of government to protect? They have been given very narrow, restricted definitions. Thus, the courts tell us that government's powers under the "commerce clause" are "not limited to," or that the "necessary and proper" clause does not restrict the government to "absolutely essential" means. When discussing liberties, on the other hand, the courts tell us that "freedom of speech" does "not include," or that "freedom of religion" does "not mean." The "general welfare" is basically whatever Congress chooses it to mean. Whenever it suits the government's purposes to intrude upon individual liberties, politicians can be counted upon to recite the catechism that "the Constitution is not a suicide pact," the kind of statement guaranteed to bring "amen" shouts from those who still like to pretend that the Constitution has any real significance in restraining governmental power. To the statists, "liberty" is but a "loop-hole" to be closed.

     Compelling evidence for how little the legal system believes that the Constitution was designed to protect your liberties is found in that obscure provision known as the Ninth Amendment. This provision of the Bill of Rights was intended as a "catch-all" for all the other liberties retained by individuals, and which were not spelled out in the earlier Amendments. For reasons borne out by history, the fear was expressed that making reference to free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, right to due process and habeas corpus, the right to be secure in one's home and possessions, etc., might leave the impression that these were the only liberties retained by people. The Ninth Amendment tells us that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." A pretty clear statement: the fact that we have emphasized certain rights elsewhere does not mean that individuals do not retain a much greater reservoir of liberties.

     One would think that such a provision – reflecting a default position for all other liberties – would have given the courts a basis for thousands of cases defining all kinds of recognized liberties. A research assistant of mine searched the cases and found but a very small handful of references to the Ninth Amendment – and most of these were cited by state courts. Roe v. Wade is the best known of the federal cases resting on the Ninth Amendment. Other state and federal cases found an individual's right to use contraceptives, to decide what to ingest into his or her body, hair length in schools, to have family integrity, to engage in political activity, and to decide with whom one could associate in her own home, as the principal liberties protected by the Ninth Amendment. You will notice that, like First Amendment "flag burning" protection, none of these liberties interfere with fundamental government policies or practices. These are quite minor individual "rights" that the state can afford to give up to help provide the illusion that your liberties are secure under the Constitution.

     How did we manage to move from a relatively small national government to our present world-dominating leviathan? How have we been able to reconcile the contradictions between our expectations of a benign government, and the harsh reality of its monstrousness? Why do we continue to delude ourselves that the Constitution is what prevents the government from doing all of the terrible things it does?

     There is a multi-faceted answer to this enigma. In the first place, the consensus definition is that government is an agency that enjoys a monopoly on the use of force within a given geographical area. This, alone, should be a tip-off that the state is set up to behave as a bully. Secondly, we have allowed the state – through its judicial branch – to interpret its own powers. (Do you begin to see where this is going to end up?)

     As George Orwell informed us, we become mesmerized by words. We are beings who deal with one another and the rest of nature through elaborate abstract systems. We are so tied to our words, symbols, and other images, that we believe them to have a clear, objective meaning. But as Alfred Korzybski reminds us, "the map is not the territory." Our abstractions are not the "things" we seek to describe or define. The word WATER will not quench your thirst, nor will you find nourishment from the word BANQUET. At best, words are very fuzzy, particularly at the edges where they come into contact with other words. Thus, the watered-stock of a cattle rancher will have an entirely different meaning than the watered-stock of a Wall Street investment banker.

     Words, in other words, must be interpreted. If we acknowledge that government officials – like everyone else – are motivated by self-interest, and then we give to the state the authority to interpret the meaning and scope of its abstract powers (e.g., "general welfare," "necessary and proper," "due process of law," etc.), what do you expect the outcome to be? In its most intellectually corrupt form – as illustrated in Orwell's 1984– the practice can lead to such propositions as "war is peace," "love is hate," and "freedom is slavery," the kind of thinking now extant in Washington, D.C., as babblers suggest to us that our obedience to whatever the state demands of us is essential to maintaining our "freedom." Is it any wonder that most of us are conditioned to think of the range of our liberties in terms of what the Constitution provides; that if what we want to do is not specifically provided for in the Bill of Rights – as defined by the government – then we do not have such a right?

