Yellow Dog [Part 8]

Donn,

I think you’re missing my point completely. I think you’re not understanding that, in my view, ALL reports are biased one way or another and to keep quoting from them doesn’t dissuade me. Historical records are unreliable, in fact, ANYTHING that has EVER been subject to someone, sitting down, and writing their views is subject to that person’s bias. For instance, you keep saying Tibet has always fought against China and, according to the Chinese, that’s simply not true. They were separated by some treaty after a war, I believe WW I or WWII, but I’m not 100% sure...it could even have been the Opium Wars. They say Tibet has always been a part of China, even if for many generations they were just loosely connected. Taiwan doesn’t have a legitimate claim, not unless you’re interested in establishing another Emperor. Those guys left China and fled to Taiwan. That's like saying Miami Cubans have a legitimate claim to Cuba. Of course they don’t, they gave that up when they left their country. I, personally, don’t think anyone that leaves their country has a claim to it anymore. My grandfather didn’t have a "legitimate claim" to Belarus. He was an American, through and through, regardless of where he was born and he would have scoffed at anyone who said he had a claim to Belarus.

As for China's "Moral Authority" given our new proclivity to torture, render and hold people without a trial or legal representation AND preemptively invade sovereign countries and kill more than 100,000 innocent civilians, I’m pretty sure we don’t have much room to talk about "Moral Authority." The point I’m trying to convey to you is, that as long as you’re relying on second, third or even further down the list accounts, you’re subject to someone else's biased interpretations. Right wing, left wing, communist, capitalist, democratic, republican, fascist, anarchist they are ALL working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, year after year, to color historical and present accounts of events to suit their needs and agendas. As for Michael Moore, I’m sorry he bothers you, but he uses verified facts to back up his conclusions. Why do "his facts" bother you more than say, ummm... Pat Buchanan's facts? It’s all in the way you say it, the meat isn’t as important as the appearance. That’s just basic marketing principles, which EVERYONE is employing these days. So, until you get on a plane and go see for yourself, you’re just repeating what someone or some text or newspaper account told you, and who knows what agenda THEY were trying to promote?

While in China, I went into an internet cafe and Googled “Tianamen Square,” and there was the Wikipedia entry, completely unedited. That’s what I keep trying to get across to you. I run across more rules and regulations here than I do in China. In China, you want to buy a bootleg DVD? No problem, the local department store carries them, right next to the legal ones for about a third the cost. You want to open a restaurant? Go ahead, no one will stop you. You want to open a stand and sell something like Smiley Face Chairman Mao Watches, where he waves like Mickey Mouse (absolutely hilarious) at a stand right next to Chairman Mao's Tomb? Not a problem. In fact, I saw the crowd patrol police wearing and buying them. Traffic laws? In China? Nope, just traffic suggestions and no one is even enforcing those. THIS year, for the first time, I had to tell them where I was living, but apparently, that was only because of the Olympics. The four summers BEFORE that, they never asked and never cared. I have traveled freely, with my wife, ANYWHERE, without any restrictions. I’ve been to the most rural of areas, where they’ve never seen a white man before. I’ve stopped traffic because I was there. I got stares and ALWAYS the most pleasant of greetings. I spent a couple days in a tiny little farming village. I went into their farming houses and saw them caring for their animals. The school I work for said they love me so much that I can go anywhere I like and, for NEXT summer, I’m choosing Urumqi, the most remote city in China, bordering Mongolia. The population there is almost 90% Muslim.

Some of the friendliest people I’ve met in China were the Chinese Muslims... friendly, happy and enjoying complete religious freedom. The largest religious population in China, believe it or not, is Chinese Christians, something like 6 or 7 percent of the population followed by Buddhists and then Muslims. The majority of Chinese are atheists. I heard that the Chinese arrested a woman for trying to smuggle in bibles last summer and I was shocked. Not because she was trying but because, in her ignorance, I guess she didn’t realize you could buy bibles at any bookstore in China. They don’t care what religion you are but they REALLY do not like people proselytizing. For them, religion is a personal, private matter. I saw many Buddhist Monks in Guangzhou and I asked them about it. Basically, I was told, ANYONE can ask and they can tell anyone anything BUT, THEY cannot approach random people in the streets and try to push their religion on anyone. To me, THAT seems to be extremely reasonable. The BEST thing I like about China is that ALL churches MUST pay their fair share of taxes. They get NO tax breaks. I LOVE that.


Marx

Yellow Dog [Part 7]

Marx,

After I make a couple of “historical” points—keeping in mind you believe any study of history written by anybody is a useless waste of time—I’m going to discuss something of critical importance that undisputed history confirms, but that does not rely on the facts of history.

About Tibet and Texas. I think if Texas had continued to wage its war for independence from the United States for 14 hundred years, we probably would have let them go. The fact of the matter is the people of Texas ultimately chose to join the Union. The people of Tibet have never offered China anything but a war of resistance. China should have let them go. Alaska also chose to join the Union. Puerto Rico stubbornly refuses to join, but the decision has always been theirs in accordance with Article IV of the US Constitution. China’s position on Taiwan is also untenable. If you accept the claim of the mainland Chinese, then the converse must also be true: Taiwan has a legitimate claim to mainland China! They’re all Chinese, after all. Mao had all of the natural wealth of the mainland with which to work. His communist utopia never materialized. The Nationalists fled the mainland and created something great on a relatively tiny island with no natural advantages. Now like all authoritarians through history, the Chinese government wants to loot the tiny island and pilfer its success. It’s like Great Britain, France, and Spain trying to retake the Americas. We were once subject to these powers, after all.

Thanks for inviting me to China! Of course, I can not take you up on the offer. As I thought I made clear, L and I have grown our family. I have twin, 2-year-olds. Did you not get the pictures? You’ve never acknowledged them [preferring to keep our correspondence official, I guess], but they are my heart and my soul. I could never leave them...not even for a summer. Besides, L can’t work and run this entire household by herself, and I wouldn’t ask her to. Am I not being brave, friend?

Finally, I do not share your view that there is no reliable information out there. There are honest, objective reporters across the globe from every nationality, every political perspective. They write honest, well-documented books, too. There is the unofficial media of the blogosphere. There are people just like you and me posting their experiences from day to day across the globe. There is uncut, unedited video out there. To compare these people with that piece of filth Michael Moore is most cynical and disingenuous of you. Reported and recorded history has never been more reliable than it is today because there are so many hands from across the globe actually writing it.

But, I promised an argument that does not rely on empirical evidence. Those most important arguments address the core of human thinking, i.e. philosophy. Philosophy is metaphysics [Your answer to the question: What is the nature of existence?] and epistemology [Your answer to the question: How do I know what I know?]. Ethics is a product of philosophy [Your answer to the question: What should I do?]. The political and economic systems we create are a result of our conclusions about ethics.

The most widely accepted Code of Ethics across the globe is collectivism-altruism. It is the code preached by every faith, nearly every government. It is the code used to justify socialism and communism. It is the code referenced by every authoritarian regime in history. It is the code that, stated most simply, places the will of the community above the rights of individuals. It is the code that demands that individuals sacrifice their own thinking to the will of the collective. It is an immoral code that has resulted in every genocide in history, millions sacrificed for the “greater good” of the collective...whether they call themselves Nazis, Muslim Brotherhood, or the CCP, all share precisely the same core values. All place the will of the collective above the rights of the individual. Your right to your life, to the freedom of your own mind and the products of your genius and/or labor, are always in jeopardy where the collectivist-altruist code is widely accepted.

The moral code upon which this nation was built, Individualism-Egoism, has been under fire from the left [in the economic realm] and from the right [in the social realm] for a hundred years. There are few Individualist [classical liberals, like the Framers, if you prefer] left. Our code is the one that pronounces unequivocally that there is no greater good than absolute protection of your right to your life, to your liberty, to pursue your own happiness.

Given their history, the Chinese may never be able to achieve this moral ideal.

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part 6]

Donn,

What I’m saying is that the old quote "believe only half of what you see and none of what you hear or read" is probably the most accurate thing I’ve ever read. Now, if you DON’T think that news reports, stats and the sort of information that you’re receiving second, third or even further down the list isn’t colored by what people want to see or what they want it to say, then I really don’t know what to say. I think it was Churchill that once said that "history is written by the victors."

