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Mr. Taft [Part 8]

2009-08-02T04:33:00.004-05:00

Mr.Taft Wrote:
Even you say that most Americans don't actually live the 'altruistic code'. They just think it's 'moral' and tell everyone else to do it. Don't you believe that actions speak louder than words? I'm not asking you to abide in cliché’s, but I'm saying that if you want to throw philosophical labels on everyone, use the right one. I understand that people (even Christians!) that preach altruistic code have certain behavioral patterns (like killing people and scolding those who aren't 'sacrificing enough'. But if they aren't actually doing it themselves, how can you label them an altruist? William Shatner played the captain of an intergalactic ship on Star Trek, but that doesn't make him one (though it does make him a tool). Sean Connery played 007, but that doesn't make him a British spy. I've had a friend preach in a church service, even though they weren't a Christian. What I'm asking you to consider is this- when a person preaches one side of philosophy, but is internally driven by a different one, which philosophy has that individual truly adapted?

There are two sides to the altruist coin, two kinds of practitioner: the sacrificial lambs who willingly walk to their own slaughter under the delusion that they will spend eternity in paradise with super beings; and the collectors of sacrifice who perpetuate the irrational mythology and profit from the sacrifices of others right here on Earth. The answer to your question is simple: Both the sacrificial lamb and the collector of sacrifices are living by the altruistic code. Neither are egoists. Egoists neither make nor collect sacrifices. Egoists are free. We live by trade, value for value.

The problem is people believe the code of self-sacrifice is the moral one. All aspects of the code are in play in the hearts and minds of all believers. This opens the door for all of the collectors of sacrifices out there, from the Christian preacher who tells you it’s a sin to acknowledge the validity of the 21st Century science of evolution, to the Wahabi school teacher who convinces his teen-age student to strap on the explosives and blow up the infidels. One asks you to sacrifice your mind to the lord, the other, your life. It is simply a matter of degrees. But, mark my words: Should Christians in this country be backed into a wall like the Muslim in the Middle East believe they are, Christians would respond in kind, committing the very same atrocities, sacrificing infidels in the name of their lord with impunity.

All religionists of every stripe are the enemies of liberty. When you believe your were created by a supernatural being who also sent a rule book to follow, you can justify all kinds of behaviors. The only defense a man has against men who claim to know the unknowable [and equally unlikely] is his own mind with which to judge what is, and what isn’t. If you give up your right to reason truth, you give up your soul, your humanity.

I could have raised my children believing that Harry Potter is a god, that J.K. Rowling’s amazing books are holy books and that she is a great prophet; that all we muggles aspire to become magical beings [if not in this world, then in the next]...I could have raised them to be Potters, a new faith I just invented, and my kids would actually have good role models to emulate, despite Rowling’s altruistic bent. Harry’s a terrific kid...a really nice person despite some miserable cards he was dealt; he loves his friends, and he is humble to the core despite the fact that he is always the hero; Hermione is wonderfully studious, smart and loyal, who also achieves greatness despite being born a lowly mudblood. She’s beautiful, but seems to not notice the effect she has on people. Ron’s whole family is dirt poor [but happy as hell] and Ron is a loyal friend who at the age of twelve willingly put his life on the line to protect a boy he met less than a year ago. Harry has many other disciples: Ginny, Neville, Luna, Fred, George, etc. All face and ultimately destroy unmitigated evil, a devil-sorcerer, whose name I cannot mention here.

Mr. Taft [Part 7]

2009-07-26T06:16:00.002-05:00

Mr. Taft wrote:

2. If a Christian is a Christian because they seek some sort of post-earth reward, they are not a Christian. I repeat, they are NOT a Christian.

Well now, that’s just it, isn’t it? You’re promised an eternity with your lord and savior [resurrection] if only you leave whatever ambition you may have at the door, if only you will give up your right to judge the world around you and love your enemies, let them drink your blood. You’re promised a reward for sacrificing your life, but told you’re not doing it right if you hope to achieve the promised reward... Christians believe in resurrection, but “if they seek this post-Earth reward, they are not a Christian.” So people go around secretly seeking eternity in paradise, performing selfless acts with their selfish [your definition] goal in mind, and they are made to feel immoral by people like you and Emmanuel Kant who argue that “for any action to be moral, the actor cannot receive any kind of benefit whatsoever.”

Do you see the impossible contradiction here? I repeat, do you see the impossible contradiction here?

By your moral code: If your action benefits some stranger who is homeless because he prefers smoking crack to working to pay his rent, your action is moral. If your action benefits you in any way, then it is evil, un-Christian. Then you say, “I feel so good when I sacrifice my weekend and go down to the local shelter to serve up grub.” But, Mr. Taft, that “good feeling” you get feeding hungry people is a benefit you have received doing your lord’s work. By your definition, your good deeds are selfish.

Once I offered to give a boy a pair of shoes. When I made this offering, I was—as I am today—NOT a religious man. My thought process going into the offering was simple: This boy looks poor. Those shoes he is wearing are the poorest shoes I have ever seen. I’ll go home and check my closet and my sons’ closets... There I discovered a half-dozen pair of never-worn shoes. Next day, I offered the poor boy a pair of shoes. The offering cost me nothing. In fact, had he accepted my offer, he would have saved me a trip to Goodwill, helped me clean out my closet, and saved me the anguish of having to watch him walk passed my classroom each day wearing those terrible shoes...pure selfishness [my definition].

Actually, Mr. Taft, I was just being nice. I’m not at all religious, but I am nice. I like being nice. I like smiling at people when I pass them in the hallway; I especially like it when they smile back. I like helping people out, especially when they haven’t asked for anything. I hate to see good people suffer, especially when they suffer through no fault of their own. I like having friends, people who like me back, not because I have done something for them, but because they enjoy my company. I think sometimes you think being nice requires strict adherence to the teachings of the ancient nice guy. It doesn’t.

So, you travel through life looking for opportunities to be nice like Jesus was, defining “niceness” as a sacrificial service you provide for others, denying yourself even the satisfaction of knowing you helped somebody. Satisfaction is a reward...that would be selfish!

I suppose the people who actually make a living pushing the paradise promise use it like a fisherman uses bait or a lure. The prize, the result of your selfless acts with no thought of reward for yourself [lest they not be selfless acts] is a great big hook in your mouth! Ever wonder why he called his disciples to be "fishers of men?"

Mr.Taft [Part 6]

2009-07-19T05:49:00.004-05:00

Mr Taft Wrote:

1. I've never sacrificed my happiness. Never.

That is because you’ve been taught that sacrificing your time and energy in the service of others is the source of all human happiness on Earth. You believe you’re doing God’s work when you give up your weekend to serve up grub at the local shelter. You think you know what God wants. Of course you’re happy. God approves.

There’s nothing wrong with serving up grub at the local shelter. Relieving human suffering is a nice thing to do; but it is only a moral thing to do if you are doing it because you choose to, not because you’re told you have some moral duty to do it. And it is absolutely immoral to be serving up grub to strangers at the shelter while neglecting your responsibilities to your own children.

That having been said, I hope you are happy Mr. Taft, always. Could your happiness be the result of you rightly turning your back on the essence of the message you call gospel truth? For Christians and Muslims alike, life on Earth is characterized in most miserable terms: it’s all about sacrifice and suffering, it’s about denying the evil, corrupting flesh that is the human body, it is about serving something not of this earth. Scan your four gospels, Mr. Taft. Quote Jesus once telling people to be happy living their lives on this wonderful planet of ours. I doubt you will be successful in your search. For Christians and Muslims, the reward for doing what you’re told comes after you’re dead in some eternal paradise; if you don’t do what you’re told, then you burn for all eternity in hell and hell fire. And this Earth, the greatest place in existence, the birthplace of humanity, is invariably described as a cesspool made evil by evil humans.

Ayn Rand describes the altruist code precisely: It is a morality of death. It’s not about achieving happiness on Earth. It’s not about celebrating the human condition. It’s not about celebrating the human body, the best product of three billion years of evolution on Earth. Even the Christian symbol, the crucifix, is about death...a bloody, brutal death to be sure. It represents the wholesale denial of the importance of the flesh, the earth, the material...in favor of your non-material, unidentifiable soul or spirit. The mind/body dichotomy accepted by Christians and Muslims is baseless. There is no evidence to suggest that a separate, non-material soul exists. None of our 21st Century tricoders can pick up energy of any kind leaving the body of a newly deceased individual. If your soul hypothesis is a correct one, a whole new physics would have to be discovered [a proposition not outside the realm of possibilities] to prove it. Good luck discovering these entirely new laws of nature.

Your soul is your conscious and subconscious mind. It is every thought, every memory, every experience you have while you live. It is the sum total of everything that you are. Your soul is most important; and it is all located in a very real way between your ears. Here’s something the ancient holy book writers didn’t know: When your heart muscle stops pumping and oxygenated blood ceases to be delivered to your brain, your neural net begins to unravel and everything that you are ceases to exist. You die. They also didn’t know: The function of the human brain...Why people get sick? What a planet is? What the sun is? DNA? Atoms?

How do you imagine these ancient people who knew so little about the true nature of existence came up with a moral code suitable to living, breathing men on Earth? They didn’t. The powerful, literate minority came up with a code that enabled them to control the masses, doling out baseless promises of eternal rewards and punishments.

Ever experience a ping of guilt because you haven’t done enough good deeds today? Or, god forbid, you did something for yourself for a change? Or because you really don’t like somebody [much less love them]? Ping! There went a bit of your happiness.

Mr. Taft [Part 5]

2009-07-12T06:51:00.004-05:00

Mr. Taft wrote:

Donn ... I've been reading and thinking a lot about your writing. I have a few questions. With the statements about Hitler and slave owners and things such as that, I understand that they promoted the 'altruistic' ideal, but I don't see any evidence of them living it themselves. It seems to me that their internal motives were selfish, even though they preached self-sacrifice. I guess what I'm trying to say is that they didn't practice what they preached. So instead of altruists, I feel like a better name for these people (and any that follow in their example) should be 'egoists breaking the natural law'. What are your thoughts on this?

In Jesus' paradigm, he stayed true to self-sacrifice, long before He asked anything of others. He and many of His followers followed this teaching to death. Paul speaks in his writing 'if we are wrong, let us be the most pitied people on earth'.

I love this quote from Paul. I think what he’s trying to say is...if you are wrong, and there is no Heaven, no eternal life, no reward, then you should be the most pitied person on Earth...pitied because you sacrificed your happiness on Earth for some promised reward after you’re dead. If the reward doesn’t exist, and this is your only life, then you have sacrificed your life for nothing.

Altruists like to say “the world would be perfect if everybody were only strong enough to live true to the code, like Jesus did.” They argue, like you, that people just don’t “live it.” To which I have at least two responses:

1. People can’t “live it” because it is irrational, i.e. contrary to what comes natural to humans...REASON and the desire to live. The only way to achieve perfection by the altruist code of self-sacrifice is to do what Jesus did and let them kill you. For a human being to aspire to be dead is most irrational. Dead people, of course, have no need of moral codes.

2. Any code that demands human self-sacrifice will be [and has been] used by its practitioners to sanction the sacrifice of humans [particularly those outside the collective]. And the really sad thing is that they generally execute these genocides in the name of their god...Yes, Mr. Taft, even Christians. If you live by the code that views sacrifice as a normal [even moral] component of human relationships, then you will do one of two things: A. make sacrifices for others, or B. demand sacrifices of others. Most people who live by your code do both. Ever hear a parent say, “How could you after all I’ve done for you?” What they’re actually saying is “How can you do this thing that I don’t want you to do after all I have sacrificed for you. Now you must sacrifice and give it up.” Guilt and force are the tools of the altruist.

It’s a good thing most Americans don’t live it! The sad thing is they believe the code of self-sacrifice is moral and are made to feel guilty for not living it. By whom? By others who thrive on collecting human sacrifices. An egoist, all I want you to do is live a good life and achieve your happiness in any way you see fit that does not violate the rights of any other individual. Now that’s a message of love.

Mr. Taft [Part 4]

2009-07-05T04:15:00.003-05:00

Mr. Taft Wrote:

Donn wants to "educate" or change people's minds to objectivism...I never said I want to force Christianity down people's throats. If they won't listen to me, fine.

I chose the teaching profession, and I did so against the wishes of my father. I have been teaching successfully for 21 years and have never regretted my decision. I have always taught for the public school system, where no one is turned away. I have had every possible “kind of student” in my class: gifted and intellectually challenged; black and white, red, yellow, and brown; rich and poor and homeless; Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists...you name it! You talk about making education available to everyone. I actually live it!

You, Mr. Taft, sat in my AP Government class for five months. You know what I do; yet when you refer to me in your correspondence with Emptying Guilt, you cynically place the word educate in quotes. I suppose if I had stood before the class spouting the bromides of the faithful, my teaching would have met your approval and you would dignify me by calling me an “educator.”

Of course I want everyone I encounter to know about Objectivism. It saved my life after 32 years of devout Christianity, unquestioned faith, irrationality, guilt, and self-destructive behavior. But, I require no followers, no disciples, and people who disagree with me in my class are never punished. I do not require your approval or acceptance. As you have every right to tell people about Jesus, I have a right to tell people about Ayn Rand. Of course, I think Rand’s thinking is better than Jesus.’ It is my right [and yours] to make judgments about what is good and what is evil.

Through my blog and in my classroom I explain what it means to be a free man. A free man owns his life, owns his thinking, owns his success or failure. I teach people to take care of themselves and to do no harm to others. I teach people that they have no duty to make sacrifices for others and no right to demand others make sacrifices to them.

I teach only what IS. Nothing I teach requires anyone to make a leap of faith. It is not a religion or static doctrine of any kind. I teach individualism, science, human thinking, reason, rationality... secular ideas, and I do it in a most appropriate setting: a public school. Mr. Taft... Why is it that you and your congregation, those who claim to love humanity so much, hate man’s mind, human thinking?

Mr. Taft [Part 3]

2009-06-28T06:08:00.002-05:00

Mr.Taft wrote [to Emptying Guilt]:
Our inaction to someone's self-degradation hurts them just as much as lynchings and gas chambers. How do we help to stop the self-degradation (obesity, drug addictions, alcoholism) of individuals? By educating them on how to take care of themselves and advance as a society (not just the strong, but everyone). Here's where me and you disagree. Advancement can only come through a relationship with your Savior (I mean Jesus, not Donn). I sincerely hope your journey leads you to know your Creator on a deeper level. God really would like that.

Let’s say I agree...education is the answer. What will the curriculum be? Wait...wait...I know. Rational selfishness, Egoism! If you want people to learn to take care of themselves, they need to know:

1. This is your one and only life to live, so make the best of it. Take care of yourself!

2. Live your life in pursuit of your own happiness...there is no higher purpose. You have no need to feel any guilt for not living your life in accordance with anybody else’s wishes or doctrines. Set rational goals for yourself and aspire to achieve them!

3. Be nice to others. Respect the rights of all individuals. Judge, and prepare to be judged. Don’t let anyone nail you to a tree.

Alcohol, drug, and food addiction are forms of self-destruction, self-sacrifice. Self-destruction is a product of the altruist code.

That having been said, you believe you have a moral obligation to sacrifice your time, money, and energy helping that person who sits in the alley shooting up drugs, that to not help him would be the same as lynching or gassing him? Are you serious? Did you cause his self-destruction? Not at all. Does the fact that you live a moral life cause his immorality? Of course not. Can you try to help him if you choose to? Certainly. Do you have a moral obligation—a duty—to help him? No.

Charity, and whether or not to give to a charity, is a private decision made by individuals. It is no one’s duty. If one is “duty-bound” to do anything, that means they have no choice. For any issue to be a moral issue, it must involve a choice. For example: Do I kill this person who has hurt me deeply, or not? If I choose not to, then [and I think you will agree] I have made the moral choice. I’ve decided to do the right thing and respect the right of that individual to live no matter how much their rejection hurt me. Now if they’re coming at me with a knife trying to kill me, I have a very different choice to make. Do I kill them, or do I let them kill me? Moral choices are for the living. The dead have no need of moral codes. To allow this person to kill me without defending myself would be to sacrifice my life to satisfy his rage [or any other irrational desire]. It would be wholly immoral for me to not defend myself.

No one has the right to demand your charity. Any doctrine that defines charitable giving as a moral responsibility or duty has rendered all giving immoral. Again, without choice there is no moral question to be answered. There is no difference between giving your money to the thug who has convinced you that his gun is loaded and the preacher who has convinced you that he knows what God wants you to do. In both instances, by your standards, you must hand it over. The thug with the gun threatens to end your life on Earth; the preacher claims you will lose your eternal life in some paradise. Both use Force.

Finally, regarding your last point: Most people have difficulty understanding and maintaining successful relationships with people standing right in front of them or sleeping in the same bed with them...relatively simple minds, simple people, simple problems. Your lot claims understanding and a personal relationship with an all mighty, all powerful, all knowing creator of the universe... the most complex of all possible minds. Stupefying arrogance.

Mr. Taft [Part 2]

2009-06-21T03:21:00.002-05:00

Mr. Taft Wrote:
Donn's evolution would tell us that the dying class would die. And if we're okay with letting the weak die off, we should have been okay with slavery. After all they were just the weaker class. We should have been okay with Hitler killing the 'weak'. Donn's "natural law" says that you can act as long as it 1. doesn't hurt you, and 2. doesn't hurt someone else.

Outrageous! Look at the laws again. Read them carefully: 1. Take care of yourself; 2. Do no harm. Slavery and genocide violate the second rule in every instance, clearly.

It’s not a coincidence that slavery, an institution that existed everywhere throughout human history, was abolished within a century of the birth of capitalism! The two freest economies on the globe at the time—England and the United States—were the first two countries to abolish the institution. Slavery in the United States persisted in the old-world, agrarian aristocracy of the South, only. In the more advanced, more capitalistic North, slavery died a natural dead decades before the Civil War. Slavery exists today in parts of Africa and Asia, in socialist-authoritarian states, only.

Genocide has never been committed by anything but a socialist-authoritarian state or a theocracy. Only an altruist-collectivist regime can “justify” the sacrifice of so many souls for the good of the community.

Slavery and genocide are impossible in a world governed by rational-selfishness, Egoism. The standard upon which all moral decisions are made, the question that must be answered, is: “Have the rights of any individual been violated?” If the answer is “yes,” to act on your ambition [whatever it is!] would be immoral. That’s what “do no harm” means... unequivocal respect, reverence! for the rights of each individual. What are those rights? Well, to begin with: Each individual has and absolute right to their life, to their liberty, to pursue their own happiness. My actions can never result in the sacrifice of anyone’s life or freedom to think and act on their own behalf. Religionists do this all of the time in their efforts to legislate a “moral society.”

While my standard is “absolute respect for the rights of each individual” and can never result in injustice or tyranny, the religionist’s standard is “what does Yahweh-God-Allah want?” or “what would Jesus do?” wholly subjective standards that have resulted through history in bloody holy wars, Inquisitions, and jihad. Why? Because the rights of individuals are freely sacrificed to what some consider the will of their god. If you think you’re working for an all powerful god, you’re not subject to any manmade law, however rational or appropriate, and you are free to commit atrocities in his name, like killing a doctor who performs abortions or flying airplanes into buildings.

Your moral code, Jesus’ moral code, Altruism is the code that glorifies the concept of “sacrifice.” Slavery—sacrificing the liberty of some individuals so that others can relax on their front porch sipping mint juleps; and genocide—sacrificing the lives of individuals so that others can create the “perfect society” they dreamed up while in prison, are both results of your moral code. May I remind you: the Southern slaveholder was Christian and defended the institution of slavery quoting from your New Testament, e.g. Colossians 3:22 "Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord." Hitler was a Christian blessed by the pope of the Catholic Church. Nazi Germany was a Lutheran nation. A Christian locked the door and pulled the lever of every gas chamber.

Still, I don’t damn any member of any faith. An individual has an absolute right to think what they want to think as long as they harm no one. But, I must say, if you’re unhappy with the state of the world, Mr. Taft, know this: This is the world created by your moral code. Over 90% of the globe believes altruism is morality, that selfishness is evil, that self-sacrifice is the key to moral perfection.

Every bit of filth in existence—every murderer, thief, child molester, rapist, and leach—acts on the altruist’s code of sacrifice. They all force others to make sacrifices to their irrational needs. Egoists live by trade, dealing with all others by trade, value for value, devoid of force. What don’t you get?

Mr. Taft [Part 1]

2009-06-14T06:12:00.007-05:00

Mr. Taft wrote:
Regulation is not the answer. I'm a huge proponent of free will. My answer is education. Educate the people on how to buy smart and eat smart and think smart. When they don't, it's their fault. That doesn't mean we stop trying. It seems to me that what we agree on is that there should be success. [Mr. Taft was corresponding with fellow blogger, Emptying Guilt at Blogspot...I snatched his comments without permission!] But who do we want success for? We SHOULD want it for everyone. Because if we don't want it for everyone, we only want it for a few. That's elitism.

So if we have complete capitalism, that creates a class of powerful and a class of dying. Donn's evolution would tell us that the dying class should die. And if we're okay with letting the weak die off, we should have been okay with slavery. After all they were just the weaker class.

[Actually, he said more. I'll address his issues one at a time over the next several weeks, assuming I get permission.]

Education is not a right: It is a responsibility. Individuals have a responsibility to acquire the skills they need to be successful in life in the 21st Century, just as they did when we were living in the wilderness, hunter-gatherers, 40,000 years ago. If you refused to learn your essential lessons, then, and you ate a hemlock salad, you died as a result of your failure to pay attention and act accordingly. Taking care of yourself or failing to take care of yourself is a matter of choice. In a free society individuals are free to succeed and free to fail.

Many of the people you euphemistically refer to as “the weak,” are the most morally depraved among us. They think they have a right to be taken care of. They think they have a right to your productivity. They use the widespread acceptance of your altruist code to force the sacrifice of the successful to sustain their own depravity. They wish to exist without effort. You are taught to pity them, as if ineptitude is a virtue. It is not.

Of course we should want everybody to make the right choices and live successfully. People who fail to live successfully—independent of others, surviving well by trading with others, relying on reason and the power of their arguments to persuade, rejecting the use of force in all human relationships—tend to be a drag on others...making unreasonable, immoral demands on others. “I don’t wanna work... provide me with food, clothing, shelter, and health care!” Or, “Yeh, I stole your car. I needed the money. What of it?” Or, “She divorced me and caused me pain. I couldn’t cope, so I killed her.”

Your moral code forgives their failure unconditionally... excuses it, rewards it. There’s nothing wrong with “wanting” everybody to make the right choices; but the only way to ensure that all people do, is through force; i.e. take away their right to make choices. You will have to destroy liberty, Mr. Taft, in order to execute “your wish.” This is the psycho-epistemology of every despot who ever walked the Earth, the sinister and the saint. As Madison said: The cure for the problem is worse than the disease. However much I may want everybody to live successfully, I cannot force them to. I can only take care of myself, make sure that I live a moral life, make sure that I am not a drag on my fellow man. This is what it means to live a moral life.

I spend my days earning my self-esteem trying to educate my fellow man about the only moral code that has the potential to make your wish come true, Egoism. If all individuals were rational and selfish, we’d live in a perfect world. Nobody would come to the market place empty-handed, or [perhaps] worse, carrying a gun. People would live in peace, trading with one another, value for value.

Finally, Capitalism is not elitist. It is economic freedom. Some will always make better use of their freedom. It is not elitist that some succeed by their own efforts and some fail by their own lack of effort. The A-student owes nothing to the dropout. He did not earn his “A” at the expense of the dropout. The dropout could have earned an “A” too. This thing you rail against—this inequality that results when men are free to pursue their own happiness, and some make good choices and some make poor choices—is called reality. The consequences, both those enjoyed and those suffered, are called justice. When you sacrifice those who succeed to those who fail, you reward failure and grow the number of failures who inhabit this planet. You sacrifice justice to your feelings, hoping to create a better world. Nothing good can result when justice is sacrificed. You can’t wish a better world into existence.

Hope you don't mind

2009-05-24T06:46:00.002-05:00

Dear Loyal Readers,

I'll be on vacation for a couple of weeks. Check back in a couple of Sundays. I may have something interesting to say then.