     A third factor resides in the dynamics of collective power. Why do large corporations, for instance, have so much influence within the government – indeed, provide the base of the political establishment – while you and I have virtually none? (I have defined "democracy" as "the illusion that my wife and I, combined, have twice as much political influence as David Rockefeller.") Why this is so is easily explained by the fact that those with a concentrated economic interest in the outcome of a political decision will have a much greater incentive to influence that decision than will those with only a diffused interest. To illustrate: let us suppose that Congress is considering a bill that would raise the price of milk by ten-cents per gallon – said amount going to dairy producers. Let us imagine that you drink one gallon of milk per week, meaning that, should this bill pass and your demands for milk do not change, you will be paying $5.20 more per year for milk than you are now paying. Even if you become aware of this proposed legislation – about which the establishment-serving media will have no motivation to inform you – will you be inclined to hire an attorney, or a lobbyist to oppose it? Probably not: the cost of your doing so would far exceed the anticipated increased milk price. What about the dairy producers? Let us assume, conservatively, that 100 million milk drinkers will be affected by this measure, and that they will end up paying a combined $520 million dollars more than they are at present. Will the dairy producers be motivated to send lawyers and lobbyists to Washington to support the bill?

     The fourth matter of significance that has led to our present social and political plight is found in the confluence of the first three factors. Western society has become thoroughly institutionalized – a process I explored in my Calculated Chaos book. In what has come to be known as our "corporate-state" system, government – with its monopoly on the use of force – is available to corporations – whose concentrated economic interests provide them with an incentive to influence government to serve their ends – to create the political establishment that now uses us as fungible resources in furtherance of the corporate-state's combined purposes.

     Because institutions are organizations with their own reasons for being (i.e., are ends in themselves) they have an incentive to structure societies in ways that preserve their existence. Institutions insist upon maintaining the status quo because they ARE the status quo! Thus, they will prevail upon the state to enact legislation that mandates standardized and uniform behavior among marketplace participants. Licensing and other restrictions on the entry of would-be competitors, minimum wage laws, import restrictions, government contracts and research and development funding, laws regulating competitive trade practices (a subject with which I dealt in my book In Restraint of Trade), product standards, antitrust and conservation laws, and numerous other politically-imposed restraints designed not to protect consumers, but to provide established firms with a reasonable assurance that their positions are secure.

     I trust that most of you, at this point in your learning, no longer think of the "free-market" as synonymous with the "business system." Ayn Rand helped fill the minds of a lot of people with the idea that "big business" was "America's persecuted minority." I wonder how she might have explained Halliburton, KBR, Boeing (one of whose subsidiaries flies "terror suspects" to foreign countries for more intensive "interrogation"), Blackwater USA, the Carlyle Group, and countless defense contractors, private corporations operating prisons for the state, and other firms that regularly root for funds at the government trough.

     A couple years ago, I made a proposal to our law school faculty that we stop teaching "constitutional law" or, for the traditionalists, include it in a "legal history" course, alongside Magna Carta, the Code of Hammurabi, or the Articles of Confederation. My colleagues thought I was trying to be humorous! When the Iraqi government puppets were trying to draft a "constitution" for their country, talk-show host Jay Leno suggested that we send them ours. "It served us well for many years, and besides, we're not using it anymore!" As you consider my proposal, keep this thought in mind: the Soviet Union also had a written constitution, broadly modeled upon the United States Constitution.

     A major problem with efforts to stabilize and conserve existing arrangements is that such practices run head-on into the fact that a vibrant society – just like a dynamic and thriving individual or business firm – depends not upon the maintenance of existing organizations, but of the opportunities for creative talents to continue the innovation upon which the health of any system depends. Our culture has put too much emphasis on nouns (e.g., material goods, business firms, etc.) and far too little on verbs (i.e., the processes by which the nouns get produced).

     There is a cost to giving in to the demands of existing institutions for a sense of permanence: institutionalization destroys civilizations! A number of historians have commented on how the effort to foster stability and equilibrium can contribute to the collapse of civilizations. This occurs when the systems that produce the values upon which a civilization depends for its survival become institutionalized (i.e., become ends in themselves; their own purposes for being). A dynamic and productive society depends upon the presence of individuals with sufficient creativity and resiliency to respond to changed conditions. Whether – and how – these challenges to existing practices are met, will determine the fate of a civilization.

     Those who seek security must realize that the only genuine security results from a continuing willingness to change; to remain adaptable to the constant uncertainties of our world.

     A system grounded in the private ownership of property and marketplace decision-making provides the environment in which these constant processes of adaptation and renewal can take place.

     But in an institutionally-dominated society – in which the coercive powers of the state are made available to economic and political interests – such qualities of changefulness and flexibility conflict with institutional needs for stability and permanency. Instead of variation and diversity, the state provides standardization and uniformity. Over time, the civilization that gives in to institutional demands for structuring and channeling human behavior, finds itself at war with the very life processes that generated its greatness. In its final stages, as Arnold Toynbee informed us, such societies become characterized by an increased militarism and the development of a "universal state."