China was hurt so badly at the turn of the century and during the Opium Wars and the imperialism of European countries that they have rarely been on the side of the "victors" and so have never been able to "write their own version of history." I never said that everyone is in cahoots with the United States, but I can say, unequivocally, that ALL the news we get is Euro-centric or Ameri-centric, and we get NO news from China that hasn’t been colored with that filter. And no, I was not in one place. I’ve been going there for four summers, one solid year. I’ve been to Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Fengjie (a small city and my wife's hometown), Xian, Yangshuo, Guilen, Guangzhou, Wangzhou and whole host of outlying small neighboring towns, and yes, I have been to Tibet. It isn’t NEARLY as bad as you've been told. I have seen farmers, been on the road, and basically have gone anywhere I want and no one has ever told me "no." On the Tibet issue, I'll tell you my wife’s point of view, which is probably the Chinese overall viewpoint. She says Tibet is as much a part of China as Texas or Alaska is part of the United States. How would WE feel if the Chinese started to demand WE free Texas? They also have poured BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars INTO Tibet building infrastructure and schools that did NOT get built during that brief time they were "independent but still part of China." They have videos and my wife’s brother was a soldier that served in Tibet, and he'll tell you that the majority of Tibetans are very happy the Chinese are more of visible source than they used to be. He will tell you about slavery and torture that were routinely being used during that brief time the Dalai Lama ruled Tibet. He will tell you there are really TWO types of Buddhists in Tibet and that, before the Chinese came, one subjugated the other. So, in their mind, they came to Tibet and freed the slaves. How would you like it if France told Lincoln after the Emancipation Proclamation "you must give the south back to Jefferson Davis and re-instate slavery." Would that be OK? They also do not believe that the Dalai Lama is the peaceful man that his image suggests. They say HE started the problems in Tibet before the Olympics to embarrass the Chinese government. Is it true? Who knows? But I look at western media with the same jaundiced eye. EVERYONE has an agenda and everyone has something they want to say and facts can be bent, twisted, altered and made to fit whatever it is you want to say...us, them, everyone. If you don’t believe me, simply watch any Michael Moore film and see the way he takes "facts" and uses them to say whatever he wants to say. The Chinese do it and so do we. Conservatives do it. Liberals do it. PETA people do it. Greenpeace, the CIA, the FBI, EVERYONE does it. Is European news better? A little but still biased and still with an agenda. Textbooks? The stuff you’re reading from and teaching from? What do YOU think? According to Chinese textbooks, Chairman Mao was their George Washington, a great man and the man that helped take China from a backward, third world country and put it on the path to explode to where it is now? Do YOU agree? I bet not, I bet you’re turning all shades of purple and livid at the very idea of what they’re teaching. Are they wrong? Who knows, history is biased accounts being reported by biased people. I look at historical records like I look at the bible, basically. Who knows what was really happening or what they were trying to say when it was written?

Don’t rely on me, Donn. If you think I’m wrong, go work in China a couple summers and you tell me what you think then. THEN, you'll be telling me what you saw and what YOU got from it. Here... go to http://www.englishfirst.com/trt/index.html and sign up. They have schools ALL over China. Next year, they’re sending me to Urumqi, an extremely remote city, but they have been accommodating and willing to send me anywhere I want to go. Be brave, go see, develop your own ideas and don’t rely on someone telling you something and then hoping that maybe, just maybe, there’s a kernel of truth in their words.

Marx

Yellow Dog [Part 5]

Donn,

Ok Donn, you have to see the paradox in your letter, don’t you? I JUST got done telling you that all the stats, all the stories, practically everything you’ve heard or read about China are untrue and my own personal experiences have SHOWN me they’re wrong, and THEN, in order to disprove my point, you quote those very stats that I just got done telling you were pure propaganda. Here’s ANOTHER story of propaganda: I was IN China during the last "Tibetan Crisis." Of course, the Chinese did NOT censor CNN's coverage. I was reading and my wife looked over my shoulder and said: "What’s that?" I told her, it’s a CNN report showing a Chinese soldier beating some poor Tibetan Monk. She looked at the picture and said, "ummm, that’s NOT a Chinese Soldier." I said, "huh? the caption SAYS it is." She then showed me picture after picture of Chinese soldiers’ uniforms, and guess what? She was right. They were NOT Chinese Soldiers at all. I then started researching and it turned out that it was a Korean uniform and an old one at that. Basically, CNN was showing footage and pictures of ANY Asian soldier and passing it off as Chinese soldiers abusing Tibetan Monks. DUDE, you’re being lied to! I don’t really think this is a hard to point to understand but I'll try again. Everything you’ve read, everything you think you know has been colored, doctored and propagandized to further our own view of the world. So, quoting those stats really doesn’t further your point.

As for the view of "American Doctors" have no interest of curing but are more interested in getting you on some drug to help out the pharmaceutical industry, the Chinese doctor telling me that didn’t change MY view. I see it every day. I have personal experience after personal experience to demonstrate that point, The one that MOST comes to mind is the time took my wife to the doctors and was waiting and waiting and waiting. IN walked the Pharm Rep. He walked right in, threw around some cash and gifts and, lo and behold, my wife was given a subscription to a NEW birth control pill that just happened to be the one THAT rep was representing. Mind you, when it got my wife sick, the doctor wouldn’t even return her call. I should have sued her. I told my wife to dump the pills and we got another doctor who gave her a different script. It doesn’t take a genius to see these guys are more interested in THEMSELVES than they are in us.

Marx


Marx,

My stats and info come from international sources [including Chinese nationals]. Are you suggesting the entire world is out there trying to give China a bad wrap, that even al jazerah is in cahoots with the their friends the United States? Follow the link below, read the article [by a reporter who actually lived in Tibet] and watch the video. The video is presented by al jazerah.

http://article.wn.com/view/2008/04/08/A_Dirty_Game_started_behind_2008_Beijing_Olympics/?section=BigPhoto&template=cheetah-meta%2Fupper-block.txt

Or don't. But know this: the international free press is a far more reliable source than China's state-controlled media. You must know this. I have no great love for CNN, but perhaps they used archived video because it's nearly impossible to get out of the country with any real, damning video. The international press is not free to roam around China shooting video of state brutality. People witness the brutality. If they can get out of country, they tell their story. But, of course, they haven't any video. [By the way, this does not excuse CNN fraudulent use of archive video. I'm no fan of CNN as I'm sure you already know....especially CNN International.] Have you been to Tibet?

You must also know that life in Maoist China was an abominable failure...that's why the leftists lost power in the late 70s. There is no debate about where the best medical schools in the world are located, i.e. the USA. The China you are witness to is the result of free market reforms and a lot of help from the West, both that offered and that stolen. Many Chinese, particularly those who live in rural areas, have seen little change.

It's a huge country, Marx. Your experiences as a guest teacher give you a snap-shot of one or two communities. I've already acknowledged that I'm sure the locals are sweet and decent people. I'm guessing you've traveled a bit, but you are obviously a foreigner and would appear to anyone as a tourist. So, China treats its tourist well. That's a good thing. But it doesn't give you infallible insight into the plight of Chinese political prisoners nor on the plight of Tibetan monks. I'm not trying to rob you of any of your happiness. I'm not just being stubborn. I'm asking you to be real.

Your opinions are based solely on anecdotal evidence amassed over four summers as a guest in China. You've already made the point that nothing in the entire free world press is accurate, and I can assure you China's state-controlled media is not reliable...so that leaves us with no facts, no data. Without data there can be no proof. Without data there can be no debate.

I'd like to continue our discussion. I think I've learned a lot of interesting things about China. I'd like to know more. But if you're going to discard all of my "evidence to the contrary" without providing any data of your own, what's the point?

You know, I work in Nashville, but I live in Columbia, 45 miles south. I've lived in Columbia for five years, all year around. In those five years I have never witnessed a crime, I have never seen an arrest. When I drive down the street in my neighborhood people in their yards wave "hello" and oncoming drivers also wave. I too have witnessed a car accident. After the collision the driver of the car at fault jumped out of their car and rushed to see if everyone in the other car was OK. There was no arguing. Last year the wind blew down some branches in my front yard. Some of them were pretty big. I was struggling to cut them up and drag them off when a truck stopped and a guy I don't even know got out, grabbed his chainsaw, and went to work with me in my yard. When I offered to pay him, he refused the money. I came to find out that he was out driving around looking for people who needed help that day after the storm....All true stories, but, is there crime in Columbia? I'm sure. I've never seen it, but it's there. Are there nasty, mean people in Columbia? I'm sure, but I haven't met any. Is there a bad cop in Columbia? Chances are there is. One person's experience in a small town does not come close to telling the whole story. How can your limited experience in a country as huge as China tell the whole story?

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part 4]

Marx,

OK, Marx. I know that you’re in love...with a woman, her country, and her country-men...so I don’t know how my points will be received. But, in the interest of truth I think a few important points must be made.

First. I am not a “conservative.” I am a laissez-faire capitalist. I am registered Independent. On economic issues, neither party promotes my view: Democrats are socialists. Republicans talk about free markets, but they aren’t laissez-faire capitalists. Taxpayer money is not used to bail out failing banks, for example, in a capitalist economy. Businesses, like individuals, are free to succeed and free to fail. Politicians play no role whatever in the economy. That is economic justice. True capitalism existed in this country only briefly...in the 19th-century. Economic freedom has been undermined in this country consistently over the past 120 years. Every economic problem we have was caused by politicians [people who produce nothing] and government intervention in the economy. On social issues, I disagree with the “conservatives” on every single issue, except gun control. My views on social issues are far more liberal than even the Democrats. My list of “things government should be doing” is a very short list.

Second. Modern medicine was invented in the United States in the early 20th Century, early efforts largely funded by endowments set up by the great capitalist, JD Rockefeller. Life expectancy in China in the 1960s was 40-years-old! Traditional Chinese Medicine [TCM] may have discovered a cure for the sprained ankle, but it utterly failed to cure the diseases that actually kill us. My father was a physician and a healer. He cured thousands in his 30-year career. My sister, L, is a Duke-Johns Hopkins-educated pathologist saving lives daily in rural North Carolina. “Whores to the pharmaceutical industry” is just laughable, communist propaganda. [I’m sure your doctor was born before the 1976 revolution in China’s politics.] Since then, China’s Right has been growing the number of individuals who practice Western medicine along with their nifty TCM remedies. As I write, thousands of Chinese nationals are enrolled in American medical schools, the best medical schools in the world. Every important break-through in life saving medicine can be directly attributed to capitalism, economic freedom...before capitalism, even in the West, life expectancy was under 50.

