Value for value

All healthy human relationships are based in trade, value for value.

The beggar has nothing to trade. He capitalizes on your acceptance of the altruist code and guilts you into sacrificing your possessions. The thief has no desire to trade. He too capitalizes on the altruist code when at gunpoint he forces you to sacrifice your possession.

The altruist code creates beggars and thieves. Incompetence and immorality are excused by the altruist for whom love is unconditional.

When I encounter someone for the first time, my eyes and ears are turned on and my mind is open. I am always hopeful that I am meeting a future friend. I expect they are thinking the same thing. I listen carefully. I make judgments about them. I expect they are judging me as well.

Sometimes I know immediately: “There’s no future here,” or “I really like this person,” or “I could really learn a lot from this person,” or “This person is a jackass!” or a hundred other things. But, I am conscious of the fact that a mutual evaluation is going on every time I encounter anyone new.

The bible says “judge not!” to which I reply, “huh?” How am I to know who is friend and who is foe? How do I sift through the multitude to discover my friends if I am forbidden to judge? Am I immoral if I refuse to suffer fools?

Weeks ago I sat at the corner bar drinking a beer pretending to watch Nascar when a local man of about sixty sat down next to me and ordered a sandwich. He was very friendly and introduced himself immediately. His name was Don. He asked how the race was going, and I replied that I was only pretending to watch, that I’m not much of a racing fan. He had the good sense to change the subject—to football—so I thought for a moment there was some hope here. [I prefer a good conversation with a stranger to pretending to watch Nascar in silence.] Don was a Titans fan. I explained to him that I had lived the first 40 years of my life in Miami, Florida, and that I was a die-hard Dolphin fan. Don knew quite a bit about my home town. A retired construction super, he had worked some contracts down in Miami after Hurricane Andrew in ‘92. We were sharing our hurricane stories when his sandwich arrived. Don was irreverent and very funny. He laughed a lot, before, during, and after taking huge bites out of his sandwich. It was pretty disgusting to watch…mayo gluing little bits of lettuce all over his face, in his beard and mustache…but funny. Don displayed the kind of indifference to his personal appearance that shows up in young people only when they are very drunk. He wasn’t drunk. Nor was he completely oblivious to the room around him. Our conversation had shifted back to football when I expressed my condolences to Don and the Titans for losing Pac Man Jones for the season. Don set his sandwich down, scanned the bar to his left and right, and then broke into a racist monologue that if I were tasked to attach a headline would read: “Niggers got no sense.”

The “Jackass” light on his forehead flashed as he spoke reminding me that he would be wrapping up his stupidity momentarily, and I’d be expected to respond. What do I say to somebody like this?

Should I smile and say nothing…Change the subject and continue our conversation? Maybe I should try to educate him…explain the whole 60’s thing…how people no longer judge other people by the color of their skin. Should I become enraged like Steve Martin in The Jerk and shout “I’m a nigger!” and start a huge bar fight?

What would you do?

The problem with the first option is that silence is often misunderstood as sanction. I will not sanction fools. The problem with the other options is that they require me to sacrifice time and energy to someone with whom I share no values. I will not suffer fools.

In the end I said, “excuse me,” walked to the men’s room and then out the back door.

Loving nothing

Love causes nothing. We love people for reasons. Loving everybody, and for no reason greater than the fact that they exist, is inflationary: My love becomes worthless if I give it away freely to all takers.

One of the most disgusting things I have ever seen on CNN was an interview with the mother of a young woman who had been raped and brutally murdered. This mother was sitting next to the animal who stole her daughter’s future and made her last living memory bloody pain and horror show. This mother was holding the murderers’ hand, the hand that had held the knife that had slit her daughter’s throat. She had developed a relationship with this monster while he was serving time in prison and was working to win his early release. She was proud of the fact that she had forgiven him and that the two of them had become quite close. She talked about the healing power of forgiveness and Christian love. She thanked God. This murderer, she said, had become “like a son” to her.

This is pure evil.

