There are several ways one can improve usability on a site with the sidebar; things I will arrange from easy to hard. The first thing is to eliminate redundant information. For example, do I really need the “about me” section of the sidebar on the about page? It’s redundant, and it links to itself. Easy enough; WordPress’s body_class() function lets me style particular pages. The following code hides the about section from the sidebar only on the about page:
body.page-template-about-php .about-widget { display: none; }

Second, there might be things one wants to emphasize on certain pages – the opposite of the first point. On the blog index, for example, I’ve used more page-specific CSS rules to make the topics a full vertical list instead of just a row of icons. Presumably if you’re on the blog’s index, you’ll be more likely to want to know what the categories are at a glance. On other pages, it collapses back into the row of icons.

Now we get into more difficult territory. Newer versions of WordPress allow you to have multiple sidebars. Instead of just get_sidebar(), you can say get_sidebar('alternate'), which will load sidebar-alternate.php instead of sidebar.php. This feature can let you modularize any number of sections on your site, but I’ll only treat the most obvious uses of it here.

This feature is useful for total layout changes. For example, the portfolio page. How constrained would I be if I couldn’t use the entire width of the page! The entire sidebar has been moved to the footer, allowing the portfolio to expand to the total width, and the site selector acts as a surrogate sidebar.

The footer-sidebar is used wherever the contents of the sidebar would be better off totally out of focus, or as an afterthought. The reader of a single-post page, for example the one you are possibly reading from (if not, click here), is more interested in the article than incidental site information. Therefore, content relevant to the article – namely the comments – are placed side by side with the article, not the site-info – which is placed in the footer should the reader be interested after the article.

Look at the following layouts from a birds-eye view. Each of them is a two-column layout, but each of them has a different layout. Without looking at the particulars of each page, can you tell what’s supposed to be emphasized on each?

A well-executed series of sidebars serves to focus the reader on whatever content the page is about. It can serve as navigation, or as complementary information, highlighting and enhancing the purpose of the page it’s on. On the other hand, a static sidebar that remains stubbornly the same across all sections of a site serves as nothing more than visual filler; something the reader (at best) mentally ignores after the first page or two, or (worse) is distracted by.

I’ve alluded to the regulatory house of cards before, specifically with regard to net neutrality. The basic idea is one of unintended consequences: starting from a state of freedom, the government sees a problem real or imagined and tries to fix it by fiat. Of course, this perverts incentives and makes for new problems, which is then fixed by further fiat. Thus, regulation begets more regulation, and we end up with an ad hoc patchwork of rules – a delicate house of cards that is surprisingly hard to deconstruct without tearing the whole thing down.

To repeat the story from the net neutrality piece, it was obvious by Gorbachev’s ascent to power that the Soviet Union’s centrally planned economy had no room for growth. It was facing stagnation and decline into the indefinite future. To revitalize the economy, one of the first things Gorbachev did was ease capital controls. Unfortunately for him, that was one of the bottom cards: capital was immediately whisked out of the country, and the Soviet Union forthwith collapsed.

This is one of the most dire pathologies of government control: it’s extremely hard to move back towards freedom. One cannot “just do it”; it has to be done right. One of the reasons privatization has such a bad name is because in Russia and Argentina, state industries were not really “privatized”, but sold to government cronies (or drinking buddies in Gorbachev’s case). Regulatory patchworks have to be dismantled, if not totally, then with extreme care lest we end up with a lopsided and immediately perverse set of incentives that lead to even worse outcomes.

It goes without saying of course that this is not to be used as an argument against dismantling government control; only that it must be done with care…

Or so you’d think. American conservatives use this logic all the time for exactly that purpose: keep our regulations, we’re used to them.

Immigration is the most obvious example. The most common argument against illegal immigration used by conservatives is that we don’t want them using our government services and leeching off our tax dollars. But wait, aren’t conservatives supposed to be against government services? What better way is there to demonstrate the untenability of the welfare state than to show its insolvency in the face of increased payouts; to show that it is not an extensible system? In fact, I propose that no welfare program will go away until it is on the brink of crisis.