     We live today in a period of fundamental change, not just in terms of the technological and informational revolutions with which we are most familiar, but in our understanding of the nature of order. The study of chaos and complexity are informing us that our world is too complex to be predictable, a fact that strikes at the root of the rationale for state planning and control. A central part of our political catechism has been that, "the more complex society becomes, the greater the need for central government." But the study of chaos is revealing an opposite conclusion: the more complex society becomes, the more we must rely on spontaneous and autonomous systems to provide for order. Complex systems are influenced by far too many variables for us to predict outcomes. Our ability to foretell the future – a presumed capacity underlying the rationale for state planning and regulation – is dependent upon what chaos scientists refer to as a "sensitive dependence upon initial conditions." For reasons I do not have the time to explain right now, none of us has such capacities, nor can we ever accumulate sufficient information to develop them. Einstein's observation that "as a circle of light increases, so does the circumference of darkness around it" helps to explain why this lack of predictive information will always plague our efforts in dealing with complexity.

     Our overly-structured, overly-regulated world doesn't function well anymore. We have just concluded a century in which political systems killed off some 200 million people in wars and genocides – a number that does not include those dying as the "unintended consequences" of state regulation, people that the statists further degrade by being labeled "collateral damage." As our world continues to decentralize into all kinds of alternative social systems; as the vertically-structured pyramid of the state – with its command-and-control mechanisms – continues to collapse into horizontal networks founded upon a non-coercive, "holographic" model; the statists have intensified their levels of violence to force us back into a manageable herd. A nation that leads the world in the percentage of its population in prisons, that frantically develops new surveillance systems and police weapons to control us all, and that now considers the deployment of soldiers to augment already over-sized police departments, is a nation in a terminal state. The state continues to feed us a diet of bogeymen – be they communists, child-abductors, drug-dealers, or international terrorists – in order to make us obedient to their rule. But as the historians and our basic intelligence inform us, one cannot maintain a free, vibrant, and productive civilization at the point of a bayonet or within the confines of a prison. The American state resembles nothing so much, right now, as a chicken that has just had its head chopped off: it flaps around in a wild and noisy display, splattering blood in its trail, . . . but its fate has been determined.

     Western civilization in general, and the American civilization in particular, is in a turbulent state, a condition brought about by a continuing insistence upon a societal model that serves the corporate-state interests that control the machinery of state power, but at the expense of the rest of us. The study of chaos informs us that we have two ways in which to respond to this turbulence:
[1] is to do nothing; to sit back and allow the entropy within the system to continue to build up and take us into total collapse. This would be akin to a horse-drawn carriage manufacturer deciding – in the early 1900s – that the automobile was but a passing fad, and that more money should be directed to the marketing of carriages. Alternative [2] would consist in the transformation of our present thinking, and to seek more sophisticated organizational forms that are consistent with the life processes that drive both healthy organisms and civilizations. Those alternative systems will likely lead us to walk away from our institutionalized habits and to seek unstructured forms grounded in the autonomous, spontaneous, and freely functioning networks of individuals.

     I might add, here, that the study of chaos and complexity provide an epistemological foundation for libertarian thought and practices, and helps to explain my energetic optimism for the future of individual liberty and the collapse of political systems. The decentralizing processes taking place throughout our world represent more than the playing out of some abstract idea, although intellectual explanations do facilitate the transformation. These changes are occurring as the result of a number of factors, two of the more important being [1] rapidly expanding technologies, including computers, cell-phones, iPods, fax machines, video cameras, and iPhones, which have, in turn, given rise to the Internet and its websites and blogsites. It is estimated that there are more than one billion personal computers in the world, along with some twenty-two million blogsites. To illustrate the unpredictable nature of complexity, recall IBM chairman Thomas Watson's 1943 statement that "there is a world market for about five computers," and the prognostication of the president of Digital Equipment Corporation who, in 1977, declared "there is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home." The technological revolution is giving us all not only access to non-institutional information, but is allowing us to generate and communicate our own information and ideas to others. Such transmission can occur instantaneously, giving individuals the capacity to respond to what those in power – and their establishment media lackeys – tell us. When Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" receives national awards for the best news reporting on television, you can be assured that something significant is taking place. When one considers the tremendous impact that Gutenberg's invention had in facilitating such epochs as the Renaissance, the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, and the industrial revolution, the unforeseeable consequences of a continuing information revolution with technological capacities far in excess of the printed word, will doubtless be marvelous to watch.

