The Noble Pundit

Happy Easter

Just wanted to take a moment to let everyone know that I am still alive, just been working my tail off this week and to wish everyone a Happy Easter. Regular posting will be resuming as soon as I get a little bit of time.

Cultural Relativism

A few days back, Beth Donovan posted a list over at We The People, entitled What this convservative stands for. Jack at Random Fate has taken the list and posted his own point-counterpoint list: What this Centrist stands for.

All in all, I can both Beth's and Jack's points of view. But I did find Jack's counterpoint to Beth's point #4 about the superiority of Western culture and within Western culture of American culture interesting and also in disagreement with my own beliefs.

Now Jack eventually comes to the same judgment as Beth (and me, also), but he certainly goes about it in a much more roundabout way.

I agree that not all values/cultures/morals are equal, but I also get angry when people proclaim how superior Western culture is when a very short examination of even very recent history will show how many of the things we decry about fundamentalist Islam were very much a part of Western culture even within the last 100 years. (PLEASE NOTE: I am NOT saying here what Beth believes, do not think I am speaking about her views in any way here, I am referring to a general trend I have observed in the blogosphere.) It is still less than 50 years since people were lynched for being the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is still less than 50 years since we had laws enforcing the relegation of people to the back of the bus or to certain water fountains because of the color of their skin. It is less than 100 years since Western civilization unleashed chlorine gas on a battlefield to indiscriminately kill enemies. It is less than 65 years since a significant part of Western civilization had a program to kill Jews, a program that was set up by an elected government that turned murder into a horror on a mass-production scale with the acceptance and active participation of the population. Women did not have the right to vote in the United States until 1920, well into the twentieth century, and even now in the twenty first century women are not treated completely equally as men. You don't even have to look back 10 years to find an instance in Texas where a black man was chained and dragged behind a truck by two white men because of the color of the victim's skin. If we are going to argue cultural relativism, we should look to our own history and how our culture evolved before we pronounce the death sentence on another culture. I do believe Western civilization has evolved and is now better than it was before, and I believe it is better than fundamentalist Islamic culture.

There is nothing wrong with Jack's analysis. Everything he says is true (although I would argue that the despicable actions of two men in a pickup truck a culture does not make). I just think that there was a lot of extraneous thought that went into his determination.

All of the evils he speaks of did happen here. All of the evils spoken of here, have been, generally, evolved out of our culture. We don't treat women like property. We don't indiscrimiately gas people anymore. We don't lynch or execute people for being the wrong religion, color or creed. This things simply are not a generally accepted part of our culture anymore. Can we say the same about the fundamentalist Islamic cultures? Of course not.

See, I believe that there is a certain threshold of civility that a civilization should have to achieve before this kind of analysis is warranted. The French have achieved this minimum threshold, which means that we could justifyably debate the relavtive merit of their culture. Islam, which hasn't evolved in the few centuries does not meet my minimum threshold. Therefore, I find this kind of examination superfluous.

For cultures that are constantly changing and evolving, a kind of relativist examination of similar cultures can be an important part of the process of evolution. It is how we examine new ideas that might make our own culture better.

But relativism only works to better culture when the two cultures being compared are on a similar plane. Medieval western society could be legitimately compared to modern Islamic fundamentalism, but modern western culture has discarded so many of its less desirable traits that it is no longer on the same plane. It is superior, without question or need to defend, than Islamic fundamentalism.

It is really telling when in comparing the plight of inequality towards women, we discuss the ownership of women against unequal pay. Abortion rights vs. honor killings. How much more divergent can you truly get?

Again, I have nothing against Jack's assessment, I just believe that such an assessment vis-á-vis Western culture vs. Islamic fundamentalism is unnecessary. Until such time as Islamic culture moves into at least the late nineteenth century, I don't see even a modicrum of a need for a relative comparison.

All cultures are not equal, and for some, there is simply no question of their inferiority.

Negotiation Is The Best Alternative - Always...

Is it really possible to negotiate with everyone? Think these folks would understand any sort of negotiating or "examination of the root causes of their anger"? You got to be out of your mind if you think so. Some negotiation is best handled by talking and the process of give and take. Other negotiation is best handled by B-52s, AC-130s, the M1A1 and the business end of the M-16.

Some people are in need of having our position explained in terms they might be able to understand. Talking obviously isn't working.

For more pictures, many of them absolutely offensive and infuriating, go here. It's all in Arabic, but as they say, pitcures are an international language....

And, just for kicks, here is another article that makes me wonder about the validity of attempting verbal negotiations. (link requires registration) "Who cares?," indeed.

The Oppression Of Freedom

Main Entry: op·pres·sion Pronunciation: &-'pre-sh&n Function: noun 1 a : unjust or cruel exercise of authority or power b : something that oppresses especially in being an unjust or excessive exercise of power

Main Entry: free·dom
Pronunciation: 'frE-d&m
Function: noun
1 : the quality or state of being free: as a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another
synonyms FREEDOM, LIBERTY, LICENSE mean the power or condition of acting without compulsion

See, its the same thing over and over. When they don't want you there you aren't liberating them, you are oppressing them. The Iraqi people have gone from an oppressive regime they cannot protest against to one they can protest against. Big whoop.

But the Americans aren't being oppressive! you cry. Actually, the Americans are being oppressive in a different way than Saddam was. With Saddam, the dictator had absolute control, and there were no personal liberties whatsoever. Now its the opposite. - comment by bthings 2000, 3/29/04 @ 4:25 pm (emphasis mine)

Freedom = oppression.

I love this refrain. We're oppressing them with freedom. Dictionary definitions would say otherwise, but who needs definitions? We have conviction and a sense of moral superiority! What's the big deal about the integrity of language? Like everything else it is there simply to serve our idealistic purpose.

Freedom = oppression.

How do we reconcile these two opposites? Oppression is the undue burden of excess rules. Freedom is their absence.

Perhaps we meant to say that the people of Iraq were completely ill-equipped to handle freedom? Maybe we could argue that the Iraqi people are mal-adjusting to the sudden freedom that they experienced? Maybe we could take comfort in the fact that new found freedom takes time to adjust to?

Nah. It's easier to chant our slogan:

Freedom = oppression.

When we're looking at the clouds, do we look for the silver lining, or do we look for the dark, foreboding storm clouds we hope are there?

Protesting Iraqis. Are they: a.) a sign that people are beginning the process of adjusting to their new-found freedoms, or b.) a sign that they must hate us with all their souls and that everything that has transpired heretofore was evil and reprehensible? It must be both! Choice "A" is true because, as we've said before,:

Freedom = oppression.

And certainly they hate us for our oppression. Oppression is evil and reprehensible and now we must be reaping the fruits of our labors. If only we had listened to all the nervous Nevilles before the war we wouldn't be in this predicament! Such evil oppressing oppressors we are, because:

Freedom = oppression.

The slogan is chanted. The slogan is an absolute good, unchallengeable by all. And like any good equation, it holds true both ways:

Freedom = oppression and oppression = freedom.

Don't you see? If we just take away the people's freedoms; if we just take away their choices, only then will they truly be free. Freedom from choice, independent will, and consequences - that is true freedom.

See, people are simply incapable of intelligent decision making. They simply cannot handle the overwhelming choices that they face when they have free choice. We must structure their lives; we must make their most basic decisions for them so that they can live in the true freedom of predetermined destiny.

See, the definitions are simply reversed. Freedom is oppression and oppression is freedom. Choice is evil. Big Brother is right and just.

Because without choice, then, and only then, can there be true equality. When people are given choices, they choose to be individuals. They choose to be different, to pursue selfish interests. Outcomes will be different.

They will be unequal. Inequality cannot be allowed to exist. It is not equality of opportunity, but rather equality of outcome that is of paramount importance. Differences in outcome mean that someone must be being oppressed. Which in turn means:

Freedom = oppression.

It's simply so plain to see, that we just cannot understand why everyone doesn't understand the righteousness of the position. Why must people persist in believing that freedom is a good thing? Why must people persist in believing in the innate goodness of man when it so obvious that man is incapable of handling basic decisions like how to behave? Why? Why? Why?

Why can we not surrender our supposed freedoms to the true freedoms dictated to us? Why can we not understand that we are oppressed by our freedom? Why can we not accept that man is best served by rules, regulations, and laws that dictate everything? Why? Why? Why?

Freedom = oppression and oppression = freedom.

It's so simplismé, no?

Not in the least. Stalin, Lenin, Hitler and Tojo would be proud. Take it for what you will.

Jobs, Pride & Unemployment

Over the last couple of years I've heard or read a number of people complaining, "I want to work, but I just can't find a job." I can't tell you when I last heard or saw one of these complaints - this post has been a while in the making - but think I've had my fill of them.

I'm not going to deny that there are some people out there who are truly chronically unemployed against their desires. Certainly there are some people who genuinely want work and for whatever reason can't find an employer to hire them (usually they are told they are "overqualified" for the position). But I believe that there is a large segment of people who are using the "jobless" recovery and the general feeling of there being a lack of a job market as a crutch to cover for some basic laziness or hubris.

I know because I was there.

A couple of years back, just when the economy was really finishing its tanking, I was let go from the brokerage firm I was working for. I was entering what really was a pretty dead job market with a business admin degree (just like the thousands of others out there) and my only practical experience being in sales or aircraft load planning. To say that the prospects of getting a job doing anything other than sales was bleak would be an understatement. Plus the job I was laid off from paid very well.

In my mind, I believed that I was underpaid while I was working there. I still do. However, most of the people at the same labor grade as me were generally paid more (seniority) and, in general, they did not justify the wage they were being paid.

In the end the company was doing everyone a great disservice by overpaying. I believed that I was worth more because I was outperforming more highly paid employees. They believed that they were worth the amount they were getting paid, in many cases, despite relatively poor performance in both metrics and customer service. And in the end, the company couldn't afford to keep paying out the amount they were for what we did.

It's taken me a long time to come around to accepting that I too was overpaid, despite my performance. It takes a lot of soul searching and philosophizing to accept that without completely destroying your self-esteem.

Right after I joined the job hunter army in 2002, I spent the first two or three months of unemployment honestly believing that I could only accept a job that paid at least 90% of my previous salary. Understand, I was worth at least that. To accept less would be to sell myself short.

So for a couple of months, I collected unemployment, looked for jobs that were nearly impossible to find around here, and basically forgot about that whole figuring out how to make ends meet stuff. I kept figuring that I would be back raking in the big bucks again soon, so if a bill went a little past due, it was no big deal - I'd just make sure it was one of the first to get paid off when I got that new job.

By the middle of July, I was starting to get concerned, as were some of my creditors. The nice cushy job I was sure was coming just wasn't there. Three months and I hadn't even gotten so much as an offer. So I decided to lower my standard. I would take 75% of my pre-layoff salary, so long as I had benefits.

Three months later, the unemployment was running out and I still didn't have even a single offer of employment. I eventually ended up taking a job as office manager for a design firm owned by a friend of the family. I was making less than 50% of my previous salary - and had no benefits at all. But it let me stop the financial hemorrhaging and to at least maintain a status quo (which wasn't a real appealing prospect at the time. I was glad when the phone was turned off because it stopped the phone calls from the bill collectors, although it ticked a bunch of them off).

Less than 50% of my previous salary and a financial disaster. That was my price for irrational pride - pride that was induced by being overpaid in my previous job. The only thing that saved me from bankruptcy was that I had based my debt load on a ratio of no more than 40% of my salary. It meant that with my new job I could pay the bills, but stuff like getting food or gas or anything that might be fun was difficult. The only reason my website stuck around was because I ran a couple of sales and sold enough extra to cover the domain name and hosting expenses.

Once I took the job as office manager, I started to plan my new attack. I went in with the understanding that the job was going to be temporary until I found something better. But I started developing a plan to build resumé buzzword skills and threw myself into doing the best job I could.

And a little over a year later, after having begun a plan to get my debt under control, I began looking for another job again. The job market wasn't really much better, but I had a big advantage that was missing the first time 'round - I was employed.

What I started to discover was that, like my mother and father always used to tell me, employers really do put a big importance on a candidate being currently employed. Finding a job was still tough (it took almost five months from when I started looking before I found a new job), but there were more real opportunities. People actually started calling back. Interview requests started coming in. Things were looking somewhat up.

I began the application to employment process with my current employer way back in November. At the same time, I got an offer from the billiard's store to come sell pool tables, for several thousand a year more than what I was making. So I moved on and took that job. Along the way, I was also offered (and accepted) a part-time job working in the food service industry.

Come the end of February, my current employer finally got all the paperwork through, the "i"s were dotted, and the "t"s crossed and they made an offer, one that actually gets me up over 90% of my pre-2002 layoff salary again. But this time, I'm one of the lowest paid employees at this company and I know from history that they can afford to sustain this level of pay without it becoming an issue.

After two years, I'm finally back to what I assumed was rightfully mine two years ago. But this time, I have no illusions about being underpaid. To the contrary, I am grateful for what I have and am busting my ass to try to earn more.

But I also truly believe that I would not be in this position had I not taken the job that was "beneath" me back in late '02.

I believe that prospective employers look at current employment as a tacit endorsement of your employability. Someone else was willing to take a chance on you, so they feel more comfortable doing the same. If you're unemployed, it opens up the question of why. Why is this person sitting here, with no job? Why hasn't somebody else taken the initial risk in hiring him? Why? The "whys?" will kill an otherwise outstandingly qualified candidate.

I see these posts or overhear these people talking about how they've been looking for however long and they just can't seem to find anything. I listen to them and listen to the jobs that they describe as what they want. I get reminded of when I was unemployed and applied for the job as CEO of a small publicly traded company (I really did. I'm still waiting to hear back from them.).

I understand the want for a good job. That want drove me for nearly two years (it is satisfied now. Now I'm driven to want to excel in the job I have). But when you've been unemployed for six months to a year, it's time to change expectations.

The best things in life are earned. Good jobs don't just fall into your lap (the late '90s were an aberration in that regards). People say they can't find a job, yet they won't look at the ones that are out there.

People offering low paying jobs know that they're low paying. They don't expect that you're going to make a career of it. To a large extent, they expect you to use their job as a stepping stone to something better.

What a lot of people forget is that some income is better than no income. They sit there an complain about having no income, yet they won't accept the job at the store down the street that would get them some income - and more importantly that all important tacit approval needed when looking for a job.

It also destroys the appearance of being a prima donna. The person who accepts the low paying job and makes a plan to move up is a person who puts performance ahead of pride. The one who sits and bitches that they aren't being offered the perfect job, well why would you want to hire someone so arrogant, conceited, and full of themselves?

Swallowing your pride is difficult, I know. I have trouble with it almost all the time. But sometimes, pride can be your worst enemy.

I get so frustrated with hearing the "I can't find a job" refrain anymore because I believe that the person complaining isn't being honest. They can find a job, especially if they're here in Orlando where tourism service jobs abound, they just can't find the one that makes them all warm and fuzzy inside.

I don't want to hear the "I can't find a job" routine anymore. I don't believe it. If you want to be honest and tell me you can't find a job to your liking, that's fine. I'll listen because you're at least being honest.

