So, we had an earthquake in Virginia, yesterday. Good news: no one appears to have been seriously hurt, though some buildings were damaged, including the National (Episcopal) Cathedral in Washington, DC. I can say, unequivocally, that there were several million people, myself included, who had the bajabers scared out of them. We live in Washington, DC. The ground is not supposed to move in Washington, DC.

It’s amazing what a little training and preparation – and basic situational understanding – can mean in a crisis. I wake up one night (at 1:30 AM), see my wife convulsing in bed, and think almost immediately, “Call 911, there’s something seriously wrong.” I’m alone in the house and I hear that a tornado is coming, and I head straight to the basement. There’s a hurricane coming, I probably should get some canned goods and water. Terrorists crash planes into buildings, it’s probably a good idea to go home. But when the walls start shaking, and don’t stop immediately, it occurs to me that even after I figure out what’s happening, I have absolutely no idea how to respond. That simple fact is probably what contributed to my and everyone else’s fear yesterday. Not simply the unexpectedness of the quake, but the fact that none of us really knows what to do.

For over 100 years, now, we’ve seen evidence of the damage that runaway government spending can do to the economy. Whether in the extreme of the Soviet Union’s planned economy, or the more subtle entitlement programs under FDR’s New Deal, LBJ’s Great Society, or Barack Obama’s Stimulus and Healthcare programs, they have all been shown to crush economic growth, disrupting the natural cycle of boom and recession that any human system must have.

The question, at least in my opinion, is not whether, but how government spending ruins the economy. And I do have a couple of hypotheses to offer as possible answers.

1.      How Revenues are Raised

The most basic problem of government spending concerns government revenue. Businesses acquire revenue through the productive sale of goods and services. A business transaction is not a one-sided deal, it is a trade. When two people engage in a trade, each provides something of value to the other. The value of the exchange is determined by how much each party demands what the other party is offering in trade. In modern economies, the exchange usually involves money on one side, since money is an easily transportable asset with a (relatively) fixed value, and, thus, can be used to precisely assign a value to a good or service. Companies make profits by selling products that are worth more than the sum of the component parts and consumable supplies used to create the product, the labor used to assemble the product or provide the service, and the overhead costs of administering the company. In this way, people are supplied with the goods and services they demand (meeting their needs and wants) and companies are supplied with the money they need to operate and grow, and pay their employees who can then buy more products, etc.

Governments operate differently, usually. Governments, by nature, are inefficient and unproductive. In this country, only a very few government agencies – the Postal Service or the Patent Office, for example – provide a direct, fee-based service demanded by consumers, and, thus, operate like productive businesses, potentially making a profit if they operate efficiently. Those agencies are usually only just self-sustaining, and, more often, are at least partly funded by the general treasury fund. I once heard, and I don’t know if it’s true, that the US Air Force’s Air Mobility Command (AMC) – which is responsible for transporting military and government personnel and equipment all over the globe – is the only truly profitable (that is making more money in its own right than it must pay in expenses) government agency in the United States, though, even AMC is paid almost exclusively by other government agencies. The vast majority of government agencies, however, are funded directly through taxation, the forcible taking of money from the populace by the government to fund the government’s activities. Taxes are essential for governments to operate, and to an extent government is essential to “…establish Justice, insure [sic] domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence [sic], promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…” as none of that is possible in anarchy. The problem creeps in when taxes become burdensome, and the more government spends, the more burdensome on the economy as a whole taxes become. Taxes remove money from the hands of consumers and producers and place it into the hands of a generally unproductive entity. Taxes are taken by force of law (with the threat of imprisonment for nonpayment), and spent as the government wills. Individuals do not pay for the military to defend them, or the fire department to save their house, or public schools to educate their children. We all pay for all of those services regardless of whether or not we need or want them. I have no children, therefore I do not demand education services, yet I must pay for them. Further, government has no incentive to operate efficiently. If they aren’t bringing in enough revenues, they can increase taxes to bring in more, in theory.

Further, when sales don’t provide enough ready cash for a business to expand – say, a new factory needs to be built – businesses can do several things: they can get a loan from a private bank, which has the power to require the repayment of the loan; or they can seek investors by selling stock. Interest-bearing loans allow banks to operate – the interest is the fee for their service – and the money loaned to businesses is usually used to make the business ultimately more profitable, providing more and better products and services, allowing them to hire more workers, or both. Stocks give investors a share in the ownership of the company, and some degree of power in the direction the company takes (though that is limited). They also get a share of the profits (the dividend), and the value of the stock is related to the value of the company. If the company is profitable, the stock increases in value.

When taxes aren’t enough to cover government expenses, the government also has a couple of options: take out a loan in the form of a government bond, or print more money. Loans to the government are essentially deferred taxes. What is not paid for by taxation today, must be re-paid to the creditor by taxes later. Government bonds are little more than IOUs which, nowadays, don’t even pay as good interest as they did merely 20 years ago. Purchasing a government bond doesn’t give you any additional say in how the government spends its money, even in theory. And with inflation, the “matured” value of the bond may not even be worth the price you paid for it. Printing more money causes inflation: the devaluation of the currency, and the corresponding increase in prices of goods and services. And with all the money that the government can collect, very little is put to productive use.

2.      Incentives

Earning money is an incentive to excel. Money is necessary to provide you with needs (food, clothing, shelter, transportation, water, energy) and wants (entertainment, recreation, particular food, clothing, shelter, transportation, etc.). In a productive economy, where money is earned in exchange for goods and services provided, providing goods and services that people will pay for is essential. Human beings are lazy, as evidenced by the fact that much of innovation is geared toward labor-saving devices. Most of us wouldn’t survive if we were suddenly stranded in Roman times, because most of us would be unable to function in the Roman economy. Even they who we acknowledge as hard workers – construction workers, farmers, miners, fishermen – benefit greatly from automation and would be lost having to do even more of their jobs by hand. The point (and I do have one) is that given the choice between earning a dollar working and earning that same dollar sitting, the vast majority of us would take “sitting.” What keeps the productive actively productive is the incentive of (a) earning more than one can by sitting, (b) earning more tomorrow than they do today, and (c) the simple pride gained by productive work. When (a) and (b) aren’t true, then (c) is an awfully hard case to make. In other words, if you make as much sitting as you do working, and you don’t stand to earn more later by working hard now, pride in hard work doesn’t pay the bills.

Government entitlement programs, now nearly half the US Government’s budget, provide a strong disincentive to work productively. A person can be given enough money to live in relative comfort without having to work under most welfare programs. Such money is not earned as a reward for productive behavior, but is gifted from the funds forcibly taken from productive labor. Further, most welfare entitlements are low enough to be exempt from progressive federal taxes. Add that to the fact that earning money productively usually results in the end of some or all of the gifts, and that the people who receive those gifts have no reason to attempt to learn the skills required to earn more than their gifts, there becomes little reason to be anything more than wards of the state. This has a double effect of taking money from the productive and giving it to the unproductive, and allowing a person who is able to be productive to not be, taking both money and productivity out of the economy.

Government employees, often, have the same disincentives. Union agreements and civil service work rules make it extraordinarily difficult to terminate the employment of an unproductive employee solely for lack of productivity. Certainly it is possible, but it requires so much extra effort on the part of supervisors that most don’t bother. We’ve all heard horror stories about government employees being promoted into positions where they can no longer do damage; sometimes making 6-figure salaries to run some small, relatively useless division that has little to do with the actual mission of the organization in question. I’ve seen it first hand. I’ve also seen – not merely heard about – people who are proud to be 20-plus-year GS-5 employees, never having applied themselves enough to warrant additional responsibilities that come with promotion, and usually – particularly at that level – doing little more than pushing paper or answering the boss’s phone. Often, when people at any GS level reach the highest “step” (automatic, time-in-service-based pay raises) they become “Retired In Place”, a derisive term meaning someone who shows up to work enough to collect their paycheck, gets full government benefits, and does literally nothing day after day for years at a time. Not only is there nothing that can be done to fire them, but they are usually, by that time, eligible for retirement on government pension. These people often take actual pride in their unproductiveness, again costing the economy both the money they “earn” and the potential productive labor. Certainly, there are exceptions to those rules, I’ve known them personally as well. There are plenty of people who are either on welfare and work to get away from it, are eligible for government benefits and refuse them, or work for the government as productively as government work can allow. But they are exceptions, and by far not the rule.

Finally, back to taxes. Taxes, particularly progressive taxes – i.e. taxes that increase by percentage of income earned as income increases – in and of themselves are a disincentive to productivity. In this country the incentive to be wealthy can be overwhelmed by the Leftist rhetoric and actual government policy designed to harm the “rich.” Our current President believes that “at some point you’ve made enough money,” and that as a consequence, the government will take some “back” to “redistribute” to the “less fortunate.” If there is a point at which an individual has made enough money, why, then, continue to be productive in the economy? The Marxist tenet “From each according to his gifts, to each according to his need” cannot work in society because gifts and needs are not evenly distributed.

3.      Corruption

Government money generally is used to pay for one of three things: entitlements, regulations, and public safety. If we look through history, and we review modern “corrupt” dictatorships, we discover that more than anything else, entitlements and regulations breed corruption. And such corruption costs the government, thus the entire economy, a great deal of money.

There is an old saying, and I don’t remember its origin off-hand, that goes “if you subsidize a thing, you will get more of that thing.” If you create a law intended to aid single mothers who are having trouble making ends meet, you will not reduce the incidence of single-motherhood. In fact, not only will it increase, but it will increase in the worst way possible – with women conceiving children with anyone who will give them the time of day so they can collect the government checks. That was one of the arguments for “welfare reform” in the 1990s, and still rings true. Whenever you have free money being handed out, there will be a great many people who will either artificially create the conditions required to get the money (women having babies out of wedlock with any man who’ll spend a few minutes with them), or will flatly falsify their qualifications to receive the money (people on the NYC welfare system who also got checks from the New Jersey system by falsifying their state of residence). And if the money being handed out is in the form of a voucher – such as food stamps or transit vouchers – people sell the vouchers for slightly less than face value in cash. 