Third. Free people grow the world’s knowledge and wealth. Did you know Americans are awarded over 50% of the worlds patents annually? Chinese researchers—all 1.3 billion of them—are awarded less than 2%. Tiny, more-or-less-capitalist Japan next door pulls in nearly 20%. Over the past several decades China has dedicated most of her efforts in this area to stealing the protected property of Western innovators. I have agreed with you, that China is moving in the right direction. I only wish you would acknowledge what that means: China is adopting Capitalism, economic freedom. Socialism, even in the health care system in China is on the way out. China is dismantling her welfare state, even as Obama Democrats argue in favor of creating these failed institutions in this country under the guise of “change.”

I thought your car accident story was interesting. I carry liability insurance because I can’t afford to replace some-guy’s $50k Beamer if in fact I am at fault. And how are these public tribunals conducted when one of the drivers is dead? Do they kill the surviving driver right there on the street if the crowd determines he was at fault and liable for the other guy's death? ...I think I’ll keep paying my premiums.

I agree with you...our Congress [in fact, the mainstream political debate in this country] is crap. Both Republicans and Democrats are statists, Republicans primarily on social issues, Democrats in the economic realm. Both sides are a threat to my liberty. When ever I vote, I am choosing the lesser of two evils.

I think it’s dishonest for a teacher to claim to present both sides fairly. I’ve heard this many times before....an American history teacher who claims to present history without bias...then I find out they spend two weeks covering FDR, a president they call great, a man they argue saved America during the Great Depression. When, in fact, FDR’s socialist policies did nothing to alleviate the depressed economy. The unemployment rate remained above 14% [usually higher] throughout FDR’s entire reign. The stock market had not recovered from its 1929 losses until 1954! [Clearly, Bush’s policy of cutting taxes and telling Americans to go shopping was a better remedy. The stock market recovered from the 9/17/01 crash—ten times worse than the ’29 crash—in a year.

Since I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat, I am free to trash both parties when I think they are wrong, and that’s exactly what I do. You see, I don’t think communism and socialism are just “bad ideas that don’t work.” I think they are pure evil. I don’t think Republican-religionist positions on social issues are just “wrong.” I think their positions are a threat the liberty of all Americans. I think their positions are irrational, anti-man and anti-man’s rights. I think they too are a dangerous evil. I will not present both sides equally if I know and can prove that one side or the other holds views that are pure evil. People, of course, are free to have whatever opinions they choose, however irrational, but I will never teach “all opinions are equal.” There is such a thing as a wrong opinion.

A Pastiche? Anything less than the truth is a lie. Any movement away from pure, social and economic freedom is movement in the direction of statism...pure evil. America is moving in the wrong direction. We may be doomed. China is presently moving in the right direction. I wonder if the Chinese will ever be able to shake that mammoth they’ve created, the state?

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part 3]

Donn,

Yes, you’re right. It’s NOT US against China, it’s our children against the world’s children and we already knew were behind the European Education system, and now I can tell you were way behind the Chinese educational system. I really don’t see how our children will be able to compete. I think we are setting up our fall from world dominance and, the truth is, I don’t see a way to fix that anymore. It's not the teachers and it’s not the system. It’s the children and their parents. It’s their feeling that somehow and for some reason, they don’t need to work hard. I told my class what I told you and their response was, who cares if they’re ahead of us, we want to be able to relax and have fun. Those kids will grow and we'll be poorer, and they'll teach their children the same lazy attitudes, and it will gradually inch down.

Mind you, yes, what you heard about China in 1989 and Tianamen Square was true but we had OUR Tianeman Square in Kent State in the 60's. The truth is that was turbulent time in China's history. If you read and talk to them about Tianamen, you get a different story than we got. The China of today is so far divorced from the China of 1989 that it’s almost two different countries. Now, if you think that’s because they’re embracing conservative ideology, you’re wrong. It's because they’re trying to find a workable mixture of political style and I think they’ve found something that truly works. They call in "Market Based Socialism". What does THAT mean? It means that the socialist structures are still in place, everyone that CAN work DOES work and that means there’s a lot of stupid jobs out there, the old man that operates the automatic elevator in an older building, the woman the sweeps the streets, the man that drives the airport shuttle bus from the airplane to the terminal 30 ft away, and jobs that are fairly useless to anyone but the guy or girl that has them.

Medical care is available to EVERYONE for what they can pay. I went to doctor in China a couple times and they fixed the problem for very reasonable costs and, apparently, they charged ME more than they would charge a Chinese construction worker. I was also amazed at HOW quickly they addressed the problems and fixed them. I sprained my ankle, severely the first year I was there. It got so bad I couldn’t walk, but I was afraid to go to a Chinese doctor because of all the stuff I'd heard from OUR medical system. I finally gave in when I couldn’t walk anymore and my ankle was the size of grapefruit and completely black and blue. The Chinese doctor looked at it, said something to my wife in Chinese (basically, she told her I was simply too fat and kept re-injuring it by walking...by Chinese standards I’m HUGE, I’m actually a little smaller than I was when you last saw me) wrapped it up in some evil smelling brown paste and hooked me up to an IV. I asked her how many weeks until I could walk again and she said "weeks??? You'll be healed in 3 days." I was shocked...3 days? No way, I’ve done this to my ankle many times and it takes about 6 weeks. She laughed and said come back here in three days and you'll see. I did, and guess what? Three days later, it was healed, completely. I was shocked and she told me "American doctors have no interest in "healing" anyone, they’re ONLY interested in getting you on some treatment or chronically hooked to some drug." She said: "American Doctors are nothing more than whores for the pharmaceutical industries. Here in China, if I don’t get you back to work as soon as I possibly can, I may not get paid." Remember, in China, Medical School is free. However, Art School costs money. They say, "we NEED a lot of doctors and not so many artists." Certain professions educational requirements are subsidized according to societies needs. American doctors are there because they want money. Who can blame them? They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars GETTING an education.

See, the conservative approach to education is costing us all way too much. They refuse to adequately fund education and we're paying for it on the back end. Just like insurance is a joke, too. Do you know how it works in China? I saw it and it amazed me. I saw a car accident: the two people got out of their cars and pleaded their case to the crowd on the side of the street. The crowd listened to both impassioned speeches, they conferred, and they, the crowd, decided who was at fault. THAT person accepted their fate and is responsible for paying ALL damages. No insurance needed and no one trying to game the system.

As for "no dissension," I’m telling you, they’re lying to you. I saw plenty of protests and PLENTY of people espousing they’re radical ideas. In fact, IN Tianamen Square is where protests ARE allowed and you see people there, standing on soapboxes, airing they’re views. They’re just a very ordered society and they do NOT like "personal attacks." You can say: "The government doesn’t work well" but you cannot say "Hu Jintao is a jerk." They’re also VERY proud of their version of Congress. They say that they have far more diversity in theirs than we have in ours. They have hard, hard right arguing passionately with those on the extreme left and every shade in between. They say OUR Congress has a lot of people that are all pretty much in the middle, they don’t think we have ANY true liberals or ANY true conservatives in our congress, just a lot of people with no firm convictions about anything.

As for you thinking you would be in prison in China, I have to say, not unless you broke the law. They NEVER restrict what I teach but they do plead that you present BOTH sides equally. If I say: "I think Barack Obama is the best," they would like me to also say "but SOME people disagree with me..." and list some reasons WHY they disagree. I personally think they’re VERY even handed about the whole thing. I HAVE, IN class, criticized Chairman Mao, but they also wanted time to rebut or they asked if I would present THIER side too. I was happy to do both, it only seems fair.

As for guns and violence? They go hand in hand. There is practically NO violent crime in China. You can walk down the street, in the worst ghetto, at 2 am on Friday night and the only thing that might happen is you might have a confidence man or a pickpocket. Try THAT in Overtown and see how far you get. Mind you, in Hong Kong, gun ownership is allowed and THEY have a violent crime problem and a HUGE gang problem with the Triads. I'll tell you a story. I went there my second summer and I got there around 12 am. I went to a restaurant to eat. I looked out the window and I saw my favorite student from the year before. Ika, a beautiful, talented, creative and musical 12-year-old girl. She was alone. I asked: "Ika, why are you out so late at night? Where are your parents?" She said: "I told them you would come tonight and they told me to come and say hello." -- "ALONE!!!???" on a Saturday night, in a big city like Shenzhen," and she said, "yes?" and "why not?" The next day I saw her dad and I asked him about it and he said: "Of course she can come alone. There is no danger." I was shocked and told him about all the things that could happen to a pretty 12-year-old in America in a situation like that. He said: "No one would hurt a child here. The government would find them very quickly and execute them also very quickly. I don’t know how you raise children in America,” he said, “there's so much fear. I would like to live in America for a while but, I wouldn’t raise a child there."

One last note: The first year I went, another teacher from my school came with, an ardent conservative. He was shocked and he told me he will never believe another thing the government tells him about other countries. He said he felt like he was totally lied to, that everything he had read or heard was wrong. He has tried to go back every summer but he hasn’t been as lucky as me. Fortunately, for me, they LOVE me there and practically beg me to stay every year. They liked him...just not as much as they loved me. He said, if he could get them to take his wife, he would go and, maybe, never come back. You'd be surprised that THAT’S the overwhelming opinion of almost every ex-pat I met there regardless of their political inclinations.

Finally, we'd better learn and realize that NO political ideology works by itself very well that, there's good in almost all the ideologies and the countries that move ahead in the new millennium will be the ones that adopt a "pastiche." We'd better learn to stop fear mongering and learn to look, objectively, at what each political system has to offer and take the best of ALL ideologies.