But I was in that same position. But I found that once I was willing to do something I didn't want, I quickly ended up in a position where I am fending off the offers. Besides the job I currently have, I still work the occasional odd hour at the pool table store; I still occasionally work at the food service job; I routinely turn on my cell phone after work to find a message from a guy who wants me to come back into the brokerage industry and just yesterday, I had an insurance agency send me a letter asking me to apply. The jobs are out there.

It's just that sometimes you have to do something you don't want to, to get to something you want.

Did Osama Cast The Deciding Vote In Spain?

I read a number of articles today that were discussing the impact of 3/11, the Spanish national election, and the possible involvement of al-Qaida. All the articles seemed to indicate that Sunday's election was a great victory for AQ and a harbinger of things to come for the rest of us.

I saw the election referred to as the "toppling" of a Western democracy. I saw it referred to as a vote for appeasement. (link will probably change tomorrow, just search his archive for today's edition) I saw it referred to as a vote "for al Qaeda." Various rantings and ravings I can't recall the source of also spoke of the election of the Socialist Party in terms ranging from dejected to dire.

What happened in Spain was a watershed event, no doubt. But what can we really take away from it already?

Not as much as we're trying to, I think.

Let's look at the opinion of Neal Boortz:

It has become even more clear that the Islamo-fascist movement has scored a tremendous strategic victory with its attacks last week in Spain. Dutch economist Bernard Walschots nails it: "Al Qaeda or its affiliates have toppled a democratic government for the first time. This may have dramatic implications for the Western democracies." Did you get that the first time around? The Islamic Jihadists have just toppled the government of a major Western nation. Socialists have taken over in Spain. Islamic terrorists like socialists ... they're brothers under the skin.

This morning we learn that CNN has discovered an Al Qaeda document which set forth a plan to get Spain to pull its troops out of Iraq. Apparently the document was posted on a computer bulletin board some months ago. This document talked about developing a strategy to force the conservative government of Spain out of office and elect socialists. And just how was that going to be done? Terrorist attacks, that's how. So, the plan was formulated, then implemented, and proof of success came quickly. The people of Spain fell into line immediately and voted out a government unfriendly to terrorism, and voted a more friendly one in.

Now Spain is loudly touting its plans to become one of the Axis of Weasels, joining Germany, France, Belgium and other Euroweenie countries in a program of appeasement toward Islamic Jihadists. How weak are the Europeans? Well, let's take this comment from Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission. Prodi says: "It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists ... terrorism is infinitely more powerful than a year ago."

Force isn't the answer? If not force, what? Appeasement? Doesn't Prodi remind you of Chamberlain prior to World War II? Read your history. Terrorism always works against the appeasers.

What's next? How about England? Intelligence officials are already suggesting that Great Britain will be next in the Islamic campaign of terrorism. Then ... the United States. The Wall Street Journal editorial this morning says that the U.S. must brace itself for the next wave of attacks. They worked in Spain ... so Al Qaeda must be thinking that they can work as well in America.

This election year just got a whole lot more interesting ... and dangerous.

Spain is surrendering ... but World War IV continues.

On the whole, I don't disagree with Neal. But I think that he is jumping to some premature conclusions about the new government in Spain.

I can understand his dislike of the Socialists. If I were Spanish, I'd be furious with the outcome of the election. Socialist policy is about as close to economic terrorism as you can get while still operating in a quasi-capitalist economy. But, of course, I'm not Spanish so my opinion matters as much over there as theirs does here.

But to imply (he doesn't come right out and say it, but it is most certainly implied) that the Socialist government will simply roll over for al- Qaida, well I think that that is still yet to be seen.

Zapatero has stated his intention to bring home the Spanish troops in Iraq unless the UN takes over or there is a material change in circumstances. He has stated his desire for closer relations with European nations, while still maintaining "cordial" relations with Washington. Every declaration he has made has been hedged in some way. No wonder he likes Kerry so much more than Bush: they are but two peas from the same pod.

Taking shots at the European Union and Prodi are well justified. We already know what their non-reaction reaction will be. Appeasement is the watchword of the day in the EU itself.

But we really don't know how Zapatero will react once in power. He might be an Axis of Weasel appeaser of Chamberlainic proportions. Or he might be another Tony Blair, a leftie who knows right from wrong when the chips are down. We really can't determine anything more from Zapatero's statements than we can from John Kerry's, they are just way too ambiguous and hedged.

Was Zapatero's election the "toppling" of a Western democracy as has been insinuated? No it was not. Was it an upset? Yes. But the toppling of a government? Not even close.

There have been no charges of the election itself being flawed. Power is transitioning in a normal, peaceful manner. The fact that the government-elect is not one that we would have desired to see in office does not mean that the government was toppled. There is a difference between this transition of power decided on in a fair and open election by the electorate, and the violent civil war transition that is marring the overthrow of Jean-Baptiste Aristide in Haiti. The former is a democracy in action, the latter a revolutionary toppling of a corrupt regime.

Zapatero's election cannot, as of yet, be called a vote for al-Qaida. Is it a bad omen? Most definitely. But until Zapatero sells out to the Islamofascists, we owe it to him, and the Spanish people, to give the benefit of the doubt.

Now what will all this mean come November? I think that the conventional wisdom on this is accurate: there will be a bloody and brutal attempt at influencing the Presidential election like the Spanish election was swayed.

If such an attempt is made, it will be a gross miscalculation on the part of Osama & Co. One that could make the reaction to 9/11 look tame.

Americans have no illusions about the intention of the terrorists. We don't believe that a change in Administration will cause Osama to suddenly decide that we're really a bunch of good guys after all. We don't think that the election of John Kerry will turn the tyrants of the world into true friends. We understand that the only intention of our foe is the elimination of freedom and the imposition of Shar'ia. Nothing less will satisfy them, quite similar to the way in which only the complete destruction of Israel will satisfy the Palestinians.

No, an attack on America in the weeks leading up to November will only ensure the reelection of George W. Bush, with a mandate to hunt down and eliminate any and all terrorist threats to our nation. Our post-9/11 reaction was impersonal. Our reaction to another Machiavellian Spanish-style attempt will be infinitely more personal. If Osama is still recycling air and providing life for a tree (which I personally doubt, I think that he's a stain on a cave painting somewhere, but I digress) another attack will be the equivalent of suicide by military.

I fully expect that al-Qaida will use their faulty calculus in making their ultimate decision (and it will likely be their last organizational decision before they cease to exist). My only question isn't whether or not they'll try to attack the US, but rather if they will take another practice shot at someone else.

If they do make an attempt on France, Germany, or Britain what, if anything, should we do? Should we unleash a fury like they haven't seen? Or should we sit back and allow the act to go unanswered? It is actually still a very valid line of questioning regarding 3/11.

The NATO Treaty clearly states in Article 5:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Spain, a NATO ally, was attacked. We have a right to take such action as we deem necessary to defend the security of the West. France, Germany, and now even Spain may not be publicly happy about us protecting them from, among other things, their own poor decision making, but they cannot help but to be pleased if they no longer have to fear Islamofacist attack.

There are certainly a number of open questions still floating around concerning 3/11 and the new Spanish government.

But I don't believe that it is quite time to start fretting about the course the new Spanish government may or may not take.

It is still too early to start trying to assess the impact the 3/11 or any follow-on aftershocks may have on the November general election.

But it is never too early to determine the manner, method and timing of the defense of Western civilization, no matter which friends, allies, or enemies join us in the fight.

The election is Spain has brought new potential complications, but we have to keep it in perspective. It is not the "toppling" of the government; it is not a vote of confidence for the tactics of al-Qaida.

Life has gone on, just as the Spanish democracy has.

Western civilization has survived another assault, just like the American Republic will.

In challenges, lies opportunity. We now have before us another opportunity to demoralize and destroy the most pervasive terrorist group of our time.

Will we take advantage of the opportunity?

Or will we fritter it away obsessing over the potential ramifications of the successful demonstration of the resiliency of Western democracy?

Do we give Osama the deciding vote?

Cross posted to We The People

I don't like John Kerry.

No great surprise there, right? Anyone who has been reading this site even for the last few days could figure that part out. But as unapparent as it may be, I actually do have some rational basis for my position.

Kerry has done a number of things that are really at odds with my own personal beliefs. His flip-flops, his positions, his actions, his pronouncements, and his history are all disagreeable to me in the extreme.

I have an extreme dislike for John Kerry.

Part of my reasoning is perhaps a little selfish. Last week I started a new job with a fairly large component of the military-industrial complex. I have a real fear that come November, should Kerry win, I will get a pink slip before I even make to my one year anniversary. This is not an unfounded belief. Kerry voted against the very program on which I'm working by voting against its host platform. Kerry is weak on defense. He is a pacifist, a modern day Neville Chamberlain. If John Kerry were President, I don't believe that we would ever defend any of our interests around the world. I have no doubt that Kerry would be a big believer in outsourcing - not for jobs, but rather the responsibility for our national security.

When our troops went off to battle in Iraq, what was Kerry's komment?

Did he say "God bless" or "Godspeed" or "I stand behind our men and women in uniform during this troubled time?" Did he have the internal fortitude to take the high road like Joe Lieberman and to put aside partisan politics during the duration of the war?

No. John Kerry's only anti-Establishment traits came out in full force.

Kerry is the ultimate Washington insider in every way, except for his opportunistic opposition to Vietnam. It was during his escapades in the VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War) that I think that Kerry developed his knee-jerk anti-military streak. He cannot articulate a reasoned and rational argument against the military, he can only rail with the blind hatred of a zealot.

Why did Kerry refrain from showing class during the war? Because his roots wouldn't allow him to. He saw a use of force and had his knee-jerk reaction. He couldn't bring himself to admit that there might in fact be a time and place where military force might be of some good (He didn't have to agree, just to at least acknowledge that the other side might have a valid point).

Instead, Kerry aped the Bush Administration and called for a "regime change" - in Washington.

I loathe John Kerry.

I've seen comments a number of other places that Kerry seems to be a ticking Deanesque time bomb. He almost seems to be preparing for an Iowan proportioned meltdown. His mouth is his own worst enemy. He says some of the stupidest things. Bush may mangle the language, but Kerry mangles all pretext of logic.

And further, he has no pretext of a sense of morality. I'm not talking about gay marriage, but rather about the abhorrent use of language on his website.

I have no doubt that the language on Kerry's site was not unknown to the candidate. Every comment that comes through on this site is read and reviewed. Inappropriate comments are erased. Virtually every site owner does something similar.

What the Kerry Kampaign seems to be doing is trying to pass off any semblance of responsibility by playing off the lack of knowledge about how blogs (which is essentially what his site is) work. He simply does not want to admit that his little foray into the world of cussing is having repercussions.

I abhor John Kerry.

He has so little apparent understanding of cause and effect it is downright scary. He doesn't seem to understand how raising taxes on the wealth creating class might end up reducing the overall tax receipts. He doesn't understand that Marxist redistribution is counter to the very idea of the capitalist marketplace that he espouses so well when needed (second paragraph, may require registration). He has failed to discover that tyrants like Kim Jong Il love him so much, not because of who he is, but because based on his past actions and statements, they view him as weak and sympathetic to their cause.

Tyrants and dictators love Kerry because Kerry loves them. He has attempted to defend in some way nearly every Communist dictatorship of his time, from the Soviet Union to Nicaragua to China to Vietnam. At a time when North Korea's Communist kleptocracy was on the verge of collapse, Kerry started talking about them in relatively favorable terms. But why does Kerry show such solidarity with such a sordid crowd?

Kerry has good Marxian principles. He absolutely believes in the redistribution of wealth (so long as it isn't his). Kerry believes in the wonders of big government. Pure capitalism is as foreign to Kerry as a Turkish lesbian. For Kerry, communism isn't a utopia, it is a goal. He may not have explicitly stated as such, but his actions very clearly point to such a desire.

As a result it has been easy for Kerry to attack one of the key building blocks of our free and prosperous society - business.

It is free enterprise that keeps us moving forward so quickly. Capitalism fosters innovation. Capitalism fosters a "can-do" attitude in our nation. Capitalism brings technological advancements unthinkable just a few short years ago. Capitalism is the engine that drives the research and development in the business world that keeps pushing the edge of that envelope.

Kerry's drug proposals would have the effect of gutting the rationale for R&D at the big drug companies. His cuts to the defense budget would seriously threaten the already shrinking technological gap advantage we have over our adversaries. Profits and the accumulation of wealth simply run counter to Kerry's beliefs. He could never allow unfettered markets, or anything that even came close to resembling them. We would be more likely to see a five year plan under Kerry than deregulation.

And business leaders have taken note of the candidate's views and pronouncements.

But most importantly, how would John Kerry have reacted to today's events? If John Kerry were in the position of José Maria Aznar what would happen?

Aznar has the second most unenviable job in the world today (the most unenviable was to be the al-Qaida goober that called in to take credit.) He has to simultaneously heal and protect his nation in a time of great need. How he handles this will likely define his Presidency - even more than his unwavering support for America in our time of need.

Aznar has skills and tools to handle this well. He has the support of the one man who has already, personally, been in his position.

Would Kerry react with resiliency? Would he react with a stubborn will to move his people forward to greater glory and achievement?

Or would he wallow in the cult of the victim? Would he, instead of calling out the National Guard and the military, call on the FBI to launch a priority investigation? Bottom line, would he be a Bush - or a Clinton?

I fear what a Kerry Administration would mean for our nation, I really do. I think that John Kerry is singularly ill-equipped to deal with any task facing a President, except for lying to foreign leaders.

John Kerry is not anywhere close to being the best choice for our nation.

No Funny Money!

Most regular readers of this site have probably figured out that when it comes to money - cold hard cash - I'm a bit of a traditionalist. I don't care for the Monopoly money bills we're issuing, I don't really care too much for the state quarter series (but it is at least palatable for some reason), I don't like the new nickels, and now I don't like the new plan to put the Presidents' faces on the dollar coin (rotating 4 Presidents per year until they're all done).

American currency should not carry the face of a living person, particularly a sitting President (which would happen with the last issue of the dollar coin series). I like Ronald Reagan. I think that he will be an excellent candidate for being memorialized with his bust on a coin - after his passing.

The Caesars put their faces on coins. King George III had his face on the coinage. Using the money as a propaganda tool is common amongst the two-bit tyrrants of the world.

It is, in my opinion, boorish. I've said it before and I'll say it again, our money is a reflection of who we are. Having dignified currency in both appearance and subject is important. People around the world complain that Americans don't value history. Imagine if they started pulling Reagan nickels and GW Bush dollars out of their pockets.

Money, like it or not, is important for something more than just being a store of value. It is, in our case, also a store of knowledge.

How many people would know who Alexander Hamilton was if he wasn't on the $10? We like to think that we would revere Franklin just the same, but there is a segment of the population who only knows of him as the "Benjamin" on the $100.

Susan B. Anthony? Sacagawea? Would they be as well known if they weren't the subject of the $1 coin? Possibly, but very unlikely.