In Washington, DC, only a few years ago, the Federal Government had to change how it operated its employee transit subsidy program. Originally, the money had been handed out as fare cards for the DC Metro system, and it was a free benefit (unlike private companies that, at best, take the money out of your paycheck pretax, and match it, up to certain legal limits). Since the money was given out in a physical, untraceable form, and in several cards, rather than just one, government employees would lie about the amount they spent on their commute, get more free fare cards than they needed, and sell the excess for slightly less than face value, often as much as $200 a month.

Another case in point: Years ago, I worked for a company that had a contract to provide training services for the District of Columbia Department of Employment Services (DOES). The training was to be provided not to DOES employees, but individuals who took advantage of the DOES entitlement. Such individuals not only got free $200-per-day (in 2000 dollars) training classes in computer applications, but they were also paid a stipend to attend the 8-hour classes. That company taught dozens of classes per month that were filled with DOES “students,” often the same people having taken the same class over and over. While I was working in a productive endeavor, providing a demanded service (computer training), the people in my classes were using other people’s money to sit in classes where they made little effort to learn, and took seats away from other students who might gain some real – as opposed to monetary – benefit from the classes.

Regulations breed corruption because while people frequently lie to receive entitlements, they just as often lie to avoid regulation. This sort of corruption is often played out in the movies (bribing a corrupt customs official, companies paying off the EPA so they can pollute, etc.). Often such corruption is all too real, mainly because government employees are no less flawed, greedy human beings than the rest of us – and some more so. The more you regulate, the harder the targets of that regulation will work to avoid being regulated, usually finding the easiest, not necessarily the most moral, way to do so. Honest businesses are faced with revenue crushing rules that they follow diligently, and dishonest ones not only pay a good chunk of their revenue, but when caught, they subject the honest businesses to more stringent – read revenue crushing – regulation.

And lest you think that I, as a conservative, am going to leave businesses and Defense contracting out of the corruption discussion, I don’t. The best example of that is the Boeing KC-767 scandal that occurred when I worked in the Pentagon – fortunately not for that particular part of the Air Force. In short, the Air Force was looking for a new tanker to replace its 1957-vintage fleet of KC-135s (a Boeing 707 with a big gas tank). Boeing stepped up and offered to produce some converted 767 airliners into tankers. Negotiations resulted in a lease program in which the Air Force would essentially rent the airplanes from Boeing – cheaper in the short term, but horrendously expensive down the road. After the deal, which was advantageous to Boeing, not the American Taxpayers, was complete, the Air Force civilian acquisitions manager who approved the deal left her civil service job and got an executive slot at Boeing.

All of this – taxes, the disincentive to be productive, and the corruption inherent in government entitlements and regulations – combines to produce an entity that stifles economic development, punishes productivity, and intrudes into the most minute details of our lives (if they are paying for it, they can decide how you live it.) It’s time to start cutting. Really cutting, not just slowing the increase. Entitlement agencies ought to be stripped to the bone. Regulatory agencies ought to have their regulations either made into statutory law in and of themselves (voted on by Congress and approved by the President) or nullified. The Federal civilian workforce can be cut by at least half, possibly 2/3 and no one aside from those cut will notice, presuming that actual, recent performance, and not seniority or race or political affiliation, are the criteria for the cuts. Defense should be cut on the rear echelon. The men and women who do the real work of the military – the ones who deploy, who fight, who die for their country, and those that train the fighters – need to be cared for as best we can, it’s only right. But the ones who spend their entire career on the home front often doing jobs that can be done by private contractors ought to go. A government cannot be a charitable organization. Such ideas are unsustainable in the real world, as we are all finding out.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s signature case, Ricci v. DeStephano, is in the news again. In case you’ve forgotten, in 2003, the New Haven, CT Fire Department administered examinations (oral and written) to choose which firefighters would be promoted to Lieutenant or Captain. When the examinations were completed, 20 people were eligible for promotion, 18 were white, and 2 were Hispanic. Because none of the 27 blacks who tested scored high enough for promotion, the city decided that the test must be discriminatory – despite the fact that it was based on readily available books on firefighting and the city’s own rules, regulations, and procedures – and invalidated the results, denying promotion to 19 people based solely on the racial makeup of the potential promotees. It was decided that there must be other ways of promoting that were less discriminatory than a test of job knowledge and suitability.

Nineteen firefighters – 18 whites and one Hispanic – sued the city, alleging racial discrimination. The plaintiffs indicated that they, in good faith, fulfilled the requirements for the promotion vacancies within the New Haven Fire Department, and the city arbitrarily decided not to use the criteria it had set because the racial mix was not suitable. The federal district court ruled in favor of the city, effectively stating that failing to promote whites who met promotion requirements was not racial discrimination.

The case was appealed to the Second Circuit and, again, the city won. Then Judge Sotomayor conducted herself in a manner that indicated that she believed that it was perfectly OK to throw out test results if the results didn’t meet certain racial quotas. Better to start over and find a way to promote more blacks than to reward whites for working hard to pass the tests, apparently.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision (that should have been 9-0) realized that discriminating against whites is, in fact, discrimination and that if the white firefighters worked harder at passing the test than the black firefighters, the city shouldn’t punish them for the work they did. All of that said, it was this case – being seen as evidence of racial bias against whites, particularly coupled with a racist statement she made in a UC-Berkeley law school lecture – that had fueled much of the opposition to Judge Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

So much for the background – and this isn’t a rant specifically against Justice Sotomayor. The case is again getting traction with one of the black firefighters who was passed over for promotion – he had passed the test, but failed to score highly enough to be promotion eligible – suing the city to force them to promote him. I don’t have much information about the case, except that the initial case was thrown out citing the Ricci case, and was then reinstated by a federal appellate judge.

We’ve been fighting, for years, the notion that a test can be racist. It’s probably been at least 15 years that the administrators of the SATs have had to wrangle with race baiters who claim that the reason that blacks consistently under perform on standardized tests as compared to whites is that the tests, themselves, must be, at best, flawed, and at worst, intentionally discriminatory. Promotion exams are another good target, because it gives race baiters a chance to “prove” that the white man is actively working to prevent the advancement of blacks.

What is lacking in any of these discussions is any factual support of the “racist test” claims. The best that anyone can come up with is that the fact of black underperformance is proof enough that the test in question is racist. Actual remedies – what changes are needed, how to measure performance in a “racially neutral” way – are rarely discussed, with the typical mitigation being throw the test out and hire, promote, or enroll based on racial demographics.

Here’s my question: How is it possible for a test to be discriminatory? Particularly a promotion test – of the kind used in most uniformed, rank-based careers (Firefighters, police, military). Yes, if a test for promotion checks for knowledge unrelated to the job being promoted too, that is an unfair, and invalid test. The same is true for an English Composition exam that grades based on the political slant of the piece. But if a promotion exam is testing knowledge that someone in the promoted position is expected to have, how can that be discriminatory? Particularly if the knowledge needed to pass the test is available in books or departmental publications to which all test takers have access. It would be one thing if an organization’s leadership only issued study materials to whites and made blacks pay for it, but that is never alleged. And that doesn’t make the test racist, it makes the organization’s leadership racist.

Knowledge is knowledge. 2+2=4 doesn’t change based on the color of your skin. Abraham Lincoln was the 16^th President of the United States and was the first US President to be assassinated regardless of whether you are black or white. “Automobile” is a noun for whites just as it is for blacks. You either know these things or you don’t. Your race has nothing to do with it.

On a more positive note, I think I’ve finally seen a counterexample to my theory that black, Democrat politicians are, to a man, any one or more of abysmally incompetent, hopelessly corrupt, or race baiters.   Michael Nutter, the Democrat mayor of Philadelphia, has gone on the offensive in the racial conflict. After recent racially motivated attacks by blacks on whites in Philly and other major cities, Mayor Nutter called out the bad behavior of young black men as being the cause for many of their own problems, something that usually gets people, black Democrats, included, in trouble. The most pertinent point he made was this: “If you walk into somebody’s office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied, and your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won’t hire you? They don’t hire you ‘cause you look like you’re crazy.” I praise Mayor Nutter’s attitude here. I can only hope that more black, Democrat politicians will follow his lead. If black people have positive role models to look up to – people they will heed to tell them to take personal responsibility for their successes and failures, blacks on the whole in this country will prosper. I see examples of that every day.

If anyone wants to know why we conservatives dislike the gay privileges movement, I’ve found a perfect example. Forget the moral arguments, neither side is likely to be persuaded the other way. Forget the “civil rights” arguments, most conservatives, me included, don’t really care what people do in their bedrooms and one of the principles of conservatism is equal protection under the law. If a person is assaulted, it doesn’t matter why, the assaulter should be imprisoned for a time commensurate with the degree of the assault (a single open-handed slap or finger poke isn’t so bad, but a full on beat-down should be punished as such), and crimes against gays should get no different punishment than crimes against anyone else. Let’s even forget the “marriage” argument for a moment. Even that is a mere political disagreement, when you boil it down. Yes, it’s one about which people feel very strongly, but it’s still a mere political disagreement.

No, it’s the in-your-face attitude of the gay privileges movement that bugs us. It’s the insistence on having gay characters in every television show or movie. It’s the insistence on using, for example, the mutant struggle in the X-Men films as an allegory for the gay privileges struggle in the real world. It’s the “Gay History” provision in California law, where students are supposed to have the accomplishments of gays highlighted solely because of a person’s sexual behavior. It’s the often absurd association of major historical figures (from Alexander the Great, to Jesus, to James Buchannan, to J. Edgar Hoover) with homosexuality.

Yesterday, (and I’m probably behind the times on this), I heard that there is a petition going around to have the popular Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie “marry” in a same-sex ceremony. Bert and Ernie, of course, are the two Muppets® who share a bedroom in Sesame Street. They have been on the show longer than I’ve been alive, being one of the staples of the show long before Elmo was a glint in Jim Henson’s eye. Because the two characters are male and share a bedroom, the gay privileges community has seized the opportunity to declare the characters gay (despite what the Sesame Workshop says). Certainly, each person’s perception is their business, and if individual gays privately want to see two hand puppets on a television show aimed at preschoolers as champions for the gay privileges movement, so be it. That said, to actually have them portrayed as gay, particularly to have them “marry” would be little more than solid proof that the gay privileges movement is not concerned with civil rights, but with indoctrinating youth with the sense that not only is homosexuality OK, but they who say otherwise (like Christians or conservatives) are bad people.

