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.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
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.
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.
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