When we start playing with the money, we start playing with that memory. If we can replace Sacagawea with Jimmy Carter, why not swap out Hamilton for Clinton - Hillary Clinton? She wasn't ever President either (of course, her fanatics would want her as the replacement for the other non-Presidential denomination. Just wait for the movie It's All About The Hillaries...) Why not just go ahead and change the currency over so that the current President is on every denomination (but then how do you account for the free campaign advertising? Gives new meaning to campaign finance reform...)?

Our money is important. Far to important to debase with a rotating bust scheme.

As far as I'm concerned, the idea is a bust.

Frustrating

I tried tonight to bring back the "Blogs Linking Me" section of the sidebar tonight but I keep having problems with the Technorati scripts. The original one I had did a much better job of listing other blogs that linked me, but it kept timing out when I tried to update the site. The other script I've found seems to work without a problem, but it basically just finds every internal link on the site. Out of 25 sites listed one was not mine. Not what I wanted. So my quest continues.

I do have three articles I was looking at, but that I'm just too tired to post anything on tonight:

Paper: Kerry to toss McAuliffe from DNC - Party unity expressed through a purge. How wonderfully Communsitic. The Commissar must be proud indeed.

Film critics miss message behind Pilate's lack of courage - Something just doesn't sit right about this. Seems to be a little too simplistic, but I can't put my finger on exactly why.

Memos Might Reveal Profit Motive in Senate - Potential concern? Absolutely. But I'd like to see the proof. Not cool to throw around an accusation like this without some kind of backing...

Oh Yeah, One More Thing

Before I go cozy up in bed and try to go to sleep before the little people, I also wanted to set one thing straight.

Over the last month or two, I've been talking a lot about the Democratic Primaries and the quest to find a candidate with half a chance against Bush.

There was only ever one Democratic candidate I would have even considered voting for: Joe Lieberman. When he dropped out of the race, I was at that point watching for fun.

For what it's worth, I think that John Kerry's service in Vietnam was commendable - and his actions after coming home, contemptible. His record surrounding Vietnam does not answer any questions regarding John Kerry and national defense, but I think that his voting record since he was elected to Congress does. I think that he is far left of the mainstream in general and is a utopian pacifist in military matters. Which is not a good combination for the country.

John Edwards, despite having listened to him in the debates, I don't think that I know enough about him to make an informed decision. Maybe he's a good choice, maybe not. I simply don't know.

Kucinich and Sharpton are like the comic relief of the campaign. They are so far out of the mainstream as to be a joke. Never could I imagine a set of circumstances that might make me even consider voting for either of them.

So where does this leave me? Actually in the same position I've been in all along. Barring some kind of monumental unforseen calamity, I will be voting for George W. Bush come November. Overall, Bush has done a fairly good job in office, in my opinion. There are certainly some things that he's done that I disagree with, immigration "reform" and the Medicare bill being two notable examples, but it's not enough to make me vote any differently.

Just so everyone knows.

The First Day At My New Job

Today was my first day as a part of the vast military-industrial complex. So far, so good.

I'm just beat right now. Was up at 5 so that I could be out the door by 5:45 - and now that's basically going to become routine (just as I was getting used to sleeping in until 7:30!)

Hopefully I'll be able to blog some good stuff about the primaries tomorrow. Until then, I got to get to bed early tonight.

My Review Of The Passion

I was going to write some great post about The Passion, my opinion of it, it's accuracy, and the discussions it invoked afterwards between me and my other half.

But it was getting way to long and unwieldy, so I'm just going to give you the short version.

It was a great movie, one of the few that I would ever say that about. If you haven't seen it already, spend the money to go see it.

If I can get a more coherent train of thought going, maybe I'll try it again, but we'll have to see.

I Have Scary Neighbors

Driving home tonight, I saw a sign in one of neighbor's front yards that made me do a double take, almost wrecking the car. So what did the sign say?

"Dennis Kucinich for President"

I've decided I've got to get me one of those signs. Not because I support Kucinich, but because it is just so damn funny looking.

Free Speech, Free Choice & The Radio

Yesterday, just before the head of Clear Channel Communications went to testify before Congress, his company pulled the plug on their airing of The Howard Stern Show. This comes right on the heels of Clear Channel's firing of Bubba the Love Sponge. And now Rush Limbaugh is expressing concern about free speech on the radio. So what exactly is the deal here?

First off, let me be clear in stating that I seriously dislike Howard Stern. I've tried to listen to the show and found nothing redeeming about it. So I don't listen.

As for Rush, I don't listen to him either. His views are often in general concurrence with mine, but for some reason his show never really stirred any passions in me like Neal Boortz or Sean Hannity (on the radio, not TV). So I wouldn't exactly call Rush a favorite of mine either.

Now Rush is absolutely correct in his statement: "IT'S ONE THING FOR A COMPANY TO DETERMINE IF THEY ARE GOING TO BE PARTY TO IT [Free speech]. IT'S ANOTHER THING FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO DO IT."

Now as I understand it, the government is merely holding hearings into indecent material on the airwaves, á la Bubba the Love Sponge or possibly even Howard Stern. The FCC likely has some enforcement actions in the works, but even in the case of Bubba, the FCC did not make any decisions for Clear Channel.

Clear Channel decided to can Bubba. Clear Channel decided to pull Stern off their stations. The FCC action against the company did not require the Love Sponge's squeezing out. Congress did not even request that Stern be taken off the air. Clear Channel made those decisions of their own free will.

Now maybe they were influenced by the possibility of further government sanction. Maybe they were embarrassed to go before Congress with Stern on their stations talking about banging his girlfriend. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Bottom line is we don't know. Clear Channel may have made a conscious decision to clean up their company. I haven't heard any rumblings about them considering taking Boortz or Hannity off the air (or Michael Savage for that matter). Rather, I only see them concentrating on those particulars that are most likely to run afoul of free speech and to cross over in obscenity and indecency.

Rush is right that there are differing standards for TV and radio. And part of that probably does have something to do with the dominant ideology in each medium. But to trot out the slippery slope argument against federal involvement already seems a bit premature. There are laws on the books about broadcasting indecent materials, on both TV and the radio. The FCC is working on enforcing those laws in a very public manner right now. And I can't really say that the FCC is going about that enforcement in a biased manner, as they are still working on the CBS Super Bowl halftime debacle. The FCC enforcing existing laws is not heading down the slippery slope. To the contrary, it is an example of good governance by the executive branch of government as it upholds its duties - a stark contrast to the shameful governance taking place in San Francisco as Mayor Gavin Newsom flagrantly flaunts the law.

And for Congress to be holding public hearings on the matter is not a trip down the slippery slope either. A public hearing is but one form of a public debate, just like Rush's show is. Congress has not passed any laws or handed down any ultimatums during these hearings. Rather they simply seem to be designed to gather some data points for possible legislation down the road and to provide a grandstanding opportunity for members of Congress in an election year.

I can understand and empathize with Rush's concerns, but right now I think that they're overblown. There are too many "ifs" involved: "if" the FCC starts overstepping its bounds of determining indecency, "if" Congress starts passing legislation that abridges the First Amendment, "if" John Kerry gets elected, and "if" he decides to become Caesar Kerry. If, if, if, if, if.

There are simply too many variables floating around out there right now. As I see it, the government hasn't overstepped is authority yet, and really isn't even pushing the line.

Clear Channel made the Bubba and Howard choices on their own. The motivation doesn't change that. The choices were theirs and only theirs to make. Just as the consequences of those choices are theirs and only theirs to bear.

Clear Channel has a right to choose not to broadcast material they fear might be construed as indecent. The exercising of that choice is not a violation of free speech.

Even if Rush doesn't like it.

I'm Not A Happy Camper

Today should have been a relatively good day for me. My current employer took the news of my impending departure reduction in hours pretty well. I start my new job on Monday.

I even went and bought a celebratory pizza tonight. Got it home and went to sit down at the table while reading Ripples of Battle. Except that someone "borrowed" the book, along with another I had bought the same night and the receipt from Books-A-Million. Oh, yeah. And all of my spare change (I'm guessing for bus fare to the store).

The little kids father showed up for a couple of hours this afternoon, supposedly to visit with the kids after school. If he took the books, it wouldn't be the first time the bastard stole from me.

So, of my celebratory pizza I was able to stomach one small piece. I am physically ill at the thought of him doing that, again. I don't care a whit about the books themselves - they can and will be replaced. What I do care about is that this happened on what should have been a happy night. Now, instead of going to bed full and happy, I'm going to go to bed nauseous and pissed. I'm so upset about all this that it even affected my last post (the last two paragraphs were written after I discovered the missing books - can you tell a difference in the tone?).

What a night.

I Am Not Looking Forward To Today

So, remember the new job prospect I've mentioned a couple of times now? I got a start date from the company yesterday. They want me to start on Monday, as in next week.

Great news, huh?

Yeah, except that I really wanted to give my current employer at least two weeks notice. The family I've been working for has been nothing short of gracious and kind ever since I started in November. Most of the time when I leave a job I give two weeks out of courtesy. This time I wanted to be able to give it out of respect.

But given the fact that the new company just had the Comanche program yanked out from under them, I really don't have much choice. I have to start on Monday, or I risk not ever starting at all. And since this involves a near 50% raise, better benefits and a non-contributory pension plan.....well, you get the idea.

Today is going to be a very painful day. I am not looking forward to it at all.

It's Time To End Government Sanctioned Marriage For Everyone

Today, President Bush came out and announced his support for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. In this instance, I think that the President is dead wrong.

A constitutional amendment defining marriage is one that limits the rights of the people. It may only be a select set of people, but it does not change the fact that it is enshrining a form of discrimination in the Constitution. And that is absolutely wrong, even if the very institution of marriage is under threat of imminent collapse.

A compromise solution of civil unions was offered and rejected as being another version of "separate, but equal," a not wholly unsubstantiated charge.

So if the compromise doesn't go far enough, and the traditionalists don't want to lose the sanctity of marriage, what is left as a course of action?

The institution of marriage must be abolished as a government recognized institution. All legal, existing marriages should be converted to civil unions and marriage itself should become strictly a religious institution.

There should no longer be a box to check for "married," but rather one for "joined by civil union." There should no longer be a marriage penalty, but rather a civil union penalty. The government should no longer have any say in, or any recognition of the institution of marriage.

Once marriage is no longer a matter of public concern, then the church can defend it as a sacred institution.

See part of the problem that we currently have is our fascination with achieving an absolute separation of church and state - regardless of the consequence. So long as the government recognizes marriage, it is almost forced by powerful special interests to try to devalue the religious underpinnings of marriage in favor of free-for-all secularism. The one man/one woman definition of marriage is unacceptable because it offends the PC crowd, so if we wish to preserve that definition, we must remove it from the scope of government.

Now we should allow clergy to sign off on civil union certificates, so that a couple married in the church can also be concurrently joined in a government recognized civil union.

The net effect would be that folks married in the church would have two certificates: a civil union certificate from the government and a marriage certificate from the church. So far as the government was concerned, there would be no difference between a civil union certificate issued at city hall to a same sex couple and a civil union certificate issued by a church to recognize a couple that was married in a traditional religious ceremony.

Now it may be argued that this is merely a matter of semantics, and to a degree it is. The basis of what I'm promoting is a change in terminology from "marriage" to "civil union" for everyone so joined in a governmentally recognized institution. I think that ultimately, short of a constitutional amendment, the battle against gay marriage (or civil unions or whatever you wish to call them) has been lost. Marriage as it is currently defined does in fact run counter to the Declaration of Independence’s assertation that all men are created equal. Just as that phrase applies in racial terms, it must also apply in sexual as well. All men are not equal if those who are gay are denied the same ease of establishing legal recognition and frameworks as heterosexuals.

Which means that the best way that I see to protect the sanctity of the traditional institution of marriage is to take it out of the purview of the government. It is unfortunate that it has come to this, but we must confront the issue before us.

Christ, The Passion, & The Bible

I'm not a big moviegoer, but I will probably go to see The Passion of the Christ when it comes out this week. When I was in college, I nearly minored in religious studies. And after my trip to Israel and Jerusalem, I have been extremely intrigued by the times and events surrounding the life of Christ (about 100 years before to 400 years after, in particular).

I've been seeing the rave reviews of the movie that have been coming out and that has been one of the catalysts for my decision to actually see this movie in a theater rather than waiting for it to come out on video. But then I also came across this review by Newsweek's David Ansen who expresses his concern with the level of brutality depicted in the film.

Now I can buy that part of the gore is due to the fact that it is Mel Gibson making the film. But the time leading to the cruxifiction was a brutal series of events. From the Garden of Gethsemene to the cross was not a gentle, peaceful journey. The Romans were very much into punishment as a deterrent. The sheer brutality of the cruxifiction was designed to serve as a powerful and public message to other would-be miscreants. It was not supposed to be a quick, painless exit.

"Those who live by the sword, die by the sword," Jesus says, putting a halt to the fighting in Gethsemene; much later we're given a snippet from the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus exhorts his followers to love their enemies as themselves. But these moments have little weight in the body of the film; they're the cinematic equivalent of footnotes and they're not what seizes Gibson's imagination. What you remember is the image of a crow plucking out the eyes of the thief on the cross next to Jesus, punished by God for mocking his son.

For some reason, I don't think that is what everyone is going to remember. You are going to take away from the movie that which is most important to you. Some people will take away the religous aspects; some will take away the violent aspects. It's all going to depend on your own personal beliefs.

In that regard, I think that this movie is going to be similar to the Bible itself. The Bible is a great book, not because it can speak to you on one level, but because it can speak to you on three distinct levels. It can be an article of faith. It can be a great literary work. Or it can be a great history of the early years of Judeo-Christian civilization. It can be any one of these or all three.

It is easiest to view the Bible as an article of faith. It not only lays out a set of guidelines for living an upstanding life (guidelines which are remarkably unchanged over the millenia), but it also gives the faithful hope that there will be a reward for their piety here in this life. For some, the Bible is the absolute word, it can never err. For others, it is an ideal to which they strive. But it is because of faith that people want to believe. It is faith that places the Bible in a unique category.

But how does the Bible divulge its lessons? It is most certainly not a list, although as the 10 Commandments demonstrates it does not shy away from simple, straightforward lists where they're appropriate. Rather the Bible is a collection of stories, stories with a moral. Forgetting the aspects of faith or historical accuracy, the Bible is as important a collection of stories in our history as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It provides the reader with the original oral traditions of the early Judeo-Christians. Stories like the Creation or the Exodus may not have happened verbatim as described in the Bible, but the stories are fascinating examples of how the ancients tried to explain the seemingly unexplainable.

But often times, the stories as told in the Bible are remarkably accurate historical records. I've seen articles (sorry, no links that I can find right away) that explain how the parting of the sea by Moses could have actually happened given the right combination of circumstances. There have been articles published that some archaeologists think that they may have found Noah's Ark on a mountain in Turkey (although there are also many reports that the Ark sightings are simply a hoax). There was an article in Biblical Archaeology a few years back that analyzed the top of Mount Moriah (inside the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount) and determined that there were in fact four 90° angles carved into the rock with their inside dimensions matching that of the Ark of the Covenant as described in the Bible. Further we have found evidence that the walls of Jericho did fall in a great battle at about the time that the Bible describes. The list of historical accuracies could go on and on.