Christianity mandates that I love everybody...even my enemies! Nonsense. If my enemy breaks into my house and threatens the people I love, I will kill him. I will not lose one second of sleep over the decision. I will not be sorry I did it. Love becomes worthless when a person of good character loves a murderer or child molester. Murderers, rapists, and child molesters don’t deserve love; they deserve death.

In short, we don't love people, we love the values they possess and live by. As I have explained previously, to love a scoundrel is to devalue your love. You're saying the values of the scoundrel are worthy of your love, that they are in fact your values.

Love your neighbor? Certainly, you should meet all new faces with an open mind, and of course, if you can find reason to love, do so. The choice is always yours. But, you have no duty to love your neighbor. Your only moral responsibility to your neighbor is to do no harm. Respect his right to exist and his liberty to pursue his own happiness. If he respects truth and is a man of integrity, you may discover cause to love.

But your neighbor is also that stupid, lazy, no good, drug-addicted, welfare mother who had two kids before she dropped out of high school, who now demands that you pay for her housing, food, and drug habit. Love her and you are loving somebody with whom you share no values. Your unconditional love gives credence to her contemptible value system. She's counting on your pity and your charity, on the "goodness of your heart." In other words, she's counting on you to ignore what your rational mind is telling you to do: loathe her. She's counting on your guilt.

She demands that you sacrifice not only your wealth to her, but your values, your integrity.

L, by the way, was my [actual] neighbor before she became my wife! I knew three other girls in my apartment complex at the time I met her. She’s the only one I love. In fact, I don’t know if the others are even alive today.

Conditional love

Love is the one thing Christians are sure they got right. Even people who don’t believe in the divine, believe Jesus’ message of unconditional love is above reproach. How, after all, can love be a bad thing?

Before answering this question, it is necessary to know what love is.

Last month I wrote:
Christians like to focus on “love,” the panacea, the cure-all feeling at the heart of Jesus’ message. Love is the reason for the season, love your neighbor, love everybody…even your enemies. Christians believe unconditional love can cause good things to happen, make a better world.

Is love a cause?

Love is an excellent feeling, just as fear and hatred are awful ones. And like all feelings, love is a result, a response, an effect, not a cause.

The list of my family members and friends is a list of competent, capable, moral people whom I love and respect for reasons. I value them because of their fine qualities, not because of blood we might share or common history. [Blood and history are important: often, they place me and others under the same roof; they make the likelihood of a permanent falling out less likely. We’re all more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to family and old friends. We’re willing to listen to them longer and more carefully in our efforts to reconcile differences.] But, neither blood nor history is a free pass into my heart.

Nor do I expect a free pass from any one of them.

When my wife L and I were first married, we immediately fell into a problem that threatened our new marriage. We went to a family therapist for third party mediation. After some exchange, L was crying and I was beginning to feel responsible for it. I told the psychologist that “I love my wife.” He fired back with a question drafted to stump me: “Why do you love your wife?” I did not require any pause to think about it. I said: “I love my wife because she is smart, funny, sexy, a good mother, and a patriot.” The therapist was shocked. This guy says he loves his wife, and he knows why!

My love is the greatest thing I have to give…so, I don’t just give it away to anyone! My love is given in response to people and the values they represent. I have conscious reasons for loving. If I came home from work one afternoon and found L had locked our hungry kids in a closet so that she could sleep with two sailors who were planning a terrorist attack, I’d stop loving her that instant. My reasons for loving her would be gone. All I’d have left is the pain of disappointment. In time I would work to purge that pain from my mind and body. But the love? The love would be gone instantly. I don’t love child abuse, infidelity, or treason. I will not love anyone who represents these values.

If any one of my kids were to grow up to become a rapist or ax murderer, on the day I became aware of the abomination, I would cease loving them. I can not love rape and murder. I can not sanction corruption of this sort in any one. Not even my own child. The pain and disappointment of such a revelation would be most difficult to bear, so much so that I may never be able to purge the awful feeling. But, loving? To love the murderer would be to sacrifice my values and my integrity in exchange for pain relief. This is too high a price for pain relief! I will have lost my soul in the loving.

Collectivist-altruists

Collectivism-altruism is the creed of every organized religion and every secular dictatorship through time and around the globe. Regardless of the subtle and not so subtle differences between Islam and Christianity, for example, both faiths are identical at their roots. [The roots are in the philosophy. Philosophy is metaphysics + epistemology and the resulting code of ethics.]