Donn

A Graduate

2009-05-17T04:25:00.000-05:00

Today is Graduation Day! My high school seniors will be making their way across the stage to pick up their diplomas, proof that they did in fact accomplish something these past four years. Some students, of course, need no such affirmation from society. They have worked hard and they have done so for their own good. They didn’t need any coaxing to come to school, to study hard, to graduate with honors. Like little Aristotles, they want to know. They believe without knowing that the difference between the educated man and the uneducated man is as profound as the difference between the living and the dead.

This year I had so many excellent students [particularly in my AP U.S. Govt. and Politics class] that when pressed by my administration to issue awards, I refused. I refused to identify only three students for awards, when so many deserved recognition. And again, the number of students who deserved recognition were the very individuals who least require any sort of affirmation from me. These individuals are never defined by others: they define themselves.

I like to think that I’m a lot like them, but I must say, when one of these students decided to recognize me this year with a beautiful letter and a generous gift card with which I took my wife out to dinner for Mother’s Day, I was completely blown away! I guess I learned that even a hard-core Individualist, like myself, likes to be told he made a difference in somebody else’s life. Maybe I should have given those awards, after all.

If I were to give an award to this student it would most certainly be “Most likely to succeed.” If you could see him, you would agree: the only student in the school who arrives each day with a starched and pressed dress shirt and tie, he certainly understands how to dress for success. You would agree, but you would understand very little about him. This young man is far more complex. He exasperates many of his classmates with his strong opinions, a quality I particularly enjoyed while he sat in my class. See, I enjoyed exasperating him with mine! The reason I hold so much hope for this student as he embarks on his future [in politics] is not his strong opinions, however, but rather, his willingness to listen to mine.

When asked for my advice concerning his future in politics, I told him that he should never compromise his values. To his credit, this young man knew that I didn’t mean: never change your opinions. He sat in my class for three months challenging my views, agreeing when he could, bombing me with insightful questions when he didn’t. In the end he began to form his own opinions and, more importantly, discovered that consistent, rational opinions on political issues are born only of a rational philosophy.

A politician must listen to his opponent to find the root of his opponent’s error. He must be ready to reverse his own position if the error, once discovered, happens to be his own. As much as I loathe what Chris Matthews has become since 2003, he did tell a wonderful Barry Goldwater story: Two-thirds of the House had already voted up the proposed 26th Amendment to the Constitution permitting 18-year-olds the right to vote. The Senate was debating the bill. The minority leader, Arizona Republican, Barry Goldwater led his party to withhold the necessary support. Goldwater was sitting in the Senate chamber listening to his colleagues on the other side of the isle make their arguments, when suddenly he turned to his whip and said: My God...they’re right! The majority leader changed his vote that day and persuaded the Republican caucus to do the same. The 26th Amendment passed the Senate.

The root of every error is found in philosophy and usually surfaces in an argument as raw emotion. Coercion...force...duty...guilt...and unconditional love...these are the enemies of reason. Judge, my friend, and prepare to be judged by others.

I'm Sure

2009-05-10T04:42:00.003-05:00

You don't have to know everything
in order to say you know something;
I know that one thing
I'm sure
You've got a right to your life:
You've got to be free
to do your own happiness.
Do your own thinking.

I know that one thing,
I'm sure

Yellow Dog [Part 25]

2009-05-03T03:34:00.005-05:00

Donn,

Disgusting?? No, your thoughts are naive and unrealistic. You think if your 3 multi-mega-international corporation colluded another multi-mega-international corporation that someone would come in and undercut them?? HAHAHAHAHA, dude, that’s about as unrealistic as can be imagined. You’re living in a fantasy world. The truth is, they'd come in, offer to buy you out for some pittance, if you refused, they'd simply lower their prices until then sell at a loss until you, with your smaller capital, went out business and then raise prices right back to where they were. They’re bigger, THEY could sustain the losses you could not. How do I know?? Why, THAT was Bill Gate modus operandi for years.

Marcs

Marcs,

Are these multi-mega-international corporations more or less powerful with or without the help of politicians? You call me naive? You trust the goddamned politicians more than a middle class kid with a great idea who hands the world desk top computers, or the poor farm boy who built the Model-T.

You know nothing about Gates...only what you've read in the yellow press. Believe what you want. Be as negative as you want. Eat your heart out over other people's hard-earned success. Sic your politicians on him. Cry, it's unfair! He has so much and I have so little. Florida's going to cut my teacher salary! Break up his company! He must have cheated. He must have hurt somebody to get where he is...tax him! Give me my share of what he has created... pathetic.

You damn mankind for his every achievement. Say you care about the little guy, and then destroy the creators of his middle class livelihood, the entrepreneur, the risk-taker, the capitalist. You won't know what you've done until it's too late and Americans are living like much of the rest of the world in filth and tyranny. Say you care about liberty, but deny men the product of their labor. Enslave mankind a few percentage points at a time and call your work Progressive. Enslave the best of us. Why? So that you can provide health care, free housing, and food stamps to that high school drop out with two kids, a third on the way, and no idea who the fathers are. Call her "less fortunate" as if luck had anything to do with her predicament.

Hand the world over, Marcs. Hand it to least worthy among us. That's the altruist-collectivist way.

Donn

Donn,

Now you’re just getting nasty and ugly. I have to end this conversation now, Bye.

Marcs

And that my dear reader was the last time I heard from Marcs.

Yellow Dog [Part 24]

2009-04-26T04:17:00.004-05:00

Marx,

The solution I am suggesting, laissez-faire capitalism, has never been a reality in this or any other country. The closest we ever got to the ideal was perhaps the Andrew Jackson Administration. Every example you site [once again!] is not an example of laissez faire OR CAPITALISM. What I am advocating is CHANGE. You [and anybody who voted happily on November 4th ] are a conservative, voting to preserve the status-quo quid pro quo! The goddamned “corporate giants” you rail against were created by the political entrepreneurs and the politicians who regulated and trust-busted the competition right out of the market place.

Corporations didn’t even exist in the 19th Century. Failed airlines, car-makers and financial institutions are subsidized and bailed out by politicians with tax-payer money. I’m not going to say this again: ANYTHING IN EXISTENCE THAT YOU DON’T LIKE ABOUT THE ECONOMY WAS CAUSED BY SOME FORM OF GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION IN THE ECONOMY. In a free market, failure is punished by reality...no subsidies, no bailouts. Because there are real consequences, there is less failure.

You know, man had never set foot on the moon before the Apollo missions. All of the problems that made that trip possible had to be solved before anyone could actually experience a stroll on the lunar surface. We were successful because our answers were correct IN THEORY. We proved our theories correct when we actually accomplished the mission. Had we never launched Apollo 11, our theories would remain correct. The truth is not always tried.

You criticize me for reading books? In fact, I’ve read hundreds since the last time we met. If not for trade and the sharing of knowledge, there would be no reason for men to live in communities or cooperate with each other at all. We’d all be better off on desert islands free to do whatever the hell we please. Of course I learn from books...really great books. I keep lessons that I determine are of value, discard others for reasons, and, in the end, form my own opinions. Every word I have written has come straight out of my head. You seem to be arguing one can only know something if he has actually experienced it. You made the same sort of arguments when we debated face-to-face 12 years ago. For example: You hate the Reagan Administration. Why? Because you personally were denied a college loan. I remember everything, Marx.

Collusion is another cynical myth that doesn’t exist for long if markets are left alone. If colluders attempt to hold prices artificially high for any length of time, competitors enter the market place and sell the same good or service for less. The colluders are A. forced to lower their prices, or B. go out of business. If McDs, BK, and Wendy’s got together and decided to raise their prices by 50%, that would be a boon for Checkers and Jack-in-the-Box. If ALL fast food burger joints in existence joined the cartel, I’d open Tracy Burgers and make a fortune! You really know almost nothing about free enterprise, Marx. You believe every pack of lies the political entrepreneurs and politicians have sold you...they are after all the ones who control our ridiculous public school curricula. Is Florida Memorial a public school?

Your thoughts on the Tylenol story are just disgusting.

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part 23]

2009-04-19T05:59:00.004-05:00

Donn,

So, let me get this straight, YOUR method of divorcing politicians from corporations is to DEREGULATE them? Now, you MUST realize how ludicrous that sounds.

Marx

Marx,

No. It makes perfect sense to me. Reality is the best arbiter. Government force in the market place changes that reality irrevocably, extending the life of bad players who happen to have buddies in Washington, among other things.

In a laissez-faire capitalist system bad players are weeded out by their better, more efficient competitors. Consumers benefit as the best products win and prices drop. If the economy is free and there is money to be made in any industry, fast food, for example, the original “monopolist,” McDonalds, will soon have no choice but to compete with the new players. Prices will drop [“buy one, get one free”], choices will multiply, quality will improve across the board as McDs, BK, Wendys, Checkers, Jack-in-the-Box, etc. all compete for your burger-buying dollar. Each would grow its menu to serve their diverse clientele and try to capitalize on some new niche in the market...adding breakfast, baked potatoes, chili, salads. Product safety is first and foremost in the mind of the producer in any food-producing industry. If people get sick eating at Burger King, Burger King won’t last long. They will rightly fail...go out of business. In a free market bad players don’t last long.

[Remember poisoned Tylenol? Their excellent product was nearly destroyed by a terrorist act. They responded by inventing product safety seals. You have to penetrate layers of security before you can actually take a Tylenol pill. That security was not mandated by government! It was invented by the capitalist producers of the product for a very rational, selfish reason: to protect their own livelihood. If people die taking your medicine, you won’t be in business long.]

Cost cutting is absolutely necessary if you want to survive the challenges presented by your competitors, but not at the expense of the business. If you cut cost where consumer safety is at issue, you won’t be in business for long.

Because the fast food industry was left alone free from interference by the politicians, others discovered unique opportunities to make money using the idea of the original “monopolist.” Eventually, consumers are able to purchase Mexican food, Chinese food, Cuban food, Health food—FAST, without even having to get out of their cars!

All of the health and diversity, efficiency and safety, of the fast food industry could be true of every industry in existence—including health care and energy—if the politicians were disarmed, forbidden from manipulating free markets.

Finally, politicians would have no corruption to peddle to the lobbyists in Washington if they were powerless to screw with just, free markets.

The only legitimate functions of government with regards to the economy are 1. the enforcement of lawful contracts and the settling of contractual disputes; and 2. to punish criminal behavior, like fraud, criminal negligence, libel, etc.

Donn

Donn,

Dude, you keep saying that but it just hasn’t worked out that way. White is black, black is white. In order to regulate we must deregulate. I’m sorry, that’s sheer insanity. Deregulation NEVER works out to be the best for society. I'll give you the latest example here in Florida. Used to be, when you wanted a motorcycle endorsement for your license, you went down to the DMV, plopped down 20 bucks, took the written test, then the driving test and you got it. Seems that JEB passed a law to take that AWAY from the DMV and give it to private, independent contractors. They said it would make cheaper and more efficient. Guess what it cost me? $265.00 PLUS I had to STILL give the 20 dollars to the DMV to issue me a replacement license. AND, I had to sit there and listen to a forced sales pitch from Harley Davidson for credit. I called ALL the competitors and, somehow, that’s the price they arrived at, the SAME price, what a remarkable coincidence, huh? THAT’S called collusion an THATS what you get when you deregulate. Why aren’t there gas companies out there selling gas for a significant cheaper price? Because first, they got to be too big, drove the smaller companies out of business and then the 3 or 4 more remaining colluded together to arrive at THAT price. Do you know what gas costs in China? About 1.50 a gallon, because Sinopec is ONLY allowed to make a certain amount of profit. You have two choices here, either government controls and regulates industry or industry buys and sells government. Seems to me, as China reaps TRILLIONS and TRILIONS in debt that we owe THEM, that maybe we'd better start getting our own house in order first. Finally, you keep saying bad business forces out bad competitors, not so, in fact, BIG bad business leads to corporations buying media outlets, bribing reporters to hide facts, buying scientists to say what they want them to say and WE never know any better and keep doing the same bad behaviors because we don’t have a clue. Your facts, your opinions are based, entirely on what someone said to you, or what you read but there haven’t been any examples where it seems to work that way or none that you can see for yourself. Tylenol? Really, how do YOU know that’s what happened? Did YOU perform the scientific tests or did some government scientists? Maybe Tylenol did it themselves, maybe it was simply a bad batch but they were big enough to buy the media outlets. Maybe they DESERVED to go out of business but didn’t because they were big enough. Who does total laissez faire policies help? No one but the corporate giants, the big wigs with hundreds of million dollar bonuses. Everybody else gets screwed.

Marx

Yellow Dog [Part 22]

2009-04-12T04:10:00.003-05:00

Donn,

HAHAHAHAHA... Your answer to reduce corporate influence on our politicians is to allow corporations to do what they want?? MORE Laissez Faire Capitalism?? And you think, somehow, they'll stop giving money to the policy makers and the holders of the USA's purse strings all on their own? Sorry, that’s SO contradictory I actually had to laugh out loud on that one.

Marx

Marx,

You laugh....And Nero fiddled while Rome burned. The economic crisis we are in today was created by your over-regulated economy...politicians in bed with corporations. Your cynicism prevents you from seeing the solution. The solution is liberty and rational, healthy self-interest. I’m suggesting we take away the purse...give the politicians an allowance to be used to fund the proper functions of government, period.

Donn

Donn,
I laugh because setting them free will ONLY do what it did in the era of robber barons, regardless of your bias, it was H E L L to be someone who wasn’t one of the top 1%. You let those guys do what they want and they won’t STOP what it was that has been so profitable for them, they'll do it more. Geez man, use your common sense

Marx

Marx,

By marrying them off to the politicians you have only made them more powerful... invincible! for christsake. Now, they can get a politician to CLUB the goddamned competition to death. Now, they no longer have to produce a better product, cheaper...all they need is a politician in Washington to back them up and they can serve up anything they want and you have to eat it...Eat it big time when their party is over. When their party's over these POLITICAL ENTREPRENUERS get their politician buddies to use the club again and bail them OUT!!! Who's lacking common sense?? You trust the goddamned politicians [who produce nothing and live extremely well, most in the top 1%] and damn the honest capitalist who just wants to sell his product to people who willingly choose to trade with him.

Donn

Donn,

The same "honest entrepreneurs" that turned the Cuyahoga river into a cesspool so horrific that it used to catch fire? Or the ones that sold cigarettes to the public while hiding damning scientific data so that people like my mother would be suffering from emphysema in her 70s? Maybe you mean the ones that produced the Corvair, designed so poorly that all it took was a bump from behind and it would turn into a blazing fireball but, the company felt that the amount of claims filed against it that would be successful was actually LESS costly then fixing the problem?? Wanna talk about the "love canal"?? Maybe what the pig farms are doing to South Carolina?? I could go on and on. The truth is, you dont regulate, they'll simply do a cost analysis before they EVER do anything and then, ONLY then, if cost of DOING something actually outweighs the costs of NOT doing anything. Its not ME that wants corporations to be married to politicians, its YOU. Geez man, use your common sense, why, in gods name would they EVER stop greasing politicians’ hands UNLESS there are LAWS forbidding it? I SUPPORT CAMPAIGN REFORM!!!!

Marx

Marx,

Reform? Give me a break. There are tons of laws on the books forbidding businessmen to grease politicians. You think the politicians are going to willingly give up the goose? No way. They reform campaign finance and people discover line 527...nothing changes. In fact it's worse [by your standards]. The soft-money is now given to unregulated private entities who can say and do whatever they want free from Congressional or FEC oversight.

Unless the divorce is final and the change systemic, i.e. a complete separation of government and the economy, the politicians and their business buddies will continue to sleep together, screwing all of us.

The examples you site are examples of political entrepreneurs, once again. Capitalism hasn't existed in this country for over a century. You'll have to find examples from the 19th Century if you want to prove your point to me. Every example you site happened WHILE the businessman and the politician were married...the source of the corruption. If you own the police, you can commit a lot of crimes and not have to worry about just consequences.

Besides, I said rational self-interest. In a free market the bad players are weeded out. They don't stay in business long. The damage they create is mitigated by the competition. In essence business IS REGULATED...It's regulated by the PRIVATE SECTOR: 1. your competition will let the public know you're a dirt-bag; 2. consumer watchdog groups will provide venues for people who were harmed by your activities; 3. the courts will still exist...class action lawsuits would still happen to weed out fraud and abuse. I'm not talking about lawlessness, MARX!

Did you know you can buy industry-certified lumber? I don't remember the name of the private entity that conducts the oversight, but Jared Diamond explains what they do in his book Collapse. The certification ensures consumers that the lumber they are buying was produced by a company that practices "silviculture," the planting of trees [like crops] to replace this renewable resource as it is consumed. Another great example of how the private sector weeds out bad players by educating consumers [rather than government FORCE] is the tuna industry. I don't care how much more it costs. I only buy dolphin-safe tuna.

The only reason the tobacco industry was able to lie and cheat and survive was because the industry was PROTECTED by Washington! You must know this! Few industries had as much clout on Capital Hill than the tobacco industry. Another reason they survive is because of people like me: We know about the dangers. We know it's not good for us. We do it anyway. [Sorry to hear about your mother.] Another industry in bed with the politicians is the auto industry...Have you ever seen the movie Tucker: the man and his dream? A great true story that makes my point well. Government is the only entity in existence that can sustain and enrich bad players. ONLY government has the CLUB to force competition out of the market place!

As long as government has the power to determine who gets to compete, there is no capitalism in this country. If you're not happy about the way the economy works these past 100 years or so, government intervention is the poison you rail against [even as you ask for more poison].

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part 21]

2009-04-05T05:27:00.002-05:00

Marx Wrote: The only thing you’ve done is convince me that, if you look hard enough, you can find "evidence" to support any point of view. You have a habit of relegating ANYONE that you don’t agree with to "talented fabulist," for example, Michael Moore and the person that you blame for the designation of "Robber Barons" [Ida Tarbell]. I’m gonna tell you the ONE truth that you'll ever hear in this world that we live in: “there is precious little reality in our individual realities." Anyone can find anything to support the views that they have, some of it may very well be true but there is NO way to tell what is and what isn’t true. It all depends on "faith" and I really don’t have much of that in any of our news, educational materials, texts or even (with the advent of Photoshop) photographic records.

Marx,

My most important points require no empirical evidence at all. They require a profound respect for the human capacity to reason devoid of faith, emotions, mystic revelation...and the irrational personal biases created by humans who feel rather than think. For example, anti-capitalists feel everybody should have everything they need including 21st Century health care. They believe that a person’s need for something crucial, like life-saving pharmaceuticals, gives a person a right to them. I require NO empirical evidence, NO anecdotal evidence, NO media or textbooks, to demonstrate the pure evil of this supposition. I need ONLY reason and a profound respect for the rights of individuals to KNOW that nobody has a right to anything that was produced by somebody else.

21st Century health care is produced by people who: spend ten years in school mastering most difficult curricula; investors putting millions of their own money on the line with the expectation that Merc will develop the next “miracle drug” and they will rightly profit. Anyone who produces anything, owns the result of their productive work. No one can rationally place any demand on them to hand it over without compensation. In a moral and just society productive individuals TRADE with one another, value for value. All values are determined by two parties: the producer and the consumer. Without this moral equation our society is relegated to institutionalized gang rule. The majority of people [those who did not produce the life-saving medicine] sic the government on the producers. Government uses force to extort these 21st Century health care products from their rightful owners... Everybody in the health care industry becomes a slave to the state. How do you justify this extortion? You say: People need health care. Justice be damned! We’re all in this thing for the good of the community, so the individual rights of the producers be damned!

Now, my nihilist friend, answer my argument. No stories about the failed health care system we have in place here in the US, please. What we have is not capitalism. Like housing, banking, energy and nearly every other industry, government designed the health care system we have in place today. Try to give me a rational argument to justify “free health care for all.” If the rights of individuals are sacrificed to make your argument work, you have not created a rational argument.

Donn

Donn,

I have never said everyone should have free healthcare and I don’t recall anyone I know or anyone I support supporting "free healthcare for all." I DO support affordable healthcare for everyone, regardless or pre-existing conditions or whether some arbitrary insurance adjustor deems it’s ok for YOU to have healthcare. Healthcare costs are out of control and BEFORE you blame the legal system, take a look at the obscene profits the health insurance companies make. My brother does NOT have healthcare insurance because he's a truck driver and he cannot afford more than a thousand dollars a month for him and his wife. I think a gainfully employed, hardworking man should be able to afford healthcare. It should NOT be the domain of the wealthy or those lucky enough to have employer provided healthcare and THAT’S what’s happening. Do YOU think this is an unreasonable position? Then you’re out of touch with what private healthcare insurance agencies cost, you’ve been on state provided healthcare TOO long and you don’t know what OTHERS are going through. MEANWHILE, a friend recently stayed at a hospital for three days for some minor surgery. His bill came back at about 15,000 dollars!!! BUT, get this, it said....Insurance Company Discount 13,000... money paid by insurance company, 2000...money owed... 0.00.. DUDE, what the HECK is that??? They give a 13,000 discount to the insurance company?? But expect an uninsured individual to pay the WHOLE 13,000 ... that’s insane!!!

Marx

Marx,

If you want abundance of any good or service, if you want innovation and creativity in the market place in any industry, don’t ask Washington to “solve” the problem.

Donn

Donn,

Our politicians veer, slightly to the left and some slightly to the right but none are really interested in anything other than where their next campaign contribution is coming from, USUALLY, that’s from the corporations.

Marx,

Marx,

Laissez faire capitalism is the only solution to the problem you site. If you want to remove corporate influence in Washington over night, remove politicians from the market place. Abolish the 16th Amendment and take away that huge pot of gold the politicians extorted from the producers and 30,000 lobbyists are out of work. They’re there in Washington, lobbying, for their piece of a pie that shouldn’t even exist! People who think like you created the problem by encouraging and empowering government to manipulate free markets AND when everything you’ve created blows up in our faces, you go back to the politicians, who injected the poison into the body in the first place, AND WHAT DO YOU DO? You ask for more poison!!

Unbelievable that you can not see this truth.

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part 20]

2009-03-29T04:42:00.004-05:00

Donn,

"Good" and "evil" are relative concepts...MY absolute "evil", obviously, is not yours. And obviously MY absolute "good" isn’t yours either. Finally, I AM concerned about voter fraud...when the elections committees have done their job and found "fraud" they can prosecute it. But again, who knows what’s true and what’s being reported as truth or even if there is ANY truth in the reports. We can not trust our media sources, some are controlled by the Republicans and some are controlled by the Dems and everyone’s doing what they do best, muddying the waters. I am NOT like you... I cant say "oooooh...LOOK...the Democrats have some potentially fraudulent voters registrations... BURN 'EM"... because, like I said, I remember no such outrage coming from you when GW was guilty of it in 2000 and 2004 and they never even did any real investigations. The one or two Fed Prosecutors that DID look into it were fired by the GW Administration for behaving in a non-political manner. Again, you keep claiming you’re not a Republican but you fall, hand over foot, to defend him when his positions are defenseless. As for Obama, this is where you guys get ridiculous, ALL these guys give monies to voters drive registration groups, yes, even Republicans and media, the so called "liberal media" which is OWNED by right wingers that control content, nary says a word when the right is caught doing the same. For instance, there's John McCain whining about how much money Obama took from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but NO one is pointing out that HIS campaign took nearly 30,000 a week from them for almost 2 years. The relative truth is CORPORATIONS GREASE BOTH SIDES and the side with the power gets the most, but they grease BOTH sides. You want a law completely outlawing corporate influence on Congress?? I'll go along with that 100% ...NEITHER side will, EVER!!! I'd do it like they do it in China, it’s a CAPITAL OFFENSE. But I’m realistic neither side will do it because THEY (politicians and corporations) control the votes, they control the media and they won’t ever take monies out of their own pockets. Finally, you can say what you want about Clinton, when he left, our country was in the best shape it had been in years, 7 years of right wing policy have completely turned everything into the worst mess I have seen in my lifetime. Two wars, one against a country that never attacked us and wasn’t threatening us. The biggest budget fiasco I have seen in years. The banking industry running rampant under deregulation and collapsing under their own bad investments and gambling and, your boy McCain, proposing that the government buy EVERY bad mortgage at FULL VALUE and making US, the taxpayer take the hit and, in actuality, bailing out those corporate executives at the full, inflated value ( I actually laughed at him when he proposed THAT at the debates .. he said That’s MY plan, not Bush's and NOT Obama’s MY plan). At LEAST, Obama's plan of requiring the industry to renegotiate the loans to help the homeowners certainly seems more palatable than rewarding the predatory lenders. MAKE em work together and not be at odds with each other. I’m sorry, I WISH that GW had found a 22 year old intern to screw rather than having him stand there at the top and continue to screw us all.