What's the most important aspect of the Bible? Is it the faith, the literature, or the historical record? What's most important is what you, the reader, take away from it.

And I think that The Passion is going to be similar in that regard. It tells the story of faith in a manner that is true to the original work and the standards of the time. Some people will find the faith in the story overwhelming; others will be awed by the story itself.

And then some, like Mr. Ansen, will focus on the historical aspect of the movie. But if we're going to focus on the history, we need to bear in mind that executions in ancient times were not quite as antiseptic as they are now. They were brutal, sadistic events. They were designed to inflict torture as much as they were to end life.

If Mr. Ansen is appalled at the depicted brutality, then I'm inclined to believe that Gibson got it just about right.

I'll let you know my thoughts after I see the movie.

Happy Day!

Well, today marks a milestone of sorts for me. It is the first anniversery of The Noble Pundit. Kind of scary to think that I've corrupted the thinking of over 43,000 people in a year.....

Kind of hard to believe that it has been year. Wow.

Jobless Claims Down

The Labor Department is reporting that for the week ending Feb.14 new jobless claims dropped significantly, posting their largest decline since November.

Now I'm not going to sit here this morning and analyze how this might fit into the overall ecnomic environment. There are enough other blogs, along with CNBC, MSNBC, FOXNews, CNN, and the major networks who will be doing that. Instead I'm going to take a different approach.

Let me begin by stating that I believe that the job market is starting to improve - just a little bit. Many of my longtime readers may recall that back around July of last year I started looking for a new job. It wasn't until Mid-November that I was able to find anything that was a step up. It essentially took me nearly 5 moths to find a new job - and I was employed at the time, which supposedly makes it easier to get a new job.

Now since November, I've received another job offer, for significantly more money and better benefits, and was felt out about yet another. Since last July, I have gone from being extraordinarily unlucky to extraordinarily lucky. Nothing has really changed in my approach (although I have not actively sought a new job since November). But something has begun to change in the job market.

I think that right now what we're beginning to see is a move towards bringing in new people in the revenue producing segments of businesses. Salespeople, manufacturing people, and customer service positions all seem to be in a little bit of demand right now.

This is great and wonderful, but most of the unemployed at the moment seem to be from support positions, IT particularly. Those types of positions are not being created just yet. So support staff candidates are going without offers.

Now some will argue that the job that are being created now are the low eage positions. And that, by and large, is true. But in order for there to be a need for support staff, there needs to be a staff to support.

I think that a lot of companies learned a very tough lesson back in the late '90s. The last brokerage firm I worked for went on a hiring spree from 1996-1999 and more than quadrupled the size of the company - and then from 2001-2003 they let go basically everyone they hired, plus some. It was a painful lesson for them. And I think that right now, there are a number of companies that are trying to take too much away from that experience. In an effort to make sure they won't have to let people go, they are foregoing revenue and profits to avoid hiring people.

In the late '90s the hiring pendulum was at one extreme, where anybody could get a job in very short order, regardless of anything. In the last 2 or 3 years, we've been at the other extreme, where very few could get a job, no matter how well qualified they might be. At both extremes, the job market was operating very inefficiently and companies have paid a price, either in realized layoffs or unrealized profits.

My sense, and I have nothing really to back it up with it is just a gut feeling, is that things are starting to return to a more normal state. It should be interesting to see how long it takes for hiring to really return to normal.

Are We A Modern Day Rome?

(This is actually my second attempt at writing this as my computer turned itself off right as I got ready to post the original. I'm not as happy with this version as I was with the first but I can't find any temp file of it on the computer. If I ever happen to find the original, I'll be sure to post it.)

I know that this is going to old news for most of you, but I thought that I wanted to comment on it anyway.

Charles Krauthammer recently gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute in which he asserted that the Roman Empire is not an accurate model for modern America.

Now I've commented on some of the parallels between America and Rome here and here.

In the past I have looked at some of the parallels between ancient Rome and modern America, specifically where the issue of the welfare state is involved. But I have never explicitly expressed the belief that the parallels of empire are weak at best.

Ever since the time that Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon on his way back to Rome, the Roman Empire was a dictatorship. The Caesars did pay homage to the Republican origins of Rome, accepting such Senatorial platitudes as Imperator, Consul, Augustus, and countless others.

But how did power in the Roman Empire actually work? It was really pretty simple. The man wearing the purple robes was it. He held dominion over life and death for anyone within the Empire. He could execute, pardon, enslave, emancipate, pillage or plunder without having to worry about Amnesty International or the ACLU complaining about every perceived violation of the rules of civilized warfare. His word was absolute law.

His power wasn't maintained by pleasing the people. It was gathered and maintained by brute force, Machiavellian action, and bribes of the Praetorian Guard.

The Roman Empire at its peak stretched from the Isle of Britain to the Caspian Sea. Towards the end of his reign, the emperor Trajan conquered and annexed Mesopotamia.

Now why did Trajan do this? Was it out of self-defense? Was it to gain additional food for the restless rabble of Rome? For the additional taxes and donatives of the residents of the region? Pride?

Did Trajan hinge his decision on the consent of the Senate? Did he wait for approval from the ancient UN? Did he try to gain the approval of the Gauls' for the invasion of Mesopotamia? Or did he simply go and add the ancient, even at that time, city of Babylon to the Empire - because he wanted to?

Trajan wanted Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, as part of the Roman Empire. It was his wish, and it was so.

Trajan's successor, Hadrian, did not want the province of Mesopotamia. So he pulled out and abandoned it.

The sacrifices made in acquiring the province? Not important.

Was there a local government in place when the Romans left? Not his concern.

Did the people of Babylon have enough food to eat? They'd figure it out - or starve.

Hadrian's wish was to pull out of Mesopotamia, and it was so. There was no public debate. There was no nation building or reconstruction. They Romans wanted to leave, so they left.

That was the way that it was in the Roman Empire. What Caesar wanted, Caesar got. The Senate was a rubber stamp, a facade hearkening back to a government that by the time of Hadrian hadn't existed for almost 200 years. So long as the citizens of Rome, the city, were kept with bread and circus, the people wouldn't revolt. The legions were controlled by fear of the Praetorians, and the Praetorians were controlled by donatives from the emperor. The only person capable of controlling the emperor was the emperor. He was a man with absolute power.

Now in a parallel with ancient Rome, modern America did invade and conquer part of ancient Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq.

But did George W. Bush act without Congressional approval? Did he not send Colin Powell to the UN to present the case for the invasion to try to gain international support? Were there not 12 years worth of previous UN resolutions that provided legitimacy that we made an effort to negotiate?

Did we simply depose Saddam and leave Iraq to suffer anarchy? Did we conquer Iraq and send their food supply back to Washington D.C. to feed the masses on welfare? Did we conquer Iraq to expand our tax base to pay for more spending in the United States?

Did Trajan have to concern himself with Senator Kerryus declaring that his vote for war was based on a different intention for the prosecution of the war? Did he have to worry of Proconsul Deanus declaring that the war against the Mesopotamians was ill advised and wrong?

The answer to all these questions is, of course, no.

Both ancient Rome and modern America invaded and conquered the lands of ancient Mesopotamia. And about the only consistent parallel is that the French probably didn't approve of either invasion.

Krauthammer is right: we are an accidental empire. We don't go out with the intention of claiming new land for God and country. Rome did.

Ancient Rome was an empire based around the superiority of one people over everyone else. Modern America is based on the idea of equality of man.

Rome demanded tribute and food from the conquered. America helps to feed and rebuild.

Rome would oppress and enslave the people. America frees them from oppression and slavery.

Rome was a military power first, commercial power second. America is a commercial power first, military power second.

Rome was founded on the strength of its legions. America was founded on the strength of its ideals.

This isn't to deny that there aren't some lessons that we can't take away from ancient Rome. The lessons from the repetition of history can be very powerful lessons, indeed.

I believe that there are some very valuable lessons of ancient Rome in the bread and circus welfare state.

I also believe that politically there are no really valuable parallels as our two governments are completely different, as are the goals of the government.

There are many parallels between the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy also, but that does not necessarily mean the two events are somehow linked, or that the second could have been predicted. Similarities and coincidences are not proof of a linkage. The lesson of each parallel needs to be examined on a case by case basis to see if it has any validity in a different set of circumstances. Comparing the militaristic, expansionist Roman Empire to the accidental and unwilling American one means that many of the lessons simply have no carryover validity.

As America moves forward in the new world in which we are the only superpower, we need to keep in mind the fact that we are actually charting a new course in uncharted waters. History is important, but we need to remember that for many things we will encounter there will be no parallel.

There is no parallel between the power of the Roman sword and the power of the American idea.

America is not the Roman Empire redux.

Arrggghhhh!!!!!

I would really love to post more today - I have three good articles to write about - but I was thrown for a bit of a loop a little while ago. I received a job offer paying a good bit more than I'm making now. The excitement has made it difficult at best for me to write anything coherent, so I think I'm going to give up on trying for the rest of the night. Also, don't expect much, if anything, tomorrow as I will likely be pulling a 10 am to 2 am workday again.

To give everyone something to chew on for the rest of tonight and tomorrow here are the three articles with a quickie comment on each:

Bush, Congress Battle Over Transport Bill - I really find it odd that Bush would make a stand against spending in one of the few enumerated responsibilities of government (Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the Constitution).

Kerry Avoids Flat Out Denial - Great, Kerry is going to Clinton the issue. If he did, he needs to admit it; if not, deny it like a man. No more weaselly stuff. Must be the francophile in him coming out......

Microsoft a Disney Suitor? - And so the Disney buyout rumor mill begins. I expect that we'll hear about more than just Microsoft before it's all said and done.

If Only...

Have I ever mentioned how much I enjoy reading Victor Davis Hanson? Yeah? If you hadn't read the posts, you probably figured it out by the fact that the top two permanent book recommendation links are both for VDH books. It has always been an unstated (until now) goal of mine to have someone make the comment that I can write half as well as he.

Today, I read his latest column over at National Review Online and thoroughly enjoyed it, as I do all his columns. But then a few minutes later, I found an article over at IMRA in which a Palestinian official proves that he lives in more of a fantasy world than Hanson could ever dream up.

This official referred to Israel as "Satan's offspring" and decided that the recent decision to swap 400 Arab prisoners for one live and three dead Israelis was part of some kind of a plot to make an Arab life seem as though it is worth less than an Israeli one!

Now I didn't agree with the 400 for 1 and 3 deal at all. I thought that the numbers were way out of line (plus I don't like negotiating with terrorists, but that's another issue.). However, I give Sharon credit for placing that much value on the life of a single Israeli citizen, along with providing closure for three other families. It speaks to the commitment that the Israeli government has to its people.

But it wasn't the Israelis who made their citizens life so valuable, it was the Arabs who demanded 400 prisoners for 1. It was the demands of the terrorists that so cheapened the perceived value of the Arab life in relation to the Israeli one. You can't make outrageous demands and then complain about their effect once they're met. It is not the fault of Israel that the Arab (and particularly the Palestinian) people now see the vast difference in the concern of the respective government for their people. The light of the truth can be very harsh indeed.

I really believe that the fact that this official is even out whining about this is a good sign. I think it indicates a rising pressure from the Palestinian people for some sort of reform that better recognizes their worth to their leadership. Had the negotiation been for 40 prisoners, the Palestinians may have felt like their side simply pressed a good deal. But 400? That number is simply so far out of whack with a reasonable expectation that I can see it making the Arabs feel as though their government views them as 1/400th of an Israeli - and that has got to hurt.

Abstinence=Bigotry?

The Liberty Council has a grassroots program going on in high schools around the nation today to have kids wear white t-shirts to school to help promote the idea that abstinence is a good thing. The kids also plan on distributing pro-abstinence literature to other students.

Given the current state of teenage pregnancies and STDs, is this really all that bad a thing, to encourage kids to wait until they're married before having sex?

said Alice Leeds, a spokeswoman for Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. "It's redefining it in their context to conform to their frankly bigoted agenda." (emphasis mine)

Now Ms. Leeds was referring to the plan to call today a "Day of Purity" as an abomination because it is using the word "purity" in a manner in which she does not approve (but a manner which is consistent with common usage of the word for the last few hundred years).

But how can she honestly sit there and claim that promoting abstinence - even with an unapproved, non-PC use of the word purity - is bigoted? Since when did responsibility become bigotry? Since when did morality, at least that accepted by a large segment of the population, become bigotry?

There is nothing bigoted about the promotion of abstinence. It may be a disagreeable position for Ms. Leeds, and one that she would not teach to her own children, but not every disagreeable position is bigotry. Placing more value on purity than promiscuity does not a bigot make. If Ms. Leeds ever wants to have her message of free same sex love accepted, she needs to become more accepting herself.

And she's not the only one out there complaining about the movement:

Eliza Byard, deputy executive director for the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, said in an e-mail that her group applauded any effort to promote healthy sexual choices by young people.

"Unfortunately, this program seems to have a limited idea of what that means and doesn't appear designed to provide the kind of information students really need," she said.

"Doesn't appear designed to provide the kind of information students really need." That sentence, more than any other in the article, really, really bugs me.

Why is there an assumption that all sides of every issue must be presented at all times? This effort by the Liberty Counsel is engaging in advocacy. They believe strongly in a certain position and want to promote the benefits to others of taking that position. In a court, do we expect the defense to assist in the prosecution while the prosecution assists in the defense? No. We have an advesarial system set up so that both sides of the story are presented and a jury determines which side is the better choice. Ideas are really no different. The grand marketplace of ideas is also advesarial. But instead of lawyers, the marketplace of ideas uses advocates. Sometimes they are politicians. Sometimes they are private citizens or organizations. But if we don't expect the State Attorney to defend a murderer, why should we expect a church group to defend or educate about promiscuity?

If Ms. Byard feel so strongly that an important part of sex education is being left out then she should go out and advocate it. Just like the Liberty Council is. Let the ideas of abstinence and promiscuity fight it out in the marketplace of ideas. Surely if Ms. Byard doesn't feel a twinge of embarassment or guilt at going forth and recommending that girls become sluts. Surely she has no concern with going out and recommending that teenage boys act on their urges with anyone, male or female, who happens to be willing.

Or maybe she does have issues with going out and publically advocating such positions. Maybe Ms. Leeds knows that she cannot legitimately win in the marketplace of ideas, so she tries to brand the abstinence message as bigotry, hoping that the stigma of the word will be enough to make up for her lack of intellectual argument.

I applaud the Liberty Council for making an effort. I don't believe that they'll be too successful as the free love crowd has already made some serious inroads in the educational system - inroads that will be very difficult to reverse. But they have taken a position and they are advocating it in an adult, responsible manner. Got to give credit where credit is due.

Also, as an aside, I am not attacking homosexuality here, only unfettered promiscuity. Please don't read in to this something that is not there.