Here’s something to consider. What if, rather than being gay, Bert and Ernie both decided to join a Catholic seminary and become good, traditionalist priests. What kind of howling would we get from the gay community on that one? Particularly if they were portrayed as deeply religious and thus, implicitly, anti-gay. You’d hear cries of indoctrination. PBS would cancel the show immediately, before any “offensive” messages could get out. DVDs of the show would be recalled and the characters would be removed from future releases.

So here are my questions: Why do they have to be gay? Could it not be that they are merely children? (I recall one skit I had on a record as a child, where Ernie indicated he wanted to be a doctor, and during the skit, he mentioned that he would have to go through 8 years of grade school, 4 years of high school, 4 years of college, and 4 years of medical school, so he could diagnose Bert in about 20 years). What possible lessons could an openly gay Bert and Ernie teach young children, but that homosexuality is OK, and anyone who says otherwise is mean? If we add gay characters to Sesame Street, will the reliable contrarian Oscar The Grouch be a homophobe? If so, will he then be slowly removed from the show for being a bigot? Will Big Bird, who has the mindset of a 5-year-old, have to have gay relationships explained to him? Will he, as is often the case, not fully understand until it’s explained to him several ways? (See the episode where they announced the death of Mr. Hooper for what I’m talking about.) Will he initially find same-sex relationships strange? If we must have openly gay characters must we also, for balance, have overtly religious characters? On balance, must those characters not also be able to express the goodness of religion, or of a particular, real, religion? (Homosexuality is real, and if they were to do it with Bert and Ernie it wouldn’t be an allegory for “unusual relationships”, like a human puppet marrying a monster puppet, but an affirmation of homosexuality.) If not, why not? Could we not have a Jewish character fast and go to services for Yom Kippur, or a Christian character discuss the importance of Good Friday, or a Catholic character refuse to eat meat on Friday during Lent? Is “progress” the correct word to describe a situation where it’s expected that deviant sexual desires be put on display, but religious preference must be kept secret? 

What is the difference between the gay privileges movement trying to indoctrinate children to their point of view, particularly if it’s one with which some parents disagree; and a Christian religious movement trying to indoctrinate children to their point of view, particularly if it’s one with which some parents disagree?

A few years ago, I wrote a piece detailing some Constitutional amendments I would propose if I had any sort of clout in DC. It was merely a theoretical exercise in attempting to get the Constitution back from the abuse it has suffered at the hands of Leftist and “moderate” politicians over the years, and I’m sure plenty of people have done similar things with their own political ideas.

Several months ago (and I don’t have the link for it, the story having disappeared from the place where I found it) I read a rather vexing story accusing Republicans of having as much disdain for the Constitution as Democrats do. In context, it was happening during the last back-and-forth about “birthright” citizenship (that which is described in the 14^th Amendment). And since the Republicans were tossing out the idea of amending the Constitution, the obviously Leftist reporter made the leap that the Republicans had just as much gripe with the Constitution as the Democrats, but while the Democrats are content to simply ignore the Constitution in passing laws requiring people to purchase a particular product, Republicans want to take the steps to change the Constitution to suit their goals.

Of course, that argument fails on one particular point: the Constitution provides a method to change what it says, which method has been used 27 times throughout American history. It also presupposes the idea that strict constructionist Conservatives are supposed to believe the Constitution to be absolutely perfect, biblically infallible. Neither, of course, is true. We consider the Constitution to be authoritative (that is, having the highest authority over other laws – where there is conflict, the Constitution wins), but not Holy Writ, and certainly needing changes from time to time, hence the afore mentioned provision to amend the Constitution.

With all of that, and with the story of yet another career politician (something not foreseen by our Founding Fathers) ending his career (for now) through corruption, I got to thinking about some areas where the Founders could have done things differently to start with. I’m not talking about things like defining marriage as one man and one woman, or excluding the idea that there is a right to kill your own children – that such would be needed was preposterous in 1789 (common sense dictated that a man couldn’t marry a man and that it’s wrong to kill your own children), but some of the finer points that have been exploited by politicians – many from both sides of the aisle – and were foreseeable at the time.

For instance: For all the respect that I have for the men that debated, drafted and approved our constitution, they missed a crucial point when they failed to limit the terms of politicians. At the time, they relied on the honor of men to realize that elected service was just that, service, and that being a politician was not supposed to be a career. And while George Washington had the honor and foresight to step down after his second term, it was inevitable that someone would do what both Presidents Roosevelt did, and run for a third Presidential term (with Teddy losing, justifying his run because it was nonconsecutive; and Franklin winning, justifying his run because there was no law against it). Further, Legislator and Judge quickly became lifetime careers and any number of people would spend their entire adult life, from the time they finished their education to the time they died doing nothing but holding elected or appointed office. It’s gotten so bad that there is now an inherent advantage both practically and legally to being the incumbent in a race, thus we have people who serve for 30, 40, or 50 years in Congress. If I could have influenced the Constitutional Conventions, I would have argued against relying on the decency of our fellow man to voluntarily leave elected office when he had served long enough. I would propose a limit to the number of years any man could serve in Congress (either house), the Presidency, or the appellate judiciary (including the Supreme Court and the circuit courts of appeals). 

The biggest abuses of constitutional power come from the courts, I think most conservatives would agree with that statement. A number of recent decisions have either been fabricated from whole cloth on the whims of the agreeing judges, or have gone directly against the Constitution. The founders did a very good job in limiting the power of the Federal bench. Article III, Section 2 reads, in part, “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;-- between a State and Citizens of another State,--between Citizens of different States,--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects,” with the bit about “a State and Citizens of another State” being removed by the Eleventh Amendment. You’ll notice that there’s nothing in there about ruling on controversies involving state law. If you read Article III fully, you will also notice that the Constitution is essentially silent on Judicial Review, the process by which the courts declare a law unconstitutional. I think the mistake here was twofold. First, I would argue for a positive definition of judicial review and a detailed enumeration of the powers the court has (most particularly, state law can be subject to federal judicial review only if said law directly conflicts the letter of the Constitution.) I would also have in the text of the Constitution, a rule that requires judges reviewing laws to include in their objections to such law the actual text of the Constitution that the law appears to contradict. Second, I would have made it clear that state laws are decided by state courts except when they directly contradict the US Constitution. 

I would have argued against the Ninth Amendment, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people,” being included in the initial draft of the Bill of Rights. I wouldn’t take it out now that it’s there, the danger in removing it is probably much greater than the danger of leaving it, but its vagueness has led to much of the constitutional shredding engaged by the Left. One could theoretically use the Ninth Amendment to invalidate practically any law. Instead, I would have opted to strengthen the language in the Tenth Amendment, and Article I, Section 8, which combine to (a) limit Congress’s, and thus the Federal Government’s authority and (b) assign that authority to the states. In particular, I would have argued for a provision that expressly states that where the Constitution is silent, the several states shall have authority. All of those in concert should protect those rights we have that are not listed in the Constitution, without necessarily letting the courts define new “rights” – like the “right” to kill your child or the “right” to redefine marriage to serve one’s prurient interests – from whole cloth.

I would have dispensed with the introductory language in the Second Amendment. It’s superfluous and confusing, which is why so many people are confused about gun control. It was that introductory text that served as the basis for “group rights” in gun control allowing the argument that the Founders meant to restrict gun access to the “Militia,” recently erroneously defined as the National Guard. Thus restricted, the right to keep and bear arms has been infringed to varying degrees across all levels of government. The Second Amendment would be much more elegant and less open to “interpretation” if it simply read: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

One other change I would have supported (but ultimately, given the political climate at the time, would have failed) would be slavery. While slavery 

There’s plenty else that could be changed, but most of that relates to changes in society that the Founders could not have predicted. Birthright citizenship, for example, was critically important in the 1860s, when the 14^th Amendment was drafted, and its framers couldn’t have predicted how it would be used to harbor people who violate our laws. I doubt anyone would have guessed that 220 years hence, the clause in the First Amendment prohibiting congress from establishing religion would be used to justify banning public displays of religion that offend Atheists. I know that Thomas Jefferson couldn’t predict that his letter written to the Connecticut Baptists reassuring them that they would be allowed to practice their faith would be used to justify ignoring the Free Exercise clause, with the phrase “wall of separation” being misunderstood to be actually in the Constitution. And, as I said, I don’t think anyone would have guessed that the federal courts would feel free to interfere in state matters where the Constitution is otherwise silent (like Roe v. Wade). 

In the end, though, we have the Constitution that we have, and it has served us admirably for over 220 years, longer than any other nation’s written Constitution. It’s been power-hungry men who have misinterpreted it or flat ignored it for the last 50 years, or who have taken advantage of its loopholes to serve their own interests or force their worldview on the rest of us.

I would like to extend my sincere congratulations to President Obama. It was under his watch that Osama bin Laden, a generally vile human being who is responsible for the deaths of thousands of American civilians, was killed, apparently by American soldiers. The military of which President Obama is Commander in Chief has accomplished something that had eluded President Bush and was ignored by President Clinton. And I’m not being sarcastic. I mean it. Barack Obama can honestly claim to have accomplished something objectively good during his Presidency, something that President Carter (for example) cannot. 

I can’t say that I’ve watched the hours of news coverage of this event. I didn’t see the President’s announcement. I wasn’t even watching the Phillies – Mets game at Philadelphia, where the crowd started chanting “USA! USA!” as the news spread through the stadium. I found out very early this morning, when I got up to go to work. So the obvious question is “what next?”