Marx

Yellow Dog [Part 2]

Marx continued:

In China, there's an air of optimism and a feeling that they can and will control the world one day. Everyone feels like their best is ahead of them. Here? We seem to be struggling just to hang on. I'll show you the difference. Florida cut our salaries this year. I lost about $300 a month. In China, as I left, ALL their teachers got a 10% raise. They were told, with inflation, it’s the least we can do. AND, teachers get a bonus every quarter plus a "Chinese New Years Red Envelope" filled with about a thousand US dollars. Taxes seem to be voluntary. I worked there every summer and they don’t seem to want it. They get three months off every year plus a month during the Spring Festival. Teachers only work half a day in China. Students go to school from 7 am until 9 pm but, a new set of teachers rotates in every 6 hours. They have an extremely close society. The grandparents always live with their kids and take care of the grandchildren. Every morning, their outside in the courtyards with the babies and doing Tai Chi. Friday and Saturday nights, the whole city heads to the city square for dancing, singing and just hanging with friends. In my wife’s hometown, they even have a band-shell. In my mind, it looks like the America we are all told about of the 1950's. Everyone goes out all the time for get-togethers with friends or maybe to the local bar or karaoke place. I'll tell you, every year I go, it gets harder and harder to come back. Last year, they offered to make me the principal of a school if I would please stay. My wife wants us to move to Guilin, a pretty, beautiful, picturesque town, open up a bar and I could play every night. Who knows? Maybe one day.

Finally, their medical system is head and shoulders above ours. I have NEVER had to wait to see a physician and, when I get in, they fix the problem for an extremely low cost. Apparently, the Chinese decided that they need a lot more doctors than anything else, so, it’s free to go to med school and it costs a lot to go Art School. I went to a dentist in Guangzhou. The dentist here said I need $7,000 in work. They did EVERYTHING, in two visits, for about $350. Their offices are all shiny and new with the BEST, state of the art equipment.

I really wish everyone would go there, they'd realize EVERYTHING we've been told about them is a flat out lie. I have met MANY Ex-Patriots there and not one of them wants to go back home. What does THAT tell you?

Marx


Marx

About China:

That's a damn shame about the Internet porn filters!

Seriously, I don't doubt at all what you said about China's educational standards. I know we're dangerously behind, but this reality doesn't shake up my world view too much. In the global economy, as within these United States today, national borders [like state borders] will mean very little. It's not, the US v. China. It will be individual Americans v. individual Chinese. People with ability, people who can adapt to the changing global economy, will win, globally. The people who cannot will continue to squeak out their existence working one of the evermore fragmented local economies, repairing cars, stocking shelves in Walmart, cutting hair, waiting tables...and [if the left has their way] their existence will continue to be subsidized by the producers.

I also don't doubt the hospitality of the local Chinese...particularly for teachers, particularly for an American English teacher. Weren't the Mandarin teachers? Didn't the government spend the last decade preparing China to show its best face for the international community during the Olympics? Local people across the globe [particularly in formerly authoritarian states] have great reverence for people they been taught to consider "their betters." In America, everybody thinks they're "the sheet," even if they're a know-nothing, low-life, thug-rapper. In this respect, I wish we were more like the Chinese.

The fact that you report everything is shiny and new, confirms my point that China's growing middle class is a relatively recent phenomenon. For the past couple of decades China's government is communist only in name. A kind of state-capitalism has grown China's economy... government-approved entrepreneurship, currency manipulation, protectionism, and trade created the China you are witness to...not communism. The regime could not ignore what free markets created in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong...good for them. They did the right thing. They moved away from socialism even as Europe sinks deeper into their own pool of sloth, tangled-up in their own, unsustainable, social safety nets. And half of America wants to follow Europe's lead into the very same disaster. China is definitely moving in the right direction.

Of course there are no guns in China. The first thing authoritarians do when they take over a country is disarm the people. It's a lot easier to control an unarmed populace. "No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms," Thomas Jefferson. "Americans have the right and advantage of being armed--unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms," James Madison.

I'm quite sure, Marx, that everything I've read about China is NOT a lie. Tiananmen Square DID happen in 1989. Political and religious dissidents are imprisoned in China, denied liberty because of their thinking and "im-permit-able" speech. If I taught there I would probably be joining their ranks.

But none of that matters. Clearly, YOU have found a woman and a country you love. If you're happy, then that is all that matters. I've heard stranger truths. I wish you nothing but the best.

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part I]

[Per my friend's request, I have changed his name.]

Marx,

I guess you've figured out by now, I'm in Nashville. I've been a teacher here for the past 5 years. A lot I'd like to tell you, but I don't know if you even care to know. We didn't part company on the best of terms, but I've never been bitter about it...

Anyway, how are you? How's your daughter? Did you re-marry? Do you have anymore kids I should know about? How's MDCPS?

Donn


Donn,

That's great. I hope you like Nashville. It's a mess here in Florida. Tallahassee has cut education again and so deeply that we’re now officially, dead last in per capita expenditures on education. I did re-marry. I married a beautiful woman I met in China 4 years ago when I was teaching English there. Since then, I have spent the last four summers working in China and I love it. Maybe one day, I'll move there. My wife would be happy...she really isn’t all that impressed with America.

Trust me...I have a MILLION stories about China. As a Social Studies teacher, you'd be interested in this. EVERYTHING you’ve heard, read or been told about China is untrue. I was completely shocked when I got there. They’re wealthier than we think they are. They have modern, shiny, new everything. Their medical system is completely affordable and their dental system is the same. This summer, before I went to China, I went to a dentist and she told me I needed $7,000 in work done on my mouth. I went to China and got the whole thing done for about $350. I also met a LOT of ex-pats in China and you know what’s strange? Not one of them is in any hurry to come here. In fact, every year it gets harder and harder for ME to come back and if I didn’t have a daughter, I would probably be living there.

Marx


Marx,

You don't disappoint, Marx. China! I would like to know more...particularly about civil liberties. I realize China adopted capitalism on some level over the past two decades, that its economy has grown at a staggering rate, that it aspires to become First World, that it owns a half-trillion of our debt, but are the Chinese free? Are you free when you live among them?

Donn


Donn,

You'd be completely surprised. China is amazing ... civil liberties? I’m not really sure what they DON’T have. No, that’s not true, I DO know what they don’t have.

1. They can NOT criticize the government publicly. Actually, you CAN do that, you can’t PUBLISH it...hmmm...no...you can do THAT too...IF you ask for permit first. They SAY you can’t protest but you can...you just have to ask for a permit first. I saw a lot of protests. Ok, let me amend that, you can’t protest without a permit. Sounds like here, doesn’t it?

2. It’s hard to find porn online.

That’s about the only restrictions I saw there. I am free to go anywhere and do anything in China. I went to ghettoes and some of the nicest areas too AND I had no fear of anyone doing anything. There are NO guns in China. Even the police are unarmed. Only the military has weapons. I saw people selling anything and everywhere...they have FAR less restrictions than we do. In the last four years [I have been there for a total of about a year], I have never seen the police give anyone so much as a ticket and I have NEVER seen anyone arrested. Contrast that with Miami, where I see tickets given every day and I probably see someone getting arrested about once a month.

The free market is COMPLETELY unregulated and they set up shops anywhere and sell anything and you can bargain for a price practically everywhere. They set up restaurants anywhere. This last summer, the new hip restaurant was one that some family set up in alleyway, between two shops. Apparently, it was "illegal" but I saw many policemen eating there. Their subways are spotless and efficient and their bus system can take you anywhere for a VERY reasonable price. Most bus trips cost about 15 cents. The subway costs about 20 cents. A car is completely unnecessary. The people are extremely helpful and happy. I get smiles and nods from everyone and people walk up to me and engage me in conversations anywhere I go, just to practice their "English". I get taken to dinner so much its crazy. Every time I offer to pay I’m told "you are a guest in my country...one day...I will be a guest in your country and you can take me for a meal." I TRY to tell them that's unlikely but they don’t want to hear it.

Their students are amazing. Any question I ask and I get EVERYONE’S hands up. They get upset if you don’t call on them. Every word I say there is treated likegold and gets written down in their notes. Parents take the teachers out to dinner at least once a week. They tell you "the teacher is the most important person in a child’s life and YOU are an expert" They defer to anything I say. Millionaires defer to teachers. They'll say, "I make a lot of money...but it’s only money...you are far more valuable than I am to society." EVERY student they have is about 3-4 years ahead of ours. They’re doing Algebra in 4th grade, required. I tell people all the time. They’re students are miles above ours. We don’t realize that they have already passed us. They’re just waiting for their kids to grow up. Our kids can NOT compete. They don’t work hard enough and don’t care...

Work and Welfare

Altruist-collectivists’ schemes to redistribute “the wealth” sacrifice justice and reward sloth and indifference to reality. Socialism destroys economic freedom, destroys liberty, and ultimately enables the politicians to destroy the producers.

Wealth doesn’t just “exist.” Wealth is created. Individuals have an absolute right to the wealth they create. In a free, capitalist system individuals come to the market place to trade with other individuals, value for value. My paycheck represents real work, real value that I have created. I can not morally consume more than I produce.

Economies are driven by production. Production is the cause of wealth. It is production that makes consumption possible. One who produces nothing has nothing to trade, nothing to consume. What do these unproductive souls bring to the market place? 1. their tears [the moochers] to beg you to sacrifice the wealth you have created, or 2. their guns [the looters] to force you to hand over the wealth you have created. Looters and moochers offer nothing of value in exchange for your productivity. Looters steal you wealth by force; moochers count on your acceptance of the altruist code and “guilt you” into handing it over.