Who Has Failed The Student-Athlete?

Earlier this week, there was a federal court ruling that cleared the way for Maurice Clarett, former Ohio State running back for a total of one season, to enter the NFL draft, effectively nullifying some NFL rules about draft eligibility. The NCAA is, to be expected, up in arms about the ruling, claiming that it will further harm young men who simlpy aren't capable of playing at the NFL level. The real question here, isn't the one surrounding the draft eligibility ruling. No, the real question is:who is failing the student-athletes?

Is there really any blame that can be placed on the NFL here? You can maybe make the argument that they should have put stiffer eligibility language in the last collective bargaining agreement. But in the end, the league was trying to keep the youngest of the young out of the league. Education may not have been their top concern, but they certainly were not attempting to poach the cream of the crop. Their rules were applied fairly across the board.

Did the court system fail the student-athletes? Perhaps. A little common sense applied by the judge probably would have gone a long ways here, but the judge followed the letter of the law. If blame were going to be placed on government, it would probably be better placed on the legislatures that passed the laws the strictly interpreted.

No, the real failure was by the NCAA and the colleges themselves. How can a graduation rate of 54% be called successful? There are now college football games on ESPN or ESPN2 nearly every day of the week. It's nice as a football fan, but it is terrible for the student-athletes.

Why? Money.

College football generates a huge amount of revenue for both the schools and the NCAA. At many universities, at least some of the money coming in from football is used to improve the quality of education for all students. But is the trade-off worth it?

I don't think so. It is exploitation. Many of these "student-"athletes are kids that really are ill-equipped to be in school in the first place, much less taking on the added stresses of athletics along with their studies. It is not fair to the athletes and it is not fair to the rest of the student body that school funding is being spent on these kids that shouldn't have made it out of high school much less into a major university.

If the NCAA and the universities are looking to place blame, they need to look no further than the closest mirror. The biggest failure of the student-athlete comes from programs that try to convince kids that they are student-athlete material when a 10 year old can read better than they can. Yes, the argument can be made that they are giving underprivleged kids opportunity. But it can also be argued that these same kids are being lied to. Do the ends justify the means?

The state of the student-athlete is deplorable. Something needs to be done to fix the system. Blaming courts and the NFL is not the way to do it.

The NCAA needs to get its own house in order. The 54% graduation rate is their fault - and no one else's. It's time for the NCAA to own up to its failings.

Question

Does anyone have any ideas as to how to pursue a copyright violation against a Chinese company? The website is registered to a Chinese company and is hosted on a .com.cn server.

Chinese companies have made cheap knock-offs of high-quality, high-price billiard tables for years, but this one is actually using the photos of the originals (not the knock-offs) to promote their product.

I know that I can't pursue this personally, but I am interested in knowing what avenues are available - simply for personal edification.

Child Support

Via the Watcher of Weasels we have a rant from Raging Dave at Four Right Wing Wackos about the worst aspects of the child support enforcement program as it exists in many states.

I agree with Raging Dave that the system is broken - no doubt about it. I'm quite sure that there are many stories like that of Mr. Pierce, a man goat-roped into fatherhood (and hence, child support payments). I know that there is a perverse incentive for some states to go after anyone with money, assuming that they must be the father of any child whose mother is a candidate for The Jerry Springer Show (The Father Of My Child Is One Of These 42 Men That I Slept With In Less Than Two Weeks!). Everything that Raging Dave rages about is accurate.

But it is only half the story of why the system is broken. Contrary to the popular belief that only men get screwed under the system, there are instances of women who get the short shrift also. Let me explain by way of personal experience.

First, I believe that any man who fathers a child has automatically signed up for 18-25 years of supporting that child (time depending on whether or not the kid goes to college). If you were man enough to do the deed with Mommy, your man enough to live up to your obligations as Daddy. Period. End of statement. No questions. You're a father, you have an obligation. I don't feel sorry for you and you had better not sit there and ask me to feel sorry for you. Some decisions have long term consequences. Deal with it.

Several times on this site, I've mentioned that I have three kids. Clarification is in order. My other half has three kids. I have none that biologically mine. I support these three and love them like they're mine, but in the end it is only because I'm me. I am not linked to them via DNA. So they're my kids, they're just not MY kids.

The State of Florida is a state that does not take out a cut on child support payments. Awfully nice of them, especially considering the fact that the payments can get down as low as $35/week for a teenager (actually perspective on the cost of raising a kid is something the courts here should get a better grip on). Benefit comes in that without there being a cut taken, there is no incentive for the State to "create" fathers, quite possibly incorrectly. It is also a problem in trying to get the State to enforce child support collection.

The State of Florida also has another quirk (at least in the mid '90s they did. I don't know if the law has changed since). If the mother and father are not legally married at the time of birth, the father cannot be listed on the birth certificate - even if he concedes fatherhood and wants to be named. Paternity can only be established by a DNA test. Sounds all nice and fair, right?

Wrong. Getting the courts to order a DNA test is near next to impossible. Our youngest is already in elementary school. I've been with my other half for over five years, nearly six years, now. We have received exactly one - 1 - payment of $25 towards supporting that child - and the bum had the audacity to ask for it back as a loan! She has gone and asked a judge multiple times to order a DNA test so that his paternity could be legally established and so that she could get a court order for the support payments (she knows that we'll not actually see the money, but he'll at least end up in jail, hopefully working prison labor, which might start to send some money our way). The judges, so far, have refused. This same bum is the father of the middle child. He is listed as the father on her birth certificate (from another state). Over the same time frame, we have seen exactly the same $25 support.

The oldest one, her father has done a little better. Ordered to pay at the whopping rate of $35 week, he is close to, if not over, $2500 behind. Last year he had a decent income tax refund coming, but the State forgot to send in the paperwork to intercept it. From him we at least get the odd $35 check or maybe an occasional $100 check if he was feeling generous. But nothing consistent or meaningful in supporting his child.

We have tried every different avenue we can think of for getting some kind of support for these kids. Both me and my other half have struggled jobwise, and we're, between the both of us, not even making what I was alone just two years ago. It is a fairly constant struggle to make ends meet, which is part of the reason why I'm working two jobs right now. Getting a little, even token help, with support would be very welcome.

But when she's gone to the courts, she gets told she has to use a Department of Revenue attorney. Remember, the DOR doesn't make anything for collecting these payments, all of the money is sent on to the custodial parent. So to say that their interest in taking on another deadbeat was low would be an understatement. They have absolutely no interest in helping her to gain the support she needs and is rightly entitled to (and not in the negative sense of the word "entitlement," it took two people to create this child, yet only one is doing anything to care for the child). They are only interested in processing another case and getting off the docket for now.

The system does fail people like Mr. Pierce by not exercising proper due diligence or by using a presumption of innocence. But it also fails legitimate parents who are trying to play by the rules. The system is in need of a complete overhaul, taking into account the needs of both non-parents and real parents in true need of assistance.

I don't have the end-all solution, but there is more to the story than just the horror stories of the wrongly accused. We need to find a better and more efficient way to screen the alleged parents to better protect the innocent while also holding the real fathers to account.

My Reason For Not Posting So Far Today

Had a little more important stuff to do. I had almost forgotten how much fun the moonwalks can be!

Too bad the temperature was only in the 50s for the party. Everything ended up great, but the kids spent a lot of time complaining about how cold it was.

Good Advice For Kids

In light of the kidnapping and murder of Carlie Brucia in Sarasota this week, Donald Sensing has posted an excellent list of things that all children should be taught in order to help protect themselves.

Go over, take a look and spread the word.

The Imperial Judiciary

I've thinking more about the Massachusettes Supreme Court ruling that essentially legalized gay marriage. The more I think about the ruling and it's effects, the more I think that it will end of being one of the watershed decisions in our history. Not because of the issue at hand, but because it has put our nation in a fundamental crisis.

For a long time, many pundits have been quietly warning that we were leaning towards a tyranny of the judiciary. Our courts have always been powerful, but up until recently, they had acted with relative restraint. The stuck to their Constitutional mandate to simply interpret the review the laws to ensure that they were in accordance with the Constitution itself. But over the last 30 years in particular, since the Roe v. Wade decision, the court system has begun to expand its scope. No longer are they simply reviewing and applying the laws as written, they are now taking over functions of the executive and especially the legislative branches of government.

Courts will now routinely dictate funding requirements to the executive branch as a means of righting a perceived wrong. Activist judges will "find" new interpretations of law that essentially rewrite and pervert the will of the people as expressed through the legislative branch. Forget the Imperial Presidency - it doesn't exist. We, instead, are faced with the greatest concentration of power in America since we threw off the shackles of King George III. We are facing the Imperial Judiciary.

The gay marriage case simply goes to point out just how far along the path we have come. The judges have taken a article of law, written by the legislature, "found" an interpretation that has never been there before, and using that interpretation to dictate to the executive branch how they must conduct business. Four judges have overruled the stated desires of millions of Massachusettes residents. The few are dictating to the many.

So how do we end the tyranny? I don't have specific answers. I think though that it is critical that we use only Constitutionally acceptable checks and balances. Stop funding the judiciary. Find reason to impeach the worst examples. The only recourse that scares me is amending the Constitution. If we go that route, and it must not be discounted as a solution, we must ensure that any amendment serves only to limit the role of government, not to in any way, restrict the rights of the people. Our options are few, and our time is limited. If we don't act now, I fear that the situation will only get worse.

Now as for the ruling specifically, how do I see it truly affecting the issue of gay marriage? I think that it set the cause back by 20, maybe 30 years, at least.

The nation was in the beginning of a debate about the merits and drawbacks to gay marriage. Given time, I believe that a majority of Americans would have come to the conclusion that it was acceptable. Distasteful, perhaps, but as a people we tend to be pretty forgiving and accepting. It's time would have come.

But now, the debate has been squashed. Four judges have told us that we must accept gay marriage, because they think it's a good thing.

And people have reacted. For the folks in the middle, the ones who eventually would have swung the debate for gay marriage, they have now been polarized. Many are now absolutely - and irrevocably - opposed to the idea. Many, like myself, who support the idea are absolutely offended at the way the we were dictated to. I absolutely oppose the Mass Supreme Court ruling and hope that the people of the state find a way to get it overturned.

There are many debates that cannot be forced. Something as emotionally charged as gay marriage is one of them. This ruling will force gay marriages to be accepted in the legal arena - in some places, at least - but will end any hope of it being accepted in the social arena for many, many years.

This ruling is so out of the mainstream that even John Kerry, a man who professes to support equal rights for gays and lesbians, has come out and is taking the same position on this ruling as is George Bush - he opposes it.

The Imperial Justice System is coming. Do we really want to accept it?

Happy Birthday

Just want to say "Happy Birthday" from me and the little one to the middle child, who is turning 9 today.

Happy Birthday, kiddo!

Lawyers And Medicine

I was going to blog on this last night, but we instead went out to dinner with my sister to see her off before she left for Texas this morning. If you're ever in the Orlando area and are looking for a nice, but somewhat pricey meal with excellent food, atmosphere and wait staff, try Seasons 52 on Sand Lake Road, just west of International Drive. Well worth it. But I'm digressing already.

While I was at work yesterday, a commercial came on the radio from one of the local ambulance chasing firms which said, in essesence, "There aren't enough nurses in Florida" - a true statement - so "let's force doctors and hospitals to hire more nurses, pay them better, and reduce mandatory overtime." Followed by the usual "If you believe a loved one has been hurt do to a lack of skilled nursing staff, call us and we'll sue the crap out of whoever you want." (All of the phrases in quotes are paraphrased, by me, and are not direct quotes. The quotation marks are merely being used to highlight the gist of their message.)

Now doesn't that just sounds all nice and altruistic. The lawyers are now sticking up for the nurses and are going to force the big, bad, hospitals and doctors to hire more nurses, to give them all raises, and to cut back their hours. Nursing understaffing is a problem. This sounds great, using the legal system to correct an obvious wrong. What could be wrong with that?

The basic premise is what's wrong with it. The law firm is working on the assumption that there are a sufficient number of qualified nurses out there and that they simply aren't being hired in proper numbers. But that's not the case.

There is a real nursing shortage. We simply have more openings than there are qualified nurses to fill. And it's not as if the educational system around here is lacking for candidates either. The waiting list to get into some of the nursing programs can be as long as two years (known from personal experience with trying to get my other half into one). Some of the hospitals around here want so badly to hire more RNs that they even go as far as to pay for all the schooling on he understanding that you work for them for two years after becoming registered. They even hire you into another job in the hospital during your schooling. The problem here is not a lack of desire to hire on the part of the medical profession.

The problem here is twofold. One, there simply isn't enough capacity in the educational system to get more people through. The system is working at capacity, training nurses as fast as it possibly can. And two, there are a certain number of potentially excellent candidates, I don't know how many, who are turned off and scared away from even considering a career in the medical field, as either a doctor or a nurse, by the excessive litigation of the field.

If the ambulence chasers succeed in their quest to begin suing the medical profession for a lack of nurses, I fear that they will only succeed, not in improving the quality of care, but rather in diminishing the quality.

Smaller practices and hospitals that cannot afford to compete with the big players for talent will losing their nursing staffs and will be forced to close. The remaining facilities will be fully staffed, yes, but they will be far fewer in number and the wait, already outrageous, will become even more so. As more hospitals close, ambulences will have to travel farther to get their patients to care - a dangerous situation where every minute can count so much.

As the timeliness of the care declines, and as more people suffer the effects, the lawyers will of course then turn their sights to the closings and shrinkage of the medical profession as their new boogieman to explain why they should be be suing the hospitals.

Which brings us around full circle to the real motive behind the lawyer's great alrtuistic desire to help the nurses. They simply are looking for a way to go after the hospitals and their malpractice insurers as they still have the deepest pockets around.

In the end, they are creating a self-perpetuating cycle. There are too few nurses; there are two few facilities. Until we simply get more nursing students educated and in the system, there is no simple solution and certainly none that can be imposed by the courts.

The lawyers will simply raise the cost of health care even more, pricing more people out of the market. I know a little about on of the partners in this particular firm, he tries to play kingmaker in Florida politics, so I can certainly believe that he is fully accepting of the stratosphereic rise in the cost of health care, as it would bring us one step closer to realizing the dream of HillaryCare.

And then the lawyers would have access to the deepest pockets of all - the taxpayers.

What To Do With The Homeless?

Dean Esmay over at Dean's World has posted an interesting article and corresponding question. The article is about a plan in Columbus, OH to spend approximately $1000 per homeless person to give the chronically homeless a nice place to live. Dean isn't questioning the idea of helping the homeless, he just questions the way of disclosing the costs. As he points out, $1000 per head doesn't really tell us the cost. How many homeless are there?

The discussion surrounding the question is excellent, as it usually is over there, but I'm left with another quandry. Of the 10% of the homeless that are chronically homeless there is a segment that is homeless due to factors beyond their control: mental illness being the most common. And I absolutely agree with helping those folks. Through no choice of their own they ended up in a terrible situation. If you told me it would cost $10,000 per person to better serve them, I would have no problem. It is the other large group of hardcore homeless, the drug addicts and alcholics - the ones who chose the prediciment - that I have no desire to help.