Metaphysics: Both Muslims and Christians profess the existence of what Carl Sagan called “the demon haunted world” view where the Laws of Nature can be wished away, where bread falls from the sky, where people rise from the dead, where God directs tornados, hurricanes, and the lottery, where angels and spirits are floating around helping people, hurting others.

Epistemology: Both shun science, believing knowledge is granted to man via divine revelation. When science proves their old books are man-made and wrong, they pretend not to notice. Ignoring six thousand years of recorded human effort to understand the causes of human illness and death, not to mention the years and years of grueling medical school success achieved by their 21st Century doctor, religionists thank God after surviving life-saving surgery.

Ethics: Both preach altruism and worship martyrdom, promoting the anti-human doctrine that self-sacrifice is the key to moral perfection. Both are collectives requiring members to sacrifice their own thinking for the thinking of the pack.

If I were to waste my time [and yours] discussing particulars, I would acknowledge differences between Muslims and Christians, as there are differences between Shia and Sunni, Catholics and Protestants; but there are no important differences where comparisons matter, i.e. philosophically. As all Western religions begin with Yahweh-God-Allah [their one God] and their earthly father, Abraham, and his progeny, all Western religions are authoritarian, collectivist, altruist.

Collectivism-altruism is an immoral creed that can be put on man only through the use of force—Muslims use actual swords, contemporary Christians prefer fear and guilt. The collectivist-altruist creed they force on the world is the product of our ancient, illiterate, and brutal past. It is anti-man. It is anti-man’s life. It is a path to self-destruction, AND it is the formula for every genocide in human history.

Compare Nazi Germany to Segregated USA and discover the consequences of this immoral creed in two seemingly different places.

In both Nazi Germany and Segregated USA the people committing the atrocities are Christians. How does one get a Christian to bolt the door behind hundreds and thousands of other humans and hit the switch to release the poison gas? How does one get a Christian to tie a rope around the neck of an innocent man and hang him from a tree Sunday morning after church?

In both cases the people committing the atrocities live in communion with their own kind. Within their collective, inside their circle, these white, Christians live moral lives, being neighborly to one another, loving their children, earning their living, paying their debts.

In both, Christian brotherhood is practiced only inside the circle. People who are outside the circle are outside of morality. Killing someone outside the circle is not murder. Raping a child outside the circle is not a crime.

People outside the circle are sacrificed for the good of the collective.

An Egoist, I do not make sacrifices…nor do I collect them. In the just world I promote, the right of each individual to his life and his liberty is absolute. No such genocide is possible.

Feelers and Joiners

From time to time married couples have disagreements about what is best for their family. My wife L and I, for example, have very different ideas about how best to discipline our children. This issue has been a fire-starter from the first week of our marriage 11 years ago, and it still is. There is no question we both adore our children and want what’s best for them, but our approaches to parenting are nearly bi-polar. There can be no compromise. We will never agree. The only thing we have managed to do is to not disagree in front of the children…much.

If two people who love each other can not agree on what action is best for the care of the children they adore, how can a politician claim to be taking action for the good of a community as large and diverse as a nation?

A politician can claim anything. Whether or not he is successful depends on your willingness to accept his claim. If you’re like most Americans and you are governed by your feelings, you make his job that much easier.

Emotional appeals are easy.

If you’re against a woman’s right to choose an abortion, you don’t call the microscopic, brainless bundle of first trimester cells in her body a “fetus” [a potential human]; you call it a “baby.” Nobody’s in favor of killing babies.

If you’re against the war in Iraq keep tally of dead American GIs, display the growing number as often as possible on the news, and declare their mission a failure. [There are good reasons to oppose the war…this is not one of them.]

If you want to win the global warming debate, some really frightening computer animation and a narrator willing to declare the end of the world in three decades, is sure to get their attention.

Want to round-up and export millions of illegal immigrants? Appeal to America’s irrational fear and hatred of foreigners, particularly those who don’t speak English. Fear and hatred are powerful tools in the hands of an unscrupulous, power-mad politician. [Hitler used these tools to great affect.]