The bits I have heard are that US officials are in possession of the body. Good. Last time they said he might have been killed, he wasn’t. At least with the body, we can make sure it was, in fact, bin Laden. I also heard that Obama, wisely, said that it isn’t over. Regardless of how much I dislike the man, or how bad I believe his presidency has gone so far – this success changes little – at least he’s smart enough to learn from the mistakes of his predecessors, particularly the “Mission Accomplished” stunt that President Bush did. All of that said, with Osama bin Laden proven to be dead, are the Left, President Obama’s base, going to stand for a continued presence in Afghanistan? Are the people who are the President’s staunchest supporters going to allow him to do his job, or are they going to start demanding that “Osama’s dead, pull the troops out now”? And, to be honest, are the American people going to accept a Presidential candidate next year who won’t promise to pull us out of Afghanistan on January 20, 2013?

The war is not over. It’s not (and never really has been) about “getting” Osama bin Laden. Smart people, people who understand how terrorism works, know that bin Laden will simply be replaced by another, equally evil, equally resourceful terrorist, who will hold equal contempt for the liberty and prosperity of the West in general and the United States in particular. Further, with the death of bin Laden being publicly announced (something I’m not sure I’d have done), he can become a “martyr” to the terrorists’ cause, someone to avenge. Someone in whose memory they will fight.

On a much happier note, with one man generally presumed to be headed for Hell, it’s nice when we hear about a man likely headed for or in heaven. Pope John Paul II is now the Blessed John Paul the Great. The Blessed title (abbreviated Bd.) is the final step before recognized Sainthood (known as canonization). Currently there are 10 Popes with this title throughout history in addition to John Paul: John XXIII (1958-63), Pius IX (1846-78), Innocent XI (1676-89), Urban V (1362-70), Benedict XI (1303-04), Innocent V (January-June 1276), Gregory X (1271-76), Eugene III (1145-53), Urban II (1088-99), and Victor III(1086-87). Further, there are three Popes in addition to John Paul II who are styled “the Great” in the modern Church: St. Nicholas I (858-67), St. Gregory I (590-604), and St. Leo I (440-61). There have been 78 Popes (out of 265) that have been canonized, 73 of whom died before 890 (not 1890, mind, but 890, or some 1,120 years ago).

There is, of course, a bit of misunderstanding as to the process of canonization. Sainthood is not merely an honor or a title bestowed by the Church on people of high esteem. It’s not like Knighthood in the UK, for example. In fact, the Church does not, by declaration, make a person a saint. Canonized saints are those people the Church professes to already be in Heaven. There are thousands (no one is sure precisely how many) of canonized saints, and an untold number of those who are in Heaven, but not canonized. (For example, the Catholic Church teaches that if you repent your sins and receive the sacrament of confession soon before you die, and you commit no mortal sins during the last hours of your life, you will go to heaven. That’s an oversimplified explanation, but it will do for now.) As I understand it (and I could be wrong), canonizing particular individuals gives Catholics examples to follow in our own path to sainthood (eternal life in Heaven, rather than eternal torment in Hell).

You’re going to hear (as you probably already have) how the Republicans are to blame for the recent budget mess. The media will tell you that if the Republican-led House of Representatives had just passed a budget that was acceptable to Senate Democrats, there wouldn’t have been all this shutdown talk. You’ll hear how Republicans put a higher priority on shutting down funding for “women’s health” than on getting a budget deal done, and it was only the Democrats who pulled us back from the abyss by finding an equitable compromise.

You’ll hear it, but don’t believe a word of it. It is the Democrats, not the Republicans, who should be blamed for the recent budget mess.

First and foremost, the 2011 budget was due at the end of September, 2010. In September, 2010 the Democrats still held majorities in both houses of Congress. I’ve heard that budget bills can’t be filibustered, but I don’t know that for sure, but even so, there were enough Republicans who frequently side with the Left in the Senate to curb any possible filibusters. Basically, it boils down to this:  There was absolutely no reason the Democrats couldn’t have passed just about any budget they wanted on time last year. 

But they didn’t. I don’t recall that they even bothered to attempt to pass a budget and it got bogged down. And if they had passed a budget on time last year, we wouldn’t have had continuing resolution after continuing resolution and the threat of a shutdown until just two days ago. So the question is not “who’s at fault?” it’s “Why didn’t the Democrats pass a budget on time?” I don’t know for sure, but there are a few possibilities.

1. With 2010 being an election year, the Democrats believed that they still had a shot at maintaining control of the House (where budget bills originate). Knowing that a massive tax-n-spend bill would have sunk them, they figured they’d still have control of the house after the election, so they could just do it after the election had solidified their hold on Congress. That scenario makes them both blind to the political realities and motivated more by keeping their jobs than doing them, just like a lot of other federal workers.
2. The Democrats knew they were going to get beat in the House but still had the White House and, barring an unprecedented electoral disaster, the Senate (most likely), so they could play the obstructionists and still blame the Republicans for not passing an “acceptable compromise” budget plan – i.e. one acceptable to the Democrats. This scenario makes the Democrats look petty, stooping to dishonest political games to undermine their opponents before their opponents even win. It also shows that the Democrats know that they can’t win on the issues, so they need to play these political games to run the government.
3. The Democrats had no idea whether they would win or lose in 2010, so they figured that they could either push it off till after the election – why take a chance on losing votes because you voted for more irresponsible government spending – or use it to demonize the Republicans.
4. They simply got lazy and figured that since the people would inevitably vote for them, they could just let the budget mess ride until after the election, and concentrate on the campaign, which is a lot more fun than assembling and passing a budget. That scenario, of course, makes them out to be both lazy and stupid for assuming that they could coast to an electoral victory.

Anyway you look at it, the fact that we even had a budget fight this year points to the Democrats either being stupid and lazy; or cynical, mean-spirited, dishonest, and petty. They could and should have passed a budget on time, and didn’t.

The pettiness went on full display when the Senate Democrats were presented with budgets from the House Republicans, and rejected them. It got to a point where the Republicans were blamed for including a budgetary measure regarding cuts to funding for a non-profit, non-government organization, and it was played as a “policy” move that was “unacceptable” to Democrats. If our national media was as right-wing as it currently is left-wing, the headline would go something like this: Democrats Want to Fund Planned Parenthood Abortionists Over Servicemen in Afghanistan. Because that’s what actually happened. The measure to cut government funds to the abortionist corporation was, in fact, a budgetary measure. It dealt with federal expenditures. To call it a policy measure is to make a distinction without a difference. All budget measures are policy measures, because you are choosing to fund or not fund agencies or organizations to fit your preferences.  As long as the bill dealt with where federal funds go, it’s a budget measure. The Democrats are so deeply in bed with the abortion lobby that they, not the Republicans, held up the budget over federal abortion funding. The Republicans passed a budget, the Democrats rejected it over abortion.

Responsibility for the budget crisis is solely and expressly on the shoulders of the Democrats. They had ample opportunity to either pass a budget of their own, or to pass the Republicans’ budget, and they didn’t. Don’t let them forget it next November

It’s interesting how the Left tackles the issues of the day. A tragedy strikes, they drum up a boogeyman – who, strangely enough, just so happens to be some issue with which the Left disagrees – and they lay into it, hoping to get enough people to see the tragedy that was “caused” by whatever the issue is that they will support the Left’s efforts to suppress the issue. For example:

-          School shootings from Columbine to Virginia Tech all originate from the availability of guns.

-          Terrorist acts from the Beirut Marine Barracks to 9/11 all stemmed from justifiable Muslim anger at American policies in the Middle East.

-          World War II has been painted as a war of racist aggression by the US.

-          “More wars have been fought over religion than any other reason.”

-          Nidal Hassan murdered 12 soldiers, a civilian, and an un-born child because he was stressed out by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now we have another such tragedy, Jared Loughner’s murder of six people and wounding of another 14, including Congressman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). And, true to form, the Left has dragged out their boogeyman. Although, interestingly, guns weren’t the target, this time.

Democrats lost about as badly as they could have in the last election. Going from a large majority to a minority in the House of Representatives, and losing almost every vulnerable seat in the Senate (thus losing their precious Filibuster-proof majority). As time progresses, barring a dramatic shift to the right, the likelihood of a similar defeat in 2012 looms heavily on the horizon. So the Democrats are faced with a dilemma: Either abandon some of their core beliefs that are 193° out of phase with the general population (I say 193° as opposed to 180° because while 180° is directly opposite, it still draws a nice, neat graph), or face the prospect of a resounding defeat in 2012 that could pave the way for undoing some of the damage done. Enter Jared Lee Loughner. 

That Loughner’s primary target was a Democrat gave the Left all the ammunition they needed. “It must have been because of all the fiery Conservative rhetoric the last two years,” they told us. Immediately after the shooting, images of Sarah Palin’s website showing what could be crosshairs over vulnerable Democrats’ districts appeared on every newscast in America. The same people who, days after Nidal Hassan’s murders in Texas in 2009, after it was apparent that he was a lifelong Muslim and had been slowly radicalizing over the years, were telling us not to “jump to conclusions,” pounced on the idea that Loughner was a reactionary Conservative who was spurred to action by reactionary Conservative rhetoric before the body of Christina-Taylor Green (the 9-year-old poster child for this tragedy) was cold.

To say that there is no evidence to link Loughner to Conservative activism is to grossly understate the matter. In fact, the evidence that does exist tends to indicate quite the opposite. To the extent that Loughner was sufficiently competent to form a coherent political opinion, his opinions generally tended Left. He had Communist and Nazi materials in his home. He was allegedly one of those “9/11 Truthers” more likely to follow the insane rhetoric of Cynthia McKinney than the possibly easily misinterpreted – and by no means unique – symbolism on Sarah Palin’s website. In school, he believed that language was relative, and how he decided to use grammar was his prerogative under the First Amendment. It was this belief (and the fact that his professors graded his grammar poorly) that got him angry enough to get himself kicked out of the local Community College. So even if political views had anything to do with the shootings – and I guarantee they did not – it would have been his radical Leftist views, not his reactionary Conservative views.

So why not just say “this guy was nuts” and prosecute him to the fullest extent of Arizona Law? Why all the grandstanding about how Conservative views motivated him?