I've heard all the arguments for why we should help the addicted: the drug is too powerful, they have some kind of mental illness that causes them to make poor decisions, it's their parent's fault, etc. I know a member of the hardcore drug-abusing homeless. He has absolutely no interest in reforming or becoming a viable member of society. He has robbed us blind and taken advantage of every kind gesture we have offered. If you were to provide him with a free to low-cost apartment, as proposed here, all that you would be doing is to create another perpetually dependent leech on society. He drains enough away as it is, giving him more is not going to be more cost effective or beneficial.

The problem is that most of the drug associated hardcore homeless are undesiring of putting in a day's work. They wouldn't want to work to pay their rent. They wouldn't want to work to buy food. They wouldn't want to work to clean their home, to do basic upkeep, or even to prepare food. For many of them, unless it comes with a poptop or can be consumed with a flick of the Bic they are completely and totally uninterested. If it's free, and their body is craving for it, they might partake. But they will only expend energy and resources on their chosen vice.

Yes, I'm conservative. Yes, I get ticked off by people that I perceive as not being willing to give an honest day's labor. But I'm also a softy when approached with a personal story. It is much more difficult to say "no" when the beggar is standing in front of me crying. But I am so thouroughly disgusted and appalled by the complete lack of, well, everything - morals, ambition, conscience - that I have actually gotten to the point of refusing help or shelter, even when the temperature is dipping into the freezing range. I can no longer (and haven't been able to for quite a while now) justify helping those who will not put forth even a shred of effort to help themselves.

For those who are mentally ill and incapable of taking care of themselves, I really think that the closing of the state run institutions was a terrible tragedy. Yes, the conditions were sometimes bad. Yes, there were some people there who probably shouldn't have been there. But for many, the institutions were the best alternative available. And they should still be available. For those who required their services, they were, and still are, the only viable option for keeping them off the streets. Bringing back the institutions would help a large part of the chronic homeless problem, and would help them in a positive way. I'll grant that there is a basis for debating who should be in the institutions and the manner in which they are run, but I don't really believe that there is much room for debating their need. Their elimination eradicated one set of problems, but created a whole set of other problems which have left the patients in a much worse condition than when they were institutionalized. We've tried it both ways. The no institution method isn't working. It's time to start helping these people again.

The only real quandry I see is what to do with the people who are chronically homeless by choice, but who are sincere in wanting to change for the better. I'm not so callous as to believe that they don't exist. They do. And they deserve a helping hand from society. We should never completely shut anyone out. But how do we address them and seperate them from the hardcore, unrepentent, homeless?

I don't think that using completion of a rehab program is sufficient enough as many of the hardcore homeless will complete a program during the winter if they believe that it will keep them warm and out of the snow. Demonstation of a work ethic might be one method, but there is also truth to the difficulty associated with a homeless person getting that first job to begin with. So how do we do this?

I think that this is where the private sector can come in to help. What's going to be needed, I think, is one-on-one interaction. Someone will need to be there to help the homeless person through an assessment, to help them with finding a job, to help with keeping the job, and to help with fighting the temptation to relapse. None of this will be easy and it is beyond the scope of anything short of a monsterous public bureacracy. I think that the private sector would be much better able to shape individualized programs, to provide the crucial one-on-one interaction, to make the necessary business world contacts.

I would gladly and willingly pay $1000 or more per qualified homeless person to either help them through mental health services and institutions or through a screened private program. Fund it through a combination of stringless federal grants and private donations. This, I believe, could be legitimately defined as a common public good.

What I cannot support, however, is a plan that gives an apartment, food, job placement assistance, or anything to the person who has no interest in becoming a productive member of society for any time period longer than required to obtain a twelve pack of beer or a crack rock. I can find no level of sympathy that makes me believe that it is a good idea to give to someone who is simply going to abuse the help and use as a way of enabling their destructive habits. I just can't.

I will go out of my way to help my fellow man who truly wants and/or requires help. I will not lift a finger to help a leech.

Selfishness Vs. The Public Good

Reading along today, I came across an interesting editorial on the Scottsdale, AZ newspaper's website: Selfish pocket pickers. Let me pull out a couple of quotes here if I may:

"They include ... selfish public school parents who want private school parents to subsidize their kids' education...

Disagreeing with me about public education funding, he smugly told me that although his three kids have graduated from public school, he gladly continues to pay education taxes for the public good, implying that he is generous and compassionate.

The fact is, the cost of his kids' public education exceeds what he will pay in public school taxes over his lifetime. In other words, he has taken more from the public good than he will contribute to the public good. Private school parents, on the other hand, will contribute well over $100,000 per household in public school taxes and take nothing from the public good."

I believe in small, limited government. There are really few expenditures that I believe are appropriate for the government to undertake. Public education is one of them.

Will the parent in question ever pay enough in public school taxes to fully cover the cost of educating his three children? Probably not (but he might depending on the value of his house). Does that mean that we, as a society, should have refused to educate his children? Would society be a better place if only those able to fund an education would receive one?

Get real.

Without a public education, a child is more than likely doomed to spend his or her life wallowing away in some menial, minimum wage job never really contributing to society. Often they become welfare recipients or charges of the state. The ongoing, lifelong expense associated with the uneducated is far in excess of the cost of educating them in the first place. It's bad enough that we have to deal with people who choose not to be educated, why are we even contemplating forcing more into similar situations?

Public education also has benefits, even for the childless. One, it allows people to more fully develop their potential, which in turn allows them to make greater and more significant contributions to overall society. Second, educated people tend to make more money, a situation which improves the overall economy and also improves the chances that someone like Mr. Cantoni will be able to peddle his books or public speaking engagements (kind of hard to sell a book to an illiterate, isn't it?). And third, as the economy improves and these publically educated heathen earn more money, they tend to pay more in taxes. This in turn benefits Mr. Cantoni in one of two ways: one, he gets more services from the government for the same amount of taxes he personally pays or two, he gets to receive the same services from his government at a lower personal tax rate.

It's kind of ironic that Mr. Cantoni would find the gumption to complain about the "hoity-toity" and the "highfalutin' elites" when his ideal world, without public education, would create a caste system in this country more deeply entrenched than that of the Dark Ages.

I agree that there are a lot of excesses in government. Many of the items Mr. Cantoni lists are indeed legitimately questionable expenses. But not public education. You can tell me that the public education system is bad and I'll agree. You can tell me that it is the implementation of the system that is flawed and I'll agree. Blame it on the unions, on apathetic students, on disinterested parents, on uncaring teachers - find whatever fault you will with public education and I'll likely agree that there is a problem that needs to be fixed.

But the idea of public education is still good. Education, now more than ever, is still needed to have a somewhat livable existance.

Mr. Cantoni complains about the selfish parents, but I find his short-term, money-in-my-pocket approach to whining to be far more selfish over the long haul.

My Opinion On The SOTU

OK, I said last night that I would give my opinion on the SOTU after I recovered from the NyQuil dose I took to get some sleep. So here we go.

Overall, I didn't like it.

Specifically, I thought the foreign policy section was pretty good, but I absolutely hated to domestic policy section.

The foreign policy section, an area which has always been one of Bush's strong suits anyways, wasn't too bad. I thought he spent a little too much time defending the war in Iraq, not enough time talking about Iran or North Korea (both of which barely registered a mention), hit it about right with his talking about Libya and how diplomacy without the backing of force is useless, loved the permission slip line, but also thought there was just a little too much fluff to make it really top notch. It was during this part of the speech that I thought the Democrats made their worst showing (before the rebuttal which was about as exciting as watching grass grow in the winter) when, as Bush was reading off the names of many of the nations participating in Iraq, they sat there like little petulent statues refusing, even for a second, to admit that the Administration might have actually done a pretty decent job in making Iraq an international effort. I think that it showing a slavish devotion to the UN and I think it was irresponsible and intellectually dishonest. This was a success of the Administration and one that deserved to be applauded as it did address the concerns of the Democrats.

Bush really blew it on the domestic policy side though. If the foreign policy contained a little fluff, the domestic side contained the Stay-Puff Marshmellow Man. There were two parts in particular that I really took issue with. First was his nearly hypocritical admonisment to the Congress to take care with the taxpayer funds. Second issue was the proposed marriage amendment to the Constitution.

Read yesterday's editorial in the Wall Street Journal Drunken GOP Sailors (this link requires registration). Bush has been raising non-defense spending at a higher rate than any previous President in the last 40 years. Congress was voting on an appropriations bill yesterday that would provide $2 million for golf awareness in St. Augustine. Why? Why is golf awareness a national priority? Why is a single traffic light in upstate New York a national priority? Come on! There is no prioritization going on here. And this has been the norm throughout the Administration. Read the editorial, it lays out the case pretty well. Bush should not have been standing up there talking about fiscal responsibility.

And the marriage amendment is, by far, my least favorite of the domestic issues discussed. A marriage amendment is a banana republic tactic. One of the reasons why our Constitution has succeeded where so many others have failed is because it is limited in scope and serves to limit the scope of government, not of the people. Think about it. There has really only been one attempt to Constitutionally tell the people what they cannot do: Prohibition. It is also the only amendment that has ever been repealed. One of the goals of the Founders, I believe, was to protect the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the majority. The marriage amendment would do the exact opposite. It would categorrically deny rights to the minority at the direction of the majority. It is an extremely dangerous precedent to set and one that I certainly would not even attempt to set over something like gay marriage. I just can't believe that gay marriage is an issue over which it is worth risking the very foundations of our society, respect for the rights of minorities. It is not a timeless issue, it's a fad issue.

If Bush and Congress believes that there is a problem with judges misinterpreting the laws, then pass a one the is absolutely clear like "Marriage shall be defined as the union between one man and one woman only. The union of two or more men or two or more women shall not be regarded as a legal marriage and no judge shall rule otherwise." Dump all the caveats. Get rid of all the weasel words. Make it plain and clear what the intention of the law is and then, if a judge ignores it, take it all the way to the Supreme Court. Just don't wreck the sanctity of the Constitution along the way. (For what it's worth, I am still mildly supportive of gay marriage if it is instituted with reform to the marriage laws for both hetero- and homo-sexual marriages to make the institution more of an institution again and less of an issue of convienence. See here and here)

Bush has a long way to go on the domestic issues. However, I believe that the upcoming election is being framed in terms of foreign policy which is certainly Bush's forte. I don't think that he won reelection last night (I really don't think that he would have picked up any votes. The speech really was an overall dud.) but he also didn't really hurt himself either. His speechwriters had best get on the ball pretty soon here, though or it's going to be a long, boring campaign.

Those Little Motorized Scooters

Posting will likely be very light through the New Year and bowl season, but I had one article I saw the other day that I wanted to post on.

The Lake Mary Herald, December 25th issue (no web site available) has an article about the city of Longwood considering a ban on the motorized scooters that are becoming so popular with kids these days. The basic gist of things is that State Representative Randy Johnson (R-Celebration) got a bill through that made it legal to operate a scooter without a driver's license (although the State Attorney General has said that there are other laws that still apply that require a license). City Commissioner Butch Bundy has proposed having them banned within the city limits of Longwood. His rationale?

"You hate to have to get into this but I also don't want our police officers or our EMTs called to a scene where a child has been run over."

By that logic, bicycles should be banned, as should regular scooters, skateboards, rollerblades, and even walking on the sidewalk since all can lead to kids being run over. But having watched a number of kids in my neighborhood and around my new job, I can certainly appreciate that there needs to be a better way. Too many kids are acting irresponsibly - on major roads, no less. But at the same time, I don't think that there should be a requirement for a driver's license.

Why not have a city registration requirement instead? Require that when a scooter is brought into a city for the first time, the parents should need to bring the kid down to the police station for a safety briefing (complete with a list of streets on which the scooters are restricted from, like SR 434, a very heavily trafficked highway in this area - definitely no place for a kid on a motorized scooter, yet I have seen them there), at the end of which the kid gets a sticker to apply to the back of the scooter. A separate sticker would be required for each city (or unincorporated area). The stickers would be free, but there would be penalties to the parents for failing to register their scooter (nominal fines perhaps).

This would hopefully restrain some of the worst behavior. If the cops are able to talk to the kid during the registration process and to reinforce the need for safe operation, maybe a few of the kids who are really out of hand will be able to get it under control.

An outright ban won't really be effective. It'll end up being like the fireworks laws around here - everyone ignores them and they're only enforced in extreme circumstances. Why do we want to create more opportunity for kids to become disenchanted with law enforcement?

Something needs to be done with the motorized scooter situation. Kids will be kids. Too many parents are allowing their kids to act in utterly irresponsible ways. Would this add a little to the police burden? Yes. But it is also part community outreach along with providing public safety. If we can foster a better public/police relationship at the same time that we improve public safety, is that such a bad deal? I don't think so.

We need to find ways to make the scooters work - kids like them - instead of finding (or manufacturing) reasons to ban them.

A Very Merry Boxing Day

For those of you who are celebrating it today.

Yesterday was a nice day. The kids got all excited with their presents, I finally was able to get the last of the spyware and viruses off the computer, and we spent most of the afternoon down at my parents house. All in all, a very enjoyable day (and the perfect time to have a day off from work. Six and seven days a week is starting to get to me!)

I did have one of those revelations yesterday that I really am getting old. For Christmas, I got (among other things) shaving cream and after shave from the kids. And you know, there was no urge to groan or anything like that. My first reaction on opening the presents was "Cool! I need this!" I'm becoming old and practical. What's up with that?

I hope everyone else had a wonderful Christmas, also.

I Hate Viruses and Such

There has been no posting yesterday or today so far because I'm trying to get a couple of viruses and spyware programs off the computer that are making it nearly impossible to use. So far I've run the new version of Ad Aware, two virus scans, and have manually erased a couple of other programs that the various software programs wouldn't pick up. What a pain in the butt!

I'll be getting back to regular posting as soon as I can get this mess cleaned up.

The New Job

I've had a few requests over the last month to blog a bit about the new job I started a month ago today. Seeing as how this is the penultimate post of my first millennia of posts, I thought I'd take a few minutes to fill that request.

In my last job, I was the office manager/store manager/administrative assistant/accounts receivable and payable/sales manager/warehouse manager/HR manager and a few other hats also - all for approximately $21K/year. The person who owned the company was one of those people who believes in personal responsibility, so long as someone else is personally responsible. Needless to say, I got blamed for many problems, most of which I had absolutely nothing to do with (a fact which was finally admitted in the last week). The pressure at work was enormous and the pressure trying to make ends meet on that salary (about half of what I was making as a stockbroker) was even worse.

So, in May, after a particularly offensive episode (ok, not particularly, but extremely offensive) I began looking for another job. After several months of looking with no success, a friend, who just happened to also be a sales rep for some of the furniture lines we carried, came across another of his customers who just happened to be looking for a new salesman.

So we met. And I liked the store; liked the owner; and was satisfied with an effective boost in pay if I switched. After some hemming and hawing during which I almost blew the opportunity, I finally hired on to a job selling pool tables, a product about which I knew almost nothing (and still have a lot to learn).