Marx

Marx,

Damn! You are incorrigible! John McCaine is NOT “my boy.” I don’t think I’ve said anything about Bill Clinton, either.

More importantly: Good and Evil are NOT relative terms. If we disagree about what is good and what is evil, it is because one of us, or both of us, is WRONG. I think my discussion about man’s inherent rights [the rational standard for judging good and evil on this planet] made my point irrefutably clear. You are wrong, and if the US continues to move in the direction you promote [socialism] that evil will be your grandchildren’s REALITY. Dying Europe will go first, so I hope in your lifetime you will get to see firsthand how the TRUTH will most certainly out. Inherent INDIVIDUAL rights cannot be compromised without destroying the lives and liberty of all men.

Donn

Donn,

Not incorrigible, you keep defending them. Stop washing your hands of them when they say things you can no longer defend.

Marx

Marx,

I've checked the record...I have not once [in our discussion] defended the 2008 version of John McCain!

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part 19]

2009-03-22T06:22:00.002-05:00

Donn,

When someone uses a stereotypical picture to present their case, expect to be stereotyped. There IS evil, and there's NOT so evil, and there’s ok, and there’s pretty good and there’s better and there’s even great and fantastic. I won’t join you in your black and white interpretation of the world. You and GW and you’re "either with us or agin us" has to go because there ARE people with us, some sort of with us, some somewhere in the middle and some sort of against us and some totally against us. THAT’S what diplomacy is for: to move those countries polarized against us and bring them back, slowly to the fold. Consider the concept of the "lethal hug" ... THAT’S what Obama is espousing and it works far more often than invasion and occupation.

Marx

Marx,

Christ! I AM NOT A SUPPORTER OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION!! I’m not a Republican.

Terrific! You acknowledge that there is evil in this world. Let’s say you have acknowledged the existence of WHITE. I’m not sure, but I think when you say “fantastic” you mean “good.” You acknowledge that there is good in the world. You have acknowledged the existence of BLACK.

So, you live in a world where there is good and there is evil; there is truth and there is falsehood; there is black and there is white.

Now, I have never said that the various shades of gray do not exist. Of course they exist. My point is simply that if you know what the good is, any movement in the other direction is movement towards evil. For example: There is truth. Anything less than the truth is a lie. There are little lies, bigger lies, huge lies, dangerous lies, evil lies.

Consider the following: All men have inherent rights. Among them are life, liberty and property [property means: the wealth created by your productive work]. These rights are not granted to men by their government. These rights are inherent. All men have them because all men are rational, thinking beings, responsible for their own existence. The greatest violator of these rights through history has been governments usually married to some church. The common justification for their atrocities: the collectivist-altruist code.

If man does not have an absolute right to his life, than he can be sacrificed by the collective will of other men. Every genocide in history was carried out by some government, usually with the backing of some church. The collectivist-altruist code is the “justification” used in every instance. The rights of the individual are sacrificed for the good of the community. The unequivocal protection of this inherent, individual right is an absolute good. Any movement in the other direction is movement towards absolute evil. Everybody talks about 6 million dead Jews. Nobody recalls the name of the first to be killed. Evil need not be multiplied by 6 million in order for it to be evil. If only 3 million had been murdered, would it have been less evil? How about 600? How about just you or your daughter?

A bird is free to use its wings to fly away from danger to preserve its existence. A lion is free to use its fangs and claws to tear the flesh of its prey so that it can survive. Human beings do not have wings, fangs, or claws. The key to a human being’s survival is his brain. If man is responsible for his own existence, a man must be at liberty to use his brain to preserve his own existence. Any institution that restricts man from the rational use of his brain for his own preservation is anti-man and evil. [Harming others, stealing, etc. are irrational, that’s why we call these behaviors “crimes.” Nobody is free to harm others even if he is trying to preserve his own existence.] Nobody has the right to control the thinking of any other man. Men, of course, are free to try to persuade one another. Again, through history no institution has been a bigger violator of man’s liberty than government usually married to some church.

Because man is responsible for his own existence, man must be free to produce the necessities of life. He must either produce food or trade with somebody who has. If you plant the crops, care for them, and finally harvest them, you own whatever your labor yields. The product of your labor is your property. Nobody can rationally make any claim to that which was produced by you. When we pay tribute to our government, we are paying a fee for services rendered [police protection, for example.] The redistribution of wealth IS NOT a government service. It is extortion. It is government forcing individuals to hand over the fruits of their labor. Why? So that it can be given to other people who did not produce it. Slavery is an absolute evil. Enslaved humans were forced to hand over 100% of their property, the product of their labor. In communist China, the Chinese were forced to hand over 100% of the property. Communism is pure evil. I guess by your standard socialism is less evil because people in Europe the few producers left are only 50-75% slave. Here in the United States the productive 60% of the population [the people who actually pay taxes] are only 30% slave.

Movement in the direction you promote is movement in the direction of pure evil.

Movement toward the absolute and unequivocal liberty of rational individuals is THE ABSOLUTE GOOD you fail to realize. You think so little of mankind. You think mankind is evil. You think that this IDEAL is unreachable, that government can create all things for all men BY FORCE. You are the advocate of force even as you rail against war! You are the cynic who restricts man’s freedoms and then damns freedom when the statist economy you created fails.

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part 18]

2009-03-15T04:53:00.003-05:00

Marx wrote: What I can tell you is this, you want me to prove ANY point? Anything, I can find it. If I can’t find it, I can create it in Photoshop and lift a couple official looking seals and logos and post it on the internet and I guarantee I'll find a group of people that will completely believe it. Finally, I believe that ANY time you venture into fanaticism or extremes you’re dooming this country. We were created with Checks and Balances for a reason; we were created with forums for a reason. I believe our founding fathers wanted this country to be diverse and accepting. I believe our Congress and Senate is FAR too centrist. We need RAGING Liberals in Congress battling it out with hard core Right Wingers, ONLY that way can we arrive at a true consensus. Like I quote I once read said "a bird needs both its right wing and its left wing to fly straight". Our current politicians are one thing and one thing only, corporatists. By the way, the Chinese are extremely proud of their deliberative body, as they said to me, there is FAR more diversity in ours than in yours. They said we have hard, hard right left wingers going toe to toe with hard right wingers every day.

Marx,

Your views [once again] suffer from the belief in a commonly held misconception about the Framers and the constitution they created: that the Framers compromised their values in order to achieve consensus, that the Constitution of the US is the result of your "pastiche" principal. Politicians in Washington also believe that oil and water can be mixed to produce a palatable colloid. This is not at all what the Framers did.

The Framers NEVER compromised a core value: they compromised on particulars. For example: That we have a republican form of government was never debated; how to elect a president was. That we have a separation of powers, and especially an independent judiciary, was never debated; how best to ensure an independent judiciary through various checks and balances was. That we have a federal system was decided on day one; decisions about federal and state power are still being debated today. That our Constitution is amendable was never debated; how to amend the Constitution was. That government is dangerous was never debated; whether or not a national Bill of Rights was a necessary addition to the Constitution was.

Capitalism is a core value. Unfortunately, a couple of loop-holes in the Constitution [namely, the Commerce Clause and the Elastic Clause] enabled politicians over time to compromise this value. From Hamilton’s National Bank, to Lincoln infrastructure projects, to TR’s trust-busting, to the 16th Amendment, to FDR’s and LBJ’s socialism this country has been on a steady course to self-destruction by undermining justice in the economy. Property rights were a core value dating back to John Locke’s 17th Century treatise, if not “thou shalt not steal.”

A perfectly just system is not improved by compromising with evil and incorporating some injustice into the system.

Donn

Donn,

You are FAR too ingrained with a belief to see the fallacy in what you say. You now label things you do NOT believe in as "evil" and the things you DO believe in as "good"...THAT’S a problem, there are way too many grey areas out there to try and divide everything into good and evil categories. The way you DO it, a lot of people with good ideas will go by the wayside.

Marx

Marx,

No Marx. Evil exists. Your failure to acknowledge it, to identify it, to fight it will be your undoing. How does one compromise with an armed thug who has sworn to kill you because you drew a picture of Mohammad?

Donn

Donn,

You don’t but, what about all the wonderful, law abiding decent Muslims? Funny, ALL the Muslims I have met have been wonderful, decent people. By YOUR rubric, people that believe in Mohammed are evil. Sorry, I won’t join you there.

Marx

Marx,

Subgunaditch! How did you come to that conclusion? I gave one goddamned example of evil. Here are others:

>Any institution that denies a human being the right to think for himself.
>Any institution that forbids human beings the right to speak their minds.
>Any institution that forces a man to work for the benefit of others...charity must always be a private matter and a choice.
>Cruelty, torture
>Sloth
>ETC.

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part 17]

2009-03-08T06:08:00.003-05:00

Marx wrote: Anyone can find anything to support the views that they have, some of it may very well be true but there is NO way to tell what is and what isn’t true.

Marx,

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.

Donn

Donn,

That’s nice, but incorrect. I can find data to support ANY position I have and if I cant find it? I can manipulate it to say whatever I want it to say and, being as YOU, personally are taking someone’s word that THEY did this research because NO one has the time in their lives to research everything...you can NEVER know what’s true and what isn’t. Finally, your reference to the medical industry? Let me tell you what my Chinese physician said "American Doctors, diagnose and manage health problems with an eye on getting you on some prescription medication and NOT on a cure"...fact is, the AMA themselves have said Americans are "overmedicated". There you, go, where's the truth in that?

Marx

Marx,

Are you suggesting that using your “manipulated data” you can reason a truth, alter reality?

Existence exists. Your failure to acknowledge reality will not change it.

Donn

Donn,

No, you can NOT impose YOUR truths on everyone, no matter how hard you try

Marx

Marx,

Truth exists.

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part 16]

2009-03-01T04:16:00.006-06:00

Fine. You asked for this, Marx.

So, you have heard me when I say that I am not a Republican, and you are wondering why I seem to be defending them. The answer is simple: We’re discussing an economic issue. If we were discussing a social issue—abortion, gay marriage, the posting of the Ten Commandments on the school or courthouse wall, embryonic stem cell research, the teaching of Intelligent Design in biology class, etc—I would be defending the Democrat position. On virtually every social issue [except gun control] I stand squarely on the side of the Democrats.

The reason you think I am defending the Republicans is because we are discussing an economic issue, and while the Republicans have sold out capitalism and are nearly as interventionist as Democrats, Republicans are not [yet] socialists. That’s the crucial difference: Democrats are European-style socialists...have been since FDR.

You Yellow Dog Democrats like to call the Republicans fascists because of their wrong-headed positions on social issues, and I agree with you. What about economic fascism? Why is there no freedom in your world where a person’s productivity is concerned? You know every true fascist regime in history was [and is] socialist...see Nazi Germany, Saddam’s Iraq, Chavez’s Venezuela...all socialist states.

When you call the USA Patriot Act and NSPD 51 fascist, I wonder where you’re getting your news. Whenever I have a question about legislation and/or an executive order, I go to the same place members of Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Supreme Court go. I go to the Library of Congress and read a bi-partisan description of the legislation in question from the Congressional Research Services before I go to any media.

Congressional Research Services: Summary of NSPD 51

“On May 9, 2007, President George W. Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 51, which is also identified as Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD) 20, on National Continuity Policy. The directive updates longstanding continuity directives designed to assure that governing entities are able to recover from a wide range of potential operational interruptions. Executive branch efforts to assure essential operations are similar to those that are broadly integrated into many private sector industries. Government continuity planning also incorporates efforts to maintain and preserve constitutional government, based on the assumption that certain essential activities typically provided by government must be carried out with little or no interruption under all circumstances.”

National Continuity Policy has been on the books for a long time. Abe Lincoln, for example, declared marshal law and suspended Habeas Corpus during the Civil War crisis; FDR imprisoned Japanese Americans in concentration camps with an executive order during WWII. NSPD 51 becomes effective ONLY in a national emergency, i.e. New York or Washington DC are leveled in a nuclear attack. It’s there so that our country doesn’t unravel into chaos during a national emergency. You better be glad it’s there. Take the chaos in New Orleans after Katrina and multiply it by about 85,000 localities nation-wide and you may get the picture. Trust me, if Obama becomes president, NSPD 51 doesn’t change.

You can research the USA Patriot Act yourself, but the story is much the same. Nearly every provision outlined in the USA Patriot Act was already in the books. The purpose of the act was to organize and consolidate US counter-terrorism efforts, to make sure everybody in law enforcement and intelligence was on the same page. The USA Patriot Act was bi-partisan, and the most controversial amendment to the law [the one you reference above when you’re damning Bush for listening to your phone calls and reading your e-mails “without a warrant,” was passed three months ago by a Democratic Congress! Why did they pass it? Let’s take a look at what FISA Amendment Act of 2008 actually says:

If you go to the American Civil Liberties Union website to find a description of the FISA Amendment Act of 2008, 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 the Obama Administration will have the same power, if you go to CRS, 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.

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part 15]

2009-02-22T04:16:00.002-06:00

Marx wrote [regarding the charitable giving of Bill Gates]: “Mr. Gates isn’t doing any of THAT "giving", that’s his wife driving the charity, there was a Rolling Stone interview with the two of them a couple months ago and HE said he wouldn’t do it if his wife wasn’t the driving force.”

Marx,

Strange. Really strange. I thought people like you really appreciate humble people, people who credit others for their own achievements. Do you know the U.S. Congress actually declared some day [I don’t remember which day] a National Day of Humiliation! Christ! Right here in the United States...a national day of g-damn humiliation. The altruists love to see all of the little humans on their knees...all weak and desperate, helpless and needy. How the leftists hate the arrogant President Bush. Make up your mind! Do you want people to humbly give all the credit to their brother-men [or their wife] or do you want them to tell the truth and say “I’m a heck of a good guy?”

What you just read is actually my argument #2. My first argument would be: Bill Gates’ fortune is the moral result of his creative undertakings. He earned his fortune by his own effort. He deserves every penny of it, and as I have already said, we could never pay him enough for what he accomplished. Think of the trillions of dollars other people have made using his software. By rights, we should all be paying him a percentage! If Bill Gates did not give one dime of his money away he would be no less moral. Giving it all away wouldn’t make him more moral, either. Whether or not a person is living a moral life has nothing to do with how they spend their money...everything to do with how they acquire it. Gates’ wealth is the product of his genius. He can do with it whatever he wants.

Donn

[For some reason Marx decided to completely change the subject.]

Donn,

I understand that you say you’re not a Republican and I understand you keep saying you’re a laissez faire capitalist but you keep defending them and, at the same time, keep saying you’re not one of them. Reagan did a lot of damage. We survived even though we were well on our way to bankruptcy. Thank god Clinton managed to turn it around and, strangely, he did it by raising taxes on the top 1%. The Supply-Siders ALL screamed the economy would crash and burn and, surprise, it not only DIDN’T do that, it was one of the most profitable times in our history. Our economy reacts well to us paying off our bills. He streamlined the military and actually reduced the size of the Federal Government while reforming Welfare from a "way of life" to a "safety net." He did what all conservatives swear up and down they WANT to do but they couldn’t wait to tear him down. You SAY you’re a fiscal conservative but then why don’t you just adore Clinton?

We SOOOOOOOO overacted to 9-11. We let GW force the Patriot Act on us and that’s practically a fascist bill. It strips so many of our rights away. The man can listen to my phone calls, read my emails, sneak peaks into my home and search my stuff without a search warrant. What about Presidential Directive #51? Does it bother you that Bush gave the presidency the power to suspend elections and seize dictatorial powers? Do you realize that I actually held my breath when McCain said he was "suspending his campaign"? He started the department of Homeland Security, the biggest growth of our federal Government since FDR. The shocking thing is, I STILL hear Republicans calling Dems proponents of big government when they’ve grown it bigger than anyone I’ve seen in my lifetime. Its not about the size of government, it’s about the efficiency. Look how efficient FEMA worked under Clinton and what a disaster it was under GW. Reps complain at how inefficient government is and then work their best to make it so. I'd rather have Clinton and his mistresses then Bush screwing all of us.

Basically, I’ve said it before and I'll say it again. In order for our country to compete in today’s world, we need to take anything that works from any ideology. I COMPLETELY disagree with the Neocon concept of the "Unitary Executive." That’s for EITHER side. No one seems to realize what the terrorists REALLY want. THEY are winning. They wanted to financially BREAK this country, the way they BROKE the USSR in Afghanistan. Take a look around you, they’re winning. They were HOPING and praying we'd invade Afghanistan or Iraq and break our financial back and end our world financial domination. They NEVER thought they could invade and capture the US of A. They NEVER thought they could come here and do more than the occasional act of terrorism. They wanted us to react JUST the way we acted. INVADE, WAR, WAR, WAR!!!! They whole "Patriot Act" thing was never what they wanted, that was all Republican propaganda, telling people they were afraid of our freedoms and then, proceed to STRIP us of our freedoms .. it was SOOOO 1984, war is peace, peace is war, white is black, black is white. Mind you, they LOVED that we subjected Americans to this indignity but THAT was never in their plans. They got what they wanted, they got us involved in a war we couldn’t afford with a nebulous enemy we could never see. The truth is, or MY truth is, Clinton was ALWAYS 100% correct, terrorism is a Law Enforcement issue. Worldwide, the CORRECT answer was to work with Interpol and give them more power to find those murderous criminals because, they’re NOT just in Afghanistan or Iraq, they’re EVERYWHERE!!!

Marx

Yellow Dog [Part 14]

2009-02-10T17:26:00.002-06:00

Marcx Wrote: “People like you MAKE the case it’s not your problem but you avail yourself of these perks and YOU, personally, make your living off it. Your stance is EXTREMELY hypocritical.”

Marx,

Please keep this definition in mind as you read my response.

Altruism: “The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue, and value.” [AR] The most basic absolute of altruism is self-sacrifice. The self is the standard of evil; the selfless is the standard of good. If you benefit, your action is evil: if others benefit your action is good.

This is the prevailing moral code in this world. I believe it is a most irrational and immoral code.

Now to your charge that I am a hypocrite because I teach in a public school and I am paid by taxpayers.

I exist in reality. The reality in which I exist was not created by me. If I could reconstruct the world’s institutions, I would. Obviously, I do not have the power to do this. I wish to teach. I wish to excel in everything that I do. I wish to earn as much as possible doing what I love to do. I earn every penny of my paycheck, and then some. To deny myself opportunities that exist in this world because on principle I would have done things another way, would be altruistic. I would be sacrificing my own well-being and the well-being of my wife and my kids [my highest values] for a lesser value, my belief in laissez-faire capitalism.

For example, I believe Social Security should be abolished, that the private sector can accomplish retirement insurance much more efficiently and profitably than the existing system. I have been forced to pay into this program my entire adult life. If, on principle, I refused to cash my social security checks upon retirement, that would be altruistic. I would be punishing myself, sacrificing my own well-being to make a point about a system I did not design, that I was forced to pay into.

A corollary thought:
Integrity, uncompromising respect for the truth, is one of my highest values. It sits on what I call “my top shelf” along with me, my kids, my current wife, and my career, and my liberty. I have plenty of faults and do lots of things I’m not particularly proud of, but I’m not a liar, Marx. I can be this way because I live in country where I am free to speak my mind and pursue my goals without fear. If I lived in Saddam’s Iraq or Castro’s Cuba I would become a professional liar over night. Despotic regimes destroy all values. Despotic regimes all have one thing in common: collectivism-altruism.

Donn

Marx wrote: “You make the late 1800's early 1900's sound like a utopian paradise which it was, if YOU happened to be in the upper 1%. For the rest it was endless labor, no retirement, no healthcare from 5,6, 7 and up. There was NO child labor laws and children worked for 12 hours a day. How many women were locked in sweatshops for 16 hours a day? How many died from fires because they locked the doors to keep them in and they were supposed to pee in a bucket in the corner? Education? Only for the wealthy that could pay for it. Low oil costs? Of course, he drove all the competitors out of business and paid his employees pennies a day with no retirement, health care or even guarantee of a job tomorrow.”

Marx,

The agrarian economies of the pre-industrial world provided the vast majority of humans the most despicable living conditions imaginable...sewage-polluted drinking water, and no medicine to treat the resulting cholera, typhoid, and dysentery...flea infested rats spreading Black Death across Europe killing a third of the population... widespread alcoholism and early death in the U.K. because the only safe thing to drink was cheap gin...chattel slavery in the South right here in the United States. [It’s a good thing people didn’t live long.] These are all realities that were reversed over time after the Industrial Revolution and the birth of capitalism.

Certainly, you are correct when you argue the dismal conditions of the late 19th and early 20th Century sweatshops. By today’s standards they were abysmal. But, while you throw the baby out with the bath water, you forget to mention several important truths: Like rural peasants today across the globe, these people moved to cities so that they could get these coveted jobs. These people and their shoeless, hungry children had always worked 16 hour days, laboring endlessly, without health care, without retirement, without pay. If their meager crops failed, they starved to death. These people moved to the cities and showed up to work each day, and brought their children with them because they had never had it so good! It’s a sad truth, but the truth nonetheless. NOBODY was forced to work in a sweatshop. They chose this work because it was far better than any alternative in existence.

At least the workers in the U.S. northern states got paid for their work in the factories.

Great Britain and the U.S. northern states were the first two places in history and across the globe to abolish slavery. The Industrial Revolution had taken hold in Britain and the North. Free enterprise and capitalism were evolving. In the southern states where the old world, pre-industrial, agrarian economy persisted, slavery flourished for another half century and had to be put down, finally, by a bloody war. Capitalism ended slavery on this planet, my friend.

Marx, I consider you a pretty knowledgeable guy with whom I disagree. Nothing wrong about that. That can be a good thing. We can make each other think. But, I must say, you really don’t know anything about J.D Rockefeller. You should stop trashing him. All you know is the popular, yellow press, socialist picture of him painted by a gifted writer named Ida Tarbell. Ms. Tarbell was the early 20th Century’s Michael Moore, only worse: she had a personal vendetta against Rockefeller on whom she laid the blame for her brother’s financial destruction. Probably the most balanced history of Rockefeller is a book called Titan by Ron Chernow. He trashes Rockefeller when he can; he defends him when he has to. It’s a first rate biography. There are other books as well.

Rockefeller, for example, did not turn to God as he grew old and start giving his money away for fear of hell. From my point of view the truth is not much better, but here goes...Rockefeller was a Northern Baptist, a regular church-goer his entire life, who believed that God had given him his talent for making money because he was one of the few people on Earth who knew how to spend it well! Nuts, I know. In adjusted dollars, this, the richest American in history, owned only three homes, lived on milk and cheese and crackers, and wore the same overcoat every day until people began to comment on how tattered it was beginning to look. He consumed during the course of his 93 year life less than 1% of his accumulated wealth. He built the University of Chicago and saved Atlanta’s Spelman College, a school for black women. He financed the first, life-saving medical science of the first half of the 20th Century, that thing you call “health care.”

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part 13]

2009-02-03T08:22:00.001-06:00

Marx Wrote: “I wonder if you'd feel that way when the roads were no longer repaired or had to pay toll at all the private roads or if the parks were no longer maintained or charged entrance fees or if the police were for hire only and if you’re poor, no crimes would be solved or if the fire department decided to haggle with you outside your burning house, don’t have the money? Let it burn. I wonder if you'd feel that way if you were having a stroke and your wife had to strike a deal with the paramedics before they'd render any care. Would you feel that way when the poorest children couldn’t get an education and ended up either trapped in a life of poverty, crime or ill health because they couldn’t afford an education or health care either.”

Marx,

Infrastructure, parks, and paramedics...

Let me begin with a few of your own words...Marx! Don’t believe ANYTHING you have ever read about capitalism or capitalists! It’s all lies!!!

Here is a simple rule I’d like you to keep in mind: If there is even one dollar of government money in play, what you are witnessing is NOT capitalism.

Have you ever read the story of the great railroad man, James J. Hill? Back in Lincoln’s time when political entrepreneurs [the people you call “Robber Barons”] stormed Washington D.C. to get their cut of the tax-payer money the government was giving out to anybody who said they could build a railroad, James J. Hill refused government money, gathered a few partners together, took out a loan from a private bank, bought the failed Minnesota line of the government-subsidized Northern Pacific railroad [after battling the government for five years in court], and built the Great Northern Railroad. Because Hill was risking his own money on the project, he built his railroad most efficiently with his customer in mind. He knew he would only survive if he built a railroad that served the people who paid his bills, the farmers [for example] who needed the railroad to move their products to market. Hill’s Great Northern was the “best constructed and most profitable of all the world’s major railroads.” [DiLorenzo] It is the ONLY transcontinental railroad that never went bankrupt.