Want to provide health care for all Americans? Show videos of uninsured, suffering, people denied needed medical procedures and argue [as Michael Moore does in Sicko] that universal health care is “free.”

Want to destroy free enterprise? Invent the “monopoly myth,” write anti-trust laws, and give politicians the power to club great, market entrepreneurs into retirement so their companies may be divvied up by their former, inferior competitors with the blessings of their patrons, the politicians in Washington D.C. Of course, do all of this in the name of what’s good for the consumer.

In fact, every legitimate issue can be considered objectively, without fear, without faith, without force. But that’s not how it’s done in America. Collectivism and the fact that Americans are uninformed feelers and joiners make it possible for politicians to gather their flock and lead, reducing all issues to a mindless, spitting competition.

It’s us against them.

The Collective Good?

What is this “community” our leaders ask us to sacrifice our rights to? Is it our family? Our town? City? Nation? Church? Racial or gender group? The answer is that it is all and none of the above. It really depends on where you’re standing and who you are listening to on any given day.

Several things that all groups, or collectives, have in common: They chose to ignore the fact that all collectives are made up of individuals; they fail to acknowledge that no action can ever benefit every member of a group; and finally, whenever any group is artificially propped up—affirmative action for blacks and/or women in the work place, tax-exemption status for for-profit religious organizations, and the Robin Hood economics of the welfare state—individuals who are not members of the chosen group are unjustly discriminated against.

Individuals house their own brains. There is no such thing as a collective thought. There is no such thing as collective speech. There is no such thing as collective rights. Only individuals have rights.

Consider even the simplest and most close-knit collective possible, the family, and know that even a family is a group of individuals. Families do not think with one brain. There is no such thing as a collective brain even on the smallest scale. A husband and wife do not share a brain. [Twin siblings do not share a brain!] What is good for one may not be good for the other. The hopes and dreams, goals and ambitions of each may be considerably different. There is no such thing as an action that is “good for the community,” even if it is a community of two and they are lawfully married!

So, why do men persist in defining themselves according to race, ethnic, religious group, etc.?

Men forfeit choice for the ease bestowed upon one who follows blindly, the freedom from having to think. They choose instead the security that comes to one as a member of the pack. They have no concept of “self.” They have no self-esteem. Any worth they may assign to themselves is as a member of the group: Black Power, Teens for Jesus, dozens of hyphenated-American groups, labor unions, political parties…and the list goes on for miles. Some substitute patriotism for thinking [which in the case of United States is at least understandable]. Americans are patriots by choice; we are people who love freedom. But, when Americans follow blindly, they too forfeit their freedom.

It goes something like this:

Indoctrination starts when you’re very young. Ninety-five percent of the adults you encounter from the day of your birth through college are members [to some degree] of some pack. Unless you remain vigil, you will think like you were taught to. They demand your mind, and you give it to them. For example, they tell you “to question your faith is sin,” so you don't question it. They tell you blind faith is a virtue, so you are actually proud of the fact that you believe something that defies reason.

Members of the pack are expected to fall in line, follow, and surrender their own thinking to the creed of the pack. A teacher, for example, who is a member of the union, is expected to overlook incompetence in a peer: The strength of the union depends on your willingness to ignore such problems. All teachers’ unions protect the jobs of failed teachers and oppose merit pay [to name but two immoral union tenants]. In exchange for your loyalty, you are accepted and protected.

All collectives punish independent thinking, even families. Children are taught the irrational faith of their parents and risk losing their family if they beg to differ. My own mother cried for three months when I tried to explain my thinking to her for the first time. The fact that I was more stable and clearly happier than she had ever seen me seemed not to matter. I had chosen the freedom of thinking with my own rational mind, but was made to feel I had betrayed my own family.

The only obligations I have to any group were defined for me by John Locke four centuries ago. They are: 1. to take care of myself; and 2. to do no harm.

For Heaven and Utopia

There are two paths to self-destruction. Neither is the proverbial “road less traveled.” Study history or watch the news and know that the paths to self-destruction are by far the more beaten paths. But how can this be? How is it that so many people across the globe willing walk to their own destruction, sacrificing their top-tier values for lesser values?