So rather than tackling the root of the issue, conservatives focus on a symptom and propose their own patch (border control) to fix the brokenness of the patches we already have (the welfare state). We’ve got a generous welfare state? Of course the indigent poor want to come here. Duh. But that doesn’t mean the indigents are the root of the problem. Our government determines in the short run the kind of immigrants we attract, and in the long run, what kind of economic actors we ourselves are (In Sweden for example it is common to take a year off after school and live off the generous unemployment benefits – not because of difficulty in finding a job, but because there’s no reason to until the benefits stop). Conservatives in America, far from advocating caution in dismantling as their name might suggest, are actually adding new cards.

This is the fundamental flaw that denies Conservatism the prestige of being a real and consistent ideology. Rather than an ideology, Conservatism (and Liberalism too; but I’ll get to that in a future post) is more of an aesthetic. The house of cards argument is so inconsistent that I suspect it’s not even what the conservatives who make it really believe. More likely it’s a mask for a visceral xenophobia, which is (consciously or unconsciously) suppressed because they know (probably unconsciously) that cosmopolitanism is at the moment more culturally in vogue that parochialism.

Of course, xenophobia doesn’t go away, even if it is culturally suppressed and hidden behind (not so) clever arguments. And some conservatives (the incorrigible, the imperceptive, or those surrounded only by other conservatives) venture into outright xenophobia anyway. The “protect our culture” argument is hardly on the fringes of the movement (as if American culture ever lived up to their ideals, and as if culture could be static anyway). Neither is the subtly racist and/or classist crime argument (which statistically just doesn’t hold water).

So if you’re going to pretend that the house of cards argument against immigration is the real reason for opposition, then Conservatives just need a dose of logic to realize the virtue of free immigration. Otherwise, if you just want to force your cultural preferences on people with the same apparatus that liberals use to force their economic preferences on people, then at least be honest about it. And if you can’t take the marginalization that a stance like that will inevitably afford as the old guard dies off, then just keep quiet on the issue.

The strength of the Protestant reformation was the axe it applied to contemporary Catholic doctrine. Is it prohibited in scripture? Then let no papal bull allow it. Is it allowed in scripture? Then let no writ forbid it. Is it not spoken of in scripture? Then let one neither forbid nor require it.

One of the many categories to get the axe was that of sacraments. Catholics had a nice round list of seven, several of which are nowhere spoken of in the Bible. Furthermore, they were understood as means of receiving grace, rather than signs of grace already received. So the list was understandably shortened. Holy orders and last rites do not belong on the same list as baptism and eucharist. But one in particular got thrown out perhaps too hastily, one whose consequences are now coming to bear in the modern American political scene: marriage.

To be sure, the Catholic church had an extremely unhealthy view of marriage at the time – a “necessary evil”, going even further than Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:8-9. Luther’s criticism of the whole idea of the holy orders – particularly of the celibacy of priests, nuns, and monks – is something the Catholic church could still bear to hear, given the endemic sexual abuses within its orders.

But the baby got thrown out with the bathwater here. By relegating marriage to a civil institution, we miss the rich spiritual symbolism behind marriage. And even with that in mind, we miss the primacy of that symbolism.

First, let’s define sacraments by the two that everyone agrees on, baptism and eucharist.

1. They are ritual in a sense, but as celebration, not as entreaty.
2. They are symbols: the Eucharist of the sacrifice of Christ, and baptism of spiritual death and resurrection.

In short, a sacrament is a means by which we display externally as a symbol of something spiritual, or at least not present. Before Christ, animal sacrifice was such a sacrament analogous to baptism. The animal itself did not cover sins, but was a symbol of something greater. The passover, likewise, celebrated the exodus from Egypt in the same way as we now celebrate Christ’s sacrifice with the Eucharist.