James J. Hill and J.D. Rockefeller were not Robber Barons, Marx. Robber Barons are the “political entrepreneurs,” people who seek government contracts and federal dollars so that they can....er...make a ton of money. Capitalists, like Hill and Rockefeller, don’t take a dime from politicians or taxpayers. They risk their own money. They have the incentive to be efficient, to serve the consumers who pay their bills, to pay their most productive workers well, because it is their livelihood on the line. Hill’s and Rockefeller’s employees were the best paid in their respective industries. Neither EVER had a workers’ strike while they chaired their own company. Consumers only benefited from their activities as prices in both markets dropped. Political entrepreneurs risk nothing. They take taxpayer money: they have no incentive to be efficient. They’re not railroad men or oil men...they are men who want to make a bunch of money. They, and their political friends in Washington, make a corrupt bundle providing substandard services. When they fail, there are no consequences. Every government-built railroad in the United States failed within 40 years of its construction. Government subsidized airlines today are equally disastrous. Political entrepreneurs are just about all we have left today [except most small businesses]. These people are propped up by both Dems and Reps in Washington, and taxpayers are made to cover their inevitable losses, BUT THEY ARE NOT CAPITALISTS!

If 874 and 836 in Miami had been built by Hill or Rockefeller or any true capitalist, your toll would probably be a quarter and the roads would be better kept. Last time I drove to work and back in Miami, I paid $4.00...average speed? About 20 mph.

Parks. Hey, I heard about this amazing private park. It’s so much fun and so well kept. People from all over the world come to visit it. Every year the capitalists who run the place open the doors to thousands of poor and sick kids who otherwise would never be able to afford to go. There’s very little crime there. In fact, I don’t think there has ever been a murder. It’s called Disney World.

Paramedics. Last time I checked both public and private hospitals offer ambulance services, but that’s beside the point. The point is: laissez-faire capitalists do not argue that there is no proper function for government. As I have said previously, there are legitimate functions for government and taxpayers must pay for these services. Government has a responsibility to protect our individual rights, including our lives, our liberty, and our property. The Defense Department, the Justice Department, police and fire fighters are all legitimate government services.

If we raised our children with the understanding that they have no right to anything they haven’t earned, we’d have far less crime. Of this I am certain.

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part 12]

2009-01-27T11:34:00.004-06:00

Donn,

First, taxes were at their highest in 1982 under Republican Reagan. Second, I’m glad you feel that way, I wonder if you'd feel that way when they tell you they could no longer afford to pay your salary so go get a job at a private school and make less money with no retirement benefits. Of course, there'd be no unions so they'd collude to make your salary as low as they could while the people at the top would drive to work in Jags. I wonder if you'd feel that way when the roads were no longer repaired or had to pay toll at all the private roads or if the parks were no longer maintained or charged entrance fees or if the police were for hire only and if you’re poor, no crimes would be solved or if the fire department decided to haggle with you outside your burning house, don’t have the money?? Let it burn. I wonder if you'd feel that way if you were having a stroke and your wife had to strike a deal with the paramedics before they'd render any care. Would you feel that way when the economically lowest children couldn’t get an education and ended up either trapped in a life of poverty, crime or ill health because they couldn’t afford an education or health care either. The problem is, we ALL use the public commons and we should all pay our share. Public Parks are for everyone, not just those that can pay the entrance fee and people like you MAKE the case it’s not your problem but you avail yourself of these perks and YOU, personally, make your living off it. Your stance is EXTREMELY hypocritical.

Laissez Faire? You make the late 1800's early 1900's sound like a utopian paradise which it was, if YOU happened to be in the upper 1%. For the rest it was endless labor, no retirement, no healthcare. There were NO child labor laws and children worked for 12 hours a day. How many women were locked in sweatshops for 16 hours a day? How many died from fires because they locked the doors to keep them in and they were supposed to pee in a bucket in the corner? Education? Only for the wealthy that could pay for it. Low oil costs? Of course, he drove all the competitors out of business and paid his employees pennies a day with no retirement, health care or even guarantee of a job tomorrow. Carnegie? The other "Robber Barons"? You’ve got to be kidding me, I mean seriously, even with the insanely biased media, you'd be hard pressed to find someone else that would call THAT era a "utopia." Those guys gave a lot in their old age when they came to terms with their mortality and were scared shitless at the thought there might just be a hell waiting for them and ALL they were doing was trying buy themselves a spot in heaven. Bill Gates was completely unscrupulous and stole a lot from a lot of people and NEVER compensated them for their work. I know some people that worked for him. One was a designer that did a lot for him and he was fired when he had the temerity to ask for a raise. Mr. Gates isn’t doing any of THAT "giving", that’s his wife driving the charity, there was a Rolling Stone interview with the two of them a couple months ago and HE said he wouldn’t do it if his wife wasn’t the driving force.

Finally, how dare you blame this financial mess on the Democrats, do you think we don’t remember GW saying "we're gonna make this an ownership society" in 2002 as he loosened the regulations to allow this insane gambling with our monies? I remember it quite clearly and I remember the Dems telling him it would be a disaster if he continued to loosen the regulations. Regardless of how you say it, this is HIS baby, period, end of story. The Stock Market is gambling and if not regulated, they can lose ALL our monies. Thank god they didn’t let him put Social Security on the Stock Market or who knows how many elderly people would be screwed now. I have a friend, kept trying to get me to take my Florida Retirement System cash out of the system and put into the investment company he worked for, showed me all his clients portfolios, how they were making 5 times what I was. I got jittery and, in the end, told him "no". His company went under last week. I wonder if his clients have any pension left? I only gotta go 9 more years and I could retire with $3500 a month for the rest of my life, if I make it to 62? $5,600 a month till I die. I won’t be rich but I'll make it, thank god for the state. I wonder if those OTHER teachers he represented are in as good shape? Somehow, I doubt it.

Marx

Marx,
I will address each point you make in the order in which you made it. Public Schools: Education is not a right. It is a responsibility. If you wish to be competitive in the 21st Century, there are skills you must acquire. Nobody can do this for you. You think government is the best facilitator of this personal objective. The failure of the public school system is profound evidence to the contrary. Privatizing public schools would vastly improve education in this country. Nobody who wanted a primary or secondary education would be denied. All one needs to get a great education is a library card. Students could choose from a potpourri of options, from countless private schools, home schools, Socratic seminars with the neighborhood guru, charity schools funded by philanthropy, or charity vouchers to enable needy children to choose whichever private school they like... If one wishes to go further, get a bachelor’s degree, Masters, or PhD, etc., College entrance exams [created by each private institution] would be the gate keeper. Advanced degrees would be funded much like they are today: pre-paid college funds, college-funded scholarships, private scholarships, corporate grants, charity grants, low-interest loans, a rich mom and dad. Competition in every aspect of the private education business would: 1. increase the supply of educational alternatives [rather than the pathetic one-size-fits-all system we have in place today]; 2. drive down the cost of an education as schools compete for the best students and more students opt for self-education; and, 3. yeild much higher wages for great educators who could sell their scarce services to the highest bidder. Now this would be change I can believe in! If you insist on keeping the failed, publicly-funded school system we have in place today, then permit me to improve existing schools by instituting some market reforms. 1. Give principals [along with faculty, parents, and students] real power to hire and fire teachers. Every school I’ve ever worked for was staffed by people who had no business in the classroom...at least 25% of the faculty... terrible teachers. Your union works to protect their jobs...why? Because people have a right to a paycheck? I think not. In every other industry incompetent, do-nothing, know-nothings are fired. Under your rules, teachers have to commit felonies to lose their jobs! Here’s an interesting statistic for you: In 1981 the US National Education Association reported that 36% of teachers said they would probably not go into teaching if they had to decide again. A major reason was "negative student attitudes and discipline". (Wolfgang and Glickman) So why were those nearly 40% still teaching? Once failed, why didn’t they “decide again?” Why didn’t they leave the profession for one better suited to their talents? When realtors fail to sell houses, they leave the profession to find a job that pays or they starve. When actors fail to get the part audition after audition, they wait tables. When politicians lose elections they become consultants. But, when teachers fail, they stay in the classroom. These teachers do incredible damage, year after year. 2. Give school administrators a budget [like a pro football team] and let teachers negotiate their worth to the school with the stakeholders. A teacher’s worth should be determined by their value to the school, not how long they’ve been in the teaching business. This is the way things work in every other industry...why not teaching [arguably the most important industry of all]? Your precious, dead-Fat-Tornillo-like, embezzling bureaucrats won’t let it happen. They have you convinced you need them to protect your job. I’d be making so much more if not for these duce-bags [Deliberate misspelling. Don’t want to trigger filters]. The best accountability system in any industry is unfettered success for those who achieve, and un-cushioned failure for those who don’t. If failure has real consequences, fewer people will fail. People will discover their better self...achieve real self-esteem. Cynics, like you, doubt unleashed mankind is good enough to achieve great results. That’s why you always invite the nanny-state to come in and control everything and everybody. If it weren’t so sad, it would be laughable... You think politicians and bureaucrats can create and maintain a better system than private individuals pursuing their own self-interest. You think self-interest results in immoral, vile men bashing each other over the head for scarce, finite resources. You think Karl Marx was right! Capitalism invites limitless possibilities. Bill Gates’ empire was built on two things: brain matter and photons. There is no limit to the abundance of wealth that can be created...not by the few, but by the multitudes, if only they are free to make it happen. The command economy you endorse is limited to whatever possibilities a handful of politicians can come up with. Do the math: billions of unfettered minds at work trying to achieve their rational, self-esteem or a handful of powerful elite determining what’s good for everybody. Which system grows innovation and abundance? History [and to a small degree, China’s decades-old movement to the right] certifies the success of the former.

Yellow Dog [Part 11]

2009-01-20T13:39:00.003-06:00

Donn,
Sure, if your basic premise were true and it isn’t... because GW and the Conservatives have been running this mess for 6 of the last 7 years...THAT’S everything: the judiciary, the Senate, the House and the executive branch. I find it amazing that there are people out there that STILL blame the Dems when they haven’t even been able to hold a meeting in the last 6 years. No, this mess belongs TO the conservatives. Are you familiar with the Conservative philosophy of "Starve The Beast"? Basically, it says, spend, spend, and spend until you bankrupt the nation and THEN you can eliminate ALL the social programs and worker protections with the phrase "sorry, there’s just no more money." I believe that the Conservatives are trying to turn the USA into a nation of the super wealthy and of a worker class...a small middle class, or managerial class, and a warrior class. That’s it, no more. So, for them, you’re either super rich, a soldier, a manager or a worker. They want to eliminate the "nouveau rich" with a Wall Street crash and eliminate all movement between the classes. Take a look around you, THAT’S what’s happening now.

Marx

Marx,

It has become quite clear to me now that you did in fact drink the Cool Aide!

First, I am not a Republican. I'm not a conservative. I am a capitalist. But, what does any of this have to do with my philosophical classroom scenario? Is what I describe true or not?

There are no pros to discuss with regards to socialism and/or communism. Once justice is sacrificed, nothing good can come of it. Sure it might seem good to you or me, low-paid teachers, but it’s not good. There is a much better solution, and it’s completely just to all. It’s called laissez-faire capitalism. It works like your classroom...students who work hard and produce something of value reap the benefits of their efforts. Students who don’t...fail. [We’re not talking about mentally disabled people here, Marx, less than 1% of the population; we’re talking about that 30% who choose to drop out, have multiple babies before graduation, party and sleep, who demand you pay their medical bills.]

Capitalism did not cause the current crisis or any economic crisis in our country’s history. Every crisis has been caused by government intervention in the economy of one kind or another. Government intervention actually prolongs the periodic slowdowns all economic systems must endure.

Laissez-faire capitalism has not existed in this country since the Lincoln administration’s transcontinental railroad...It has been nearly totally dead since the Sherman and Clayton Anti-trust laws of the 1890s, when the politicians invented the “monopoly myth,” and used the myth to create fear and hatred for the producers. Men like JD Rockefeller [and one hundred years later, Bill Gates]—self-made men, who were better than the competition, who grew their own personal wealth and the wealth of the world of people who benefited from their efforts—were demonized by the socialist press, the rent-seeking competition they buried, and politicians in Washington, both Dems and Reps, who saw an opportunity to grow their own personal wealth [doing favors for their friends] and power [clubbing the great entrepreneurs to death]. While JD Rockefeller controlled Standard Oil the price of kerosene dropped from .65/per gal to .18/per gal. [Once the government had taken over Standard and busted it up into Chevron, Mobil, Exxon, etc. a federal petroleum regulating agency [I can’t remember the name of the agency] created the petroleum CARTEL we call “Big Oil” today. Once the agency went to work, the price of gas in this country doubled over night.] Consumers benefited from Rockefeller’s efficiency. The politicians came in and busted up his company and argued they were doing it for the good of the consumers! A tremendous lie, you still believe.

A more recent example: Bill Gates’ success wasn’t hurting consumers. He put wonderful new tools on the desk of tens of millions for pennies...he made Google, Ebay, Yahoo! etc., etc., possible for a one-time fee, the cost of his software. We could never pay Gates what he’s worth. But Netscape complained to Utah Republican Orin Hatch... Waa! We can’t compete, they cried. Hit him over head, they demanded...Bill Clinton saw an opportunity to make people like you happy, and spent the later half of the 90s clubbing a great company to death. Software prices went up dramatically as Gates spent hundreds of millions trying to save his company from unscrupulous politicians working their brutal magic for their rent-seeking cronies at Netscape and others who could not compete in the free market with Microsoft.

Government has only one tool, Marcus, FORCE. Whenever it is used, what you are witnessing is not capitalism. Government has no role to play in a capitalist economy, except to prosecute fraud and mediate contractual disputes between private parties. In fact, government is the only entity capable of creating and sustaining a monopoly. The Post Office, for example, was a monopoly for the first two hundred years of US history. When the rules were changed to permit competition a billion dollar private company was created, Brown; then another billion dollar industry, Fed Ex; still another, DSL. Millions of real jobs created. [A real job is one that grows the economy. Jobs like ours, paid by tax dollars, don’t grow the economy.] In a free market, in any sector, profit invites competition. If government stays out of the way, monopolies, like McDonalds in the late 40’s, don’t last long. If there’s money to be made, competitors emerge and create Burger King, Wendys, Checkers, Jack-in-the-box, etc. We now have fast food in abundance and prices have grown slower than inflation in the fast food industry. My father’s 1990 car phone cost him thousands. My cell phone [a much better phone] was free. My father’s 1980 beta VCR cost him thousands. I think I paid $30 bucks for my last VCR...$50 for my last DVD player. The reason? Government didn’t mess with the electronics industry, for whatever reason. True capitalism resulted in abundance, lower and lower prices, countless producers, and wonderful innovation. THIS SCENARIO WOULD BE TRUE IN EVERY ASPECT OF THE HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY AS WELL IF GOVERNMENT WOULD STAY OUT OF THE WAY.

In a capitalist economy businesses succeed and businesses fail. There are no government bailouts. Businesses regulate themselves because there are real consequences for failure. A businessman who was responsible for the distribution of contaminated baby milk, for example, would never work again. His reputation would forever be ruined. In a capitalist system your product and your word are sacred: failure in either realm and you’re finished.

FDR would have served the country well had he encouraged the private sector to invent the 401k, or the 403b, or any private IRA you like. My grand parents would have left me millions had they been investing in a retire account that grew with the country’s economy...compounding interest can be your friend, Marcus. The pittance you MIGHT draw from the SSA is a pathetic government program that does not grow wealth at all. It maintains the status quo, i.e. an inch above poverty.

Finally, the weak are never left to die, particularly if their weakness is something beyond their control...mental retardation or a debilitating illness in mid-life after years of productive work. Americans are the most charitable people on Earth. Social Darwinism is a most cynical myth: It charges that men climb the ladder of success only by kicking the other guy in the face, that somebody’s always getting screwed when men live by trade, that people will never choose to help one another. You agree with this leftist, middle school lesson, and then compound the failure of its conclusion by arguing that benevolent, all powerful government will do better. Sure...it’s easy to be charitable with somebody else’s money! Rockefeller passed on more than 90% of his fortune, not to his kids, but to several endowments: Medical research and education. Bill Gates has used his money to save millions of lives in Africa and countless state-side educational programs. If the government got out of the charity business, subsidizing poor people and broken companies, tax-payers would get to keep 2 TRILLION of their dollars a year—that’s right, Marx, entitlements consume half of our government’s budget annually. Private charity would increase tenfold. We could pay back China in six months. We could pay off the entire national debt in five years if we nixed just two programs: Social Security and Medicare. You want to grow these disastrous programs. Half the country agrees with you. If you win, we all fail.

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part 10]

2009-01-11T04:12:00.002-06:00

Donn,

This is NOT a discussion about the pros and cons of communism although, I could argue and very successfully that our health system is completely out of control, and I could argue that it’s very disingenuous of you to trash socialized medicine when that’s what you enjoy as a teacher. I am talking about the fact that you’ve been lied to and you seem to want hang on to it despite the fact that you’re actually speaking to someone that has traveled more extensively in China than I have here in the US. Let’s examine your quote; "when we read history or watch the news or read someone's eye-witness account, or whatever, we have to take our values with us." What do YOU think THAT does? You’re reading biased reports and you’re asking your students to add their own personal biases to it? That just gets you further and further away from the truth until you might as well just read some nice historical fiction by Anne Rice. I also don’t recall anyone saying that we should have socialized medicine. What I DO see is people saying EVERYONE should have access to bare minimum healthcare. How many billions do we spend every year because the poorest of the poor don’t have access to preventative medicine and end up in trauma and emergency care? What we have now is system that is so out of control that people that have Healthcare are being turned away to die.

Ms. Robin Whitelock, a teacher here at Filer Middle School developed cancer, she had MDCPS healthcare Insurance, she got some chemo and some radiation therapy and then the insurance company told her she had exhausted her medical insurance limits and they would only pay for hospice care until she dies. She appealed, they rejected her appeal, she went to the Red Cross, who she donated money to every year and they told her she made too much money to qualify so, she died. Meanwhile, I know you reject this, in China, EVERYONE is guaranteed bare minimum healthcare. Sure, if you’re wealthy or have Health Insurance you can get better but EVERYONE gets the least amount even the foreigners and the doctors I saw in China say more and more Americans are coming to them for care. I went there for Dental Care, my dentist here in America wanted to charge me $7,000, the Chinese dentist did ALL the work for about $300. Like I said, most of our physicians and dentists want to be millionaires and helping people has become a secondary issue. I remember my childhood pediatrician often telling my mom "pay me when you can" or saying things like "no charge, I know with 3 boys it gets expensive." I gotta laugh, there is NO way I would hear THAT today. The FIRST thing a doctor says today is "how will you pay me?" The strict "let the markets regulate themselves" just doesn’t work.

Case in point, the current Financial Crisis is directly related to this greed factor. No regulation means, collusion, collusion and rape the public until they have no more to give. As for your points about giving things to the D and F students. I guess provisions for the mentally and physically impaired isn’t important to you. When FDR became president, the elderly were working until they were used up and then in the streets begging until they died, with no healthcare or social structure to help them. There were no Pension Plans and employers didn’t give a dam. THAT sounds like what you’re espousing because THAT’S what happens when your plan plays out to its natural conclusion. Free markets, let the buyer beware, no regulations, no social structures...Social Darwinism. I dunno, to me? That sounds like hell on Earth.

Marx

Marx,

My quick response: I'll work on my response to everything you said...but please respond to the logic of my classroom analogy...what I have described is precisely what has happened and will continue to happen in this country if we continue to operate as if feelings are a means of cognition. Feelings are a result, not a cause. You reverse the Law of Causality and arrive at irrational, destructive, unworkable solutions.

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part 9]

2009-01-04T04:05:00.003-06:00

Marx,

Of course, I’m not missing your point at all. I understand the concept of media bias. I know that thirty people can witness the same event and write thirty different stories. This is not a new idea. That is why when we read history or watch the news or read someone’s eye-witness account, or whatever, we have to take our values with us.

I don’t reject Michael Moore, for example, because he creates entertaining movies and calls them documentaries, or because he cuts and edits film to make people look ridiculous, uncaring, dishonest, or whatever he wants them to look like. I hate Michael Moore and his movies because he is a collectivist-altruist, cynical, hypocritical collection of raw sewage. He is a statist and a socialist. When I show his films in my classes I always point out to my students that Moore is a talented film-maker and an excellent propagandist for his cause. What I reject is his cause. Take Sicko, for example. Moore makes the case for universal health care. I don’t care if all of Moore’s video or none of his video is doctored, altered, pure fiction or gospel truth...It wouldn’t matter if every sick person shown in the movies was a Hollywood actor reading a script, or my next door neighbor, or me! I reject entirely [philosophically] with every fiber in my being his first premise: People have a right to health care. This is an irrational and dangerous position to hold if you believe in liberty. Health care—hospitals, doctors, and prescription drugs COST MONEY. Nobody has a right to anything that costs money. We all need health care, but the fact that people need food, clothing, and shelter does not give anyone a right to these things.

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. People can not morally consume more than they produce. One who produces nothing has nothing to trade. What do they bring to the market place? 1. their tears [the moochers] or 2. their guns [the looters]. Looters and moochers offer nothing of value in exchange for your productivity... Looters steal your wealth by force; moochers count on your acceptance of the altruist code and “guilt you” into handing it over.

The welfare state is actually a combination of the two: collectivist-altruist politicians are guilted into forcing taxpayers to hand over their wealth. In other words, they use the tools of the looter to achieve the immoral goal of the moocher!

In his films. Moore uses both, too. He appeals to his audience on a purely emotional level. [Nobody likes to see human beings suffering, particularly when they did nothing to deserve their condition.] The altruist Moore uses your own guilt to soften you up to the point where you gladly leave reason at the door...Like Hitler he calls his followers to ACT! Don’t think. ACT! Something, ANYTHING must be done! Then he sics the politicians on you. Politicians, of course, produce nothing. The only tool they have at their disposal is force. Through the progressive tax code, socialist politicians force the producers to hand over the products of their labor so that their wealth may be distributed to others, people who did not produce it. This forced sacrifice “for the greater good” is nothing less than extortion.

Altruist-collectivists sacrifice JUSTICE and reward sloth and indifference to reality. Their socialist schemes destroy economic freedom, destroy liberty and ultimately enable the politicians to destroy the producers.

Try this experiment with your classes. After your next test tell your students that you’re going to add up all of the points everybody made and divide them evenly among all of your students. Students who made Ds and Fs will think this is a fine idea...they’ll be getting something of value for nothing. You’re the government, so of course you can force the A and B students to hand over the points...They will undoubtedly [and correctly] believe that your system is unjust, but you have the power to imprison them or even execute them, so they’re not going to give you too much of fight. They’ll get permits and protest a bit, here and there, but they’ll never attack you personally. After a while the producers, the A and B students, will stop trying so hard to get ahead. What’s the point? There will be fewer points to go around...the D and F students will demand more...they will believe that they are entitled to it...Good grades are my RIGHT! There are more of them than A, B, students by now...you’ve done the math...there are fewer points to go around. You’ll try to persuade your former A and B students to work harder “for the greater good,” for the “motherland,” for your brother-men. Before long that empty promise will fail, too. My right to keep the A that I earned is the greater good. Justice is a greater good. Eventually, you will have to crack down on the dissidents, start detaining your former A and B students, force them to study after school...set quotas based on their pre-experiment test scores...Finally, you will announce your Four Year Plan 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, your former A and B students will either:

>flee to the West where [still] one can keep most of the products of their labor [the US is the world’s greatest beneficiary of Eastern brain drain];

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

Donn

Yellow Dog [Part 8]

2008-12-28T04:10:00.002-06:00

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]

2008-12-21T04:23:00.001-06:00

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]

2008-12-14T04:13:00.002-06:00

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]

2008-12-07T02:50:00.003-06:00

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]

2008-11-30T04:08:00.001-06:00

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]

2008-11-23T04:11:00.002-06:00

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]

2008-11-16T04:10:00.005-06:00

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]

2008-11-09T04:18:00.009-06:00

[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

2008-11-02T02:15:00.001-06:00

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

2008-10-26T05:22:00.000-05:00

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

2008-10-19T03:33:00.001-05:00

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

2008-10-12T04:14:00.002-05:00

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

2008-10-05T04:11:00.002-05:00

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

2008-09-28T04:13:00.005-05:00

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

2008-09-21T04:12:00.001-05:00

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

2008-09-14T04:18:00.004-05:00

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

2008-09-07T04:13:00.002-05:00

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

2008-08-31T04:10:00.001-05:00

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

2008-08-24T04:18:00.001-05:00

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.