As I said, the Democrats see the writing on the wall. They know that without their own shift to the Right or the American people’s shift to the Left, they will lose the White House and Congress in the next election. Since shifting to the right would mean attenuating support for same-sex “marriage”, increasing support for lower taxes and less spending, working harder to disguise illegal immigration “amnesty” programs, and letting the ObamaCare monstrosity be repealed, they would vastly prefer a populace more willing to accept their views, rather than changing their views to match the populace. And the way the Democrats convince people to accept their views has, historically, been to demonize the opposing viewpoint. Haven’t you ever wondered how opposing Global Warming legislation makes you a racist?

A quick Postscript: Consider how the Left responds to Freedom of Speech. They demand its protection when they are defending pornography, the release of government secrets to foreign agencies or the public at large, and Imams who preach the violent overthrow of our government – none of which was ever considered protected speech and all of which have been crimes in and of themsleves. On the other hand, Conservative speech against Left-wing causes is branded as “inflammatory rhetoric” or “hate speech” and must be suppressed because it might cause someone to commit a crime.

I think I’ve figured it out. I think, after reading articles, columns and comments on the Townhall website for many years, I think I’m about to fathom the unfathomable: how the Leftist’s thought process works, and why the Left is wrong on just about everything.

The modern Leftist (also called: Democrat, Liberal, and Progressive) has formed his entire philosophy around closed-minded secular-humanism. The revelation I’ve had isn’t so much that the Left is made up of closed minded people and secular humanists – those are obvious hallmarks of modern Leftism, but that closed-minded secular-humanism is the totality of Left-wing philosophy.

A bit of explanation: Secular-humanism is – in the most oversimplified description possible – the belief that humanity is inherently good. Humanism rejects the notion of God and, instead, takes the position that humanity is the source of goodness and morality; thus, any individual can decide for himself what “goodness and morality” means, hence the “moral relativist” stance, at least as it pertains to people who behave aberrantly according to Judeo-Christian morals.

Since humanity is inherently good, but there are some obvious examples of evil humans –Adolph Hitler and the Nazis, Conservatives, Businessmen, serial killers, maybe even Osama bin Laden – then inherently good humans must be corruptible; that is, humans can be made to do evil things through outside influences. Since outside influences can corrupt inherently good people, those outside influences must, themselves, be inherently evil.

Consider: Some businessmen have done evil things to improve their businesses. We’ve all heard the stories about the exploitation of labor, particularly in the late 1800s – at the time of the Industrial Revolution – and continuing through to this day, if the Labor Unions are to be believed. More reliably, we’ve seen what has happened to Enron, MCI, and other companies that have failed after questionable or outright evil business practices ended up undermining their bottom line. To the secular-humanist, this can only mean that for-profit business is, itself, evil and has corrupted what otherwise might have been good human beings. Further, for-profit business, having its root in money, is evil because money is itself evil. In fact, they often believe they are quoting the Bible – thus pointing the finger at alleged Christian hypocrisy – when they say “money is the root of all evil.” To the humanist, those wealthy people the Left favors – actors, personal injury lawyers, media personalities, and wealthy people with extreme leftist views (George Soros comes to mind) – are able to rise above the corruption that money and business create.

Closed-mindedness is also part-and-parcel to the Leftist’s line of thought. The open-minded person readily sees that there are exceptions to his argument. A conservative who favors private business over government understands that there are the Enrons of the world – companies run by people who do evil things – and is not surprised when that sort of thing happens. The closed-minded person cannot see that their argument can be wrong in some specific instances. They not only believe without even unreasonable doubt that their worldview must be the correct one but they believe that anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their worldview must subscribe to the exact opposite, and use the inevitable exceptions to show how wrong the opposing worldview is. In this way, the closed-minded secular-humanist – who, himself, believes that man is inherently good but can be corrupted by evil things such as money – believes so strongly in his worldview that he imposes the direct opposite on they who disagree. The Leftist thinks that the conservative fanatically believes that while people are inherently evil (which is true), some inanimate objects (businesses, guns, money, etc) are inherently good. Thus, when a business inevitably does something illegal or immoral, or someone misuses a gun, or someone does something out of greed, it is absolute proof that the conservative is absolutely wrong. No further argument is needed, and the Leftist wins.

But that’s not what conservative Christians believe.

Christians, generally, believe that the only inherent goods are God and His Holy Church. We have some internal disagreement as to what “His Holy Church” means – I think it means the Catholic Church, so I will use it in my examples – but God and His Church are, to the believing Christian, inherent goods. In fact they are the only inherent goods. Objects, organisms, and concepts are, at best, morally neutral, neither inherently good nor inherently evil. As a matter of fact, it is impossible for any of those to be either good or evil, because good and evil imply willful, moral choice, and neither a gun, nor a business charter, nor a dolphin has the capacity make a willful, moral decision. A gun can be used to commit a heinous crime – like killing 12 soldiers, a civilian, and an un-born child while blaspheming God’s name – or it can be used to protect the innocent – like stopping an evil Muslim terrorist before he kills more soldiers and civilians. Nuclear energy can power or destroy entire cities. A business can be operated legally, morally, and honestly, or it can be used to bend the law, exploit its workers, and cheat its customers. Government can be used to protect people’s rights or destroy them. It’s all in how the object is used.

It is the Left’s absolute faith in a deified humanity that leads them to their social policy agenda. They believe that people, being inherently good, will not abuse their entitlement programs. They believe that guns and businesses, being inherently evil, must be either outright banned, or, at least, heavily regulated. They believe that the planet, being inherently good (and unchanging) must be protected from exploitation by evil businesses at all costs. They believe that wealth is inherently evil, and the wealthy must, for their own good, be relieved of their wealth. They believe that conservatism is evil (a) because it favors that which the Left hates, (b) because it recognizes the inherently evil nature of man, and (c) because it promotes intolerance of “different” (what we call aberrant or sinful) behaviors and ideas. They believe that Government is inherently good – being a force against the evils of guns, business, wealth, and intolerance – and when government turns evil it is because those in it have been corrupted by money or conservatism.

Contrast that to the God-fearing Christian conservative: The rights and privileges we enjoy as Americans are given to us by God, and are to be protected from government interference. We should live our lives not by what we think is right, but what God teaches is right through His Holy Church. We believe that charity is a great virtue, but legally enforced “charity” is not virtuous at all. We believe that if a person lives as God demands, he doesn’t need a nanny government looking over his shoulder as he runs his business or buys a gun, but if he misuses that which he has, he should and will be punished. We believe laws are needed precisely because people are inherently evil, and even those who are professed Christians will stray from the straight and narrow path from time to time. And we understand that even those inanimate things we favor can be misused to devastating effect and when that happens, the person who misuses the object is at fault, not the object itself.

Finally, just in case some Liberal is still reading, the actual biblical quote comes from St. Paul’s first letter to Timothy: Chapter six, verse 10, and it reads, “…the love of money is the root of all evils…” It isn’t money that’s evil, it’s the disordered desire for money, an all too human trait.

The federal appeals system – particularly, the usually leftist-activist Appeals Court for the 9^th Circuit – will soon begin reviewing the illogical ruling by gay US District Judge Vaughn Walker that the California Constitutional Amendment restricting marriage to normal couples violates the due process and equal treatment clauses of the 14^th Amendment to the US Constitution. With the understanding that I am neither a lawyer nor a Constitutional scholar, there are some simple facts that even the layman can understand that I would hope the federal appellate courts would take into account in ruling on this matter:

Fact 1: Judge Walker’s pronouncements to the contrary notwithstanding, same-sex intimate relationships are inherently biologically unequal to normal intimate relationships. The biological goal of sex is procreation. When a male and female of any species copulate, the intention, in general, is to create children. This works for every living thing that reproduces sexually. That sex is a pleasurable experience is a necessary side-effect. If sex were a chore, humanity wouldn’t exist, because humans would concentrate more on self preservation than continuation of the species. We see this today in the industry that supports pornography, contraception, abortion, and homosexuality – all activities intended to pervert the purpose of sex from procreation to mere pleasure. But the bottom line is that normal couples, absent certain unfortunate abnormal conditions – some by choice, some by illness or injury – can, by their copulation, create new life and, in the coldest, most analytical description possible, continue the species.

Homosexual copulation cannot, under any conceivable circumstance, produce children. There’s no pill you can take, there’s no operation you can have, there’s no law that can be written, there’s no court decision that can be rendered, there’s no biblical verse that can be misinterpreted so as to grant that ability to two men or two women without significant outside help. It is physiologically impossible for a same-sex couple to have a child that is uniquely and jointly theirs. In the closest conceivable circumstance, a child of one would be a niece or nephew of the other (if one partner somehow either got the other’s sister pregnant, or if the other’s brother got the first partner pregnant, depending on the type of relationship). It is in procreation that the inherent unequality of homosexual and normal relationships is based. From that stems the moral and legal unequality that are inherent in the two types of relationships.

Fact 2: I’m not sure what a leftist-activist judge thinks when he reads “due process”, but I’m sure he and I don’t think the same way. To my understanding, due process means approximately this: A law is passed and executed in the manner prescribed in the constitution concerned. The law is enforced by the agency so designated in the law. The courts are brought in to mediate disputes that arise under the law, and the decisions are rendered based on the text of the law. Due process cannot be violated by a law in and of itself, only by treatment under a law (illegal search and seizure, torturing for confessions, other violations of the rights of the accused as set forth in the US Constitution, passing law by executive or judicial fiat, etc.) Since California’s Proposition 8 Amendment was passed in accordance with California’s Constitution, as confirmed by California’s court system, there can be no “due process” violations, best I can figure.

Fact 3: The central proposition in Judge Walker’s ruling was that defining marriage as one man and one woman somehow amounts to “unequal treatment.” His contention is based on the fallacious idea that same-sex and opposite-sex relationships are functionally identical, an idea I showed to be incorrect a few paragraphs ago. Inherently, a law defining marriage as one man and one woman does not violate the idea of equal treatment because the law applies identically to everyone. There are, however, a number of people who choose not to marry in accordance with that law. Catholic priests and religious cannot claim unequal treatment because they choose, by their calling, not to wed. Certain people choose not to marry because they prefer to live a life of bachelorhood or because they choose to act in a promiscuous, and irresponsible manner, and, thus, cannot claim unequal treatment. Likewise gays choose not to marry because normal man-woman relationships do not suit them. Further, the argument that marriage law should allow a person to marry “the person they love” regardless of sex ignores the simple fact that marriage law already restricts a number of other relationships. Under the theory put forth by gay privileges activists and accepted in Judge Walker’s courtroom, a man should be able to marry (and, thus, legally copulate with) his sister, his daughter, someone else’s wife (while she’s still married to the other person), a second wife (while still married to his first wife), a child under the age of 16, and in extreme cases (that you know would make their way into the courtrooms if they could) his dog. All of which (except the dog, of course) have some degree of historical precedent that man-man “marriage” lacks, even in societies that were historically accepting of homosexuality.