Marriage, with all its aspects, certainly fits this definition. God uses richly sexual language in the Old Testament to describe his relationship with Israel, and later the Church (all throughout Ezekiel, for example) – the former compared to a prostitute (Hosea), who through redemption as the latter will be presented as a spotless bride (Revelation). God is compared throughout the Bible and specifically by Jesus to a bridegroom who is returning for his bride – namely the Church.

The analogy goes the other way around too. In Ephesians 5, Paul speaks of the wife as subject to the husband in the same way as the church is subject to Christ, and of the Husband as responsible for the safety, both physical and spiritual, of the wife, in the same way that Christ sacrificed himself for the Church.

So why have Protestants traditionally considered marriage a civic matter anyway?

Luther’s sentiments – that Marriage is a civic matter. It is really not, together with all its circumstances, the business of the church. It is so only when a matter of conscience is involved – I think stem from several sources, not least of which is the reaction against the Catholic church’s pathology of marriage. But more significant to our modern context is a reluctance to deny the title of “marriage” to unbelievers. Their unions are celebrated and carry on in much the same way as ours, so it’s tempting to call it the same thing.

But it is really not the same thing. What protestants fail to appreciate is the primacy of the symbol. God does not compare his relationship with the church to marriage just because there’s nothing better to compare it to, as if marriage was prior and God just used that as an example. Quite literally, marriage (and therefore sex) exist for the sole purpose of symbolizing the relationship between God and the church. Sex, as one of the highest forms of physical ecstasy, serves the purpose of broadening our palate of “good”, of heightening our knowledge of it. Add on top of that the bedrock deep emotional attachment, affection, and commitment, and one has the whole spectrum; a microcosm in which to taste the goodness of God through one’s spouse.

No doubt marriages with and without this foundation can look superficially similar to one another. So can devout Christians and self-described “good people”. The Christian and the hippie may find themselves working together at Habitat For Humanity, but could their worldviews be more different? It is the core of Protestant doctrine that superficial similarities in works count for nothing without a regenerated heart (Isaiah 64:6). We’ve simply failed to extend that to marriage.

Indeed, if marriage were primarily a civil institution, what good would it confer upon the unbeliever who partakes? Certainly no final spiritual good without Christ as the center. Is marriage nothing more than a common grace, akin to tasty bagels and sunny days, enjoyable by believers and unbelievers alike? That position, I think, is untenable given the amount and intensity of treatment in the scriptures.

The idea of marriage as a primarily civil institution is also the root of the Evangelical opposition to gay marriage. All the treatment of marriage in the Bible, they see, is not for furthering the sanctification of the believer, but for maintaining the bedrock of civilization (as some dramatically call the institution). This is patently ridiculous, but as the argument usually hinges on the raising of children, which I have treated elsewhere, I will not divert here. Suffice it to say that such a line of thought evidences a lack of faith in the work of God to the highest degree.

In fact, Christians cannot have it both ways. If marriage is a civil institution, then the Church (and everyone) has an interest in promoting marriage as an institution, but the Biblical arguments for permitting gay marriage in the church all of a sudden work. It would have simply been a cultural injunction against temple prostitution. Promote civil marriage as the bedrock of civilization, but marriage for everyone.

If marriage is a sacrament, however – if the symbol is primary – then Christians can no more condone gay marriage than baptism in the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Yet in this they may not use the state to enforce it, for an unbeliever “marrying” another of the same sex no more defiles the sacrament than one who marries another of the opposite sex, for neither participates in the sacrament at all. It would be just as ridiculous as mandating by law church attendance on Sundays, which most (hopefully) would agree would do little if any spiritual good for anyone.

Sacramentalizing marriage is thus not only a more healthy (and more Biblical) way to approach the matter, but also a dose of common sense to a church tilting at political windmills. The richness of the symbolism confers a seriousness to it. And given the state of what passes for marriage today, it could use some of both the somberness of the eucharist and the excitement of baptism that come with the realization that one is partaking in the symbol of divine union.

Ni Dieu Ni Maître – “Neither God Nor Master” – is a slogan coined by a Socialist publisher which has more recently become popular among anarchists. The idea is that the self is the final authority, that it has an obligation to submit itself to no authority, religious or political.