Physician Assisted Suicide

2008-08-17T04:20:00.001-05:00

Each individual’s right to their life is complete, total, unequivocal, and absolute. It stands to reason then that the converse, the right to die, also rests with the individual.

The problem once again is statist theocrats and their old books. They believe their old book was written by God, and that God is against euthanasia for humans. They argue that they are fighting for the “sanctity of life,” while they force terminally ill humans to endure months and years of unbearable, unnecessary suffering. These same people wouldn’t think twice about killing an unfortunate thoroughbred suffering a broken ankle to relieve its pain. Horses keep their brains in their bones.

These so-called ‘pro-life” advocates consistently fail to properly define human life. Probably the most infamous display of their wrong-thinking played out in Florida courts, the 24-hour news services, Florida’s state house, and Congress a few years ago. The case of Terri Schiavo, a beautiful young woman, who after suffering cardiac arrest that resulted in massive brain damage in 1990, was kept “alive” in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years. Her husband thought his wife would prefer not to live with a useless, liquid brain: her parents, however, wanted to continue to visit their daughter’s warm body imagining Terri was in there somewhere. Devout Roman Catholics, I’m sure Terri’s parents believed her soul presided in that warm body somewhere, somehow. It is this failure to understand what a human life is that resulted in unnecessary suffering on both sides.

Everything that Terri was died in 1990 when oxygen ceased to reach her brain. Every thought, every memory, everything that Terri was—her conscious and subconscious mind, her soul—lived between her ears before that terrible day. Afterwards, only the most ancient parts of her brain survived to keep her heart beating and her digestive system functioning. Her body was young and strong and could be made to live in this way for decades, without a functioning brain, mindless. Less than a human life.

If one claims to value the sanctity of human life, a proper definition of what it means to be human should be referenced. A human without a brain is not a human. One does not have to be a scholar to be human, but I think at least the hope of sentience, self-awareness, is a reasonable place to draw the line. One can be unconscious, in a coma for months or years, and I would never advocate removing a feeding tube as long as their EEG showed measurable brain activity. But, when the human brain dies, it is the higher functions—our senses, our ability to think and reason—that die first. The brain cannot repair itself: once these abilities are lost, everything that that human being was is lost forever.

When the brain dies first, the question of physician assisted suicide is made by surviving loved ones. Because most of us would prefer death to the sort of existence Terri Schiavo’s body endured, the decision is “easier.” When an individual’s body is first to go, the decision to die is much more difficult.

If my body were to become useless, as happened to Christopher Reeves after his horseback riding accident, or as happened to Dr. Steven Hawking after contracting a degenerative disease, I have always thought certain that I would wish to continue living. If my brain was functioning properly, I could read and think and write. I could still experience life, talk to my wife, watch my children grow up. I value my life and recognize the fact that it is my brain that lives it. Everything that I am lives between my ears.

Only a very narrow set of circumstances would cause me to choose to end my own existence:

If I were terminally ill, certain to die, my body being consumed by a spreading, inoperable cancer; if I were in constant, excruciating pain that caused the doctors to suspend my brain’s proper functions in a fog of Morphine and Demoral all hours of the day and night, I would wish to die. I would choose death, and nobody has any right whatever to force me, or anybody else, to do otherwise.

Presently, in these united states, I have to live in Oregon if I wish to exercise this unalienable right.

Military Spending

2008-08-10T04:28:00.005-05:00

Governments may tax in order to fund only the limited functions of government. They are: 1. To protect the governed from enemies foreign and domestic, that is, to protect the unalienable rights of individuals; 2. To settle disputes between and among free people pursuing their own self-interest in a free, capitalist economy.

Money spent protecting the people of this country from our enemies in the world is one of the few legitimate uses of tax-payer money. To protect our lives and our liberty is the reason we created government in the first place. Why so many Americans think we spend too much on our defense in this post-9/11 world is difficult to understand.

The President's actual budget for 2007 totals $2.4 trillion. This budget request is broken down into the following expenditures:

$586.1 billion - Social Security
$548.8 billion - Defense
$394.5 billion - Medicare
$294.0 billion - Unemployment and welfare
$276.4 billion - Medicaid and other health related
$243.7 billion - Interest on debt
$89.9 billion - Education and training
$76.9 billion - Transportation
$72.6 billion - Veterans' benefits
$43.5 billion - Administration of Justice
$33.1 billion - Natural resources and environment
$32.5 billion - Foreign affairs
$27.0 billion - Agriculture
$26.8 billion - Community and regional development
$25.0 billion - Science and technology
$23.5 billion - Energy
$20.1 billion - General government

Total Expenditures: 2,418,400,000.00

The total requested Military budget of the United States including supplemental spending for the War on Terror, Iraq, and Afghanistan for 2007 was $699 billion, according to CBO, The Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update, August 2007. While every effort should be made to spend productively, efficiently, this $699 billion is the most legitimate expenditure of tax-payer money in the entire budget. It is the dollars dedicated to the preservation of the American way of life. Much of the rest of the list above did not even exist prior to World War II, much less during the Jackson or Washington administrations. The Framers would not recognize this mammoth our government has become.

$586.1 billion - Social Security
$394.5 billion - Medicare
$294.0 billion - Unemployment and welfare
$276.4 billion - Medicaid and other health related
$89.9 billion - Education and training
$76.9 billion – Transportation
$27.0 billion - Agriculture
$26.8 billion - Community and regional development
$25.0 billion - Science and technology
$23.5 billion - Energy

Illegitimate Expenditures: 1,820,100,000.00

Our government’s illegitimate expenditures are nearly three times our total defense budget.

If we limited our government to expenditures for the legitimate functions of government, the national debt could be paid off in a decade and tax-payer rebates would exceed a trillion dollars annually. Furthermore, free enterprise in the retirement insurance, health care, education, transportation, agriculture and energy businesses would result in greater economic growth and health as the government withdraws from the economy and capitalism is allowed to work. The DC Politburo would dissolve resulting in greater efficiency, creativity, and innovation in the private sector, the hallmark of capitalism. Statist politicians would be disarmed and corruption on K Street would all but disappear.

Life, Liberty, and Purpose

2008-08-03T04:34:00.003-05:00

I have a right to my life, as you have an exclusive right to your own. Parents do not own their children; husbands don’t own their wives; wives do not own their husbands; employers don’t own their employees; governments do not own their citizens. Each individual’s right to their life is complete, total, unequivocal, absolute. The only ways to forfeit the right to your own life is to 1. choose to give it up, or 2. deny some other their right to theirs, i.e. murder.

I know my life belongs to me. I accept my responsibility to live it.

Because my life is mine to live and my responsibility to sustain, I must be free. I have a right to my liberty. If I am caged or enslaved or forced to live in accordance with some dictator’s arbitrary decrees, I can not be held responsible for my failure. A slave does not own his life and is therefore not responsible for its sustenance. A slave is not free to make choices, and where there are no choices there are no moral questions, there is no personal responsibility. A free man, I can dream-up projects, and I can carry them out. I can think in many directions and pursue my happiness in any number of professions and arts. When a free man succeeds, he does so by virtue of his own ability. He owns his success. When a free man fails, he has no other to blame, and therefore no escape. There’s no escaping the truth when you are free.

Much is made in America of our First Amendment religious freedoms. What is seldom said [and likely even more rarely considered] is that these rights include the freedom from religion, or any other system of thought control [compulsory patriotism, for example]. The First Amendment protects each individual’s right to think for themselves. As long as my thinking does not result in actual harm to any other, my right to think for myself is complete, total, unequivocal, and absolute. We are free to think, and we can speak our minds, too, my loyal reader.

The purpose of my life is to live it. The goal of my life is my own happiness. You have a right to pursue your own happiness. You are free to do anything you wish as long as your actions harm no other, but, be warned: don’t expect anything you can conceive of to result in your happiness. It is your right to pursue your happiness, but there is no guarantee you will achieve it. “The pursuit of happiness is a man’s right to set his own goals, choose his values and to achieve them. Happiness is that state of consciousness which comes from the achievement of your values… But happiness doesn’t mean simply momentary pleasures or any kind of mindless self indulgence. Happiness is a profound, guiltless, rational feeling of self-esteem and of pride in one’s own achievements. It is the enjoyment of life…” –Ayn Rand

All of the ancient models for living a good life are spelled out in the holy books of every religion in existence. None of the ancient models recognize the value of your life. None permit you to set your own goals. None point to your own self-esteem as the principal goal in life. All propagate the notion that there is something greater than you, that you are unfit to determine what is right and what is wrong. Nearly all promise another life in some undefined “elsewhere” where you will be rewarded for sacrificing your life here on Earth. Ancient authoritarians created lists of do’s and don’ts and the bloody consequences for doing the don’ts, all claiming to know what God wants.

As for your contemporaries: Their parents accepted the popular mythology as their parents did. To deny or question their faith, for them, is like turning their backs on their parents. They seek harmony above all. They fail to question. Not knowing what it means to be free, they willingly sacrifice their life and liberty for the comfort of conformity.

Immigration

2008-07-27T04:14:00.001-05:00

I have a lot of respect for the poor, Mexican, dirt farmer who packs up his wife and kids and braves the treacherous desert, border patrols and minutemen, in an effort to create a better life for his family. A person who takes these chances with the hope of working to build a better life for his children is one who deserves our admiration, not condemnation. I’d like to think given the same circumstances that I too would choose to brave the uncertainty.

That I would do nearly anything I had to do in order to preserve and protect the well-being of my family is certain. Knowing this, how can I condemn people who seek the greener grass, the opportunity to work north of the border? Our nation must benefit when people with such character cross the border, particularly when one considers over 30% of our own home-grown children fail to muster enough character to graduate from high school.

The problem we face today is not that we have too many people coming to live and work in the United States. The problem is that too many are coming into this country illegally. The question for me is: How can we make it easier for good people to come to United States to live and to work legally?

To stop the tide of illegals flowing into this country one can build fences of both the virtual and actual variety, but these fences will not be enough. The Atlantic Ocean didn’t stop Christopher Columbus. 300,000 miles of empty space didn’t stop the Apollo missions. To stop determined humans you have to change their minds. If you want to reduce the number of people willing to break the law to get here, you have to remove their incentives for taking the risk. Employment, public education, social welfare dollars, drivers’ licenses, and hospitalization must all require a social security number [or at least a valid visa or green card] to access. Social welfare dollars shouldn’t even exist! The fact that billions of these extorted dollars are going to prop up people who are not even here legally is beyond reason.

Any non-citizen convicted of a crime must be deported…one strike. Any non-citizen with a contagious disease must be deported…no exceptions.

The hate and xenophobia spread by the far right in this country is most unproductive and un-American. The hate does nothing but create collectives of persecuted illegals waving the flags of their countries of origin, marching down Main Street USA, demanding their rights as humans be recognized. The hate creates the nationalistic feeling these expatriates wouldn’t feel if they were left alone to work and care for their families. They left their native countries, like my grandparents, for reasons: they wish to be Americans. Fantasy rhetoric about how we’re going to round up all of the illegals [all ten million of them, by some estimates], load them onto buses, and caravan them out of the country, is just ridiculous. These people need to want to leave. If they can’t find work, can’t enroll their kids in public schools, and can’t access health care, they will leave.

Disincentives for illegals must be accompanied by incentives for legals. There should be no quotas. We should perform background checks and process as many applications as is humanly possible each year from the four corners of the Earth. We should welcome with open arms all individuals who wish to be Americans. We should have a guest-worker program in place. We should wave fees for individuals who have advanced degrees. We should educate all new arrivals so that they know what it means to be an American. We should encourage new arrivals to learn English, but without force or fear. Whether or not the first generation speaks English really doesn’t matter. Their children and grandchildren will be raised in our public schools. They will speak English. They will choose to assimilate.

Like Alexander Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and me, many of them will come to understand American values better than most of the indigenous population.

Holocaust

2008-07-20T04:02:00.002-05:00

Genocide is made possible by the collectivist-altruist philosophy. Collectivism lumps people of a particular race, ethnicity, or religion into groups, pitting one group against another. Altruism is the code of self-sacrifice. Individuals sacrifice their own thinking to the collective. Their submission creates the un-thinking monolith easily moved by a passionate leader who secures his power by declaring a common enemy, propagating irrational fear of the enemy, justifying any atrocity committed against the enemy. Any imagined self-esteem one may experience is the product of their membership in the group. If the group is powerful, the individuals who have given themselves over to the collective feel that they are powerful.

Often, the leaders of these groups are erroneously classified “egoists.” They are greedy, ruthless, megalomaniacs to be sure. But an egoist is none of those things. Egoists do not lust for the unearned. Egoists recognize the right of each individual to think for themselves. Force is banned from all human relationships. Egoists do not make sacrifices for others nor do they demand others make sacrifices to them. The leader of any collective, on the other hand, is a collector of sacrifices: He collects the brain matter of his followers, the blood of his enemies. He is made possible by the blind, wide-spread acceptance of the altruist moral code.

The Holocaust, the mass murder of Jews and other minorities living outside the circle of the Nazi collective during World War II, is the result of the collectivist-altruist philosophy and moral code, the very same code revered by Christians and Muslim alike. Nazi Germany was a Christian nation. Darfur’s Janjaweed is a force of the Muslim variety. Genocide may be the result of the other side of the collectivist-altruist coin…but it is the same coin that propagates unconditional love and prayer five times a day. Members of a collective are denied the freedom to exercise their own judgment. Members do their duty, follow orders…they don’t make choices.

Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, and all of the other Holocaust survivors who got on with their lives after the war, remained sane in the face of the pure evil done to him because he never failed to imagine tomorrow. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl describes the physical and psychological torture he endured as an inmate in World War II, Nazi concentration camps and, in conclusion, attributes his survival to luck [and more importantly] the fact that he wasn’t finished living. He knew that regardless of how hopeless he was made to feel, that his life was waiting for him on the other side. He had books to write, books that only he could write. He knew that if he allowed himself to die the books in his head would never be written. The ability to imagine a future, one driven by personal ambition, individualism, meaning, enabled Frankl to endure unspeakable agony over a prolonged period of time.

Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist with degrees in neurology and psychology, used his textbooks and his experience to develop therapies for individuals suffering from despair [and countless other psychoses and neuroses]. He calls the treatment logotherapy. It’s all actually very easy to understand. It is what the “declaration of independence” would be had it been written by a scientist for an individual, rather than by a politician for a nation. A logotherapist is not a passive listener who after years of psychoanalysis and thousands of your dollars concludes that all of your problems are the result of your subconscious loathing of your father. A logotherapist would be more inclined to grab you by the shoulders, shake you, and whisper “get a life you miserable whiner!” I exaggerate [for laughs], but there is some truth here. Frankl insists man is not made by his environment, the conditions in which he lives or the cruelties he is subject to; but rather, man is made by the choices he makes. For example, the fact that a child molester was molested as a child does not excuse the abomination he has become. He could have chosen to live a moral life.

While Frankl does not use Objectivist terms like, “collectivism, altruism, egoism,” his meaning is clear to me. Through his experience, Frankl discovered that the cure for the victims of the collectivist-altruist world order is individualism. There is nothing greater than your life: the purpose of your life is to live it.

“Happiness is a man’s right to set his own goals, choose his values, and to achieve them…” AR

There is no greater good.

Hate Crimes?

2008-07-13T04:31:00.001-05:00

Hate crimes…as opposed to what…love crimes? Anybody who harms any individual has violated their victim’s rights and should be punished accordingly.

Are there any “good” reasons for the murder of any innocent? It’s wrong to kill your neighbor because he is a Jew. It is as wrong to kill your neighbor because his dog won’t stop barking. It’s wrong to kill a woman because she is a lesbian. It is as wrong to kill your ex-wife because she left you.

People should be punished for the crimes they commit, not the motive for the crime.

Hate crimes legislation is an emotional response to the worst kind of stupidity: racism, xenophobia. Like the crimes themselves the legislation is devoid of any rational thought whatsoever. I understand the disgust reasonable people experience witnessing senseless crimes committed against innocent people who were targeted because they are black, gay, Jewish or Muslim. But, by declaring these individuals different and subject to special treatment under law, the advocates of hate-crime legislation are reinforcing the perpetrator’s feeling that these people are in fact “different.”

Presently, federal hate-crimes laws address crimes motivated by race and religion, while other minorities, including, gays and people with disabilities, continue to lobby Congress for recognition in the law. The Matthew Shepard bill, named after a gay man beaten to death in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1998, failed to make it to President Bush’s desk last year after passing both houses of Congress. The president had promised to veto the bill, and for whatever reason, the Democratic leadership in Congress decided not to send the bill up the road. If Democrats maintain their control of Congress after the November ’08 election, the Matthew Shepard bill will be made law soon enough.

Regardless of what Congress does, this sad chapter in American jurisprudence may soon be over. Laws that usurp the authority of judges to pass sentence in any criminal case may already be mute.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has struck down several state hate-crime laws. A New Jersey statute was declared unconstitutional because the law authorized judges to make a factual determination about the motive of the defendant. In a criminal trial that’s the jury’s responsibility. In another case decided this year, the Supreme Court took a look at laws that mandate minimum and maximum sentences for specific crimes. In this case the Supreme Court defined mandatory sentencing guidelines as “a starting point” or “initial benchmark.” As reported in the New York Times, “Justice Stevens went on to say that the guidelines were just one factor in the “individualized assessment” that a judge must make in every case. The judge may not presume that the guidelines’ range is reasonable.”

This is a good thing. This means that no matter what hate-crimes legislation comes down the pike, whether federal or state, criminal sentences will once again be rendered by judges, not legislatures responding to the emotional appeals of the mob, their constituents.

Murderers will be punished for “murder,” regardless of the nature of the devil that made them do it.

Gun Control: The Solution

2008-07-06T04:20:00.000-05:00

The first thing dictators do when they march their armies into the capital is disarm the population. An unarmed population is much easier to control. Next, they take over the newspapers, radio and television stations…controlling the message makes it much easier to control the people. Then they restrict travel. Authoritarian governments keep close tabs on their people…local yokels are easier to control than men and women of the world. Finally, people lose their rights to speech, assembly, due process…And the list goes on.

Access to guns is the first line of defense for a free people who hope to remain free. 100 million or more armed Americans is a force no Republican Guard, KGB, or even Navy SEALS could ever control. We never have to worry about some Julius Ceasar declaring a dictatorship here in America. 100 million armed Americans is a most formidable army. If we hope to remain a free people, Americans can never give up our right to be armed. The right to revolution against an unjust government IS America.

These things having been said—the Second Amendment safe from the feelers, the O’Donnells and the Moores—is there any way to reasonably regulate the manufacture, sale, and ownership of fire arms? Of course. But, like the abortion debate, the problem is extreme and irrational positions taken by both sides in the current debate.

To ban guns of all kinds, like they tried to do in San Fransico [Proposition H] and in Washington D.C., must be unconstitutional. [The Supreme Court published their decision on the DC case a couple of weeks ago, and I was relieved to see that I am right.] But, regardless of the decision, gun bans are not a good idea. When San Francisco passed its gun ban back in 2005, every thug in California packed their bags and moved to San Francisco. It became the one place in California that the armed robber didn’t have to worry about getting capped by a convenient store clerk. Store clerks obey the law: armed robbers don’t. Here in Tennessee, “armed robber” is still a very dangerous job.

For the same reason a “Gun-free safe zone” sign outside of schools is a bad idea. The sign announces to any would-be assailant “if you want to do some random violence, come here! You’ll be the only person with a gun!”

Reasonable restrictions on the right to bear arms regulate who can sell and who can buy fire arms. Without referencing current law [which varies from state to state], I will list objective regulation that should be in place across the country.

1. The following individuals have no right to purchase, own, or even use a fire arm: felons and people with a history of mental illness.

2. People under the age of 21 may not purchase, but may use fire arms under the supervision of a licensed adult.

3. Because some individuals can not legally purchase, own, or even use a fire arm, licensing individual gun owners is reasonable and necessary.

4. It is reasonable to restrict fire arm sales to licensed fire arms dealers accredited to perform background checks on individuals seeking to purchase a fire arm.

5. For law enforcement purposes all fire arms must be registered.

It's just that simple.

Gun Control: The Rationale

2008-06-29T03:27:00.001-05:00

Probably the most famous argument for gun control was born of scraps of film pieced together by master manipulator Michael Moore. Bowling for Columbine, two hours of drippy emotionalism, witch hunting, character assassination, misrepresentation, race-baiting and wrong conclusions, received Hollywood’s highest commendation, The Oscar.

Moore spends the entire movie trying to get an answer to his question: What makes two young men walk into their school armed with automatic weapons in order to murder their peers?

Of course, nobody [except maybe Marilyn Manson] gives him a decent answer. Moore seems to conclude that the availability of guns, Charlton Heston, racism, and the Welfare Reform Act of 1994, are the cause for the violence. [When asked what he would say to Dylan and Eric if we could go back to the day before the Columbine Massacre, Manson said he would say nothing. “I would listen…which is what nobody did.”]

Probably the most cynical and dishonest thing Moore did in making his argument against guns, was the back slap he laid on the Framers. Moore chose James Nichols, the moron brother of Oklahoma bomber Terry Nichols, to be the voice of the Framers. It is Nichols who tries to quote John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, who argued correctly that a free people have a right to revolution against an unjust government. With a lot of help from the moron, himself, Michael Moore successfully renders anything coming out of James Nichols’ mouth idiocy. And that’s it! That’s the only time during the entire movie the intent of the Framers is discussed. People leave Moore’s film thinking America is the land of the blood-thirsty depraved and that guns are the principle cause for all the violence.

Our right to bear arms has nothing to do with crime fighting. In a civil society individuals give up the right to apprehend and punish criminals. Protection “from enemies foreign and domestic” is government’s responsibility. Government has a monopoly on the use of force. Self-defense is the only exception to this rule. That means, if somebody is getting ready to kill you, you can stop them with lethal force; however, if you come home and find your loved-one slain, you can’t legally go door to door looking for the culprit. You call the police. It’s government’s responsibility to apprehend, try, convict, and punish criminals. Individuals do not have a right to vendetta or vigilante justice. The Second Amendment is not about individuals protecting themselves from criminals.

Because government has a monopoly on the use of force, government is very dangerous. Throughout history the greatest violator of the rights of individuals has been government. The Framers read history. They knew this. They fought a war against an unjust government. They wrote the Second Amendment to insure that such a just revolution may be fought again, if need be. Don’t take my word for it. Here are the words of the Framers.

"No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." (Thomas Jefferson, Proposal Virginia Constitution, 1 T. Jefferson Papers, 334,[C.J.Boyd, Ed., 1950])

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States" (Noah Webster in `An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution', 1787, a pamphlet aimed at swaying Pennsylvania toward ratification, in Paul Ford, ed., Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, at 56(New York, 1888))

"...to disarm the people - that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them." (George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 380)

"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins." (Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment [I Annals of Congress at 750 {August 17, 1789}])

"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, The Federalist Papers #46 at 243-244)

"The right of the people to keep and bear...arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country..." (James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434 [June 8, 1789])

Gun Control: The Problem

2008-06-22T03:28:00.003-05:00

The problem with the gun control debate in this country is that nobody seems to understand the Second Amendment. Every time I listen to or read a debate on the subject, I find absurdity on both sides. Invariably, supporters of the amendment argue that guns are legal so that citizens may protect themselves against home invaders and armed robbers, that the Framers allowed us to keep our weapons to save us the trouble of having to dial 911…Oh, and so we can all hunt to provide our families with those all-American, Sunday dinner favorites venison burgers and hasenpfeffer. Gun control advocates are no better. They ignore the Constitution entirely, recounting the horror show of the last school shooting, blaming guns for insane behavior, making emotional appeals to stop the violence.

Neither side ever mentions the reason for the Second Amendment right to bare arms.