Over the last month, I've been learning product and refreshing sales techniques. I was told that I could expect reasonably to sell three to five tables a week once I was established, I've sold, on average, 2½ per week since hiring on.

It's been a challenge. Trying to learn the product, while making sales, during the Christmas rush has actually been fun. Before I started, I had no idea that pool tables came in any form other than what you would see at bars. So my learning curve has been steep to say the least.

But I've had good support. The owner has been extremely supportive. He has helped with every stupid question I had. He has been a cheerleader and a critic.

And I've been able to relax. He runs the business much the same as I would, so we have a good understanding. He treats customers the way I would, so we have few misunderstandings. And most importantly, he believes that personal responsibility is personal. Each person, himself included, is responsible for his or her own actions.

Part of the reason my posting has been so light is because I've been trying so hard to learn the product so that I can do a good job. Life is much more relaxing now as I have goals to meet, but they are attainable and I don't have to feel like I am the final line of defense between the customer and a miserable experience.

Changing jobs when I did was one of the best moves I've made in a long time.

Lieberman On Saddam

I just turned on the TV and while switching over to the football game, I stopped on Fox News where Bill O'Reilly was interviewing Senator Joe Lieberman about the capture of Saddam. I've often said that Lieberman was the most reasonable of the candidates running for the Democratic nomination. Tonight he proved why.

When asked about the political bump that Bush will inevitably get from this, Lieberman responded to the effect of: So be it. This is a night to disregard party affiliation and to celebrate the victory that is ours as Americans. (This is not an exact quote, but a pretty close paraphrase.)

That is classy. I've seen quotes from other candidates (most notably John Kerry) which tried to minimize the magnitude of the success or to play politics.

Tonight is a night where we can and should celebrate. One of the most evil men on the planet is, for the moment, neutralized.

I'm glad to see that Lieberman understands this.

Damn Spammers

Arggh. They got through my filtering with another variation of the Nigerian scammail. This time, in the subject line it said "URNET PROPOSAL" and they pretended to be the son of a Zimbabwean farmer (who just happened to have $24.5 million sitting in the bank, yeah right).

Now I have to filter not only against good spellings, but misspellings also. Pretty soon, I may not ever get a single email because I'll have them all filtered out!

These guys are going to kill email as a real tool, absolutely kill it.

Wow! I Made Two Letter Of The Day Lists!

This is pretty cool! My dad called me earlier today to mention that he had seen my site mentioned in Electric Venom's Letter of the Day list (today's letter was "N").

Then tonight, after I finish posting the last post, I go to make sure that I didn't horrifically screw something up, and I notice that The Accidental Jedi had me listed in her Letter of the Day from yesterday (her letter was "M").

Great. Another goal in life. To be part of a list for every letter in the entire alphabet. I guess I need to start writing some better stuff now, huh?

This Done Pissed Me Off, Y'All

I wasn't going to write anything tonight, but this article just got me all up in arms: Southern identity grows less assertive

They only wish it would. Southern culture and the resulting pride it engenders are just about the most fearful aspect of the South to many outsiders. It is also very likely the most misunderstood.

Southern culture is not about slavery or racism or superiority. It is about honor, independence, and trust. The elitists in the world (both Northern and Southern in origin) don't appreciate the rebellious streak in Southerners and spend a great deal of time trying to smear us as exclusive, backwards and slow.

Look at some of the loaded phrases the author uses:

The South -- the home of good ol' boys and pickup trucks, the stereotypical images recently mentioned by Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean; of yellow dogs with grease spots on their backs; of front porch swings ...

"The only thing I can figure is the past traditions," said Raymond Scott, an African-American UPS driver in his hometown of Cleveland, Tenn. "I know years ago in the South, it was known to be racially slow to change..."

"I think that's why some people consider [being Southern] to be degrading," he said. "Other people say Southerners aren't as bright, not as clean..."

"I think a lot of the older folks are dying out, the kind of people who sit down at a [restaurant] and tell racist jokes, you just see a lot less of it,..."

"There are people up here driving down the street with a huge Confederate flag flying behind them...."

...the South's lagging willingness to desegregate haven't helped the image...

Low test scores and near-bottom rankings in national academic achievement tests...

"I feel some embarrassment and shame because of how underfunded our school system is," said Connell. "You've got a lot of older people who want to stick to the old-fashioned way of doing things. You mention any kind of tax [for the schools] and they think it's just terrible."

Staunch in their Southernness were mainline Protestants and those with no church affiliation, political conservatives, Republicans and the most affluent.

There were, of course, no similar statements of why it might not be so shameful to be a proud Southerner. Consistently, anyone who disagreed that it is shameful to be Southern was portrayed as someone ignoring reality.

There was never any discussion about the honesty and integrity that you find among true Southerners. There was never any discussion about the strong sense of right and wrong that leads to an intense code of honor among true Southerners. There was no discussion about Southerners desiring freedom, independence, and self-reliance.

The one insinuation I found most revolting was that old-time Southerners don't value education. That is absolutely untrue.

Old time Southerners do value education. They just don't value the education of the bureaucrats who arrogantly claim to know best. They don't value an education based around "new math" where the answer is unimportant. They don't value an education in which most kids come out of the system illiterate. They don't want to pay more taxes for a system in which kids learn all the history of Africa and Kwanzaa, but know nothing about their own local deep and rich heritage.

And they certainly don't want to give more money to the NEA educrats for their anti-Southern indoctrinations.

Teach the kids how to speak, read, write and to do proper math - the old Southerners will support you. Teach them real history; teach them something about Robert E. Lee besides the fact that was the Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia and they'll support you. Teach the kids about the respect and honor of a Lee or a Stonewall Jackson and they'll support you.

Teach them about the greatness of Jesse Jackson and they'll run you out of town on a rail.

Southern culture is not perfect. It never has been, and even as much as some Southerners like to pretend, it probably never will be. But it also is not shameful. The accent, the slower way of life, the reverence of traditions - they don't make a person slow, stupid or ignorant anymore than the Massachusetts accent, faster pace of life and utter disregard for traditions make someone from the Northeast smart or brilliant.

Now this study I think has an interesting, and potentially damaging flaw in it. They surveyed 18,000 people, only 10,000 of which had been born here. That's less than 60% of the respondents. The then tried to make it sound better by saying that all but 1,800 respondents had lived here for at least a decade.

I would like to see the numbers for the 10,000. I'm guessing that more than 70% of the life long residents would describe themselves as Southern. Just because someone lives here does not make them Southern any more than me living in Zimbabwe for a year would make me African. The influx of new residents to the region is certainly diluting the perceived strength of the Southern pride, but just because of New Yorker living in Kentucky thinks it might be shameful to be Southern doesn't really mean that it is.

Show me a real breakdown of the statistics. Give me an article which acknowledges some of the virtues of being Southern. Quit trying to shame me into submitting to some idealized elitist vision of what the South should be like.

But of course that will never happen. And the fact that it will never happen is the very proof that the author of this article, despite his employment with the Atlanta Journal Constitution, hasn't a clue about the South.

Why am I not surprised?

Only In My Neighborhood

Sorry about the lack of posting lately. I've been pulling some long hours at my new job and by the time I get home in the evening, I'm usually not in a condition to be writing too much. I even ended up working today

Now after I got home tonight I knew I had to make a quick down to my parents house, so I figured I'd stop and pick up the kids and then drive down there. Got sidetracked a little when my neighborhood decided to rear its ugly head once again.

This time, the kid across the street decided to shoot one of his friends with a BB gun. The other kid's mother went over and got into an argument with the shooter's mother - all the way up to involving pushing and spitting.

Now here's the question: Who overreacted more? The shooter's mother, who called the cops to report an assault against her person (never mind that her kid shot another one) or the local Keystone Kops who sent out damn near the whole department (4 cruisers, 5 officers) to repsond to it (lights and sirens going, of course)?

As it turns out, the shooter's mother could report her neighbor for assault - a misdemeanor charge. In turn, the neighbor would have been able to press felony negligence charges for failing to supervise her kid wile he was running around with the BB gun.

Now I'm not a big fan of gun control. I believe that the Second Amendment is pretty clear in it's wording, it's meaning, and it's intentions. But ownership of a gun, even a BB gun, does entail responsiblity. And that was what was missing in this case. The adults involved showed no responsibility.

I have got to get out of this neighborhood. Hopefully I can turn this new job into something that pays enough to achieve that.

Giving Thanks

This Wall Street Journal editorial, published every Thanksgiving, has got to be one of my all time favorite holiday essays.

And a traveler cannot but be struck on his journey by the thought that this country, one day, can be even greater. America, though many know it not, is one of the great underdeveloped countries of the world; what it reaches for exceeds by far what it has grasped.

Despite the advances made since 1961 when this was written, I think that this paragraph still holds true and that it underlines the source of our greatness, our ambition and the ability to fulfill it.

Written 42 years ago, it still sums up things up pretty well. Take a few minutes out of your holiday to go read it.

A Blast From The Past

This morning I get to work and was sitting there watching the airplanes on final approach into Orlando-Sanford International Airport while waiting for someone to get there to open the door.

As I'm sitting there, it's like going back into the late '70s or early '80s. A Pan Am 727 with the meatball logo. A Southeastern shortbody DC-9. Another Pan Am 727. It was really, really wierd. I haven't seen that assortment of airplanes and airlines on approach since I was a kid watching them head into Orlando International.

I've always been fascinated with airplanes and it was really, really odd watching a scene from my childhood apparently replaying itself 20-25 years later. I'll have to see if I have a long enough lense for the camera to get some good pictures.

Why Do I Do This?

Sitting here doing some light reading before going to bed this evening, I noticed another rash of "how to build your blog traffic without Instalanches" posts that are going up all around the 'sphere. Dean Esmay has one, Robert Prather has one, The Commissar has one, as does Donnie at Ain't It Done.

OK, now I'll admit that for a while I chased the fabled Instalanche, only to find out when it came that it wasn't all that impressive. And it kind of missed the point of why I started writing this whole blog thing to begin with.

I started this as a way for me to write down some of my ideas and to expose them to the harsh criticism of the world. It was (and still is) intended to allow me to continue working on my communication and debating skills even though I don't have the money to continue in school right now.

I don't do it for the hit count (although it is nice, especially when you pass a milestone like 25,000 visitors as I did an hour or so ago! Woo Hoo!). I don't do it for ego reasons (although it does feel good when my Dad tells me that he thought something was really well written). And I certainly don't do it for monetary reasons.

I do it because I want to. I do it because I think that it makes me a better person in some way (although I'm sure a few would disagree). But mainly I do it because it is fun.

Somehow, I've built my traffic up to an average of about 215 visitors a day, despite two seperate week long outages caused by problems with my ISP. I partially credit it to advice I got from David at Better Living Through Blogging who told me early on to try to post something every day, even if it's just a "no posting today" post. Something to let people know you're still alive. Oftentimes, I use my Quick Links posts, a roundup of interesting news stories that I didn't write on during the day as that post.

There's a lot of good advice in the above posts. The biggest thing to get out of those posts is that a true readership is based on being yourself, on posting regularly (ideally at slack times in the 'sphere - less competition for eyes at that time), and be generous with the links. An Instalanche is nice, but watching your readership go from 30 to 60 to 125 to 200 readers a day is much more satisfying long term.

Parades & Public Relations

I just got back from taking the kids up to see the However-manyeth Annual Winter Springs Holiday Parade. Had the usual assortment of kids throwing candy and organizations that you wonder why they joined the parade, but no collision between the Shriner's go-karts this year (it actually happened last year. Never actually saw a go-cart get totaled, but that fiberglass body just busted into pieces on impact). And, of course, as it always is, the parade was kicked off by a police color guard, followed by motorcycle cops from about 7 local agencies.

What really caught me as interesting though were the actions of the motorcycle cops. They rode by, 5 rows of 5, 25 in all. And then there were two more, almost riding along like an afterthought. They were the two cops from the Orlando Police Department.

The OPD cops were the only ones from Orange County (Winter Springs is in Seminole County). And these two were riding around like they were on the Shriner mopeds. They were doing figure-8s, leaning the bike over as far as they could without falling off, tight circles, all of that.

But more importantly, they were having fun. They both had big grins on their faces. They would ride right along the side of 434 where all the kids were lined up and they were high-fiving the kids, stopping to show them the bikes or how the sirens worked. They were laughing and making the kids laugh.

It was an amazing dichotomy.

You had the Seminole County officers riding along in perfect rank and file. They were anonymous. They stared straight ahead; stealing only glances to the side to make sure that they were still in perfect lines. It was almost like a Stalinist show of force military parade. Perfectly pressed uniforms. Hard steely faces looking forward. Jackboots. It was all very impressive - if this had been a police funeral procession where discipline is the order of the day.

But this wasn't a funeral. This was a holiday parade. It was a wonderful opportunity for the cops to show the community that they too are human. All too often, especially with kids, the only contact with a motorcycle cop comes when they pull you over for a traffic violation. People forget that the cops on bikes are capable of having fun, too. They are seen only as stern authority figures.

The two OPD cops played the public relations game beautifully. The other 25 were, as on every other day, the stern, unyielding authority figures. The two OPD cops were a couple of regular guys, who liked to show off (just like kids do) who just happened to wear a badge, a uniform, and ride a motorcycle with flashing lights. When the 25 went by, the kids just sat; when the two came by, they were up on the road cheering, pointing, laughing, and most importantly learning that not every encounter with a cop has to be bad.

Now I'll grant you that OPD is a much larger organization and probably much more in tune with the beat officers doing PR. But it's not hard. These small agencies seem to want to make everything into a proving ground of their discipline and their orderliness. Along the way, they lose their connection with the community. Yes, they're disciplined. Yes, they're orderly and efficient and all that other stuff. But they also are, from all appearances, smug and elitist, not willing to mix it up with the "common folk" who pay the taxes that pay their salary. They don't seem like they're one of us; they don't seem like they want to be one of us. They act like they believe themselves to be above us, there only to keep us abiding by their laws.

Maybe if they had treated the holiday parade like a fun, festive event - like it's supposed to be - I wouldn't have a problem. But my kids have already had such poor experiences with the cops around here that they distrust them. I have spent more than a few nights trying to explain to them that not all cops are bad, evil, or uncaring. But the cops here do nothing to help in that. They look and act the very part which I'm trying to convince my kids that they're not.

Why couldn't these guys at least try to smile during a holiday parade? That's not even PR, that just basic humanity.

Redefining Culture Through Education

As I'm looking around at Free Republic this morning, I found an excellent column by Bill Maxwell of the St. Petersburg Times in which he discusses "black culture" and how it seems to be related to a loss of focus in the areas of education, manners, and work ethic. I've got to say, his statements hold true not only for blacks, but for everyone. Where I live, we've got white kids and Puerto Ricans running around pretending that they're "gangsta." They don't know how to communicate in any way other than swearing every third word. They don't know how to resolve disputes without violence, usually extreme violence. They are rude. They are impolite. Reading, writing, 'rithmetic? They have no clue how to do stuff that I used to do in junior high (and I'm only 30 for God's sake!) As far as I can tell, we have an entire generation setting itself up for massive failure.