There indeed seems to be a sentiment, especially among left-libertarians and anarchists, that religious devotion is incompatible with liberty. Submission to the state, the logic goes, is only a small step to a mind accustomed to submission to God.

Is it such a small step, though, as if the authority of God were essentially the same as the authority of men but on a grander scale?

The difference hinges upon consequence. For any action, there are consequences, which may be divided into natural and unnatural consequences. If I speed, for example, the natural consequences are 1) lower fuel efficiency, 2) faster arrival time, and 3) increased risk of collision. These are the consequences inherent in the nature of the action. A speeding ticket, on the other hand, is an unnatural consequence: it is imposed from without by force, and has no essential connection to the action.

All human authority is predicated on unnatural consequences for violation of that authority. And of course some of this is necessary for a well-functioning society: protection of what have come to be called the “natural rights”¹ by unnatural consequences is foundational to the market economy and to modern civilization. But on the whole, it is presumably the goal of every friend of liberty to reduce the set of unnatural consequences to a reasonable minimum, to prevent abuses like shutting down a little girl’s lemonade stand.

Where the anti-religious go wrong then is imagining divine authority to be also predicated on unnatural consequences. People both religious and irreligious have an idea of God as a sort of Zeus figure standing in Heaven with a lightning bolt ready to impose doom on those who don’t follow his will.

Or a piano.

The entire idea is ludicrous. The authority of God consists entirely of natural consequences, though the irreligious misestimate those. Hell, for example, is not the final spite of a vindictive God against those who have spited him. God being the summum bonum, the ultimate good from which all other good derives, then final rejection of God is quite literally the rejection of all good. Hell is therefore the most natural consequence of a conscious rejection of that good, a separation from all that is good.

Likewise with regard to the law, the entire point of the New Testament is that it is not an end in itself. Paul harps on the point of freedom from the law for several chapters in Romans, yet because it fails to conform to the default Zeus concept of God, it is more or less ignored by the masses on both sides. The authority of God is not a series of categorical imperatives given weight by the threat of burning. Rather, it is the means by which we pursue our best self-interest – not materially, where moths and rust destroy, but spiritually, by striving directly for the highest good, rather than subsidiary goods as ends in themselves. As John Piper said recently, “Love God and do as you please is not bad advice“, hence his term Christian Hedonism.

The attack can then be levied, why all the injunctions against things that have no apparent consequences? This is another fundamental difference between human and divine authority: where human authority can only be exercised with respect to external behavior, divine authority is more concerned with the state of the soul. Thus, an action may have no physical consequences but by its nature serves to further alienate one from the summum bonum. Action is a feedback loop, both springing from and reinforcing our identities and conceptions of ourselves. Indeed, alteration of the self is the most natural of consequences: the Bible makes it clear that sin is both what is punished, and the punishment itself, as each action further separates one from the good. This vicious cycle is precisely the reason that the human condition is so spiritually desperate.

One can no more reject the authority of God than the authority of gravity. Not just because God has the means to inflict punishment, but because if we were not de facto subject to it, there would be no such thing as a consequence to an action, good or bad. In fact to reject the idea of the authority of God should he exist is to deny the very idea of identity, for we choose actions based on (what we understand to be) their consequences; based on the decrees of a God who has ordered everything we consider natural.

1. This is a completely different, and in my opinion inexpedient, sense of the word “natural”. I tend towards a more Hayekian view of the natural rights; that they are the bundle of rights which have been shown through history as the most expedient to civilization ( see The Principle of Federalism for a slightly more expanded discussion of the natural rights).

The idea of beauty as the reduction of all explicanda to a single explicans, of all particulars to a single head as Adam Ferguson would say, still allows for a dichotomy in the treatment of beauty; what I will refer to as the appreciation of first and second order beauty.