The vintage 1960s welfare state currently being sold to this nation as “change” by Barack Obama is actually a combination of the two: politicians will use the tools of the looter [force through the progressive tax code] to achieve the immoral goal of the moocher [to consume the values created by others].

Imagine the consequences of Obama’s immoral “spreading the wealth” principle applied to my high school American Government class. The just system in place today and always in my class is simple: students receive the grades they have earned. If I were to introduce the “change” endorsed by Obama after my next test, I’d tell my students that I’m going to add up all of the points everybody made and divide them evenly among all students. Students who slept in class, failed to study, made Ds and Fs will think this is a fine idea. They’ll be getting something of value for nothing. I’m the government in my classroom, so of course I can force the A and B students to hand over the points. I will argue that this is the policy of our likely, president-elect. They will grumble that my system is unjust, but I have the power to suspend them from school, so they’re not going to give me too much of a fight. They’ll get permits and protest a bit, here and there, but they’ll never attack me personally. I’ll get the school news paper to write a wonderful story about me and my “progressive” classroom, how I’m working hard every day to lift up the little guy. After a while the producers, the A and B students, will stop trying so hard to get ahead. What’s the point? As a result there will be fewer points to go around. The D and F students will demand more. They believe they are entitled to it...Good grades are my RIGHT! There are more of them than A, B, students by this time...I’ve done the math...There are fewer points to go around, less wealth to be spread. I’ll try to persuade my former A and B students to work harder “for the greater good,” for the “mother-school,” for their brother-men. Before long that empty promise will fail, too. [A producer’s right to keep the A he earned is the greater good. Justice is the greater good.] Eventually, I will have to crack down on the dissidents, start detaining my former A and B students, force them to study after school, set quotas based on their pre-experiment test scores. Finally, I will announce my Four Year Plan, force my change on the entire school of classrooms, and promise that if everybody does their DUTY to the STATE that all will be better for it on graduation day four years hence.

After graduation, our former A and B students will either:

>flee to some place on the globe where one can still keep the products of their labor;

>join their former oppressors, become card-carrying members of the collective elite, and take the club to the next generation of suckers...er...ah...brothers.

Veterans

The great Roman general and seven-term consul Gaius Marius [157 BC -86 BC] was famous for his populist reforms of the Roman army. Marius changed the rules, admitting landless, common folk into the legions, correcting their land-deficiency by giving his new volunteers land to work and build on in the conquered Roman lands. Marius knew how to build a most effective volunteer army. While none of his contemporaries would have described the brutal soldier as thoughtful or visionary, Marius was in fact a man with his eye on the future. He understood the importance of taking care of his veterans.

Even as we dump a trillion dollars annually into subsidies for needy and elderly citizens who have never put their necks on the line, Americas spends a paltry 2 billion annually caring for our homeless veterans. As I write, 250,000 veterans are homeless, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Many have substance abuse problems and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

The USA Today reported in November, 2007, that “veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States, though they are only 11% of the general adult population... And homelessness is not just a problem among middle-age and elderly veterans. Younger veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are trickling into shelters and soup kitchens seeking services, treatment or help with finding a job.”

“The Iraq vets seeking help with homelessness are more likely to be women,” said Pete Dougherty, director of homeless veterans programs at the VA.

Our failure to care for our veterans is a disgrace.

The best-kept Americans should be our veterans. Any man or woman who served this country during wartime should never have to fear for their future. They are the only Americans who actually have a legitimate right to “free” food, housing, and health care. They’ve paid for it with their service to this country. Unlike the failed high school dropouts on the welfare rolls and the bailed-out failed financial institutions on Wall Street, veterans are entitled to our collective support through the tax code. They are the only Americans our government has a moral obligation to sustain whatever the cost.

If we persist in legislating immoral budget priorities, the consequences will be grave. We will not be able to gather a volunteer force to defend this county’s interests across the globe even as we enter what will likely be another bloody century for the defenders of liberty. America is engaged in a global war for our existence. Our armed forces will be deployed somewhere in the world for decades to come. How will build our armies? Ultimately, Congress will determine that there is no choice but to compel individuals to serve in the military. This would be a cure for our manpower problems that is worse than the disease. It is a terrible hypocrisy to form an army for the purposes of defending the rights of individuals by forced conscription.

There is no better, moral way to insure the maintenance of an all-volunteer force to defend this country down the road than to take care of each and every individual who has served already.

Values Voters

This man-on-the-street looked into the camera certain his next pronouncement would silence his detractors... “I’m a values voter,” he said. I imagine he felt like one of Constantine’s soldiers marching into battle wielding his shiny, new shield with the Christian cross of his master embossed on its face. He’s doing God’s work, he thinks. An ancient, illiterate soldier following his general into battle can be forgiven his blind devotion, if not to the Christian ethic, certainly to his general. A 21st Century American should not be so readily forgiven.

A 21st Century American should know better. He has had every opportunity to assess the militant history of the purveyors of his moral code, to vet out Gospel inconsistencies and contradictions, to recognize how incompatible his ancient thinking is with life in the first free society in the history of the world. He’s had every opportunity to choose better values. He is a blind witness to the corruption his moral code [altruism] has wrought on this Earth, the ceaseless bloodletting for God; televangelists and mega church icons arrested for drugs, male prostitution, child pornography, and embezzlement; pedophile priests and a corrupt church hierarchy at work to cover up their atrocities. He has witnessed the wonders created by free, rational men of science since the separation of church and state, from the life-saving prescription drugs he ingests every morning, to computers, cell phones, and the Internet he uses to propagate his irrational dogma. An honest 21st Century American acknowledges what free men have achieved in the last two hundred years. He knows these achievements have nothing to do with Christian values and everything to do with Renaissance Humanism, the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, and the birth of these great United States.

The values voter believes ridiculous, little children’s stories about the creation of time and space, Earth and humanity, utterly ignoring a wealth of old and new science to the contrary, and he wants his Bunk! taught in biology class as a “competing theory.” He has no data whatever to support his feelings on the subject: he does not know that without data no hypothesis can be elevated to theory status.

The “values voter” prides himself on the fact that despite the corruption of his church on Earth, his religion is pure and perfect. He prides himself on his faith in this fantasy despite its compounding demonstrable failure in reality. And he wants our government to force his faith on the rest of us. He thinks the Constitution of the United States should be re-written to better reflect Neolithic, biblical thinking. He claims to be a proponent of “traditional American values.” He has far more in common with the Taliban, than the Framers of the Constitution. He thinks he has a right to force a woman to have a baby, even if that baby is the product of incest or rape. He claims to value the “sanctity of human life,” but utterly fails to properly define what a human life is. He has no respect for the rights of individuals to choose their life-style. If your chosen life-style conflicts with his narrow, ancient teachings, you are immoral and your right to marry, to spend your life with the person you love, can be denied. If he were true to his own values and lived according to the teachings of Jesus Christ, he would be a pacifist who turns the other cheek; the values voter supports the Bush doctrine of preemption, hardy a view Jesus would endorse. If he were true to the teachings of Jesus, he would be a socialist. He’s not. In fact, his voice is loudest when he denounces the welfare state and the progressive tax code.

He is a mass of contradictions, a fascist, and a bully. He is a fearful follower who pretends to lead. He projects moral certainty and righteousness while clinging to irrational doctrine he has never once scrutinized. He would be a joke if he weren’t so dangerous.

Truth

As a man, I seek the truth. If you are ill, for example, nothing short of the correct diagnosis, the truth about the cause of your illness, will enable medical science to develop a remedy for your condition. Guessing will not do. Wishing your illness away will similarly do nothing to alleviate your symptoms. Granted, a positive attitude may postpone the inevitable for some time [We’re only beginning to understand the healing powers of our own minds.], but without treatment, without eradicating the growing cancer, you will eventually succumb to your illness. People have been praying for thousands of years, and for thousands of years life expectancy for humans was forty-something. True medical science is only about a hundred years old. Since its birth, right here in the West, humans live twice as long. Have we discovered a truth here? Will you continue to credit your prayers for health and healing that science created? Probably. But know this: you are not being truthful.

Truth is not determined by majority vote. Truth is that which exists in reality. All of your holy books were written millennia-ago by people who thought they lived on a flat plane. None knew even the nature of the planet that gave birth to the human race. Up until about 500 years ago, had there been a poll, 99% would have checked the “flat-Earth” box. The vast majority of Earthlings didn’t know their Earth is a relatively puny globe floating through space, orbiting its sun with clockwork regularity. Had the majority voted and the poll results been published, the vast majority of people would have been comforted by the results. Their wrong-thinking would have been “confirmed” truth. “I must be right! Ninety-nine percent of my neighbors agree.” Did the fact that nearly everybody agreed the Earth is flat alter the reality, change the truth? No. Of course not. The Earth remained, stubbornly, an orb.

The truth is identifiable. It is definable. If the majority fails to see the truth, the truth remains, still, unaltered. The converse is also true: Something that you consider “true” must be identifiable, definable. People of faith through time and across the globe have prided themselves on their willingness to leap into the abyss of the unknowable and declare that they have found the truth. As it turns out, what they declare to be the truth is whatever they want it to be, the laws of nature be damned! If you are hungry, bread falls from the sky. If you want to live forever, believing in this man can deny nature the right to exercise on you every living thing’s inevitable, death. If you sacrifice your life for Allah, and take a number of the infidels with you, you will be rewarded with seventy virgins for some indefinable eternity. If you’re fortunate enough to be born with lots of good karma, you might be lucky enough to be re-born a sacred cow in your next life. All of the examples above have at least one thing in common: none of these beliefs is knowable.