The following is an excerpt from a debate aired on ABC's "The View," October 2006. This is a good example of the pre-school debate referenced above.

Rosie O’Donnell: "I think the horror of imagining six to thirteen-year-old girls handcuffed together and shot execution style, one by one [O’Donnell is referring to the shooting at an Amish school in Pennsylvania] is perhaps enough to awaken the nation that maybe we need some stricter gun control laws."

Elisabeth Hasselbeck: "So you can’t- You can't take way the right to, to bear arms."

O’Donnell: "Well, it’s not really a right. There’s debate as to what that-"

Hasselbeck: "It is a right. It’s in our Constitution. It’s the Second Amendment."

O’Donnell: "Well, let’s talk instead of yell."

Hasselbeck: "I’m not yelling."

O’Donnell: "I know that the Constitution has been interpreted many, many times. In our country the president puts his hand on the Bible and swears to uphold the Constitution. In the United States there is debate over whether or not the right to bear arms includes the lobby organization of the NRA, allowing no rules and no registration and absolutely, sort of, carte blanche, to make guns available to Americans in a way they're not in the rest of the world."

Hasselbeck: "There should be- There should be a middle ground. There should be a middle ground."

Barbara Walters: "Well, there are some gun controls. I mean, without guns-"

O’Donnell: "Well, what about this? The firearm death rate among children in America 0 to 14 is 12 times higher then all 25 other industrialized nations combined. Combined."

Hasselbeck: "What about the fact that firearms- Well, firearms are used 60 times more to defend people then they are to take a life in this country, too. That’s another statistic. This is why we have the debate."

O’Donnell: "I know, but maybe-"

Hasselbeck: "These things confuse us as, as Americans, but, in, in the results of children dying kind of bring it to a front, they bring it right to a boil. And that's why we have this discussion. That should not happen. But you have to remember that people protect themselves. In the times of segregation, when there were bigoted officers out there trying to just rule over and have government tyranny, people had to defend themselves somehow and they did it with guns."

O’Donnell: "If the man had a knife and he walked in there [the Amish schoolhouse] and there were adult women there and the man said I would like the women to leave because I'm going to keep the girls, I guarantee you, if that man did not have a gun, the mothers who were the teachers in that school would never have left those children alone in that room. Never."

Hasselbeck: "What if they had a gun? What if- Hang on, let's just flip it. I’m saying, let’s discuss all sides. What if, What if those women had guns on them and were able to defend themselves?"

O’Donnell: So you’re saying, you think we should arm teachers?"

Hasselbeck: "I'm not saying teachers should be armed. I'm just giving you the flip side of this situation-"

O’Donnell: "But the flip side is you’re saying-"

Hasselbeck: "-that is a lot of times guns are used to protect people, so we can’t be so extreme."

Joy Behar: "I think people want to hunt, that's a right as you’re describing with their rifles. Why do they need an AK--47? Are these deer in the Israeli army? What is the purpose of a machine gun to hunt with? Now that should be outlawed. Do you agree?"

Walters: Most people do not hunt with-"

Hasselbeck: "I would agree with that. And if you're a good hunter, you don't need that type of weapon."

Walters: "They don't hunt with machine guns."

O’Donnell: "But Barbara Walters. In America, it’s shocking that one is able to purchase an AK-47."

Walters: I’m agreeing with you."

Behar: "Why do they have them?"

O’Donnell: "Right. Because it is a $6 billion industry. And they have way too much power in a democracy, if you ask me."

Wow! This is the sort of debate “informed” American voters are exposed to daily—loud mouth, know-nothings tossing bromides and statistics at one another, spitting up arguments about the Constitution without once citing the intent of the Framers. What did the authors of the Constitution think they were doing when they wrote and ratified the Second Amendment?

Believe it or not, Elisabeth Hasselbeck almost stumbled on the answer when she brought up the civil rights movement.

Gay Marriage: Part 2

2008-06-15T04:13:00.007-05:00

What better way to present my views on gay marriage than to debate Christian fundamentalist, Dr. James Dobson, a man who thought the issue important enough to write a whole book about it, Marriage Under Fire. In the book Dobson makes 10 arguments against gay marriage. I will take them one at a time. [See June 8, 2008, post for Arguments 1-5.]

Argument #6
Dobson: Foster-care parents will be required to undergo "sensitivity training" to rid themselves of bias in favor of traditional marriage, and will have to affirm homosexuality in children and teens.

Good. Everyone should be encouraged to rid themselves of irrational biases. Everyone should know that two people who love each other should be able to live their lives together in any way they wish, that there are no rules regarding the behavior of two consenting adults in a bedroom or anywhere else, as long as nobody is being harmed. Toleration is not affirmation.

Argument #7
Dobson: How about the impact on Social Security if there are millions of new dependents that will be entitled to survivor benefits? It will amount to billions of dollars on an already overburdened system. And how about the cost to American businesses? Unproductive costs mean fewer jobs for those who need them. Are state and municipal governments to be required to raise taxes substantially to provide health insurance and other benefits to millions of new "spouses and other dependents"?

This is just plain silly.

Argument #8
Dobson: Marriage among homosexuals will spread throughout the world, just as pornography did after the Nixon Commission declared obscene material "beneficial" to mankind… If we take this step off a cliff, the family on every continent will splinter at an accelerated rate. Conversely, our U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that it looks to European and Canadian law in the interpretation of our Constitution. What an outrage! That should have been grounds for impeachment, but the Congress, as usual, remained passive and silent.

Acknowledging the right of individuals to love and spend their lives with whomever they choose will not result in more people choosing a gay life-style. It will only insure that those who do will not be persecuted by irrationalists like you Doc.

Individual rights were not created by the Bill of Rights: The Bill of Rights was created to protect individuals from government abuses. The U.S. Bill of Rights is neither finite nor a complete list of the rights of individuals. While I agree with Dobson, the U.S. Supreme Court should not be referencing the laws of any other country when drafting their opinions, acknowledging rights that are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution is certainly a function of the courts. The Framers acknowledged this when they wrote the 9th Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Argument #9
Dobson: Perhaps most important, the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ will be severely curtailed. The family has been God's primary vehicle for evangelism since the beginning.

I wish I could just say “good” here, too. But this buffoon needs an education in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Imagine that, an atheist teaching an evangelical leader about Jesus’ message!

Jesus taught—if nothing else—tolerance. He hung out with the worst kind of people, prostitutes and tax collectors. He disarmed stone-throwers, like you Doc, in the name of love…unconditional love. And don’t tell me you love gay people when your mission is to deny them their right to pursue their own happiness.

You’ve made spreading Jesus’ teachings your life’s work. So do it! Stop throwing stones.

Argument #10
Dobson: The culture war will be over, and I fear, the world may soon become "as it was in the days of Noah" (Matthew 24:37, NIV). This is the climactic moment in the battle to preserve the family, and future generations hang in the balance.

This apocalyptic and pessimistic view of the institution of the family and its future will sound alarmist to many, but I think it will prove accurate unless-unless-God's people awaken and begin an even greater vigil of prayer for our nation. That's why Shirley and I are urgently seeking the Lord's favor and asking Him to hear the petitions of His people and heal our land.

The only culture Americans should be working to define and defend is that spelled out by the Framers in our founding documents, particularly the part about each individual having the right to their life, their liberty, and to pursue their own happiness. The culture you’re trying to preserve, Doc, is polluted with Neolithic sensibilities: mysticism, superstition, authoritarian governments, intolerance, and persecution. The fear your arguments attempt to generate is as baseless as your faith in the existence of supernatural forces who respond to your wishes. The apocalypse you and Shirley are praying to mitigate is your own. A new Age of Reason is on the horizon. The future is a place where each individual will be free to pursue their own happiness free from persecution and your message of hate and intolerance.

Perhaps Robin Williams said it best responding to viewer mail at the end of the film, Mrs. Doubtfire.

"Dear Mrs. Doubtfire, Two months ago my mom and dad decided to separate. Now they live in different houses. My brother Andrew says that we aren't a real family any more. Is this true? Did I lose my family? Is there anything I could do to get my parents back together? Sincerely, Katie McCormick.”

“Oh, my dear Katie. You know, some parents get along much better when they don't live together. They don't fight all the time and they can become better people. Much better mommies and daddies for you. And sometimes they get back together. And sometimes they don't, dear. And if they don't, don't blame yourself. Just because they don't love each other doesn't mean that they don't love you.

“There are all sorts of different families, Katie. Some families have one mommy, some families have one daddy, or two families. Some children live with their uncle or aunt. Some live with their grandparents, and some children live with foster parents. Some live in separate homes and neighborhoods in different areas of the country. They may not see each other for days, weeks, months or even years at a time. But if there's love, dear, those are the ties that bind. And you'll have a family in your heart forever. All my love to you, poppet. You're going to be all right. Bye-bye.

Gay Marriage: Part 1

2008-06-08T04:19:00.005-05:00

What better way to present my views on gay marriage than to debate Christian fundamentalist, Dr. James Dobson, a man who thought the issue important enough to write a whole book about it, Marriage Under Fire. In the book Dobson makes 10 arguments against gay marriage. I will take them one at a time.

Argument #1:
Dobson: The implications for children in a world of decaying families are profound… half of today's children are born out of wedlock. It is predicted now, based on demographic trends in this country that more than half of the babies born in the 1990s will spend at least part of their childhood in single-parent homes. Social scientists have been surprisingly consistent in warning against this fractured family. If it continues, almost every child will have several "moms" and "dads," perhaps six or eight "grandparents," and dozens of half-siblings. It will be a world where little boys and girls are shuffled from pillar to post in an ever-changing pattern of living arrangements… Imagine an environment where nothing is stable and where people think primarily about themselves and their own self-preservation.

It sounds to me, Dr. Dobson, that the problem here is divorce, not gay marriage. If you’re concerned about single-parent homes, it seems to me you should be preaching to heterosexual couples. It is marriages “between a man and a woman” that are producing children. It is these marriages that end in divorce over 50% of the time. It is the heterosexual relationship that results in children and single-parent homes.

I personally don’t think a single-parent home is a terrible thing. My five whole-siblings and four of my six half siblings were all raised in single-parent homes, and we’re all decent, moral, professional people with children and step-children of our own. Just because our experience does not follow your narrow model of perfection, does not at all mean that our families are not as valid and loving as yours.

Argument #2:
Dobson: The introduction of legalized gay marriages will lead inexorably to polygamy and other alternatives to one-man, one-woman unions. After the introduction of marriage between homosexuals, however, it will be supported by nothing more substantial than the opinion of a single judge or by a black-robed panel of justices. After they have done their wretched work, the family will consist of little more than someone's interpretation of "rights." Given that unstable legal climate, it is certain that some self-possessed judge, somewhere, will soon rule that three men and one woman can marry. Or five and two, or four and four. Who will be able to deny them that right? The guarantee is implied, we will be told, by the Constitution. Those who disagree will continue to be seen as hate-mongers and bigots. (Indeed, those charges are already being leveled against those of us who espouse biblical values!) How about group marriage, or marriage between relatives, or marriage between adults and children? How about marriage between a man and his donkey?

Let’s cross that “man marries donkey” straw bridge if and when we get there, hey Doc? The issue here is the right of two people—grown, consenting adults—who love each other having the right to share their experience here on Earth free from persecution. Aside from your irrational fear that such acceptance would result in widespread polygamy and incest, by what right do you deny two consenting adults their happy union? Your biblical values are yours. You have no right to force your faith and its ancient decrees on Americans any more than Islamist hate-mongers and bigots in Tehran have a right to execute homosexuals.

Argument #3
Dobson: An even greater objective of the homosexual movement is to end the state's compelling interest in marital relationships altogether. After marriages have been redefined, divorces will be obtained instantly, will not involve a court, and will take on the status of a driver's license or a hunting permit. With the family out of the way, all rights and privileges of marriage will accrue to gay and lesbian partners without the legal entanglements and commitments heretofore associated with it.

Back in 1951, my newlywed parents moved to Madrid, Spain, where my father began medical school. Upon their arrival they met and befriended a young couple Harvey and Camile. Harvey was a medical student, like my father. Before the two men had graduated medical school, Harvey had left his wife Camile for his gay lover, Leo. My parents divorced in 1969, and my father married his second wife. Harvey and Leo were still together in 1969. My father’s second marriage ended in divorce in 1984. Harvey and Leo’s 30-year “marriage” was going strong. My father’s third marriage was celebrated in summer, 1985, and when my father died in 1992, the family of Harvey and Leo was still going strong.

The pursuit of happiness is every man’s unalienable right. There is no guarantee of happiness, and there is no prescription for achieving happiness. Nobody’s answer to the question “How should I live my life?” can be forced upon others. Individuals are free to choose their lifestyle. As long as nobody is harmed, there is no wrong-doing, there is no crime. There is no role for government to play.

Argument #4
Dobson: With the legalization of homosexual marriage, every public school in the nation will be required to teach that this perversion is the moral equivalent of traditional marriage between a man and a woman. Textbooks, even in conservative states, will have to depict man/man and woman/woman relationships, and stories written for children as young as elementary school, or even kindergarten, will have to give equal space to homosexuals.

All gay individuals have one thing in common: heterosexual biological parents. An individual’s sexuality is not determined by the will of, nor the example set by, their parents. It is not learned in school, either. An individual’s sexuality is determined [more or less] by two very human functions: 1. Biology and 2. Choice. If a person’s homosexuality is primarily a function of biology, Dr. Dobson is condemning these “perverts” for characteristics beyond anyone’s control. That’s like persecuting ugly people…not very Christian of you, Doc. If educating young people about legal, gay marriages does anything, it will demystify the life-style and result in greater tolerance across the board. There’s no reason to believe this tolerance will result in more people choosing homosexual relationships. Knowing about the heterosexual relationships of their parents and the wide-spread acceptance of heterosexual relationships in society did not cause gays to grow up straight.

I’m not gay. I never have been. I have always believed choosing my friends and lovers is a choice that belongs to me and the subjects of my affection. If I found some girl attractive and decided to ask her out, for example, I did so. If she didn’t share my interest and said “no,” well…that was that. I moved on. Made other friends. I’m an adult. The company I keep is mine to keep and nobody’s business but mine. The same must be true for all individuals regardless of whether or not their choices would be mine.

Argument #5
Dobson: From that point forward, courts will not be able to favor a traditional family involving one man and one woman over a homosexual couple in matters of adoption. Children will be placed in homes with parents representing only one sex on an equal basis with those having a mom and a dad. The prospect of fatherless and motherless children will not be considered in the evaluation of eligibility. It will be the law.

There is a shortage of loving couples and individuals qualified, willing and able to adopt, not the other way around. Nothing could be more irrelevant to a child than their parents’ sexuality. Do you have any idea what your parents did in the privacy of their bedroom, Doc? Shudder to think of it.

I thought everybody knew this: All any child needs is one, loving, responsible adult. A loving and responsible adult, Doc! The true parent could be anyone, regardless of who the biological parents are. A beautiful, successful American family could be a loving, responsible lesbian and her adopted, Russian baby boy. I know this, because this family exists in reality. I know this family.

Faith and Jihad

2008-06-01T04:18:00.001-05:00

Let’s play 20 Questions! The following quotes are descriptions made by family, friends, and acquaintances of a very famous individual. Who are they describing?

He was “shy, soft-spoken, friendly, almost gentle…”

He was “tireless, an activist, with a great imagination.”

“He ate very little. He slept very little. He was very generous. He’d give you his clothes. He’d give you his money.”

“He had a small smile on his face and soft hands…you’d think you were shaking hands with a girl.”

“His house was poorer than the houses of most of the people who worked for him.”

“He was shy and serious, and struck many as naïve. When he laughed, he covered his mouth with his hand”

“He was very religious.”

Who is this man they are describing? Jesus? Pope John Paul II? Billy Graham? Mother Theresa? NO.

Try Osama bin Laden.

The most wanted man in American history, terrorist and evil-doer, 9/11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden is a very humble, generous, and religious man. A good Muslim. Far more religious than any of his siblings [and he has dozens of siblings]. A man of uncompromising faith.

This is the problem with blind acceptance of millennia-old divine revelations, or put simply, faith in the irrational: there is no objective standard by which all men may make judgments or be judged. Most Christians would agree that self-denial, humility, faith, generosity, and religiosity are all fine qualities, that the man described above could not be evil. But the man described above is evil.

What makes Osama bin Laden evil? It is his irrational belief that he is doing God’s work. He, like all people of any faith, handed over his rational self, turned his back on his own humanity, in exchange for the supernatural promise of life everlasting. Like the most religious individuals of any faith, he’s not living his life: He’s waiting to die. He and his followers can find justification for their actions [suicide bombers and the murder of innocence] in their holy book, the Koran. They believe they will be rewarded in the afterlife for making these sacrifices in the name of Allah. Like Christians, Muslims believe their holy book is the word of God. [Mohammed delivered his message over six centuries after Jesus, so for Muslims the Koran is God’s last words to man. Muslims acknowledge Jesus and his teachings, but because Mohammed came after Jesus, his message is final. The savior, the Mahdi, many Muslims are waiting for will actually do his Judgment Day war-on-the-anti-Christ work with Jesus at his side. Jesus, of course, is expected to beseech all Christians to convert to Islam.]

Mohammed said it’s okay to convert [and if unsuccessful, kill] non-believers, infidels. As long as some religious leader declares a fatwa, even murder of innocents is permissible in bin Laden’s world. Christians have a long history of murdering innocents, non-believers, heretics. In the last century it was a so-called “Christian nation” that actually used nuclear weapons killing tens of thousands of women and children.

Why does God require so much bloodletting? Both Muslims and Christians worship death. Martyrdom in both faiths is the surest route to Heaven. Martyrs, like Jesus, St. Peter, and St. Stephen are among the most revered of all Christian saints. Today, young men travel from all over the Muslim world [including the United States] to volunteer to serve bin Laden in Afghanistan and Iraq with hope that they will be killed fighting the jihad against the West. When the bombs fall, many do not even take cover. Death is their wish. It is their only standard. They are anti-human, anti-life.

The moral dictates of both faiths defy reason. A believer is left with no objective standard with which to make judgments. What is an objective standard? 1. Life on Earth is governed by natural law. The laws of nature do not answer to the prayers of men; 2. What is…IS! This world is the world and when humans die they are dead; 3. Each individual has an absolute right to their life and an absolute right to determine their own thinking. These are all rational, objective standards that would [if widely accepted] create a much better world than the one envisioned by Muslims or Christians.

In fact, if men could do two simple things, we could make a heaven of this Earth.

1. Take care of yourself.
2. Do no harm.

As long as immoral, altruists, religionists claim the high moral ground in this world, as long as moderates and secularists yield [by default] the higher ground to the extremely irrational, as long as entire nations of people are subjected to the thought control of religious, morality police, whether they be young thugs raping unaccompanied women on the streets of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, or Christian state legislatures here in America denying a woman the right to determine the functions of her own body, this world will know no peace.

Nobody has the right to force anybody’s mind.

If you think your ancient prophet is God, or is the son of God, or works for God, think it! Live your life doing exactly what’s written in your holy books…with one exception: Leave the rest of us the hell alone!

We don’t believe your claim to know what God wants. Many of us don’t even believe there is such a thing as “God.” Yet, we are moral people! You’d never know it because we don’t walk around all day saying “bless this” and “bless that.” We don’t do public displays so that everybody can say “Gosh, what a religious guy he is” or “He must be going to Heaven.” We don’t go around trying to force other people to think the way we think. We don’t condemn to Hell people who don’t agree with us. We don’t murder! We don’t use ancient mores sanctioned in our holy book so that we can have sex with little girls.

We are enlightened, modern men governed by reason with a profound respect for humanity, the rights of individuals, and human truth. We are the future of humanity if humanity is to have a future.

Faith v. Integrity

2008-05-25T03:16:00.003-05:00

I doubt Thales, when divvying up the world into opposites—fire/water, earth/sky, day/night, hidden/obvious, etc/atc.—ever considered the opposite of faith. Thales looked to nature for data, to reason for answers. When looking to nature I doubt faith ever crossed his mind: Nature doesn’t ask to be believed in, it asks to be explained. Everything he saw, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted created an opportunity for learning, and in the mind of a rational man everything requires study. Understanding requires study and the integrity to acknowledge truth.

While I’m sure Thales had his doubts about the gods, twenty-six centuries ago questioning them publicly was not a healthy choice. Then, like today, it wasn’t the gods who punished the non-believer…it’s the believers right here on Earth who make sure the wrath of their gods is felt. Across the globe, presently, it is still not safe for the rational to speak their minds. In the Muslim world they risk death or imprisonment. In the United States, vocal opponents of irrationalism risk unemployment, ostracism, ridicule, and abuse.

For three years such abuse took place in Dover, Pennsylvania, in 2005, where the area school board had been hijacked by a few Christian zealots determined to turn the clocks in Dover back to a day before science, a day before the Bill of Rights, when teachers led their classes in Christian prayers and bible readings. Their leader, Board Curriculum Chairman William Buckingham, was raised believing in a literal interpretation of the Bible, including its first book, the Book of Genesis. Apparently, he thought everybody else’s kids should be educated so well. “This country wasn’t founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution,” Buckingham told Dover parents. “This country was founded on Christianity and our students should be taught as such.”

Problem was, public prayer and bible reading and teaching creationism in public schools is illegal. Bill Buckingham had a problem. How does a man of faith manage to solve a problem of this sort? What would Jesus do?

At the trial, Bill’s victims—his fellow board members!—testified that they had been cornered and questioned, asked if they were Born Again, ridiculed and called un-Christian if they answered incorrectly or refused to answer, bullied into voting for the anti-science, biology curriculum Buckingham and his friends at the Bible Science Association [BSA] and the Foundation for Thought and Ethics [FTE] endorsed. On at least one occasion, a board member was compelled to resign. Dover High School science teachers testified that they were forced to accept an irrational, anti-science textbook to supplement their biology curriculum. The teachers were required to accept the text, Of Pandas and People, or lose funding for the text they had ordered, Biology. Conscientious science teachers actually had to walk out of their classrooms, leaving their students to board stooges appointed to read an anti-science message at the onset of the unit on the origins of life.

In addition to his utter lack of integrity when dealing with co-workers and constituency, Apostle Bill demonstrated a complete incompetence regarding the facts, not only of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, but of the “alternative theory” he championed, Intelligent Design. Here’s Bill answering questions at the trial:

QUESTION: I'm just trying to understand so we can have a working understanding here of what intelligent design is if we can. Do you have an understanding in very simple terms of what intelligent design stands for? What does it teach?

ANSWER: Other than what I've expressed that scientists, a lot of scientists, don't ask me the names, I can't tell you where it came from, a lot of scientists believe that back through time something, molecules, amoeba, whatever, evolved into the complexities of life we have now.

Q: That's the theory of intelligent design?

A: You asked me my understanding of it. I'm not a scientist. I can't go into details and debate it with you."

Q: Do you remember giving that testimony?

A. Yes.

Q. And at least as of that date, January the 3rd, that's all that you understood about what the theory of intelligent design is, isn't that correct?

A. Plus the fact that I felt that life was too complex to have randomly happened without a design of some sort.

[Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District Trial transcript: Day 16 (October 27), AM Session, Part 1]

Buckingham’s Board failed their mandate as educators to equip the next generation with the necessary tools for survival. They demonstrated contempt for humanity, ignoring man’s best efforts to understand himself and his place in time They failed their duty as elected officials to represent the views [or even the best interests] of their constituency. They extorted, bullied, lied and distorted, and then, under oath, denied it all. And like the Theory of Intelligent Design, these apostles failed even to name the designer they had in mind on the day they embarked on their ridiculous crusade.

It would be laughable if so many people hadn’t been hurt.

I remember awaiting the decision of United States District Judge John E. Jones III. I knew what the verdict should be, but I honestly wasn’t sure what the court would do. I remembered the Supreme Court’s failure to address the “God” in the pledge issue, granted a trivial matter compared to Dover. I was afraid the court would make some sort of compromise with these lunatics in the name of tradition or American values. While reading the testimony of Buckingham and others, I came to the conclusion that these people—like the goddamned Taliban—don’t compromise. They don’t soften their message. They don’t study. They’re not interested in anything man has accomplished in the last millennium. As far as they’re concerned, history stopped two thousand years ago with Jesus, the Bible is the only book, and the complete store of knowledge was handed down to man by God. They believe their nonsense. They are people of faith. They disparage every effort made by man to uncover the truth calling him the Devil and damning him to Hell. They blind their eyes to the truth he discovers. They cover their ears. They have no stomach for the truth when it unsettles their little minds. They haven’t the integrity to acknowledge truth.