First order beauty is the most common conception, simply because it is the most obvious. It is beauty in an object as such, and stops there: everything exists for a purpose, and executes its function in the best way possible. It is a constructed beauty – what Hayek would call rationalist and constructivist. It is the result of deliberate design – in fact, anything human designed is done with a form of first-order beauty in mind – whether art, institutions, or urban planning. Its unifying principle is consequential -its unity is in what it does and how it does it.

Second order beauty, on the other hand, is a beauty of process – a meta-beauty. It is more fundamental, and does not necessarily exhibit first-order beauty. Yet the beauty of it is in the robustness: though it does not necessarily generate results with the most beauty in themselves, its results are always suited for its ends. Its unifying principle is procedural – the result is not deliberately constructed as such, but comes about from interactions under general rules.

The difference may be hard to grasp in the abstract, but concrete examples will make it much clearer. The difference is between Esperanto and English. Esperanto is a clean and regular language. It was constructed that way. Everything exists for a purpose, with no vestiges from older ancestors. English, on the other hand, is a messy hodge podge of two major and half a dozen minor European languages. It has constructions (for example do-support on yes/no questions) which from an a priori perspective seem outlandish.

Yet Esperanto is subject to the same rules of language change as English. Should it achieve its goal of becoming a universal second language, it will inevitably split into dialects just like any other – its beauty marred by the accidents of mass-adoption. The second-order beauty here is the process of linguistics, governed by the innate principles of Universal Grammar first articulated by Noam Chomsky. Though English as such may lack the apparent beauty that Esperanto has, the principles of universal grammar in tension with the processes of language change will always produce a language as fit for human communication, as rich in expressive power, and as easy for acquisition as any other, despite their surface differences – even with severely degraded input (i.e., the creolization of pidgins).

Another example is nature versus cities. Which is more beautiful, a forest, or a well-laid-out city? They exhibit, of course, different types of beauty. The city represents the distilled rational principles of habitation that man has learned from nature and experience, and is thus more suited to house him. Yet without conscious and deliberate upkeep and intervention, the city will eventually crumble and fall into disrepair, while the forest survives and thrives just as well without as with human aid.

Second order beauty is exemplified in spontaneous orders. Where first-order beauties require full knowledge, absolute control, and constant vigilance (and are thus easier to create on a canvas than in a society), second-order beauties provide for their own continued existence by general rules rather than specific directives, and in fact are hindered rather than helped by deliberate intervention, simply because deliberate human design can only result in first-order beauty, which becomes impossible to create as the scope makes the necessary knowledge, authority, and vigilance impossible (see Cracked.com for 6 examples of intervention hindering coordination – examples 3 and 4 with regard to nature, and the rest with regard to society as a whole).

The most pervasive example of second-order beauty outside of the laws of nature themselves is the market economy. Its general rules are property rights and contract enforcement. And though it is the result of human action, like language, it is not the result of human design, qualifying it as second-order. The robustness with which it provides for the needs of the consumer, agnostic to which particular firm gets to do so, just as Universal Grammar robustly provides for human communication agnostic to the particular grammatical constructions which do so, is what makes it beautiful.

The attempted substitution of second-order beauty with first-order beauty has been the cause of a great number of evils in human history. The theme of Hayek’s entire corpus is the repudiation of this attempt with regard to the institutions of the market. Though it, like nature, is resilient to a great degree of intervention, experience has shown that neither is impossible to break. The Soviets, in fact, demonstrated this with regard to both: land irreparably laid waste by industrial development, and an economy collapsing under the misdirection of a central authority charged with the impossible task of omniscience. The two are not unrelated, stemming both from the philosophy of man as supremely rational, and the former in fact spurred on by the latter.

A beauty which does not provide for its own continued existence is no beauty at all, which is why an appreciation of second-order beauty is absolutely essential to understanding the universe and seeking truth. Second-order beauty is creation; first-order beauty is only imitation. As rationality is the qualitative distinction between the intelligence of man and animal, so the creation and governance of second-order beauty, something requiring nothing less than omniscience, is the qualitative distinction between the intelligence of man and God.