Truth is knowable. It stands firm, unchanging, uncompromising. Man can know truth and falsehood—like good and evil, like black and white. If something seems to be "a gray area" that is only because presently we may lack some knowledge essential to full understanding or we may have erred in our interpretation of the data.

People of faith are actually comforted by the fact that no one can prove their irrational beliefs certifiably false. Their comfort is the result of an integrity deficiency, their absolute refusal to acknowledge: A proof requires data. There can be no data on anyone’s ideas about what happens after we die. Even Carl Sagan threw people of faith a bone when he wrote famously “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Before you break into a “halleluiah” verse, read Sagan’s maxim again. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence in a world governed by natural law, i.e. the world Sagan spent his life trying to explain. In the natural world, however far away the subject of our query, however microscopic, however difficult the problem, there is data. As long as the possibility of data exists, there is an existent worthy of our attention, there may be something to learn, and rational men can debate the possibilities. If data exists then proof is possible. There can be no data on anyone’s ideas about what happens after we die. God theories and life-after-death stories offer nothing worthy of our attention, nothing rational men can debate.

[This is why people of faith have been killing each other for centuries... they have nothing to debate, no data with which to persuade honest men. Like the playground bully they have only one tool with which to convert their more thoughtful peers who wish to live: that is, FORCE.]

Our failure presently to solve a problem does not alter the solution. The solution—the truth—is there for us to discover. In other words, whether we know the facts of reality or not, the facts of reality do in fact exist.

Given the fact that humanity faces so many real problems, real threats to our existence—from disease to global warming, from despotic governments to crime to hunger—I think it is immoral that so many of us spend so many hours and so much wealth and brain matter propagating falsehood, dreaming about eternity in paradise. Earth is paradise. Eternity [for a 21st Century American] is about a hundred years with proper diet and exercise.

Torture

All humans have inherent, unalienable rights.

Most people who have lived and died on this planet knew freedom only in the privacy of their own minds. Even today, relatively few of us actually live in a country where those rights are protected from assault by the greatest abuser of humanity in history, governments.

The United States—its Constitution and Bill of Rights, its independent judiciary and system of checks and balances—has successfully created a state wherein the rights of individuals are for the most part protected. We must be the envy of the world.

I think it’s safe to say, most Americans wish for a world where all governments are limited, where all governments are bound to protect the rights of their citizenry. Some Americans, most notably President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney, think we can spread the virtues of our great system around the world by force. The war in Iraq is just such an effort. While the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights makes bold, empty pronouncements about the rights of man, our president has gone so far as to say we have a moral duty to extend the protection of these rights to all people around the globe. Our president and his war are very unpopular in America today. It seems most Americans don’t have the belly for making our words stick.

When a tsunami strikes, Americans are among the first people in the world to arrive at the disaster zone with blankets and MREs for the poor victims of the natural disaster; but when it comes to removing a brutal, genocidal maniac from the seat of some poor country’s government, more than half of us stand down... “It’s not my problem.”

When our government was preparing to invade Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein, like most Americans, I supported the effort. I don’t believe we have a duty to police the world, but I predicted the war would be short, “weeks, rather than months or years.” I thought, like most Americans, that we were that good, that our military was that superior. I was right. Saddam was hiding in a hole in the ground, out of power, weeks into the war. Removing dictators is easy. I have come to realize since, however, spreading the virtues of our great system of government is not. Removing a brutal dictator can be accomplished by force: Setting up a rational, constitutional republic for people who have no concept of what it means to be free cannot be.

Clearly, we can not wish free states into existence. It is also clear we can not force free states into existence. How then can we accomplish our goal of a world wherein all governments are limited? The answer is simple: We must live by the values we hope to spread. We must demonstrate the virtue of our values in all of our dealings with other people around the globe. We must refuse to act in ways contrary to our values. We must never support a regime that denies the rights of its citizenry. We must stipulate to all of the world’s governments, if you wish to do business with the United States, you must recognize and work to protect the rights of all individuals. We must exercise moral certainty in all of our international dealings. Herein lies the dilemma: In order to exercise moral certainty we must be morally certain.

The fact that we are even debating the issue of torture in this country is most disconcerting. Do Americans believe the Bill of Rights’ protections exist only for citizens of the United States or non-citizens who happen be living or traveling within our borders?

“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

The Eighth Amendment prohibits our government from using cruel and unusual punishments, period. Like all of our protections listed in the Bill of Rights, it is a statement of our commonly held values. Values are not subjective. What is moral and what is immoral does not change from one setting to the next. If it is immoral to torture American humans, than it is immoral to torture al-Qaida humans.

If Americans persist in going out into the world to promote the existence of just governments we can do business with, we must take our values with us and demonstrate unequivocally their rightness.

Space Entrepreneurship

Our Earth is surrounded by the answers to our problems. Saturn’s moon, Titan, for example, rains hydrocarbons and, according to Ralph Lorenz, a Cassini researcher, is “a giant factory of organic chemicals." In other words, Titan is a gas station 50% larger than our own moon. Saturn’s rings are mostly water. Comets may also be a rich source of fresh water, liquid hydrogen and oxygen, i.e. rocket fuel. Near Earth asteroids “could provide precious metals like natural stainless steel to be used in space construction projects, such as the space cities envisioned by the Permanent Project. One cubic kilometer of a nickel-iron asteroid is estimated to contain seven billion tons of iron, one billion tons of nickel, and sufficient cobalt to supply the Earth for three thousand years. The total current value would exceed five trillion U.S. dollars,” according to John Lewis, author of Mining the Sky.

As sure as America was “destiny” for 16th, 17th, and 18th Century Europeans, the future for the people of Earth will be one spent traveling, settling, and working our solar system. The search for gold, and later the desire to spread their Christian faith, was enough to prompt European monarchs to finance dozens of uncertain, risky quests. Fortunately, the risks were taken. The seeds that were planted bore fruit that grows, still, growing the wealth of the world ten-thousand fold.

Since there are no local aliens to convert, the potential for wealth, harvesting the mineral resources of our solar system, alone, will have to be enough to spawn 21st Century space entrepreneurs and pioneers. To date, the hard work of breaking through our atmosphere and establishing a permanent presence in space has been accomplished by governments, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA] in the United States, the European Space Agency [ESA], the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese. As great as our achievements have been, I think it’s clear we have failed to capitalize on the promise of the Apollo missions so long ago.

The people of the United States spend over a half trillion dollars annually propping up people who for whatever reason cannot manage to take care of themselves, but when it comes to investing in the most important work of securing humanity’s place in the cosmos, we drop a couple of dimes in the basket. Since 1969’s moon landing, NASA’s annual budget [in real and adjusted dollars] has never exceeded 20 billion dollars. And many Americans think even that’s too much.

Currently, dozens of individuals across the globe have amassed enough personal wealth to fund NASA’s annual budget using their own dollars. What prevents private individuals from investing in space exploration? Government’s failure to secure property rights on the moon, near-Earth asteroids, Mars, or anywhere else in our solar system.

Presently no legislation or treaty exists to protect the property rights of the space entrepreneur planning to establish a permanent, human settlement on the moon, for example. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 prohibits governments from claiming land on the moon and elsewhere, but the issue of private ownership remains unresolved, according to the Space Settlement Initiative. Why would anyone, however determined, risk billions without some assurance that they’ll get to keep what they produce or discover?

Forward-thinking Alan Wasser, former chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Space Society and author of the Space Settlement Prize Act, is a notable voice in the battle against government apathy to address the inevitable commercialization of space.

“Presumably it is only a matter of time until new treaties are negotiated, establishing a functional private property regime and granting suitable land ownership incentives for privately funded space settlements. The U.S. will, of course, abide by such new international law when it has ratified such a new treaty. But, given the urgent need for privately funded human expansion into space, as soon as possible, something must be done immediately, on a provisional basis, to correct the present inefficiencies in the international standard on property rights in space and to promote privately funded space exploration and settlement...”

To encourage a future where private interests will set up shop on the Moon, the United States will be launching several unmanned probes, including the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter [LRO] on February 27, 2009. Perhaps less romantic than the 19th Century Lewis and Clark Expedition, the robotic LRO will survey the Moon’s surface searching for landing sites and reasons to inspire future, private investment. If there’s water on the Moon, the LRO will find it. We know asteroids produced more than craters on the Moon’s surface. The Moon may be a rich source of “Platinum Group Metals [PGM’s], indispensable for efficient fuel cell operation.” [Moonrush: Improving Life on Earth with the Moon’s Resources, by Dennis Wingo.] The LRO and its siblings will pave the way for NASA’s Constellation space craft destine to land on the moon in 2020.

If the Moon’s resources can be harvested profitably, and governments work to protect property rights, capitalism will drive the human development of our solar system, one world at a time.

Smoking

Smoking cigarettes is irrational. Cigarette smoking can steal your health and take years off your life. If I could live true in every sense to the ideas I promote, I would certainly quit smoking. To date, I am unable to do so.

Perhaps, I’ve confessed a weakness here? So be it. But know this: I have not relinquished my right to care for, or to abuse, my own body. Nobody has the right to tell me what I can put into my body.