United States District Judge John E. Jones thought better…thank goodness.

Faith and Evil

2008-05-18T04:22:00.001-05:00

Faith is believing something, something which can not be proved to exist. When someone believes some religious doctrine, they are believing something for which there is no evidence. Modern believers point to history, their holy books, heroes and martyrs, arks and shrouds, and any number of bits of so-called physical evidence to “prove” their faith. All they ever end up proving is that people for centuries have done the same thing they are doing. People for centuries have believed, not in existence, but rather, in what they wanted to believe. People of faith for all time have shared this common belief: that their minds—their thoughts, wishes, visions, dreams—are real and that their minds have the power of creation. “If I believe it, it is true. As evidence, I offer the words and deeds of thousands [billions] of others who believed it too. Surely, so many could not be wrong.” They express their faiths in community where they have the physical support of other believers. Universalizing faiths—like Islam and Christianity—encourage the faithful to win converts, increasing their numbers, increasing their certainty that the unreal is real.

From time to time mindless reality demonstrates the fraud modern humans call faith in their gods. Tragically, the innocent are made to suffer.

Eleven-year-old Madeline Neumann, after suffering two months of deteriorating health, paid for her parent’s irrational psycho-epistemology with her life. Madeline died last month of diabetic ketoacidosis while her parents prayed that the demons would leave her body. A single shot of insulin would have saved her life.

Madeline’s mother, Leilani Neumann, said that she and her family believe in the Bible and that healing comes from God. “We know we did the best for our daughter we knew how to do.” Incredible…a 21st Century American who thinks prayer is more effective than modern medicine in treating the sick.

Do you think the death of her beautiful little girl has caused Leilani to reconsider her thinking on the matter? Maybe even question her faith? Think again. When asked how she and her husband were coping with the loss of their daughter, Leilani replied: "Only our faith in God is giving us strength at this time." Incredible… it was her faith in God that brought this disaster to her doorstep in the first place. A little “faith” in humanity and human science [i.e. reality] and Madeline would be alive today.

I happen to know that when people like Leilani say things like “only our faith in God is giving us strength at this time,” they are actually proud to make the pronouncement. It’s as if voicing it makes them feel closer to God. It is the public pronouncement that gives them “strength.” Knowing others have heard their public surrender to the will of the All Mighty somehow makes them feel favored, more holy.

One relative told police that the girl's mother believed she "died because the devil is trying to stop Leilani from starting her own ministry," according to the Associated Press. The death of her little girl is not about a treatable insulin deficiency and her failure to grasp reality. For Leilani it’s about her imagined battle with the man in the red suit, horned forehead, and pitch fork. Incredible stupidity.

“Do not say that you’re afraid to trust your mind because you know so little. Are you safer in surrendering to mystics and discarding the little that you know? Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience—that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible—that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.”—AR, For the New Intellectual

Faith v. Reason

2008-05-11T04:35:00.003-05:00

The following is a letter to my students:

“Who Cares”

If I were conducting this class 10,000 years ago, my lessons would include the following topics: 1. How to hunt large animals with a sharpened stick; 2. How to make sharpened sticks; 3. Which plants are edible and where to find them; 4. How to make fire; 5. How to build a temporary shelter. I would have chosen those topics 10,000 years ago for the very same reasons I chose the topics I teach today. My job is to arm you with the knowledge you require in order to live successfully in this country on this Earth.

You may ask: What’s the point? Why does this matter? How will I ever need this knowledge in the future? Who cares?

I require no followers. I seek no apostles. I would never ask anyone to accept any of my ideas on faith. But, these are big questions that I think deserve a response. Before you read on, permit me to answer your question with one of my own: Do you value your life? If so, know this:

1.The skills necessary for survival have changed over the past 10,000 years: The fact that man must think to sustain his life has not. Other animals have things like wings to fly away from danger, sharp claws to defend themselves, hard shells, sharp quills, or brute strength. Humans have none of these things. Humans survive because we evolved an excellent brain. Our brain is our “basic tool of survival.” [AR] A teacher is someone who cares about the survival of mankind. A rational teacher is the only one who can make good on that promise.

2. An individual must think [that is, reason] in order to sustain his life. If he refuses to do so—if 10,000 years ago you ignored my lessons and ate poisonous berries—the individual dies. Your survival today does not require that you know how to hunt, fish, or gather berries, so I don’t teach these skills. I teach reading and writing and rational thinking.

3. To think rationally the first thing one must come to grips with is simple: A = A Or stated another way: Existence exists. And still another way: What is….IS! This is called REALITY. On Earth, the only reality we know of, the fundamental question for every man or woman is the question of their own existence: “To be or not to be?” To live or to die? So I ask again: Do you value your life?

4. There are millions of people out there—running countries, starting churches, leading armies, writing books, creating art, selling philosophy, gathering and making news—who do not accept the validity of my #3. They do not believe reality is an absolute. They do not believe in the value of your life. They demand your sacrifice. They believe that their wishes have the power of creation. They believe “if I think it, it is so.” They take short-cuts—gathering dreams, whims, feelings, and mystic revelations—and arrive at what they call “the truth.” Their truth has little to do with WHAT IS. Everything to do with what they want. They claim to love mankind: they hate the human mind and human science. They are the growers of your fears and the collectors of your sacrifices. In exchange for your actual life right here on Earth, they promise an imagined eternal life in some “better place.” I teach so that you may identify irrationalists of every stripe and know there is no better place for a human being than here on Earth. Earth is the planet that made our existence possible. We are the best product of this Earth.

5. Because humans love their children and want them to survive, we teach our young. Humans pass knowledge on from one generation to the next. Human knowledge of this world has been accumulating over the thousands of years of recorded history. Human knowledge about the world we live in is today better than it has ever been in the history of the world. Humans continue to add volumes to our knowledge stores, volumes that extend human life through medicine, volumes that make it possible for humans to see with our own eyes worlds billions of miles away, volumes that make it possible for us to live comfortable, pleasant lives. I teach children who will one day have children of their own.

6. Humans make errors. Honest humans correct them. The ancients made many errors. They had only their five senses in raw form with which to make observation, reason, and draw conclusions about the nature of their existence. With technology we have enhanced our five senses a billion fold. We don’t have to guess the definition of star. We know what it is, how far away it is, what it’s made of, where it came from, and how to get there. We don’t have to make up stories about how man came to exist on this planet. We can read his entire history. It’s written in every cell in your body on every strand of your DNA. A man of integrity loves the truth. I teach so that you may learn to recognize the truth when you see it.

7. Irrational philosophies are the greatest threat to freedom in this country; indeed, they are the cause for the lack of freedom elsewhere in the world. Altruistic moral codes are dominant in the history of the world and in the world today. They are immoral codes that teach self-sacrifice is the key to moral perfection. The purveyors of these vicious ideas survive [in many cases growing wealthy, strong, and politically powerful] by your sacrifices. The survival of our Republic requires that you understand the value of your life and the absolute necessity of your freedom. That the purpose of your life is to live it. That there is no higher purpose than the pursuit of your own happiness. That your brain belongs to you! A moral man is one who earns his success by the power of his creative mind and his productive spirit and who deals with other men by trade, by persuasion, but not by force. I try to demonstrate the power of these ideas because I want you to be happy, too.

I care.

Energy Independence: Two untapped Alternatives

2008-05-04T04:32:00.005-05:00

Then I found precisely what I’m looking for on the front page of the paper.

Billionaire Texas oil man makes big bets on wind
By Chris Baltimore Fri Apr 18, 9:00 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legendary Texas oil man T. Boone Pickens has gone green with a plan to spend $10 billion to build the world's biggest wind farm. But he's not doing it out of generosity - he expects to turn a buck.

The second sentence cracks me up. Why Christopher Baltimore thought it necessary to remind Americans that entrepreneurs make investments in order to turn a profit is beyond understanding. But, of course! T. Boone Pickens should only risk his $10 billion if he can reason a high probability of a profitable return on his investment. Becoming “green”—in the Al Gore sense of the word—is not prerequisite to capitalizing on meeting the energy needs of the free world. Healthy self-interest drives entrepreneurship in a capitalist economy. The only question remaining is, will more private individuals make similar investments before our government crowds private investment right out of the market?

If government takes the lead change will be slow, waste will be abundant, and the building of the necessary infrastructure will be charged to tax-payers, stifling growth in other sectors of the economy while denying entrepreneurs opportunities in the energy sector. If private interests take the lead the progress of change will vary across the country, each major city providing an opportunity for a private energy producer to build a clientele supplying the clean energy needs of the local homes and businesses. The most productive and efficient of the private producers will be rewarded with growing market share and profits for its shareholders. Not since Reconstruction has such an opportunity for growth presented itself: the complete transformation of how America creates power.

T. Boone Pickens chose to invest in wind. That may work best in Texas where millions of acres remain undeveloped. T. Boone’s wind farm will power a million homes and businesses when completed, a greater yield than two nuclear power plants, according to The Energy Blog, with no adverse effects on the environment.

If I had $10 billion to invest, I’d chose to produce geothermal energy. A 2006 study by MIT sold me on the idea.

"The Future of Geothermal Energy" (PDF, 14.1 MB).

Geothermal energy is a product of the Earth’s own heat. Wells [no deeper than the wells we currently drill to reach oil] are drilled to reach the hot rocks underground. The hot rocks are broken up so that water can pass through them. Water poured down one well returns to the Earth’s surface as steam to run electric generators.

According to MIT Tech Talk: “Unlike conventional fossil-fuel power plants that burn coal, natural gas or oil, no fuel would be required. And unlike wind and solar systems, a geothermal plant works night and day, offering a non-interruptible source of electric power.”

Geothermal energy leaves no carbon footprint.

Ultimately, I think solar energy will be the future…but not the way we’re doing it now. The first time I saw solar panels stretched across my neighbor’s roof, I thought, those panels would work much better if they were in orbit where they could absorb the sun’s energy without interference. I wondered if anybody else was thinking like me. A quick Wikipedia search confirmed my thinking.

“A solar power satellite, or SPS or Powersat, as originally proposed would be a satellite built in high Earth orbit that uses microwave power transmission to beam solar power to a very large antenna on Earth. Advantages of placing the solar collectors in space include the unobstructed view of the Sun, unaffected by the day/night cycle, weather, or seasons. It is a renewable energy source, zero emission, and generates no waste. However, the costs of construction are very high, and SPS will not be able to compete with conventional sources (at current energy prices) unless at least one of the following conditions is met:

1. Low launch costs can be achieved;
2. A space-based manufacturing industry develops that is capable of building solar power satellites in orbit, using off-Earth materials;
3. Conventional energy costs increase.”

With oil pushing $120 a barrel, we may be well on our way to achieving the third criteria. In time, the second will be realized.

Energy Independence: Security

2008-04-27T04:24:00.003-05:00

Because cold fusion research commands about as much respect in the scientific community as SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, my original hope for a solution to the world’s impending energy crisis and feared global climate change is quashed. Sometimes the stuff of science fiction becomes reality…rockets to the moon, for example. But nothing happens if there are no people left in the scientific community who see the possibilities. With regards to cold fusion, very few see the possibilities.

I had so hoped Hollywood had gotten this one right…To tell Chavez and Putin and the Saudis what they can do with their oil, was a message I’ve hoped would be delivered in my lifetime.

Fission reactors work, the problem is the waste. We don’t know what to do with it and it’s very poisonous stuff.

Hydrogen, the most abundant element in the cosmos, fuels our world, presently. Whether we’re burning fossil fuels, renewable bio-fuels, or charged hydrogen fuel cells, the power element is hydrogen. Hydrogen burns clean. The problem is producing clean-burning hydrogen requires energy. Today, that usually means using carbon fuels.

Extracting the hydrogen from fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—powers our world but releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is a green house gas. That’s not good. Whether or not we’ve done any real or permanent damage to the planet yet is not the issue. The fact of the matter is that the greenhouse effect is real…it can happen. Planet Venus is evidence of this fact. If we continue to pollute our atmosphere with carbon dioxide, Al Gore and the rest of the fear mongering [Medieval, anti-capitalist] environmentalist movement will get their wish. It might take a thousand years or more, but eventually, their truth will out.

My reason for supporting the development of alternatives to carbon-based fuels has little to do with melting ice caps and everything to do with security. America and the rest of the free world cannot remain dependant upon irrational, authoritarian regimes for our energy needs. To do so means two things: constant war somewhere in the world and a deterioration of the standard of living for all Americans.

The fact that there are so many clean alternatives to fossil fuels, and all, including wind, solar, and geothermal are currently in use, means that the barriers to energy independence are not a fact of nature. It is not science that has failed to present feasible solutions. The barrier to energy independence and security is man made. It is our lack of will to make the necessary investments in infrastructure to bring these alternatives on line. Apparently, our concerns about energy security will not be addressed seriously until another 9/11 whacks us into action.

So what’s the biggest obstacle in the way of developing this and other cheap and clean energy? Government, of course. Politicians will claim free markets “aren’t working,” that entrepreneurs can’t find ways to harvest energy profitably, that we need government to create uniformity and safety. Politicians on both sides of the isle [Nancy Pelosi, Newt Gingrich] will offer their “leadership.” Politicians will fail to deregulate the energy industry in the name of what’s good for the community and effectively stifle private creativity, productivity, and investment. Energy entrepreneurs will be denied the opportunity to be the 21st Century’s J.D. Rockefeller, while politicians grant lucrative contracts to their buddies, the political entrepreneurs, who specialize not in energy production, but rather, in collecting government contracts. This is how the transcontinental railroad was built in the second half of the 19th Century: This is why the railroad industry has not been profitable since World War I.

Political entrepreneurs make their money up front. They have no incentive to work efficiently or build well. They’ve risked nothing. The politicians have given them other people’s money with which to build. Market entrepreneurs risk their own money, and they make money only if they build an energy production facility that works. They have the incentive to operate efficiently and build well. They’ve risked everything.

If the private sector is allowed to work this problem, I see every major metropolitan area in the United States as an opportunity for an energy entrepreneur to set up shop, provide clean, cheap energy, and reap just profits.

Election 2008: The Case for McCain

2008-04-20T04:16:00.007-05:00

Because most Americans don’t know we are in the war for our existence, polls indicate that the economy is the number one issue of Decision 2008. Because Americans can’t list two bills passed by Congress this session and most know nothing about economics, they tend to blame the president when the economy goes south. About half the country believes the Democratic candidates when they promise a potpourri of tax-payer funded “solutions” to the problems.

Hilary Clinton promises to:
[HillaryClinton.com]

>Lower taxes for middle class Americans;
>Provide quality, affordable health care for every American;
>Make college affordable and accessible;
>Confront growing problems in the housing market;
>Harness innovation to create high-wage jobs for the 21st Century.

Barack Obama’s list of promises is almost identical.

Democratic economic “solutions” without exception attempt to correct the injustice of reality with brute force. They've convince half the country that free markets don’t work and that government is the solution. To suggest that government is the engine of “innovation” that drives America’s economic success is most dishonest and irresponsible. It is a conclusion that denies history. Democratic economic theory is about as useful as astrology or alchemy. Both candidates think government-created jobs actually grow the economy, for example, so they would end tax cuts for the wealthy…you know, the entrepreneurs. In fact, every one of the Democratic proposals requires a thorough clubbing to death of the most productive Americans, and because all of these “solutions” are funded by taxes, none grow the economy. New jobs in the private sector grow wealth in this country. The redistribution of wealth creates nothing.

Recently, Hillary Clinton signed on to legislation co-sponsored by Barach Obama that would expand the role of the Federal Housing Administration in the forced restructuring of home loans on the verge of foreclosure. The bill actually enables government to buy the loans in order to keep the “buyers” in “their” homes. Defending his boss, Clinton economic adviser Gene Sperling, explains the psycho-epistemology of the statist Left:

"This is too big of a crisis for us to let either ideology or fears of political demagoguing to keep us from putting every option on the table."

Read it again. What Sperling is encouraging us all to do here is to leave our brains at the door so that our leaders can do something….anything! It doesn’t matter if the solution is anti-capitalist. It doesn’t matter if the solution is brutish and irrational. It doesn’t matter if a terrible injustice is about to be done. This crisis, according to Sperling, is too big for philosophy. Too big for ideas. Too big for justice. Too big for integrity. Don’t think! [Hitler told the mob] ACT!

McCain has promised to withdraw government from the economy…to de-tax, deregulate, and further devolve federal intervention in the economy. If John McCain knows nothing more about how a free market economy should work, he has already stated the better view. More capitalism. Less government intervention. Creditors and debtors must honor their lawful contracts. Winners get to enjoy their success. Loser must accept the consequences of their poor choices.

Regardless of who the Democrats nominate, on the economy John McCain is the candidate who threatens my freedom least.

Unlike his Born Again predecessor, McCain pays the obligatory lip service to the Christian Right but doesn’t buy into much of their self-righteous intolerance, and he has said as much in the past. However much he tries to distance himself from his Election 2000 statements, when McCain railed against Christian orthodoxy he was speaking his mind.

“…political intolerance by any political party is neither a Judeo-Christian nor an American value. The political tactics of division and slander are not our values. They are corrupting influences on religion and politics and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country. Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right.”

It’s a shame when a “straight talker” like McCain thinks he has to pander to these people in order to win the Republican nomination. I don’t think he should. I don’t think he has to. These people are not the base of the Republican Party [if they ever were]. Look at Huckabee’s numbers. There they are. That is the so-called Christian conservative base of the Republican Party. McCain won the nomination without them. There are far more Independents and secular Republicans than Christian fundamentalists. Very unscientific, I know, but I’d be willing to bet that most people who call themselves “Independent” left the Republican Party because of the Christian Right. I know that’s why I left the party. [The rest of the Independents are former Democrats who still believe in capitalism.]

In 1999, John McCain expressed acceptance of Roe v. Wade on behalf of the woman who would die turning to illegal, unsafe procedures should Roe be overturned. Excepting his 2007 reversal on abortion and his vote in the Senate expressing his belief that life begins at conception, I don’t think I’ve ever heard McCain utter a socially conservative view. That’s a real plus. A cancer patient and supporter of stem cell research, I feel confident McCain will reverse the Bush Administration’s anti-science policies. McCain may in fact hold other socially conservative views [gay marriage, for example], but of two things you can be sure: 1. He won’t run on these issues as Bush did in 2004, and 2. once McCain is in office, the social conservative agenda will cease to exist until the next
election cycle.

John McCain is no zealot.

He is no Crusader, either. Unlike our current president who declares war on fundamentalism of the Muslim stripe, never realizing he represents Christian fundamentalists who share the altruistic-collectivist values of the enemy, who would resort to the same sort of violence as al-Qaida if ever they were faced with moral extinction, John McCain declares war on al-Qaida because they attacked the United States and murdered thousands of innocents. He has no ambition to remake the world in our own image. McCain is still fighting the legitimate war of retaliation against the perpetrators of 9/11. He’s the only candidate who even mentions Bin Laden. A McCain administration would continue the fight against those who seek to end our way of life. He will fight them in Iraq and anywhere else their ugly heads pop up. He is the only candidate running who understands the immutable nature of the enemy we fight. He’s the only one who knows we are at war.

Family Matters

2008-04-18T06:46:00.002-05:00

Happy Birthday Marc!
No comments lately. Does that mean you're converted?
Reality is a beautiful thing, and I REALLY want you to have an excellent year. See you soon.
Donn

Election 2008: Obama’s Rev. Wrong

2008-04-13T11:30:00.001-05:00

Whenever I vote for President of the United States I know I am voting for the lesser of two evils. My vote has always gone to the candidate who threatens my freedom less. In April of 2008, I find myself stuck with a somewhat larger task. I have to determine which of the candidates threatens my freedom least. That’s right. There are still three candidates out there with a real shot at winning the presidency.

The Republicans are set. They’ve nominated John McCain. The Democrats have two candidates who have split the popular vote and the elected delegates more or less down the middle, making it impossible for either one of them to secure the nomination without the votes of the Democratic establishment, the super delegates. If the nomination is left to the party establishment, I think, that is a scenario that favors Hilary Clinton. She and Bill have been rubbing elbows with these people for far longer than newcomer, Barack Obama. Of course, it’s more complicated than that. If Hilary does manage to win the nomination, by hook and by crook, the Democratic Party will be DOA come November as blacks and young people stay home disgusted, feeling betrayed. The Democratic Party is not going to let that happen. The party super delegates are going to decide in favor of Obama, and [if they know what’s good for them] they’re going to do so before the party convention.

Will they have made the better choice?

There are no important differences between Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama on the domestice front. Both would-be presidents deny the virtues of the capitalist economy that made each of them possible. Both tell Americans that they have a right to food, clothing, shelter, and health care, and that it is the government’s responsibility to provide these things. Both demand European-style social safety nets be constructed, ignoring and denying the fact that such nets may be woven only with the fibers of our freedom. Both would create a nation of beggars, losers, and looters—people who willing give up their rights as free men in order to create a government equipped to spare them the responsibility of living in the real world. The only question left then is which of the two has a better understanding of the world in which we live?

Maybe it’s because she was a Senator from New York on 9/11; maybe it’s because of her service on the Senate Armed Services Committee; maybe it’s because she watched her husband wage war for eight years as President of the United States; but Hilary Clinton [despite her movement to the left during the primaries] has a much less dangerous view of America’s standing in the world. She understands we have to fight to preserve what we have created here and around the world. She will fight. Conversely, Barach Obama has said he will meet with our enemies without precondition. He will lend credibility to the likes of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meeting with them as “equals.” He would crawl into the United Nations and beg forgiveness for American arrogance during the Bush Administration. He would empower our enemies to bold action against us all in the name of peace…unconditional peace that hands the world over to thugs and assassins.

While Clinton and Obama have dangerous, socialist economic policies in common, Obama is by far the more dangerous of the two. He embodies the kind of subjectivism possible only in America where liberty seems free and survival is relatively easy. He is a man who can not, or refuses to, distinguish between good and evil. He will not disassociate himself from the later. He will compromise his values. Barack Obama suffered twenty years of hatred and racism spewed from the pulpit by the “man of the cloth” who taught him about Jesus. He sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for twenty years and spoke not one word in protest. He brought his two beautiful daughters there to be educated by this racist. Twenty years of silence in the face of evil is sanction, and I think, disqualifying.

I’ve had my eye on Barack Obama since the 2004 Democratic Convention. After his red-America, blue-America, one-America speech, I told my students that I thought Obama would in fact be the first black president of the United States. I told them that I thought he’d run in 2112 or 2116. I was surprised when he decided to run from his freshman seat in the senate in 2008. I was even more surprised when he won Iowa and Super Tuesday.
But I was pleased…and I’ll tell you why. I thought an Obama presidency [perhaps even a nomination] would be enough to shut up all of the racist “civil rights” leaders who dominate politics in Tavis Smiley’s “Black America.” To shut up Jesse Jackson, Luis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, Cornell West…to shut up all of these racists, I might vote for Barack Obama!

I’ve spent the past twenty years explaining to my students why black candidates win seats in the house but fail to win seats in the senate. “Civil rights” candidates can win in congressional districts where a half-million or more black people live: “Civil rights” candidates cannot win seats in the senate because blacks are a minority in nearly every state. Typical white people will not vote for a candidate who represents only the black people of the state. For blacks to win in the senate they must become candidates who represent all of the people of the state. The Illinois senator won his seat in the senate [virtually unopposed, with all due respect to Alan Keyes] when his Republican opponent’s messy divorce undid his candidacy. But I remember thinking, if Obama made it to the senate he is not a product of “Black America.”

For the first time in American history [because Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice refuse to run], I thought we had a black man who could actually win the White House. Rev. Wright’s words and Barack Obama’s silence convinced me otherwise.

Education: Rewards

2008-04-06T04:13:00.002-05:00

People who choose to teach are generally not leaders. They are collectivists who take pride in their altruistic constitution.

A typical teacher is that kid who in the third grade said: I want to be a doctor because I want to help people. The third graders who actually grew up to be doctors are the ones who said: I want to be doctor because I want to understand the human body, disease, how to cure sick people, and earn a decent living. Most teachers think of themselves as care-givers, helpers, nurturers. They believe their work is a service, a service they provide for the good of the community. They believe good teaching is a selfless endeavourer. Care-giver teachers even take pride in their small paychecks, further evidence of their virtue, this sacrifice they believe they are making.