Fact 4: Finally there is the greater societal aspect that Judge Walker couldn’t see when he made his ruling. We have a case that started last year where a lesbian couple in Vermont decided to break up because one of the women decided she wasn’t a lesbian.  That woman has a biological daughter that the couple had been raising. The courts, in a bout of insanity almost equal to Judge Walker’s, actually ruled that the non-biological “parent” should have custody. The biological mother has since left Vermont and is probably on the run on a kidnapping rap for taking her daughter from her former lesbian partner. We have seen in jurisdictions where same-sex “marriage” is allowed that there is an abridgment on the free practice of religion inherent in an “anything goes” society. In Massachusetts, the Catholic Charities adoption agency was forced to either allow gay couples adopt – in violation of Catholic teaching – or shut down. They chose the latter. In Canada, a lesbian couple wanted to have their “wedding” reception at a Knights of Columbus (a Catholic men’s organization) hall. When the Knights refused – again, citing religious practice – the couple sued. Throughout the “free world” we have ministers and priests sanctioned because they preach the biblical truth on homosexuality. How long before a Catholic priest is fined or imprisoned for discriminating against a gay couple that wants to be “married” in the Church? How long before a Baptist minister loses his church’s tax exempt status under the same circumstances? How long before religious organizations will not be allowed to provide adoption services, marriage counseling, or even basic charitable services because they refuse, based on their beliefs, to recognize same-sex couples as “married?” Worse, how many will be legally forced to change their core beliefs to suit this political monstrosity?

So, apparently, the developers of the Park51 project have decided to ask for Federal funds. What’s Park51, you ask? It’s the official name for what Conservatives call the Ground Zero Mosque in New York City, the mosque that a group called the Cordoba Initiative intends to build 600 feet from the site of Islamist barbarism, 9 years and some change ago. So I can be absolutely clear about this, a Muslim religious organization is requesting federal (and state, for that matter) funds to build a new place of worship (as opposed to replacing an existing one) on the site of a building that was damaged in the 9/11 attacks.

Obviously there are multiple problems with this request. First of all is the fully warranted public opposition to the project in the first place. Sure, they have the right to build a mosque on land they own, but did they need to own that particular plot of land? Given Islam’s history of building mosques in conquered lands, one could see how the sensibilities of New Yorkers and Americans, in general, might be offended a little. But we’ve covered that ground, here and elsewhere, so that’s the last I’ll say about it.

Secondly, there’s the whole idea of federal funds to build a house of worship. If it were replacing an existing mosque that was damaged in the attacks, I might – that’s might – go along with it (but, see below). If it were a Christian group asking for federal funds to build a new church, the Anti-Christian Liberties Union would be all over the “Establishment” clause. The Left can’t even tolerate the idea of a cross that exists in the public view, so much so that if the public land on which the cross sits is transferred to private hands, Atheists sue to stop the transfer so the cross must be destroyed. The Leftist media should be squawking loudly about this. It should be a Front-page headline on every newspaper in the land, and the lead story at the top of the half hour on CNN Headline News. But it’s not going to be. Yesterday, I only noticed it as an un-linked headline in Townhall, and today, a quick check of major media outlets, (CNN, the Washington Post, LA Times, NY Times, and Chicago Tribune, etc.) showed nothing. If you don’t look at Fox News, you don’t even know what’s going on.

Finally, this wouldn’t be nearly as bad except that lost in whatever hubbub the proposed mosque is generating is the fact that the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church that was crushed by the falling towers hasn’t even been granted a permit to rebuild. Forget funding, the city hasn’t even said they can break ground. Muslims are asking for federal dollars so they can build a shiny, new mosque 600 feet from the site of Muslim barbarism, and yet some of the victims of that barbarism can’t even get the necessary permits to rebuild a Christian church that was destroyed by the selfsame barbarians.

I will be interested to see what the Federal Government will do about this. The right thing to do would be to deny funding to the mosque on the grounds that the Federal Government can’t fund the building of houses of worship, and the permit process should be stalled until St. Nicholas’s is rebuilt in its entirety. If Park51’s Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is truly interested in interreligious dialog as he claims, perhaps, he could find it in his heart to support – both with his words and his checkbook – the rebuilding the Christian church that members of his religion destroyed before he builds his own Mosque. Of course, if he were concerned with ecumenism, he wouldn’t be building a conqueror’s mosque and asking the victims to pay for it.

A year or so ago, Virginia voters elected, in a landslide, three very conservative Republicans to the three elected executive offices (Governor, Lt. Gov., and Attorney General) in Virginia’s government. This was not even 9 months into the reign of Barack Obama as President of the United States, and barely a year after, in the words of the Nigerian edition of the Guardian newspaper, “the word was made flesh” and a black man was elected President of the United States. The electoral high created by the victory of a black Leftist over the policies and goals of the hated Bush-the-younger administration had long ago died out as the nation began to realize that having George W. Bush in office wasn’t nearly as bad as having an extreme Leftist in power. Virginia responded not merely with a rebuke for the party in power both in the state and the country, but with a double slap in the face of a near 20% victory by ideological opposites of the folks on the other side of the Potomac River. It is a rare occasion that all three executives hail from the same party in this very purple state, and rarer still that all three are Republicans. But the petals fell off the Obama rose so quickly and with such force that a backlash was inevitable.

Fast forward a year, and a similar backlash was felt nation-wide. The Democrats took huge losses in the House of Representatives and state governorships, and lost the few Senate seats that were up for grabs that weren’t in entrenched blue states. Furthermore, in that bluest of states back in April, a Republican won the special election for the senate seat vacated by the death of Ted Kennedy. The news of the time was that a Democrat victory was inevitable in “Kennedy’s seat.” But it was not to be. To make matters even worse (from the Democrats’ point of view), the Senate seats up for grabs in 2012 are mainly Democrats with a few entrenched Republicans. Finally, Barack Obama hasn’t shown any sign that he understands the gravity of this election. Like most Democrats he’s focusing more on the fact that the Republicans couldn’t regain the senate in a year – when they already had half the seats up for grabs, and the rest were, as I said, entrenched Democrats – than the fact that they made massive gains in the House and the governors’ mansions. He shows no sign of changing tack, an attitude that will probably get him beat by a ham sandwich.

So, what to do about it? Here’s my two cents: Republicans should nominate a strong conservative for the Presidency in 2012. We don’t need another John McCain, or Bob Dole, or George (anything) Bush. All the “moderates” and “centrists” in the party ought to be thrown out like yesterday’s newspaper. Nominate the anti-Obama: someone who takes a hard conservative line on abortion, government spending, taxes, gay privileges, guns, national security, religion, race relations, international relations, trade, business, healthcare, immigration, crime, and every other position on which our current President takes a hard Left stance. No, I’m not shilling for Sarah Palin (though, I’d vote for her in a half-second) or any other candidate, for that matter. I don’t know specifically who that candidate should be, but I do know that the line of “moderates” we’ve been handed haven’t gotten the job done, and we’ve gotten a taste of what the Extreme Left will do, so let’s give the far right a chance. What’s the worst that could happen? The far-right candidate loses and we have to endure another 4 years of Marxist/Obamist governance? How’s that different from nominating a moderate in 2008? If a conservative doesn’t fare well in 2012, do you really think a moderate will fare better? They rarely do. I’d wager that people will be more willing to vote for someone whose positions are distinguishable from the current administration’s, given the current administration’s declining popularity. If you can’t tell the two apart, why take a devil you don’t know in favor of one you do know?

Politics is a funny thing. Everyone talks about America being a centrist nation (those on the right generally see center-right, those on the left generally see center-left), but when you get right down to it, on a national level, when Presidents lose and Congress switches parties, what sets it off? Did Gerald Ford lose in 1976 because he fought to free Vietnam? Did Jimmy Carter lose in 1980 because he moved to a centrist position from being solidly on the left? Did George H.W. Bush lose in 1992 because he held a hard conservative line on taxes? Did Bill Clinton keep the Presidency by pushing even harder for HilaryCare, open gays in the military, more taxes, and more spending? Did Ronald Reagan keep his seat by spending his first term softening his stance on Soviet aggression? Did Bush-the-Elder win his election because Reagan tacked toward center? Did George W. Bush win in 2004 because he was a spend-thrift?

The answer to all of those, of course, is “no.” See, the funny thing about America is that we are a generally purple nation. We are just as likely, generally, to elect a liberal as a conservative all other things being equal. But when it gets right down to it, we don’t want liberals in office, at least on the national stage. Yes, there are those Congressional seats that are firmly rooted in the Leftist base. California, Massachusetts, New York, Washington, and Oregon are the primary examples, as well as a lot of the urban areas in this country. But as a nation, if you look at recent history, the times that Liberals win on the whole are when conservatives have failed, usually at being conservative. Incumbent Presidential parties don’t win by moving or staying Left. Republicans don’t win when they nominate “moderates,” particularly in the presidential races. In an otherwise equal race, where the two candidates are equally strong, and the only differentiating factor is the message, the more conservative candidate will win in a nation-wide ballot. Republicans lost in 2006 and 2008 because the war had lost all its steam, and the Republican party, both on Capitol Hill and at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., was perceived to have abandoned its conservative base with the medicare spending and immigration issues. John McCain’s primary win put a “moderate” on the ticket against extremely Leftist Barack Obama, at a point when much of the nation didn’t pay much attention to Obama’s history, and took his pronouncements of bipartisanship and unification at face value. Once they had control of the government, they started pushing and implementing a host of Leftist agenda items: Government-spending-backed economic “stimulus;” a national, federally-backed healthcare system; government stake in the ownership and business decisions in the financial and manufacturing sectors; increased government payouts to the unemployed; appointing Leftist judges who argue that “empathy” for the aggrieved party is an important factor in rendering a decision – and one who believes that her race, sex, and economic background uniquely qualify her for the bench in favor of someone of a different race, sex, and economic background; abortion on demand; union coddling, including removing the secret ballot from union elections; forcing people to accept same-sex relationships as equal to marriage; etc. The next election saw them lose about as badly as they could have. 