So how did state and local governments manage to ban smoking in work places, restaurants, and bars across the country? They hypothesized about something called second-hand smoke and then proved it exists. They argued that my smoking actually has an adverse effect on the health of other people, non-smokers who are exposed to my smoke. If I accept the science of second-hand smoke, which by the way, I do, then I cannot in good conscience smoke in an enclosed environment where non-smokers might be exposed. I have no problem with this. I would never light up in my classroom, or in the teacher’s lounge, or anywhere else inside the school building. I don’t have to be told not to. But, once I walk out that door and I’m standing with nothing but the great blue sky over my head, there is no justification for any law that criminalizes my decision to smoke a cigarette.

I have been an outlaw since the early 1990s, when the school system for which I worked banned smoking anywhere on campus. The school I worked for was an “open-air” school: when I stepped outside of my classroom, I could see the sky. I ignored the ban on smoking because I recognize no man’s right to tell me what I can put into my body. In an open-air environment, there is no rational basis for the infringement of my right.

Some of you will say that a smoking ban on school grounds is valid because I’m setting a bad example for my students. Ridiculous. Sneaking off to smoke in my car, hiding my lawful behavior, denying who I am and what I do is a hypocrisy my students never have to factor into their definitions of me. Furthermore, students who like me love to beg me to stop; some have even researched the dangers of smoking for me. Students who dislike me love to walk by and say things like “you’re going to die!” Whenever my students demand I explain my irrational behavior, I am afforded a unique “teaching moment.” I begin by asking: “Do you know why I smoke?”—They respond with science, humor, psychology, etc.—I say: “No…I smoke for one reason: Because I started.” An anecdote about how I’d love to go back to that day at Chuwakala Park, Auburn, Al. when I decided to switch from Skoal chewing tobacco to cigarettes follows. When all is said and done, I’ve taught a complete lesson, including: the science of addiction, the psychology of peer pressure, the ethics of hypocrisy, and the philosophy of a free man.

Those of you who argue that I’m putting a drag on the health care system because smokers get sick, I say, are you kidding me? I pay for my health insurance. My behavior is between me and the insurance company I am paying. I’ve been paying premiums for twenty years and during that time I have never been seriously ill, I’ve never been hospitalized, I rarely go to the doctor, I can’t remember the last time I took a prescription drug. My insurance company must love me: I’ve been paying for nothing for twenty years.

Supporters of universal health care are famous for making the “drag on the health care system” argument. When they finally have their way, and America follows Europe’s socialist lead, the health police will be out in force, unchecked, banning all kinds of harmful choices. Liberty will be sacrificed in the name of what’s good for you…whether you like it or not. I’d like to know the numbers: How much of a drag do overweight, inactive people put on the health care system? Will they be banning all fast food? Mandating exercise? The solution to the health care crisis in this country, as is the case in every instance where value is traded for value: Take the government out of the equation. Capitalism, the laws of supply and demand, individual responsibility…these are the solutions. Yet, we continue to move in the opposite direction.

Probably the most troubling thing about the new laws is government’s use of force to ban smoking in privately owned and operated establishments, restaurants and bars. In a free, capitalistic economy decisions about appropriate behavior in a private establishment are made by the owners. Rather than the all-inclusive ban we have today, what we should have is restaurants and bars that advertise a non-smoking atmosphere and others that permit smoking. The choice would be left to the owners, those who have the most to gain or lose. No force was ever necessary.

Why do we continue to hand this sort of power over to the politicians? Free people should be permitted to make choices about where they want to go and what they want to do when they go out.

Science and Freedom

I remember actually looking forward to dying when I was in high school. When I die, I thought, I’ll finally have the answers to all of my questions.

Because I attended private, Catholic schools, K-12, and studied liberal arts in college, I was 32-years-old, a regular churchgoer, and tenor in the choir, when I picked up my first science book and began to read. It was Carl Sagan’s masterwork Cosmos. By the end of the first chapter I was hooked.

What I realized reading Cosmos was that most of my questions were being answered by really smart humans working in their laboratories. I found their answers both exciting and very comforting. It all made sense to me [except maybe some of the math], and it made me realize what an excellent thing a human being is. We have come so far: We have so much further to go.

As I read Cosmos, my Bachelor’s Degree in History—that hodgepodge of names, and dates, and places, and stories—finally became meaningful. Context joined my thinking, and I was on my way to defining my world view. Those first three days cosseted in my otherwise empty apartment, were three of the best days of my life. I was truly born again.

I laughed at myself often...”My God! I’ve lived on this planet for 32 years, and today I learned why the sky is blue!” I ridiculed myself for my stupidity. I nearly cursed my parents for sending me to parochial schools, where for thousands of dollars per year I was made metaphysically dishonest and epistemologically disabled. For the first time in my life I was learning about the nature of the planet that gave birth to the human race. This Earth, this Heaven...There is no better place in all existence for humans.

Over the next several months I read every book Sagan had written, and then I read Asimov, and Darwin, Green, Feynman, and Drexler. I stopped reading fiction entirely. Science was wonderful. Church was becoming less and less meaningful. I began to wonder if my priests had ever read any science? I thought if they had they wouldn’t be standing there spouting hearsay about ancient miracles. I was 34-years-old when I stopped going to church entirely.

While I was sure Jesus wasn’t a God, or God’s son, or God’s spirit, or any of that, I remained faithful to the moral teachings of Jesus. I didn’t know any other way to live. I didn’t know there was another moral code. I knew Christianity, like all faiths, is metaphysically and epistemologically irrational, and that I had purged those inconsistencies from my thinking learning science. There is no supernatural. The creation of the supernatural was a pre-science short-cut, invented “truths” dedicated to the pacification of man, dishonest. But, I didn’t know the Christian ethic, altruism, is also irrational. I didn’t know that Christian moral teachings are actually anti-man, that Jesus’ example was self-destruction, that the guilt I had always carried around with me [for not being able to be like Jesus] was actually harming me. Did one have to fall on swords in order to live a moral life on Earth?

I was 39-years-old, flipping through the channels one evening, when I stumbled on the answer to my moral dilemma. C-Span was airing an interview with Ayn Rand recorded at the University of Michigan in 1950. I had read The Fountainhead twenty years ago, but I was so stupid then, I thought it was a book about an architect. Rand’s reasons for writing the book had completely escaped me. Now I listened. As she spoke I heard myself saying, repeatedly, “yes...exactly...that’s precisely what I think!” Rand defined the pursuit of happiness: “...man’s right to set his own goals, to choose his values, and to achieve them...happiness is that state of consciousness which comes from the achievement of your values...happiness is a profound, guiltless, rational feeling of self-esteem and of pride in ones own achievements...it is the enjoyment of life...” She explained to me what I had always known but had been made to feel guilty about: The purpose of life is to live it! Life isn’t about suffering, or the avoidance of suffering, or even the relief of suffering. Rather, life is about the pursuit of your own self-esteem, your own happiness.

Next day I began reading Atlas Shrugged and discovered the truth. I discovered the truly heroic nature of man. I found a truly moral moral code. Science and reason had freed my captive soul.

Six years later, I am guiltless. I am fearless. I’m sure.

Privacy

Which is government’s primary responsibility…to preserve order or to protect the rights of individuals? The answer is BOTH. Therein lays the problem that creates the debate, Order v. Liberty.

If you’re dead, liberty is useless: If you’re enslaved, you may as well be dead.

The institution primarily tasked to preserve the rights of individuals is the most passive branch of our government, the Judiciary. Federal courts initiate nothing. They decide cases brought to them. The courts do not have the power to enforce their decisions. Nonetheless, during peacetime, arguments to protect the rights of individuals generally prevail.

The institution tasked to preserve order is the most active [and the most dangerous] branch, the Executive. Fears of an unchecked Executive Branch are real and justified. During peacetime the Executive Branch is hard pressed to justify actions taken for security purposes that hedge upon the realm of our most sacred civil liberties. During wartime, however, fear of the enemy generally trumps our fear of tyranny.

The problem we face today is that a significant percentage of Americans have forgotten we are at war.

If you go to the American Civil Liberties Union website to find a description of the weeks old FISA Amendment Act of 2008, for example, you’ll find the headline: Unconstitutional FISA Bill Becomes Law, followed by the following description of the law:

On July 10, President Bush signed into law the unconstitutional FISA Amendments Act, which gives the Bush administration virtually unchecked powers to monitor Americans' international phone calls and emails, and grants immunity to telecommunications companies that illegally aided in the president’s warrantless wiretapping program.

Putting aside for now the fact that an Obama or a McCaine Administration will have the same power, if you go to GovTrack.US, look up the legislation, and read the prepared summary, you will find out what the ACLU means by “virtually unchecked.” Section 4 of the FISA Amendment Act of 2008

Allows that in emergency situations, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to authorize surveillance for up to 45 days of non-United States persons who are reasonably believed to be outside of the United States and who may be communicating with someone inside the United States, but that within seven days, an application must be filed for approval from the court established under FISA.

It seems to me giving our intelligence community seven days to file for approval by the FISA court is a reasonable check on our government’s surveillance activities in emergency situations. Requiring a warrant prior to the initiation of surveillance activities places cement shoes on the feet of our operatives who are expected to protect us from terrorist threats coming from “wherever” in the very fluid, high tech global environment. When a lead shows itself, it must be acted upon immediately, or it will soon become cold and useless.