These poor souls are convinced by religionists and/or secular altruists that their top shelf is not actually the top shelf. Religionists are told that the actual top shelf is not even of this Earth. That God and God’s will is tops, that others somehow know God’s will, and that God demands sacrifices. Secular altruists argue also that your top shelf is not the actual top shelf. That the collective, that society, that what is good for all of mankind is tops. Sacrificing individual rights for the good of the community is moral and just.

Both substitute dogma and duty for reason and choice.

Both believe that moral perfection is measured by the degree to which you are 1. able to ignore your rational self and 2. willing to act selflessly, i.e. against your own self interest. Your willingness to reverse your hierarchy, to place the needs of others before your own, is called virtuous. Guilt and fear of divine retribution are the tools of the religionist to keep the flock in line. Guilt, fear, and duty are the tools of the secular altruists.

For both, feeling trumps thinking.

Religionists promise Heaven after you’re dead in exchange for sacrificing your life on Earth. Heroes are called martyrs. The two things all religious martyrs have in common whether we’re talking about Jesus or a Muslim suicide bomber? Altruism and the fact that they’re all dead. Christians have one; Muslims have many martyrs. No difference here, really. Both faiths glorify death, awarding special status to individuals who willingly walk to their deaths in the name of faith in their un-provable, un-testable God.

Secular altruist promise Utopias right here on Earth in exchange for human sacrifice. They bleed you through your wallet, immorally taxing your productivity in order to sustain others, the unproductive. They call them “the less fortunate” as if wealth is a finite quantity and productivity, creativity, ability and ambition are doled out at birth by chance. “It’s all about the hand you are dealt.” Secular heroes are called public servants. They get a lot of coverage in the media. Sometimes statues and monuments are dedicated to them. The monuments serve to encourage the public at large to follow the altruist path. Egoists are painted in the media and in Hollywood movies as uncaring, selfish, evil capitalists…people who kick other people in the face while they climb the ladder of success [as if that’s the only way to achieve success in America].

The road less traveled? Well, now, that's the whole point of this exercise.

What would Jesus do?

It's a good thing that Americans are not very good Christians?

Absolutely.

Take a couple of current examples [9/11 and the welfare state] and apply solutions consistent with the teachings of Jesus, and it is clear the United States is not a Christian nation. Study history, and know that America has never been one.

The United States responded to the attacks on 9/11 by invading Afghanistan. Nobody even debated this just response. Three thousand innocent Americans had perished needlessly. Al-Qaida and their Taliban sponsors in Afghanistan were responsible. Americans recognize a right to self-defense. What philosophy guides our thinking? Common Sense? Individuals have a right to their lives. Individuals form governments for the purpose of protecting their rights. Or is it Moses and Yahweh’s Old Testament directive? “An eye for an eye.” Either way, the invasion of Afghanistan was a just response to the attack on our people.

A just response, but not a Christian response.

Jesus, of course, had nothing to say about the rights of individuals, but he did address Yahweh’s Old Testament directive. He overturned it. Jesus taught unconditional love, love your enemies, and turn the other cheek. Jesus did not fight back. He didn’t even defend himself verbally when standing accused before Pontius Pilate. He had no harsh words for the people who beat him and sent him to his death.

The United States never turns the other cheek. We didn’t do it after 9/11, and we didn’t do it sixty-six years ago [when arguably we were an even more homogeneously Christian nation] after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. We don’t love our enemies. We melt their streets and disintegrate hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children. And we are right to do so when our own existence is threatened.

We are right, but not Christian.

In defense of her socialist “health-care-for-all” economic policies, Hilary Clinton once said that Jesus would have been a liberal. I’m sorry to say, she’s right. Jesus’ philosophy and ethics applied in the realm of economics is socialism. As Christians demand sacrifices in order to achieve moral perfection and go to Heaven, socialists demand sacrifices in order to create their imagined Utopia. Christians say: “Do it for Jesus;” socialists say: “Do it for the good of the state.” In a socialist state the property rights of some individuals are sacrificed for the good of others. Why? Because people need health care.