Like nearly all people who live by the altruist code, when these teachers encounter students who don’t need or want “help,” but rather, wish to be challenged intellectually, they fail. They bore the best students in the building to tears and ultimately to open rebellion. Care-giver teachers utterly ignore or fail even to recognize the self-motivated, productive, creative student. If they do notice these sovereign individuals, they react with fear, tagging them “arrogant,” unruly broncos that must be broken. They actively work to break the will of these students with heaps of meaningless work, low-level instruction, group projects, and merciless remediation. Never fully conscious of the actual service they provide for the community, these teachers are The Levelers. Their focus is on the least productive, most needy students. Their purpose is to raise up the bottom. When the low level students fail to rise, The Levelers hammer the top down into submission. There’s no room in the collective for anybody who is too good.

Ayn Rand called this phenomenon: Hatred of the good for being good. [See Rand’s essay The Age of Envy.]

The best among us are forced to sacrifice their dreams, goals, and ambition; forced to apologize for their abilities, hide their talent; forced day after day to perform mindless tasks and volumes of useless, busy work. Why? Because their excellence is perceived as a threat to the self-esteem of the less able. Some school districts have gone so far as to ban “Honor Rolls.” The teachers’ union actively opposes merit pay for successful teachers. The collectivists will not tolerate winners, so we all lose together.

True competition has been removed from the school house. Merit—for both students and teachers—goes unrecognized, unrewarded.

So why do I teach? My reasons are pure selfishness.

I am a lover of humanity, i.e. human knowledge. I am a lover of ideas. I wish to spend my days studying and sharing great ideas.

I teach American Government. I love the principles upon which this country was built. I have a need to spread true understanding of those principles to my students [and to you my faithful reader] because I want this country to survive the Right’s assault on the intellect and the Left’s assault on property rights.

I am sustained by the Eureka smiles of my students. I love spending my days in the company of young people. I love to hear them speak the words: “Thanks…I never thought about things that way before.”

I love seeing my students go on to bigger and better things. Like the proud surgeon of the healthy transplant patient, I share in my students’ success.

I have met dozens of great teachers over the past 20 years. I have made a few good friends. I like working with people who are expert in their subject, thinkers, real teachers.

In twenty years, no school-site administrator has ever given me a hard time. I’ve had a dozen or more “bosses” through the years, and every one of them trusted me and left me alone to do my job.

I love being home with my own children everyday by 3pm, and all day Saturday and Sunday. I love June and July, a week off in October and April, and half of December.

I am pursuing my own happiness…my just reward.

Education: The Teachers’ Union

2008-03-30T04:07:00.004-05:00

Years ago I sat around a table at a dinner party talking to professional people about their work. I encountered a businessman and father of three who was a contracted employee of the public school district for which I worked. His grown children were all graduates of the same district. The businessman had a very low opinion of teachers, he said, using some very colorful language, qualifying each of his statements with the requisite “with all due respect.” He had no respect for teachers or [especially] the teacher’s union. I was offended by nothing the businessman said; everything he said was true and none of it applied to me. When I told the businessman that I was not a member of the teachers union, he smiled and said: “Oh, you work for a living!”

Failed teachers are almost always very active in the teachers’ union. The union works to protect their jobs…regardless.

The closest thing to a political speech I have ever delivered went out to my co-workers at a faculty meeting. The president of the United Teachers of Miami-Dade, Pat Tornillo, had just been convicted of embezzling $650,000 of teacher union dues to finance his Caribbean vacations. [I was not one of his victims.] Furthermore, days prior to my appeal, a few teachers had led hundreds of our students in embarrassing public protests against the state’s new accountability test, the FCAT.

I don’t know if I made any friends that day.

An Appeal to the Real Teachers of
“My Miami-Dade County” Senior High

By Donn

Union stewards and active members of United Teachers of Dade are famous for giving young teachers the following advice: “Cover your ass.” This bit of “wisdom” is referenced so frequently, in fact, most times a whispered “CYA” is all one needs to say to stop a young creative. I’ve heard this advice from hundreds of people over the course of my 14 years in the classroom. I have ignored it as many times. Think about the message they’re sending here. It’s not, do the best possible job you can do, but rather, do the bare minimum. Or even worse, do nothing; just don’t draw any attention to yourself. The union tells you that you are powerless without them, that you need them to watch your back, that you are nothing, incapable of standing alone, that you have no value except as a member of the pack.

I understand many of my colleagues are disappointed in their union, presently. I imagine our stewards are among the most let down. Despite this embarrassing failure, I can assure you that UTD has kept its promises to you. It is because the union has kept its promises to you that we fail. With your dues they have worked hard and have succeeded in:
1. Stripping school-site administrators of any and all meaningful authority;
2. Protecting the paychecks of incompetent and failed teachers;
3. Destroying every effort made by parents and their elected representatives to reform this broken school system.

Do you wonder why our students take to the streets and protest the FCAT rather than cracking the books and passing it? It’s no wonder to me. They are doing what their role models have taught them to do: decline to look in the mirror, refuse to accept responsibility, unite with others who have failed, discover, invent, enlist, and promulgate excuses, secure their imagined self-esteem at all cost, blame someone other than themselves.

The FCAT is a test administered to individual students to test their progress. The test, like all work they will ever know in life, is their responsibility. If they pass the test, the credit belongs to them. If they fail, the failure belongs to them. Success in school is an individual effort, yet our school’s “F” rating was addressed earlier in the year by our leaders as a collective problem requiring a collective solution. The message to the teachers: WE failed last year. WE are all in this together. WE can solve this problem if we work together. WE must work hard and help these students pass the test. WE don’t want to be called failures. And to the students we said: WE believe in you.

Has it occurred to you that the students don’t believe in US? They see us as we are, as individuals. They know how to discriminate between the good and the bad. They know who is working and who is not. They can tell the science teacher who loves science, from the one who hasn’t read a science book [other than their high school textbook] since college. And they know who loves math and social studies and language arts, too. They know who’s earning their paycheck and who’s collecting one. They know who the cheaters are.

They’re smart. They can follow a lead. Many choose the easier road. They cheat. Ultimately they fail. Then they protest.

They protest their failure because they don’t know any better. They’ve been lied to year after year by their teachers. How is it that a student with a 3.5 average can’t pass the FCAT? Simple. Their 3.5 is a fabrication, a fantasy, letters and numbers given to them not for their accomplishments, but for the mere fact of their existence. Good grades are what our students have come to expect for showing up to class, for doing their work, for trying…Too many teachers don’t understand the necessity of telling their students: “I know you tried…I really read your work…It’s wrong…You failed… Here’s how…Now try again.”

Our students protest their failure for the same reasons teachers refuse to acknowledge theirs. They believe they have a right to a high school diploma just like you believe you have a right to your paycheck. Like your union president believes he has a right to your dues, your students believe they have a right to the unearned. Why? They follow your lead. Real achievement is not rewarded in this system you have created. You and your union think everybody’s equal. You think all opinions are equal. You think everybody deserves the same grade or the same paycheck regardless of effort, regardless of achievement. Your students, you and your union fail to understand that the opportunity of a free, public education is your right. A diploma is not. A diploma, like a paycheck, must be earned.

You protest any and all efforts to be held accountable for your failures. You hide behind your union lawyers who protect your job whether or not you’re doing it. Your contract makes it virtually impossible for school-site administrators to reward merit and punish failure. You say we’re all in this together, and you are. The most productive of you drag the least productive along, protecting them from the consequences of their failure. You do this and say it is right to do it because that failed teacher has a family, a house, a car, and bills to pay. Do you think you are right because you are compassionate? Your compassion for one failed professional costs 150 kids-a-year a proper and meaningful education. Is this your idea of a just sacrifice? Is this the goal of your compassion?

In 14 years I have never heard a union steward address the faculty with the message: Do your job! Amazing. You know, if you do your job, your ass is covered. Your students will provide all of the cover you need. If anyone approaches any one of them at any time and asks: So, what’s going on in Mr. So-and-SO’S class? The student—whether or not he or she is passing or failing—will answer TEACHING.

And that is what this profession is about. Fellow teachers, I ask you today to stand and be counted, and one teacher at a time, quit this fraud, quit this union. Let this be the first step in taking back our school.

Education: Management

2008-03-23T03:58:00.003-05:00

I suppose there is some justice in the world after all: poor teachers generally have miserable days. Kids know who they are. They torture them, and rightly so.

For the benefit of my non-teacher reader, I should explain “management” is short for “classroom management,” which is an actual course of study taught at teacher colleges across the country. There are dozens of books and textbooks on the subject of classroom management.

According to Wikipedia: “Classroom management is closely linked to issues of motivation, discipline, and respect. Methodologies remain a matter of passionate debate amongst teachers; approaches vary depending on the beliefs a teacher holds regarding educational psychology. A large part of traditional classroom management involves behavior modification, although many teachers see using behavioral approaches alone as overly simplistic. Many teachers establish rules and procedures at the beginning of the school year. They also try to be consistent in enforcing these rules and procedures. Many would also argue for positive consequences when rules are followed and negative consequences when rules are broken.”

A lot of teachers’ lounge chatter is dedicated to the subject. War stories and vicious rants! Tales of unruly, outrageous kids…”Gotcha!”…doughnuts, coffee, vents and frustrations are all served up daily in the faculty lunch room. The poorest teachers are easily identified: They are the ones who complain the most.

To be fair to my colleagues I must say, young teachers generally have more problems than experienced teachers. It really does take time to figure it all out, classroom management. Young teachers with great potential have more discipline problems in their first three years of teaching than they will during the course of the rest of their careers. For poor teachers, each year is worse than the last.

Furthermore, it must be said, middle-schoolers and high school 9th-graders are probably the toughest kids to deal with on a daily basis; still, some middle school teachers are very successful, others are abysmal failures. The failures generally blame the kids.

Finally, most teachers are good.

In 1981 the US National Education Association reported that 36% of teachers said they would probably not go into teaching if they had to decide again. A major reason was "negative student attitudes and discipline". (Wolfgang and Glickman)--Wikipedia

So why were those nearly 40% still teaching? Once failed, why didn’t they “decide again?” Why didn’t they leave the profession for one better suited to their talents? When realtors fail to sell houses, they leave the profession to find a job that pays or they starve. When actors fail to get the part audition after audition, they wait tables. When politicians lose elections they become consultants. But, when teachers fail, they stay in the classroom.

They stay in the classroom for decades passing along thousands of kids who learned nothing in their classes. They call the kids stupid, unmotivated, rude, and disrespectful, as they assign mindless book work, twenty definitions, and ditto after ditto after ditto. Students receive passing grades for “doing their work.” Much of the work goes unread, while the teacher sits at their desk surfing the Internet, staying, collecting their paycheck, writing referrals, complaining September to June about how terrible kids have become.

Failed teachers demand respect, like Christian love, unconditionally. They offer their students no reason to respect them. When a student, feeling caged and bored and lied to, lashes out [as if to say, “You have nothing at all to offer me!”], his honesty is rewarded with a referral to the principal for discipline. He is suspended from school for three days for “insubordination.” Any understanding of justice he may have had is lost. Chalk up yet another word he can not define!

To be sure, there are as many management styles as there are teachers. Every excellent teacher I’ve ever met had their own management style and exactly one thing in common. They all relied almost entirely on their lessons, the quality of their curriculum, to manage the classroom.

Discipline is not punitive. Students engaged in real learning discipline themselves. Teachers should never demand respect. Like everybody else, they must earn it.

Education: Curriculum

2008-03-16T04:17:00.002-05:00

Curriculum is the key to great teaching.

Across the country public school district administrators produce three-inch binders of curriculum guidelines for the teachers of their district. Each course offering is meticulously outlined, dissected into objectives, sequenced. Teachers are required to teach the objectives. Textbooks adopted by the district cover the objectives. State standards exams test the objectives. Students are required to demonstrate mastery of the objectives in order to earn credit.

Great teachers view the curriculum guidelines as guidelines, a starting place, a list of minimum standards, a skeleton. Great teachers review the guidelines and proceed to develop their own curriculum, building a course of study that embodies all of the muscle of their own advanced knowledge and the beating blood of their passion for their chosen subject. Great curriculum is as human as the teacher who creates it. It is the technology of great instruction. It is an offering of wings.

Poor teachers view the curriculum guidelines as the goal, checking off each district objective “covered” as one step closer to achieving their quota. For poor teachers the district guidelines are the curriculum. Of course, textbook manufacturers use the district standards to outline the course of study they release with each new edition of the text. A textbook can be a very useful tool in the classroom. Like a dictionary, thesaurus, or Wikipedia, a textbook is a resource. A reference book. An empty vessel, the poor teacher relies heavily on the text. The text is their curriculum.

The best teachers read great books. They study. They are life-long learners, people who never stop being a student [whether or not they opt to earn advanced degrees]. Great teachers are people who want to know everything for the sake of knowing and so that they can answer any question their students may pose. They are people who are not afraid to say—“I don’t know the answer to that question…let’s find the answer.” Great curriculum is often discovered right in the middle of a lesson…a discovery initiated by an insightful student. Poor teachers fail to see and to seize these opportunities.

The knowledge base of poor teachers is a static quantity, the sum total of everything they learned in college. Some even use their notes from college classes taken ten years ago to teach tomorrow’s lesson. Poor teachers fail to revise and amend, grow and extend that “knowledge.” They dress up their stale ideas with colorful Power Point presentations and believe themselves fresh and innovative. Their students copy notes. The unfortunate students of a poor teacher go home at the end of the day with sore hands. The students of a real teacher walk out of class each day with their heads spinning with ideas and possibilities.

Curricular malpractice I have witnessed first hand…

> Science teachers who hate mathematics [the language of science] and who deny the validity of the Theory of Evolution because it conflicts with their irrational faith.

> A science teacher who told her students that “we can’t be sure U.S. astronauts actually landed on the moon.”

> High school math teachers [regardless of what level they teach] who can’t do basic calculus. [Even I could do pre-calculus, once upon a time, and I consider myself a math-moron.]

> A history teacher who claims to be unbiased, never offers a view on a controversial issue, and then teaches Franklin D. Roosevelt as if he was the nation’s greatest president. [I think the socialist FDR is one of the worst on the domestic front.]

> An English teacher with a PhD who boasts that she hates to read…that she only reads “what they make me read.”

> An economics teacher who tells his students…”Well, if you don’t believe in God, that’s just stupid.”

> A social studies teacher who argued [in 2000] that Bill Clinton had not been impeached, frowned, and looked at me like I didn’t know what I was talking about.

> Our school library had a dozen books on Michael Jordan…one on James Madison. When I pointed out the problem to the librarian, she asked: “What’s he famous for?”

> English teachers who send out memos and e-mails with multiple grammar and punctuation errors.

> A high school government teacher who could not define Federalism.

Drugs, i.e. Dope: Part II

2008-03-09T06:12:00.004-05:00

My government has a responsibility to protect me from people who would try to use government to:

>shield me from the consequences of my actions;
>force the dictates of their “commanded moral code” on me;
>demand any sacrifice of me to shield them from the consequences of their actions;
>tax my productivity so that my wealth may be redistributed;
>tell me what consenting adult I may sleep with;
>tell me what I can read or view;
>tell me what I can put into my body;
>force me to acknowledge their God.

People who call for “universal health care” appeal to needy citizens who see an opportunity to relieve themselves the burden of having to provide for their own health care. Because of government intervention in all aspects of the health industry, the cost of health care has skyrocketed over the past few decades. Economic liberals blame this phenomenon on capitalism, corporate America, greed…failing utterly to identify the problem: politicians in bed with the political entrepreneurs of the health industry. The problem is not free markets, but rather, the subjugation of free markets to K Street political patronage, cronyism, neomercantilism. Rather than advocating the extraction of political influence from the economy, economic liberals advocate a complete take-over of health industries by government.

Politicians and their patrons, powerful lobbyists, political influence peddlers, they claim, poison the health industry: Their solution? More poison. Hand over the entire health industry to the politicians. This is insane.

Putting aside for now the economic injustice of socialist health care schemes, there are some sinister side effects to placing our health choices in the hands of government officials that, I think, few people have even begun to consider. There are costs associated with universal health care that have nothing to do with "progressive" taxes or rationed health care services. The greatest cost is the loss of the right of individuals to choose their own life-style.

A universal health care system hands over to government the moral authority to determine what we put into our bodies…not a great leap from where we are today, where government claims the power to criminalize certain substances in the name of what’s good for us, where government claims the right to sample our bodily fluids [a clear violation of the 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination], and where just last year Metro Nashville Public Schools issued a mandate:

“It is the duty of each local education agency to integrate a minimum of ninety (90) minutes of physical activity per week into the instructional school day for elementary and secondary school students. Opportunities to engage in physical activity may include walking, jumping rope, playing volleyball, or other physical activities that promote fitness and well-being” (TCA-PC 1001).

If government is covering the cost of your health care, then government has the power to determine your diet. They’ll begin as they have already in a few deep, blue communities in California and New York. They’ll ban smoking….first indoors and then out of doors. [Now, even tobacco states like Tennessee have legislated smoking bans.] Next, they’ll ban trans fats and begin to move against fast food restaurants. In time they will justify the authority to mandate exercise even for adults. “We’re paying for your health care. According to the Surgeon General, the best preventative medicine is healthy diet and exercise.” This decree will be followed by a long list of banned consumables: dope, tobacco, trans fat, whole milk, greasy burgers, ice cream…And the list will certainly grow.

I expect We the People will begin to acknowledge the monster we’re creating when the Health Police snap on the anklet to monitor our daily exercise.

Drugs, i.e. Dope: Part I

2008-03-02T03:56:00.003-06:00

I can legally drink a gallon of Dewar’s Scotch Whiskey every day, destroy my liver, ferment my blood, pickle my brain and prematurely age every other organ in my body. I can legally eat a dozen Big Macs with fries a day, become obese, and die young in my own pool of fat and sodium. I can legally call myself a “thrill-seeker” and attempt to jump forty buses on my motorcycle, attempt to climb to the summit of man-killer Mt. Everest, or jump out of an airplane without a parachute. I can legally engage in all of these risky behaviors, but in America, I can’t legally smoke a joint.

I can legally ignore any symptoms I may be suffering, refuse to go to the doctor, refuse life-saving treatment and die miserably after a prolonged illness. I can legally drop out of high school and enter the workforce unable to read, write, or think. I can legally smoke four packs of cigarettes a day. I can legally engage in all of these risky behaviors because as a man, my life belongs to me. My body is mine to cherish and enjoy or to abuse and destroy. To argue that some drugs are illegal because they are a danger to the health of the user is a ridiculous argument given all of the risky behaviors that are legal in this country.

There is no place in the law, criminal or civil, that suffers questions of credibility more so than United States' drug law. The favorite drug of the politicians, alcohol, is legal. All of the others are illegal.

Or did you say these drugs are illegal to protect the children? A high school teacher for nearly 20 years, I think I have a few insights into what makes young people tick. What draws young people to experiment with drugs is not the promised high or the desire to escape reality, but rather, the mystery created by their illegal status. Teens are risk-takers. Forbidden fruit? It’s not the fruit that attracts them. It’s the “forbidden.”

Besides, protecting children is the responsibility of parents. Parents are responsible for teaching their kids to look both ways before crossing the street, “don’t talk to strangers,” and the dangers of unprotected sex. Parents, for the most part, teach their kids to avoid dangerous substances and with great success. I can’t remember the last time I read a story about some kids drinking Drano or Clorox. Parents can teach their kids about cocaine and crystal meth as well.

There’s no need [in fact it is a violation of our individual rights] to criminalize self-destructive behavior. Rather, adults should teach and model healthy behavior. As children grow into adulthood, their health choices are theirs to make. There is no legitimate role for government to play here. There is no crime.

Are all of these drug laws designed to protect us all from drug-crazed criminals looking for money to cover the cost of their next fix? Making these substances illegal is precisely the cause for all of the crime associated with drug use and the drug trade. If not for the illegality of marijuana, for example, the growing and selling of pot would probably remain far less profitable than tobacco and the government could tax the trade and consumption. The illegal drug business ruled over by thugs and assassins would disappear over night in favor of the new order: local farmers and public companies. Drug-crazed criminals looking for money to cover the cost of their next fix will be treated as all criminals should be…They’ll be arrested, tried, convicted, and punished for larceny. The crime is not the motive for the theft. The crime is the theft itself.

The Draft: Part II

2008-02-24T04:44:00.002-06:00

In a free society when men volunteer to fight and they die on the battle field, they have not sacrificed their lives. They have fought for their freedom. They have said: I died fighting for my freedom because I refuse to live as a slave.

A soldier drafted into service dies a slave of the state. He has truly been forced to make a sacrifice: He has sacrificed a higher value, his unalienable right to his life, for a much lesser value, the goals of the political leaders who forced him into service.

The only moral army in a free society is a volunteer army. If there is a shortage of volunteer soldiers, the government has several moral options at its disposal to increase enlistment. They are:

PERSUATION:
Propaganda—The government may work to “sell” the war to the media and to the citizens. If the war is just, the government should have no trouble gaining enlistees. In fact, going to war against the Taliban in Afghanistan required very little selling on the part of the Bush Administration. The righteous cause for which that war is being fought was apparent to nearly all Americans. The Iraq War was sold to the Congress and the American people and was executed [the first three weeks] with the overwhelming support of the public. Right up until images of the un-policed Iraqi streets, widespread looting and mayhem, reached into America’s living rooms, the Bush Administration could claim Mission Accomplished. Support for the war eroded over time. After the lawlessness and looting, Don Rumsfeld had to explain why nobody could find any weapons of mass destruction. The media began to turn against the war. Then Abu Ghraib. [The Bush Administration’s failure here was to apologize for the criminal behavior of a few individuals, empowering our morally bankrupt adversaries in the Middle East by declaring our own moral bankruptcy.] Then the Democrats on Capital Hill found their collective voice in John Murtha, and for the first time since 9/11, seized an opportunity to recapture power in Washington: They would be the party against the war. How would they explain their votes supporting the invasion? Bush lied...he tricked us into supporting the invasion. Harry Reid, the Democrat, Majority Leader in the Senate actually declared the war lost even as the Democrats won their first majority in the House since 1994.

Most Americans are now against the Iraq War. Still, young men and women enlist to serve in the U.S. armed forces.

The Bush Administration failed to close the deal with the American people. They allowed support for this war to erode. They fought a limited war to appease Europe and our “friends” in the Middle East and sacrificed victory. They permitted the Iraqis to draft a ridiculous constitution [declaring Islam the official religion of the state] and sacrificed any hope for liberty in the new Iraq. Now, our government is divided and the Democrats on the Hill—with the help of CNN, MSNBC, and Bill Maher—are winning the propaganda war.

Financial incentives—A volunteer army must be paid well. A soldier’s work is very dangerous and necessary work. Dangerous and necessary work must be duly compensated. According to the U.S. Census Bureau the median annual household income in the United States was about $48,000.00 in 2006. Soldiers, like police officers and fire fighters, should be paid a salary above the median. In today’s Army an enlisted man would have to serve about 12 years before his salary even approached the U.S. median. A soldier on the ground in Bagdad can expect a few hundred dollars more each month in what the military calls “imminent danger pay,” about the same stipend a teacher can expect for achieving a Master’s degree completing on-line courses in the comfort of their own home. Putting your life on the line has to be worth more than that. A soldier should pay nothing for health care for life, and as Senator McCain proposes, go to any doctor, any clinic, any hospital. A soldier should never have to worry about being homeless in old age. If America took better care of her soldiers our government would never have to contemplate the immoral use of force, conscription. Politicians must stop glorifying sacrifice in order field an army on the cheap. Pay professional soldiers what their dangerous work is worth.

CREATIVE RESTRUCTERING:
Reduce educational requirements for service—Currently, one must have good grades and a high school diploma to serve in the military. If the armed forces determine that more bodies are needed on the battle field, they can make military service available to people who are currently not accepted.

Grow up!—If I were gay, the last thing I would do is join the military. It’s the only career I can think of where a person is not free to be themselves…even off duty! “Don’t ask, don’t tell” means that if they find out you’re gay, you will be discharged. If the military didn’t actively discriminate against homosexuals, gays would probably be more inclined to choose a career in the military.

Admit women—There is no objective reason why women who want to serve should not be admitted. Women should be permitted to perform any and all military tasks for which they can be trained… including combat.