[2] The other major factor helping to generate more horizontal and decentralized social systems is found in the failure of the old, vertically-structured model to satisfy the requirements of living beings. The state has always been at war with life processes, compelling people to do what they do not choose to do, and preventing them from doing what they do choose to do. When the well-being of institutions becomes paramount, and individuals are regarded as little more than so much interchangeable protoplasm; as resources to be exploited and consumed for corporate-state purposes, there comes a point at which life, itself, declares "enough." Individuals begin to walk away from hallowed halls in search of options that serve their interests, not out of any philosophical or ideological commitment, but of an awareness that their world just doesn't work anymore; that the corporate-state establishment has made it too costly, too deadly, and too dehumanizing, to be tolerated. They look to a future in which their children and grandchildren will be expected to take their places on battlefields, in prisons, or in workplaces that do not satisfy the human need for meaningful production. Without articulating it in so many words, they implicitly recognize that there are better ways in which to live.

     The "refounding of America" – as is the topic of this conference – is already taking place, not in the halls of government, or in academia, or even at conferences such as this one. It is occurring where creativity and meaningful change has always taken place: in the relationships and transactions among people within society itself. Our world is becoming rapidly decentralized, as horizontal networks are replacing vertically-structured systems of power. Alternative schools, health-care, and systems of dispute resolution; the Internet and other decentralized forms of communicating information and ideas; the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the breakup of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia; secession movements throughout the world; smaller business firms along with the decentralization of management; Internet based retailing and payment systems; "on-demand" publishing; on-and-on go examples of centralized systems collapsing into decentralized systems of individual interconnectedness. Some European cities are experimenting with locally-generated money systems, while others have taken to eliminating all traffic signs. The latter effort has led to a significant decrease in traffic accidents, with people reporting the social advantages of dealing with one another on the basis of personal negotiations rather than conditioned responses to mechanical devices.

     On a grimmer note, even the war system – the most robust expression of the state – is becoming decentralized. The events of 9/11 show how nineteen men, armed only with box-cutter knives, can plunge the world into a major war. Nor can we forget decentralist lessons that led to the defeat of the French military in Algeria and Indo-China; the British in India and, centuries earlier, in a war that ended a few miles up the road in Yorktown; the erstwhile Soviet Union in Afghanistan; the Israelis in Lebanon; and the Americans in Vietnam – a lesson being relearned today in Iraq. Powerful armies, air forces, and navies, are increasingly unable to subdue informally organized guerilla groups whose homelands are attacked.

     Perhaps some of the explanation for the changes taking place within and around us can be found in Thomas S. Kuhn's classic study on the history of scientific revolutions. Major paradigm shifts in scientific thinking arise out of "crisis," all of which "begin with the blurring of a paradigm." Earlier theories are no longer capable of explaining inconsistent events, causing some scientists to search for a new theory. In words that bear upon the inquiry into alternative models of social order, Kuhn tells us that the "failure of existing rules is the prelude to a search for new ones." The crisis develops into turbulence, creating "the essential tension" involved in trying "to live in a world out of joint."

     Lest you are inclined to confine Kuhn's remarks to the world of science alone, he adds: "political revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense, often restricted to a segment of the political community, that existing institutions have ceased adequately to meet the problems posed by an environment that they have in part created." Has the vertically-structured paradigm under which we have lived failed to meet the problems "created" by the practitioners of this model? Does the current "failure of existing rules" to provide for the expected order signal a need for "a search for new ones?" I will leave that judgment to you.

     Like the bridge in Minneapolis last week, the pyramid is collapsing beneath the weight of unseen forces. The owners of the corporate-state apparatus are well aware that their system no longer functions according to the expectations of those who long ago gave their sanction to a constitutional form of government. Humanity is in need of a fundamentally new model, one which will not be forthcoming from the defenders of the status quo. Instead, the political establishment will intensify efforts to reinforce their control by ever-more-forceful means. They will continue to scare us with the need for "national security," but it is only the "security" of their authority over mankind that concerns them. They will also speak of the threat of "terrorism," not bothering to tell you that all acts of government are acts of terror (i.e., dictates backed by various threats that will be visited upon you should you be disobedient). "Terror" is a verb, not a noun. It is a tactic – like a cavalry charge; the "terrorist" is one who employs such a tactic – much as the United States did in its early bombing of Baghdad under the name "shock and awe".

     What the corporate-state is really concerned with is preserving its privileged position of power, and to resist – by as much force, threats, imprisonment, and killing as it deems necessary – the further collapse of its structures.

     As I said, I am quite optimistic. I believe that the life forces – assisted by emerging technologies – will insist upon a new paradigm, . . . one that serves rather than destroys life. I further believe that America, as we have known it, no longer exists, and that "all the king's horses, and all the king's men" cannot put it back together again.

Butler Shaffer is a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles where he teaches courses in Legal Reasoning and Property – and conducts a seminar on Informal Systems of Order. He is author of Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats To Peace and Human Survival and In Restraint of Trade: The Business Camaign Against Competition, 1918-1938. He has a continuing EBook at LewRockwell.com The Wizards of Ozymandias: Reflections on the Decline and Fall.