Does the fact that you need something give you a right to it? Can anyone have a right to something that costs money?

Reason is irrelevant where the altruist heart is in play. Justice is sacrificed to their feelings. Secular altruists actually changed the Constitution [the 16th Amendment—Income taxes] in their efforts to enable government to confiscate and re-distribute private property. For the good of the community all producers are forced to cough up their hard-earned money to feed, clothe, house, and provide health care for the unproductive.

So, why is it always the Christian conservatives who oppose growing the welfare state? The welfare state is consistent with the teachings of Jesus. Why is it always the most outspoken Christian conservative elements in Congress and the Bush Administration who argue for the military response to global threats, gathering tens, hundreds, or even thousands of eyes for an eye? Are they hypocrites, claiming to be Christian while acting wholly un-Christian? Don’t they ever ask themselves…What would Jesus do?

Thank God they don’t!

Bad government is terminal; hypocrisy is easily cured. Our leaders need only to acknowledge that we are not a Christian nation; that we are governed by objective law; that the United States is the best product of a secular movement, The Enlightenment, not biblical mandates; that the purpose of government is to protect the rights of the individuals, their lives and their liberty, not to protect people from the reality of having to earn a living.

Happy Holiday!

Framing Contradiction

Most Americans believe the altruist code is the moral code. Most Americans are religionists, and all religions promote the altruist code. But, even people who are not particularly religious—Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Hollywood “liberals,” for example—believe that the moral teachings of Jesus are correct, that the example set by Jesus is the ideal. Fortunately, like most Americans, Jefferson and Madison lived Monday through Friday practicing egoism, paying lip service to altruism in public speeches and on weekends. In their private correspondence both men expressed serious doubts about the divinity of Jesus and an unwavering stand against theocracy.

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God” (Jefferson, a letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787).

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which…thus[built] a wall of separation between church and state” (Jefferson, a letter to the Danbury [ Connecticut ] Baptist Association, January 1, 1802).

“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own” (Jefferson, a letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814).

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise” (Madison, a letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774).

Hollywood liberals practice altruism now…now that they have achieved their fame and have tens of millions in the bank. They did not climb to the top of their profession by placing the needs of others before their own or by being humble.

Like most Americans, Jefferson and Madison failed to accurately define that which made them moral men: their competence, their ambition, their productivity, their integrity, their self-esteem. America was built by egoists claiming to be altruists.

In other words, America is a great and powerful nation because we’re not very good Christians.

Americans call egoism “common sense,” and act accordingly pursuing their own goals and ambitions, never acknowledging the system of ethics that drives their success. Instead, they cling to the lessons their parents [and their parents, and their parents] taught them, and falsely characterize any success they may enjoy as the result of some divine favor, or more often, as the result of some sacrifice they may have made. A student, for example, believes he is making a sacrifice when he forgoes a night out with friends in order to study for an exam. Did he make a sacrifice? No. He made a rational, selfish decision. He reasoned that doing well on his exam was more important to him than partying with friends because his goal is to graduate with honors. In fact, only if the student had chosen to go out partying with friends and had failed the test would he have behaved selflessly, altruistically. He would have sacrificed a higher value, his goal to graduate with honors, for a lesser value, partying with friends.

Every moral choice can be analyzed similarly. I hope to demonstrate that in every instance the moral choice is the rational, selfish choice.

Selfishness is a dirty word according to the altruist code. That’s why successful people in America are always falling all over themselves apologizing for, or thanking God for, their success. But, what does selfishness mean? It means, pursuing your own happiness. That’s right! It’s an unalienable right. Selfishness means “taking care of one’s self.” The cynical, altruist definition of selfishness assumes that such success can not be earned, but rather, that it must have been coveted, stolen, gained at the expense of others. [“It’s easier for the camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,” said somewhere in the Bible.]

As long as you accept any part of the altruist code, no quantity of material success you earn can be properly enjoyed. You condemn yourself to suffer irrational guilt for having achieved your self-esteem and the resulting material comforts. How can you be so selfish? How can you enjoy your wealth while there are so many others slopping through life pathetic and poor?