The conclusion to draw here is simple: on the whole, we as a nation will elect someone conservative over someone Liberal. We’d much rather see Ronald Reagan than Barack Obama in the White House, and we put the latter there only when the Republicans abandon their conservative platform. George W. Bush didn’t win because he compromised with the Left, he won because he distinguished himself from the much more Left-wing Al Gore and John Kerry. John McCain didn’t lose because he was too conservative. In fact, his choice of a staunch conservative running mate actually made the Presidential race close than it otherwise would have been. He lost the race because Independent voters couldn’t tell the difference between McCain and Obama, and a lot of Republican voters didn’t want to hold their nose and vote for him. The bottom line is this: if Barack Obama doesn’t move toward Center after the rebuke handed him in the 2010 election, he will probably lose in 2012. You don’t win nationally in America by moving or staying Left.

The Left considers itself to be the more rational and scientific of the two sides of the political spectrum. They take this position as a way to frame their hostility toward religion. The line of thinking is that anything that is rationally explainable must not be miraculous, and, thus, must be a simple confluence of random events that can be attributable to something (anything) other than God. We commonly see this in the support for Darwinist evolutionary theory (that life on earth is the product of hundreds of millions of years of essentially random changes that, by the theory, must have extended all the way from random combinations of DNA in the primordial soup to the current diversity and complexity of life as we know it today). If Darwinist evolution holds water, there is no need to believe that God created Life. The Left uses science as a way to try to prove that God need not (and, thus, does not) exist.

I’ve considered a few ways to challenge this assertion, but I’ve been running into brick walls. There are mountains of evidence for the unscientific Left, but I’ve been having difficulty framing my comments.

Until now.

I could sit here and talk about the gaping holes in Darwinism. I could go on about the environmentalist frauds who claim that Man is warming the globe. I could even bring up that the people most likely to follow “new-age” religions, or believe in “crystal power,” or buy into all the 2012-apocalypse-slash-Mayan-Calendar garbage (which, incidentally is based on a calendar that indicates that creation is only a few thousand years old) are also about 100% likely to vote for the guy with a (D) after his name. But I’m not. In fact, that’s the last I’m going to mention of any of that in this column.

No, I’m going to argue that the Left is the less scientific of the political spectrum based on their unequivocal love of socialism.

The essence of science is data. Without data there is no way to devise the formulas that predict future events given a particular set of conditions. The data is gathered by observation, either of controlled experimentation or of natural conditions. Even those of us who have no scientific background or training do this on a regular basis. When you go outside on a cold day and the wind picks up, you observe that you feel colder. You develop the hypothesis that “wind seems to lower temperature.” You decide to observe the effect over the next several days, and the results are consistent: each time the wind blows you feel colder, and you observe that the intensity of the wind affects how cold you are. On a cold, winter morning, a light breeze is moderately uncomfortable, whereas a stiff wind is #%&* freezing! Therefore you develop a theory that wind makes you feel colder, and wind speed is directly proportional to the chilling effect. At dinner, you try to apply this theory by blowing on a spoonful hot soup to cool it to a temperature that won’t scald your mouth, and it works. From this you draw the conclusion that your theory is correct and you know the next time the wind is blowing it’s making things colder. Trained scientists do essentially the same thing, and with their mathematical and scientific backgrounds, and specialized equipment they can come up with more precise results than most laymen, and they will generally develop theories on why their results worked, thus making the predictive power of science that much more accurate. (If you know why something happens you can often either cause it to happen or not to happen, or you can have advanced warning of it happening and take steps to derive the most benefit or the least harm from the event.)

The most important part of all that is the data. If you have good data, you stand to get better results (presuming your experiments and observations are correct). If you have lousy data or you ignore data that don’t fit your theory, your conclusions will be worthless, as your theory will lack any sort of predictive ability, and it’s that predictive ability that makes science worthwhile.

The Left Wing obsession with socialism proves the lie in their “we’re more scientific” claims. Socialism, that is, the economic theory that the government should control the means of production and distribute wealth evenly among the masses, does not work. Period. Everywhere it has been tried, it has failed to a degree directly proportional to the intensity of the attempt. 

Countries that have tried partial socialism – nationalization of a segment of the economy, welfare states, burdensome regulation, and massive bureaucracies and public works projects intended to employ those without jobs – have seen those efforts drag their economies down. An example is the massive introduction of socialist behaviors into the US economy in the 1930s contrasted with the laissez faire (minimal government interference) policies of the 1980s. In the former, a recession grew into a massive depression that was only ended in the massive production upswing necessitated by World War II. In the latter, the economy hiccoughed in the mid 80s, but it boomed for 20 years thereafter, through (some might even say despite) three intervening presidents.

Countries that have tried total socialism (mostly Communist dictatorships) have failed totally. The USSR no longer exists. Some of the countries in the Communist Eastern Bloc either broke into their constituent parts (Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia) or were absorbed by other countries (East Germany), and the rest prospered after the yoke of communism was thrown off their backs. In fact, it has only been the ethnic fighting in what once was Yugoslavia that has kept the eradication of European Communism from being a near 100% success. In just about every other case, after the long road of transition, the former communist states in Europe are far better off now than they were in 1989. Cuba’s economy has been stagnant since the 1959 revolution, and North Korea is literally starving. China has even realized the economic burden of socialism and has prospered only after allowing some of its industry to be privatized.

Our economy effectively boomed all the way until the spend-thrift Democrats took over congress with the spend-thrift Republican George W. Bush in the White House. The first segments of the American economy to show signs of recession were those in which the Federal Government had a hand, particularly the housing market. The Government tried to artificially affect the demand for housing by “requesting” that banks loan to unqualified debtors in the name of diversity. Being a minority now became more important than your history of paying your bills on time or how much income you had when qualifying for a loan. As a result, housing prices skyrocketed, and banks were still “encouraged” to make bad loans. So people making $30,000 a year were buying houses for $350,000. Then, once the mortgage terms changed (rates adjust, interest-only becomes a standard loan, etc) people began to default. As the defaults happened banks lost money. Bad loans were bought by the Government (doing business as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and taxes threatened to rise to pay for the bad loans. Because people were having trouble paying for their homes, other companies began to experience pressure, among them the auto industry, as people were more disinclined to make large purchases “in this economy.” As the Obama Administration took office, the massive spending has merely deepened the recession with people and businesses knowing that they will have to pay for the Stimulus packages and ObamaCare before long. And that’s just a few examples of socialism’s built-in failures.

The problem with socialism is that the very premise on which it is founded is flawed. The most basic of Karl Marx’s tenets is “From each according to his talent to each according to his need.” Spelled out in longer form, socialism relies on the idea that all people will merely accept the fulfillment of their needs in order to willingly supply their talent for the good of the community. For this to work, one needs to make the assumption that people are inherently good and that altruism alone can motivate people in general.  For example, it is only altruism that would compel a doctor to endure 12 years of school, long and difficult hours, the stress that comes with being responsible for individals’ life and death decisions, and having to actually read medical journals merely for three hots and a cot.

As any true Christian knows, man is not inherently good, but inherently evil. We know this not only because it is what the Bible teaches, but because it is evident that, left to our own devices, we are more apt to do evil (sin) than good. Evil is easier and quicker, and our instinct is to get what we need in the easiest and quickest way possible. We must be taught to be good, hence the need for God’s guidance through religion. Thus an economic system based on the idea that everyone, (EVERYONE) will, out of the kindness of his heart, can’t possibly work because the starting premise is faulty.

Believers in the market economy (called “Capitalists,” though this is more pejorative than accurate) understand that people need incentives to behave a certain way. That’s why, for example, we have punitive laws that are intended to provide a disincentive to engage in certain behaviors. The incentive is money. Now, I’m not going to go on a Gordon Gecko rant and try to say that “Greed… is good.” It isn’t. Greed causes people to exploit, lie, defraud, steal, and kill. But the desire to reap what you sow is strong. If I do a day’s work, I expect a day’s pay, and if I have a skill set that not many have, I expect that day’s pay to be higher than a common, unskilled laborer. An auto mechanic makes more than a ditch digger because most anyone can wield a shovel, but not everyone has the tools and talent to change a piston or rebuild a transmission. Doctors and Lawyers make big money because of the time and effort it takes to train for those professions, and for doctors, their profession is inherently difficult. Professional athletes command what we consider obscene salaries because their skill set is nearly unique (fewer than 5,000 people work as elite professional athletes in a country of over 300,000,000, and many of the 5,000 are non-native) and their services are in high demand (people willingly pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars per person to watch these athletes do their job and advertisers pay billions every year to advertise on sports broadcasts, providing both the incentive for businessmen to sell athletes’ services and to pay the athletes elite salaries).

Despite what its supporters believe, socialism cannot stamp out inherent unfairness. In fact, at times it exacerbates it. In a free-market system, many perfectly qualified people are denied jobs for a variety of reasons, some good, some arbitrary, some discriminatory.  In a socialist system, sure everyone has a job, but either (a) highly-skilled workers will not be compensated commensurately to their skill (Why waste the time and effort to become a doctor, when I could be a DMV clerk and make the same living and have the same chance for advancement?) or someone wholly unqualified to make the decision will have to decide what constitutes the appropriate skill-level for each pay level. Sometimes the decision will be good, others will be arbitrary, and still others will be discriminatory. Furthermore, free-market economies, by their nature, offer incentive to succeed. The more successful you are, the better your standard of living, generally speaking. Without the incentive of improving your lot in life, there is no reason to excel. We see this in Government, now. There’s no profit motive with either the government as an organization (they can use deadly force to increase revenues if they have to) or government workers (pay raises are automatic, promotions are more often political than they are merit-based, and it is extremely difficult to fire someone for performance reasons, as assured by the unions). Therefore the government has no incentive to excel, so they only give the bare minimum effort in quality of service. We see this in products made by the Soviet Union and its satellites. High-profile or national security government projects were done fairly well (military equipment, the space program, etc) because failure could mean the GULAG. But consumer products and civil projects (like infrastructure) suffered from abysmal quality and short supply. (Could I interest you in a 1986 Yugo?)