This whole argument reminds me of an Emo Phillips joke. [It’s been years since I heard the joke, but I’ll do my best to explain it.] Emo starts off making the point that his sister is choking on a chicken bone. He tells us a few funny things about his sister and then goes into a five minute discussion of how he parks his car, goes into the library, finds the book he’s looking for, asks the librarian for change of a dollar so that he can make a copy of the page he needs; he cracks on the stupid librarian for a while and the library’s stupid policy of not making change, walks across the street to the KFC to get change, then back to the library to make his copy. Five minutes and a dozen little jokes later, Emo finally lets it be known that the page copied at the library explains how to do the Heimlich maneuver… “By this time my sister is just blue, choking on that chicken bone…”

The ACLU’s right about a lot of things, but not this one. Effective intelligence can not be achieved by a lumbering bureaucracy. Rules for stopping these unconventional warriors, the terrorists, must give our agents broad latitude to do their most important work. Intelligence officers must act quickly without fear of prosecution should they make an honest mistake. If they have made a mistake, the FISA Court will have the power to order the cessation of surveillance activities on the subject[s] in question.

The logic is similar to the War Powers Act, where the President can order U.S. combat troops into action anywhere on the globe without prior Congressional approval. Within 60 days the president must convince Congress that the deployment is just and necessary or Congress can order the troops home. The War Powers Act, like the FISA Amendments Act, gives the executive branch the power to act quickly in an emergency, while Congress and the FISA Courts, respectively, retain the power to check the executive action and order corrective action.

ACLU cynicism in this case assumes that the professionals who make-up our intelligence community, tasked with the life or death responsibility of weeding out Al-Qaida terrorist cells in our neighborhoods and across the globe, will use their new tools to read e-mails and listen to phone conversations of ordinary Americans. Fortunately, our Republican president, our Democratic Congress, and most Americans do not share their doubts.

Prayer in Schools

Praying Parents in Wilson County, Tennessee, met openly on public school grounds, held prayer sessions around the flag pole, handed out fliers to promote their activities, sent notes to students letting them know that they had been prayed for, and posted a link to their web site on the school’s web site. The administration of Lakewood Elementary School openly supported the group’s activities, permitting Praying Parents to address students in their classrooms during instructional time. Teachers led students in prayers and in the singing of religious songs.

Parents sued, and when the school board finally came down on these Praying Parents and forced them to cease their illegal activities, their Alliance Defense Fund attorneys argued that the school board had displayed “clear hostility towards Christians.”

Of course, these praying parents are all very proud of their unconstitutional efforts to turn a public school into what the neighbors describe as a “religious school.” They think Christianity is synonymous morality, and that non-Christians [particularly atheists] are immoral. Of course these Praying Parents are all Christians, praying to their Christian God, with no thought at all for the number of students who attend the school who are not Christian. Middle Tennessee has one of the nation’s largest Muslim populations. How un-Christian of these parents…how insensitive. More importantly, these people are my neighbors. I send my five kids to public schools in Middle Tennessee.

It is the Praying Parents who initiated hostilities here. Their actions are hostile to the Constitution and to non-believers. Their irrational belief in the power of prayer, i.e. wishing, is hostile to reason and to science.

When my children ask for my perspective on life, philosophy and ethics, I teach precisely the lessons I’ve been writing about over the past year. I explain the difference between my rational philosophy and the irrational. I try to be persuasive, but I do not indoctrinate. My children are free to make decisions about the nature of reality and moral behavior. When they express curiosity about religion [because all of their friends are church-going Christians], I explain Jesus’ teachings and what Christians believe. If they want to go to church with their friends, I let them go. I encourage my children to learn about every perspective under the sun, but I don’t send them into the fray unarmed. I arm them with science and reason, and knowledge of the perfect moral code, Egoism.

I do not indoctrinate my kids, so you can be sure, I will not sit back silently while these ignorant, Bible-beaters attempt to do so on public school grounds. Ignorant is not too strong a word to describe these people. I know them well. They know nothing of science. For them, everything is God’s doing, God’s will. How do they know anything? They feel it. They don’t read. It’s clear they don’t even read their own holy book:

Matthew 6:5-6: "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men....when thou prayest, enter into thy closet and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret...."

Parading around in public praising their Lord, imagining Jesus smiling down on them, they believe they’re doing God’s work, so the Constitution be damned.

These Praying Parents think America was a more moral nation when Christian prayers were forced on school children, when few people complained because most people were Christians. They think that all that ills society started after the 1962 Supreme Court decision, Engel vs. Vitale, banning prayer in public schools. For example: They blame the divorce rate on secularism and the demise of “family values,” ignoring the fact that women in this country achieved equality during the 60’s. Women go to college, now. They earn advanced degrees and enjoy prosperous careers. Women are no longer dependant upon their husbands. They can choose when and if to have children. If more marriages end in divorce these days, that is because women no longer have to endure decades of emotional and/or physical abuse honoring and obeying their terrible husbands. All veils have been lifted. It is no longer shameful to be a woman in the West. [And it’s no longer considered murder when an abused wife, Mary Winkler, puts a bullet into her preacher-husband’s back, killing him.]

I’m sure these Praying Parents have never considered the fact that they actually send exactly the wrong message to young people. Our schools have been failing to compete with students around the globe for decades in areas critical to our economic superiority. Since the 60’s, successive administrations, including the Born Again Bush Administration, have warned that United States schools must do a better job educating young people about science and mathematics. Science is the epistemological opposite of religion. Faith does not factor into the scientific method. Math is the language of science. Religion is hostile to science. How does this practice in mysticism and unreality advance student progress in the very real world of scientific inquiry and mathematics?

We shouldn’t be teaching our children how to pray. We should be encouraging them to think and to study.

The Pledge of Allegiance

I still perform daily that little morning ritual most middle-aged professionals haven’t even considered since clearing out their high school locker for the last time. Every working morning I stand before my students with my right hand over my heart and recite the Pledge.

I do not force my students to recite the Pledge. I ask them to stand, but I don’t force them to stand. What value is there in extracting a forced display of allegiance? I try to persuade my students to stand out of respect for the people around them or for the soldiers waking up on the battle field this morning. I explain to them that if I were sitting among Parisians getting ready to watch a soccer match, I’d stand for the French national anthem. I have no allegiance to France, but I would stand out of respect for the people around me. Sometimes I am able to persuade them. Sometimes I’m not.

Sometimes I wonder why I’m doing it. My allegiance is not to the flag, certainly. My allegiance is not to this country, its soil, its history, or its leaders. My allegiance is to the ideas that make this country the only place on Earth I would ever wish to live. Those ideas do not include mindless subservience to my leaders or any sense of duty to support some imagined greater good. Compulsory pledges of obedience are anathema to liberty. I’m not duty-bound to the ideas that make America great. I am morally bound to them. Mine is a volitional reverence.

What my students don’t know is that I recite the original Pledge, the Francis Bellamy Pledge, the 1892 version. Francis Bellamy's original Pledge read, "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. America"

I’ve accepted some of the earlier modifications of Bellamy’s Pledge; actually, I say: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

It’s the last official re-writing of the Pledge that I object to most. The change the Knights of Columbus lobbied Washington for years to affix. The change Rev. George MacPherson Docherty sold one Sunday morning to an American president, arguing it was representative of the views of all Americans. I object to the change President Eisenhower signed into law, June14, 1954, after voicing the following rationale:

These words [“under God”] will remind Americans that despite our great physical strength we must remain humble. They will help us to keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and moral principles which alone give dignity to man, and upon which our way of life is founded. [Wikipedia]

First. It is not humility that places a check on American might. The reason we reframe from using our military superiority to build a world empire subject to decrees from Washington is that Americans categorically reject authoritarian government and the initiation of the use of force in all human relationships. We [should] exercise power rightly, not righteously. We check the use of force with reason and out of a profound respect for the rights of individuals, not some ancient, superstitious, God-fearing.

Second. It is not our spiritual and moral principles [i.e. faith] that give dignity to man. Man’s inherent dignity was first recognized by secular institutions, “more perfectly” by the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights than anywhere else on the globe. The dignity of man was utterly ignored throughout the thousands of years of recorded human history when church-states governed humanity. The dignity of man was achieved finally by the rejection of the marriage of church and state by the United States. We have no official way of thinking: Not even the belief in God is official. There is no reference to God in the Constitution. Our First Amendment rights to think for ourselves and speak our minds acknowledged the dignity of man for the first time in history.

Third. Our way of life was not founded upon Christian principles [or any religious doctrine, for that matter]. Our way of life was founded upon an Enlightenment revolution that turned the old world order on its head. In our revolution, reason trumps faith; choice trumps duty; the rights of each individual trump the will of the collective. If 99% of Americans were Christian, this would not be a Christian nation. Individualism is not a Christian idea. Capitalism is not a Christian idea. Free thinking is not a product of any religious doctrine.

All of these things having been said, my objections to my government’s violation of the Establishment Clause delineated, my bottom line remains simple: I really don’t care to argue with people who think placing “under God” in our Pledge, or “In God we trust” on our currency, makes a bit of difference to their imagined deity. Mindless, daily regurgitations of “under God” by school children [many of whom are forced to stand and speak] does not move the people in this country any closer to God. Furthermore, why religionists, who believe money to be the root of all evil, fight to keep the name of their deity on Cesar’s evil instrument is also beyond me?

So, when Michael Newdow made a federal case of the issue in 2002, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rightly decided that “under God” in the Pledge is unconstitutional, I was pleased. When the chicken-shit Supreme Court of the United States refused to decide the case on its merits and sent Newdow home on a technicality, I was not pleased. I was also not surprised.