Maybe I didn’t really want to write this column. According to Robert Sapolsky I just couldn’t help myself.

Sapolsky, a Stanford biology professor and author of Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, argues that everything we do is pre-destined. Not by an all-knowing and completely controlling god, but by biology. Our brains work in certain ways and we do as they command, not vice versa.

I’ve not read the book yet, but look forward to it and have read reviews and listened to some of Sapolsky’s interviews. Maybe I’ll learn differently, but his main point seems to encapsulate well in a quote from the Los Angeles Times:

“The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over … We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.”

If we’ve got no free will, can ANY human conduct be “fair” or “unfair?” Aren’t those doing the rewarding and the punishing just as constrained by biology to do whatever they’re doing as those being rewarded or punished?

If the philosophers who have expounded throughout history on systems of ethics grounded in notions of free will had no free will themselves, how would that invalidate those systems? After all, they had no choice in the matter. If free will doesn’t exist, their explicit and implicit claims that it does, and the systems based on those claims are … well, predestined!

“A difference which makes no difference,” as psychologist William James pointed out, “is no difference at all.”

We either HAVE free will, or are doomed to believe we have it, and to act AS IF we have it.

Naturally, I find it comforting to believe that I have free will: That I am the master of my fate and the captain of my soul.

Perhaps I believe that, and find it comforting, because all those chemical reactions in my brain require me to, rather than because it’s true … but I believe it and find it comforting either way.

Why do I not lie awake at night pondering the particular question of free will versus predestination?

Well, maybe that’s because I have no choice as to what I lie awake pondering.

Or maybe it’s because I understand that the answer to the question is a difference that makes no difference.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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On November 13, the US Supreme Court — presumably motivated by bad publicity after the exposure of bribery schemes involving justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, use of judicial aides to promote justice Sonia Sotomayor’s books, and other unsavory activities — announced what it calls a “Code of Conduct,” and what most media outlets describe as an “ethics code.”

The new code goes off the conduct/ethics rails before finishing its short opening statement, asserting that its purpose is to “dispel” the “misunderstanding” that the justices “regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules,” rather than to actually restrict the justices with any ethics rules.

Because the document — 15 pages, including the opening statement, the “code” itself, and commentary/notes — doesn’t provide for any penalty or punishment whatsoever should a justice violate it, the justices remain as unrestricted after its publication as they clearly regarded themselves before.

Even ignoring the absence of consequences, the code itself is full of lofty and often ambiguous “shoulds” and “should nots” rather than specific and well-defined “shalls” and “shall nots.”

As codes go, this one’s far more Emily Post than Exodus 20. It’s not about what the justices may or may not do, it’s about how the court wants or doesn’t want to look.

Does anyone find this surprising? Letting government agencies  regulate themselves always results in government agents (especially those who regard themselves as enjoying tenure for life) leaving themselves room to do whatever they like.

In theory, Congress can impose binding rules on the Supreme Court. Contra justice Samuel Alito (“No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period”),  Article III of the US Constitution specifies that the justices hold their seats “during good Behaviour,” and that the court operates in its appellate capacity “under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”

In practice, impeaching individual justices  seems like the best way of imposing the “good Behaviour” requirement, but that remedy’s only been applied once, and threatened once more, in 240 years. In 1804, justice Samuel Chase was acquitted by the Senate. In 1969, Abe Fortas resigned from the court under impeachment threat.

The “checks and balances” system seems, unsurprisingly, to not  work very well. The Supreme Court remains at least potentially on the take … if you’ve got the money to buy the rulings you want.

“Put not thy trust in princes,” the Bible tells us. Under which label I’m inclined to include lifetime political appointees.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error,” Trump advisor Stephen Miller tells the New York Times. “Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown.”

The disgraced former president’s promised second-term program includes (according to the Times) “round[ing] up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain[ing] them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled,” using money illegally appropriated for other purposes, as he did with his “border wall” boondoggle.

Legally speaking, here’s the “vast arsenal of federal powers” regarding immigration that Miller references:

THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

The US Constitution not only doesn’t mention any federal power to regulate immigration (meaning, per the Tenth Amendment, that the federal government enjoys no such power), it unambiguously forbade any such power prior to 1808 (per Article 1, Section 9), after which a constitutional amendment would have been required to create one.

The moral side  of the equation is even simpler: Where a peaceful individual chooses to travel to (and possibly settle down at) isn’t Donald Trump’s business, or yours, or mine, except to the extent that we may choose to associate, or do business with, them (or not to).

Not that Trump, or the Republican Party, or any other political class leader or institution, cares what the Constitution says, what they’re legally “allowed” to do, or what’s right.

Laws are for the little people, not them. Your rights aren’t due any respect whatsoever, unless they find it convenient to pretend such respect. Which is rarely, since the powerful always crave more power whether or not they’re entitled to any power at all.

Thus, it’s reasonable to expect that if Trump is elected to the presidency again, he’ll try to implement what he promised an Iowa audience in September: “The largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”

Do Americans bear a responsibility — a moral duty — to resist such lawlessness on the part of Trump and his minions?

I’m tempted to say no, for the same reason that I don’t think you’re morally obliged to park in front of my house each night and make sure it isn’t burglarized.

On the other hand, if you buy the burglar a set of lock picks and loan him your car, you’re part of his burglary ring.

Do you pay taxes? Unless you own nothing, buy nothing, and earn nothing, the answer is yes. As do those Trump wants to victimize.

Where does he plan to get the money to build those camps and pay those kidnappers? From the aforementioned taxes, of course — even if he borrows it on the promise to tax you for it later.

He plans to make you part of his criminal conspiracy whether you like it or not. So pretty much anything you do to thwart that conspiracy is at least justified, if not obligatory — up to and including burning the camps and incapacitating (in whatever manner) the kidnappers.

Resist much, obey little.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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