The best example of the superiority of capitalism is Japan. Within 40 years after World War II, Japan went from being a war-torn society that was merely trying to recover their economy from the devastation wrought by the war they started to one of the biggest, most innovative, economies in the world. They didn’t do it with heavy-handed government regulation. They did it with the profit motive garnered in a free-market economy. How you can ignore all the data on socialism and support its implementation here in the US under any form, and, yet, still say you are more scientifically-minded and rational than I, a religious Conservative, I really don’t understand.

I'd wager I'm like most people in that I have my own wit and wisdom – catchphrases if you will – that are usually recognizable by they who know me. Some are meant to be amusing, others to make a point, still others simply to give insight into my mind.

1.      It’s always something simple.

I’m a trainer. That’s what I do. I get up in front of people and impart knowledge and expertise in the world of computers. I used to do it every day, but now I work more behind the scenes.

Since I work with and teach complex systems (computers) I’ve developed a knack for diagnosing problems. Modern computer programs (at least those that hope to make a profit) are designed in such a way that most operations are relatively simple, but it’s still easy to make mistakes. I’ve found that the vast majority of big problems can be traced back to one simple solution. The hard part isn’t implementing the solution, but finding it. Sometimes the solution jumps out at you, other times you have to dig.

I suppose it’s this philosophy, above all others, that makes me a conservative rather than a liberal. The Left is always trying to find “nuance,” to interpret the “hidden meaning” behind the words on the page, to reinterpret things based on how they feel at the time, or to uncover the “deeper issues” that may have lead to a particular problem. I tend to take a more “black-and-white” view of things more often than not.   Not that I’m always right, nor that face value is always the way to take things, but I always start with the presumption that the simplest solution is the right one, and it usually works.

2.      Life doesn’t have an “undo” button.

I came up with this saying when I started teaching computers because by that time (2000) most programs the average consumer was buying had an “undo” button to correct mistakes. I know that everyone has times in their lives they would rather reset. One beer company has even made a commercial based on that concept (I don’t remember which one, so you see how effective the commercial is). In the ad, a man has a time machine and uses it to try to prevent himself from saying or doing something idiotic – most of which seem to involve insulting or accidentally injuring some attractive woman. (The ad is much more amusing to see than for me to describe.) I’m sure everyone wishes they had that time machine, I know I do.

We have all heard that once you say something, you can’t take it back. We all have also heard that actions speak louder than words, and you usually can’t take those back either. When we say or do something stupid, we have to rely on the patience and forgiveness of the person we hurt to repair the damage to our reputations.

The way I get around the bad things that I have experienced, either through my own doing or the fault of other people, is that rather than harbor regret or resentment, I consider two positive things. One is that mistakes can be teaching tools. You usually learn not to touch the sharp end of the knife the first time you do it. The other is that my mistakes, pitfalls, and pain are part of what got me where I am today, which is in at least good enough shape to have a good wife, a good home, and the ability and means to write my stupid little blog posts.

3.      Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

There are two great examples of this in the news today. The first is the so-called “Park51” project – the “Ground Zero Mosque” supported by Feisal Abdul Raouf and his Cordoba Initiative. The second is the Dove World Outreach Center, a non-denominational protest church, akin to the Westboro Baptist Church, whose members intend to hold a Koran Burning ceremony this September 11, to commemorate the innocent lives lost in that atrocity committed by a group of Muslims 9 years ago. 

In both cases, I have stated my opposition to the respective groups’ plans, and that opinion seems to be joined by a great many of my fellow Americans. I find both the building of a mosque almost right on top of the site of an act of barbarism perpetrated by a few Muslims acting (rightly or wrongly, it doesn’t matter) in the name of Islam, and the burning of another religion’s scripture, even if I have a very low opinion of that scripture, to be arrogant and insulting. At the same time, however, both groups can do what they are trying to do. They have that right under our laws. The Dove World Outreach Center has as much a legal right to burn Korans as the Cordoba Initiative has to build a mosque less than 600 feet (two football fields) from a site where almost 3,000 people were killed by barbaric Muslims (probably the closest site they could find to the point of attack).

While President Obama has gone on record citing the right of Feisal Abdul Raouf to build his mosque wherever he wants, he conspicuously did not comment on the wisdom thereof. I will. Both the Mosque-building Muslims and the Koran-burning Christians are in the wrong. They are doing something that certainly appears to be an aggressive gesture intended to insult someone else and provoke them into an even more wrong response.

Having the right to do something does not make doing that something right. We still must demand a sense of propriety and an understanding of right and wrong from ourselves before we take an action that we are able to do.

4.      There’s a time and a place for everything, and work usually isn’t it.

I usually break this one out when someone gets caught doing something patently stupid at work and either the perpetrator or random members of the Left start screaming “privacy rights!” For example, when someone gets fired for spending hours on end viewing pornography on a company computer and not doing his job. Or when someone gets caught pursuing a workplace romance in the broom closet or an executive office. Or when someone brings his guns to work to “jokingly” threaten another coworker, who responds by displaying his own arsenal. I could go on, but the point is made.

Work is for work. Someone pays you to perform some task, and to perform it well. Not merely “to the best of your ability” but objectively well. If your work rules allow for some down time and limited private use of company equipment, be thankful. Other offices watch like a hawk. The degree to which you, personally, are watched is usually inversely proportional to your productivity and your quality of work. And even if you work in a very loose environment with lots of down time, you should still be judicious about what you do. If you are surfing the web for gambling and porn, you should not complain when you are fired. Making crude comments, using foul language, telling racist jokes may all be part of your personality at home, but that sort of thing doesn’t fly in the workplace. I try to keep my political and religious views subdued when I’m on the job because people don’t care to hear them. They are much more interested in my opinion of the document I have to review, or how to use the “undo” button.

5.      Religion's purpose is to bend man to God's will, not to bend God to man's will.

This one comes out when “Progressive” clergy make a declaration that something in the Bible no longer applies to modern life. Most commonly, anymore, I bring it up for one of two reasons: homosexuality and universalism. I have been taken to task on comments I made some time ago that V. Gene Robinson, the gay Episcopal Bishop ought not, because of his open, active homosexual behavior, be a member of the clergy. My contention is that the job of a clergyman, whether a priest, minister, imam, rabbi, monk or whatever is to effect the salvation of his congregation. He should, therefore, be making an effort to bend the will of men to match that of God. When a moral authority – as a clergyman is, by nature – proclaims that something is right or wrong, the people who trust his authority will tend to believe it. The trouble arises when the clergyman gets it wrong, as happens from time to time. Teaching that directly contradicts scripture is where this comes up. For example, stating, as someone did a few years ago, but I don’t remember exactly where it came from, that the Holy Spirit has now said that the Biblical prohibition on homosexuality is no longer valid, and that committing homosexual acts is now OK is one such case. It becomes a case of trying to bend God’s will to match that of men. Without going into too much detail, here (I have elsewhere) God’s going to win that argument one way or another. Either you’ll (in the best case) realize your error and repent and reform your ways, or you’re going to end up looking at a black gate inscribed with the words “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” and behind you will be all the people you led astray.

God’s word doesn’t change just because it’s unpopular. In fact, God’s word is going to be unpopular, and He knows it. I commented on the Gospel of John a year ago, relating how one of my priests explained it. In the short version, the priest noted that when Jesus stated, “unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you shall not have life within you,” and a large number of his followers complained that his message was “hard” and they stopped following him, he didn’t change his message when his “polls were down.” In fact, in the reading I cited (and included in the post for convenience) he makes the point even more plainly and less ambiguously the second time. Just because secular society has accepted the idea that there’s nothing wrong with homosexual behavior, abortion, or the idea that there are many paths to eternal salvation, does not mean that God does. Religion is not supposed to make you feel good about yourself. A clergyman has only done his job when you look at yourself and realize that you are doing something wrong, and work hard to fix it. Anything less is dereliction of duty.

6.      It's all about control.

I mention this one frequently when I’m talking about the policies of the Left. The Leftist elite are trying to control your life. Period. In the Leftist utopia, the elites will have control over every aspect of the lives of the proletariat, and the proletariat will rely on the elites for everything they have. That’s how we ended up with the Soviet Union and the other Communist nations out there. Think about it. When the Left talks about rights people have, they proclaim those rights to be something that the government must provide. You have, for example, the right to healthcare, so the government must provide it. You have the right to shelter, so the government must provide it. You have the right to a certain standard of living, so the government must provide the means for you to achieve it. But nothing the government provides increases freedom. Government health insurance restricts the type of care you receive, forces you (or others) to pay for care you don’t want, and places a monetary value on your health and life, and when the cost of care exceeds that arbitrary value, the care is reduced accordingly, or you are encouraged to enter “end of life counseling.” Government housing is like rental property, but with lower quality. You do not own the home, you borrow it from the government. Government entitlements require that you do not earn too much money on your own accord, and that amount of earning is usually lower than the government’s dole, especially when taxes are considered. The aim of entitlement programs is to keep you dependent upon them so that you will vote for the people who will keep those programs in place.

Even when the Left declares rights that don’t necessarily require government intervention to procure, control is the larger issue. The Left proclaims freedom of speech only when it suits the Left. When someone criticizes the Left, they say something like "I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking." (Short version: shut up and stop opposing me while I blame you for my mess and make efforts to deepen the mess). When the Left declares a right to engage in homosexual behavior, it’s often to gin up opposition to Christian Churches that preach objective morality and personal responsibility. Why? So that the Government, run by the Elite Left, can become the sole arbiter of morality.