Sure, in Generation X we have our issues. For a long time the talk was have about we X'ers would never amount to anything because we lacked this or that or the other. And we're still faced with significant obstacles, most commonly a ceiling on opportunity in the business world due to the large number of boomers working later in life. But we have also taken the tools we have: education, communication skills, and a certain civility to still forge ahead and to make progress despite everything.

Generation Y, my little sister's generation, is facing much the same as the X'ers. But like us, they are finding ways to succeed and to prepare for the time when they become the big dogs.

But this new generation, call them Z or whatever you want, I don't think that they're going to be able to adapt as well as X & Y did. Huge numbers of them are lacking the manners and civility needed. Many are dismissing as useless the education, and more importantly the educational ethic of lifetime learning, that will be needed to improvise, adapt and overcome. Generations X and Y headed into the world with a lack of focus and a disheartened attitude, but we had the tools in our toolbox to create success. Generation Z seems to be heading into the world with an empty toolbox.

I know I'm not the only one who shares these concerns. Look at some of these comments I've pulled from the Free Republic thread:

"I remember how these unflappable people put their families before everything else; how children dared not insult an elder inside or outside the home; how doing well in school was taken for granted; how "cutting up" in public and "shaming the family" were not tolerated.

Good article. More white people should have these standards, too." - Tax-chick, post #7

"White culture and white Americans, Eminem, and a host of other substitutions could be made for the authors reasons of why this country as a whole needs to wake up and get back to basics before the sound of a toilet flushing can be heard 'round the world." - freeangel, post #9

"Excellent points. A polite society is a civil society. We've become very course and it shows." - Cincinatus' Wife, post #13

"Very good post. You are absolutely right, of course. I would only point out that you black leaders are going to have to do the heavy lifting to effect corrective action in the black community. In today's PC climate, for a white to comment on, much less be critical of anything "black", gets him labeled racist. Perhaps that's the first problem you need to work on." - zebra 2, post #23

"I agree with this column. People are judged - black or white - by their behavior. More specificially, their attitude, the words they use, their ability to interact with others in a civil manner, even the way they dress.

I know young white men who similarly place themselves at a socio-economic disadvantage. You know the type, the ones who are always copping an attitude, wearing a baseball cap backwards with sneakers and baggy ill-fitting pants, spewing obscenities, "talking trash" and showing no mastery of the English language whatsoever. Well this is the way that many young black men are perceived as well, and this, not race, is what is holding them back." - SamAdams76, post #25

I'm starting to fear that we may actually have an entire generation coming along without the skills needed to function properly. And people without functioning cognative skills are easily manipulated and terrorized, as I pointed out in my last post.

"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism...The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin...would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities." - Teddy Roosevelt

The hyphenated Americans are starting to impose their will on the majority of American-Americans. They can only succeed if we are too intellectually weak to resist their simplistic demagoguery. The tyranny of the minority starts up front with a lack of education.

A Tyranny Of The Minority & Distinctions

I tried this one early this morning, but my computer crashed before I could save it, so I'm giving it another shot.

I want to try to tie together two separate themes I've discussed in the past: hate crime laws (here and here) and the coarsening/loss of expression in the English language (here and here). I think the combination of the two are pushing our society in a direction that is not the way we want to be heading.

As I've mentioned before, one of the greatest threats arising from the loss of ability to express oneself in our language is leading to a loss of cognitive distinction. When people can no longer express themselves verbally, they lose the ability to distinguish between right and wrong; between good and evil; between people and the act.

To be truly fair to another when making judgments, we must be able to separate the act from the person (see Leni Riefenstahl); the person from the group (suicide bombers among the Palestinians); and the group from the society (al-Qaida from the Muslims). At the same time, we must be able to separate the society from the group (the Soviet Union was evil, but not all Russians are); the group from the person (not all Muslims are anti-Semitic); and the person from the act (sometimes good people have are forced into distasteful acts). Distinction is a key to protecting our society from tyranny.

But with our language being debased as it has, too often the distinctions are lost. And people who can make the distinction get branded as racists or hate-filled people. And the arguments against the charges are ignored, no matter how logical or well constructed, because the average person can't understand or comprehend the distinctions required to understand.

The racist tag has become one the most feared labels thrown around in our society these days. People will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid being labeled as such. The EU's recent decision to squash a report is a prime example. The report essentially reported a statistically verifiable and intuitively accurate fact: most anti-Semitic acts in Europe are committed by Muslims.

The EU backed away from confronting this fact because it might be considered to be anti-Islamic. Never mind that they have published three reports on anti-Islamic activities in Europe just since 9/11. Forget the fact that facing this fact is but the first step in the process of confronting a real problem. They're too afraid of being viewed as unfair or racist for reporting a fact.

A fact is a fact. Whether you like it or not; whether it is fair or not, it is what it is - a fact. It can be researched. It can be verified.

It is not racist. It is not biased. It simply reports what is. To shrink from the truth is to show the ultimate in weakness.

And that is being exploited to the max by special interest minorities. They are using the loss of ability to cognitively separate people, acts and groups to make it easy to brand huge swathes of society as racist. With their new power granted to them by the vague and expansive hate crime laws they are actually beginning to terrorize the majority.

Think about how many words can no longer be spoken, because they have been branded as racist words. Think about how many ideas have been branded as racist. Actions. Symbols. Concepts. Nearly everything can be considered by some group as racist - except for what the minorities pass approval on.

By passing hate crime laws that are abused by the PC police, we are chipping away at our freedoms. Freedom of speech? Have you seen a campus speech code lately? Freedom of association? Freedom of religion? They, too, can be hamstrung by hate crime activism.

Hate crime laws take away the very freedoms on which this country was founded. Yes, we want to avoid the tyranny of the majority (which is why we have a republican form of government, not a pure democracy), but in our effort to "protect" the rights of the minority, we are actually creating a tyranny of the minority.

They now dictate what we can say, where we can say it, when we can say it. They dictate what symbols we can display. All without hate crime legislation.

Passing a new hate crime law will only strengthen the hand of the minority. It will only make their tyranny worse. It will give them a better ability to further reduce the functional vocabulary of the English language, which will only exacerbate the problem.

Hate crime legislation is simply another step down the slippery slope to the loss of our freedom, our society, and ultimately our nation.

Blogging As A Form Of Networking

Director Mitch over at The Window Manager has an interesting post today about networking, but with a twist. He looks at the blogosphere as it compares and contrasts to social networking.

Kind of an interesting point. I know that personally, I am also much more likely to respond to an email from a blogger (or one of my readers) than I am to respond to an email sent to my generic questions -at- cbnoble.com email address I have for my other site. Why? I don't know. I think part of it is because the fact that I've read your site, or that you've read mine, does give a little more insight into you than someone just randomly out of the blue sending me an email. I may not agree with a thing you've said, but I guess I respect you just a little more because there is a little tiny shred more of a personal relationship there.

Now I know that I only get to see what you expose, and believe me, what you see on this site is only a little tiny fraction of who I am. I don't profess to know you and don't expect you to know me, but at least there is some kind of a common ground there.

I have "met" and conversed with some very interesting people doing this. People that I never would have met otherwise. On those rare occasions that people ask me for help (and it is rare - you guys must know me too well!), I try to give what I can. I've gotten some great ideas for books to buy and for other websites to read. Blogging has certainly made me a richer (in the spiritual sense, not the monetary one) person.

Blogging is certainly a new tool for use in networking and I can see Director Mitch's point as to how it can really be a great advantage. Not everyone is doing it. This gives you one added avenue that the guy out there joining every club in town probably doesn't have. Blogging will certainly give you access to a much wider diversity of expertise and opinion than someone who doesn't know what a blog is.

I had never thought of this as a form of networking, but I guess it is. Anyone know of a good high paying job in the Orlando area that would give me lots of free time for blogging? :-)

OK, I'm Pissed

Am I allowed to have a moment to be pissed?

Last week when I tendered my resignation from my current employer, I offered to train the person she had assigned as my assistant to take over my position. I told her it would help to smooth the transition (I had actually already been training him off and on for a couple of weeks anyways).

She agreed that it would be a good idea. She even went as far as to ask him if he wanted my job. He, of course, said "yes." Obviously I must have failed in my training somewhere if that was his response.

And everything was going just swimmingly. With there now being one week left in my tenure there, we were done with all the major training issues and were starting to work on the little stuff, like customizing Quickbooks. The only issue left to discuss was his new rate of pay - something she had already told him she would discuss with him.

Then today, while trying to figure out why a designer wasn't running any of his sales through the company like his agreement with the store stated he should, she goes off and says - in front of my replacement - that she's going to hire a new bookkeeper, indicating it is due to his lack of experience.

Needless to say, he was pretty well stunned. Yes, he's young. Yes, he lacks experience. But her choice is a lady with a design degree who has never managed anything either. He's at least got training, tenure with the company, an understanding of how the owner works, and most importantly, he had desire. He was looking forward to the challenge. He wanted the opportunity.

Instead, I found myself outside, in my outdoor office, trying to console him; trying to help him find a silver lining. We talked about ways for him to make the most of the situation. I encouraged him to help the new person. I told him exactly why he should be glad that she was separating out the pain in the ass portion of my job and giving it to someone else. We talked about making his job into a resume builder.

And we talked about how he felt betrayed. He felt as though he was lied to. Getting passed over for the position was one thing - he could understand that, it was the way in which she did it. She offered it. He accepted it. He started working on it. And then she pulled the rug out from under him.

And you know, I understood completely. When I first heard that she was bringing in someone else, I felt a tightness across my chest, like I had done something wrong. I felt terrible because I ended up feeling like I had contributed to his getting his hopes up, only to watch them get crushed. I've been passed over for positions in the past, but this, his getting passed over in such a vile manner, hurt worse than any of my own failures.

People asked questions because of his age. My answer was always that he would be able to succeed in the position if the company were able to survive the learning curve - which is questionable no matter who comes in. And I believe it absolutely. He has the right temperament and the right ability to observe, process and react in a timely manner. He has what it takes.

I just wish that if she was going to deny him the opportunity that she would have done it with more class. He has been going above and beyond the call of duty. He has been doing more than he was asked or required. She owed him at least a little smidgeon of common courtesy. He didn't deserve it, he earned it.

God, am I pissed about this.

Trains and Memories

Just got to see a relative rarity in these parts: a near mile long, mixed freight train. Most all of them that come rumbling through downtown are either solid coal trains heading to the power plant south of town, or they're a mix of double stack containers and tri-level autoracks. To see a train with boxcars, tank cars, open hoppers, covered hoppers, gondolas - basically everything but a little red caboose at the end - is really kind of cool.

What made it even more interesting was the fact that quite a few of the covered hoppers hadn't been repainted for many years now. They carried the logo for the SCL/L&N Family Lines System, one of the precursors to the modern CSX. The SCL/L&N is also the railroad of my first train memories. It was like a little mini-flashback for me.

Oh, well. Guess I need to go back to thinking of how I'm going to train my replacement at this place. This should be a really fun two weeks.

Why I Don't Like The Orlando Sentinel

The last couple of days, one of the guys I work with has been bringing in the daily editions of the Orlando Slantinel, er, Sentinel. I haven't actually read the Sentinel in quite a while, outside of the classifieds, (mainly because I get almost all my news information from the Net, including the Sentinel website), but I figured since it was there, I would actually read through it to see if there was any worthwhile reason for starting a subscription.

The front page was pretty much like it always has been: full of AP reprints, exposes of problems anyone paying attention already knew about, and the same lame op-ed fare that they've always had. But then I went to the Local & State section and decided that there is no way I will even consider subscribing anytime soon.

The Sentinel has a columnist named Mike Thomas. I always remembered Mike as writing happy little columns that were never really outstanding, but never really offensive either. It always seemed that he would be writing a story about something some grandma did, or some school play, or maybe a community event - the kind of stuff that a local news reporter would report on. So when I saw his name in the byline for a column, I stopped to read it - to maybe learn some little odd tidbit about the community that I didn't already know.

Now Thomas' columns are still printing on the front page of the Local & State section as if they were the same generic community building columns as before. They are presented as news. But read some of the comments and language used just in his last four columns:

"In talking about whether he would run for his U.S. Senate seat, Bob Graham said he didn't have a "God complex." I guess that's what separates him from Jeb Bush. Jeb did not talk to medical experts or Terri Schiavo's husband before ordering a feeding tube stuck back in her brain-dead body. But he did talk to Randall Terry, founder of the extremist anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. "Our goal is a Christian nation," Terry once said. "We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism." Seems Jeb took that to heart..."

"As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Graham became one of the most focused and respected voices on the war on terror"

"Orange County Chairman Rich Crotty has stuck a respirator in Mobility 20/20, keeping the corpse warm in hopes of a miracle resurrection for his road-building plan."

"It is lucky for Dr. Shashi Gore, the chief medical examiner of Orange and Osceola counties, that dead people can't sue for medical malpractice.

He is the Barney Fife of pathologists -- likable and well-meaning, but incompetent. If he exhumed Marie Antoinette, he probably would conclude she died from drowning.

Gore says he will step down in June. That would be fine if we could guarantee that nobody dies between now and then."

Is that the language of reporting? Or is it the language of editorializing; of opinion?

I don't really care that Mike Thomas has these positions. I generally disagree with him, but he's entitled to believe whatever his little heart so desires.

I do have a problem, however, with his opinion being cast as "news." His opinion, no matter how arrogant he might be, is not fact. His opinion, no matter how righteous he and the editorial staff believe it to be, is not material for the front page of a news section. For the op-ed page, absolutely. Heck, he might even liven up that page up and make it more worth reading. But for the front of Local and State - no way.

I find this to be rather condescending of the Sentinel's editorial board. Do they think that I'm not smart enough to know that they're trying to shamelessly pass of editorializing as news? Do they really think that little of the intelligence of their readership?

I can understand politicized language slipping into articles from Reuters, or the AP, or the UPI, as the editorial staff does not have direct control of the writers and the content. But Mike Thomas is a Sentinel writer. There is no excuse for him to be using words like "anti-abortion extremist" (my emphasis) or for referring to any official as a "Barney Fife" on a news page. If he wants to expose a problem, that's fine. But it can be done with facts. The personal attacks need to be confined to the op-ed page, where they belong and are expected.

The Sentinel editorial staff's use of Mike Thomas' columns on a news page is intellectually dishonest. As a result, I am not going to be subscribing to the Sentinel until such time as they feel fit to respect me.

I Think I'm Annoyed

Gees, I was just reading my posts from the last couple of days and I really sound annoyed. Excepting the post on the retirement of Concorde, I think I was maybe a bit too sarcastic. Maybe it was the stories I was finding; maybe it was just a weekend in which I needed a serious attitude adjustment, I don't know.

On the bright side, I think I've got some possibilities for Venomous Kate's Hunting of the Snark (my dad will be so proud...)

More On Peace With Iran

Yesterday, I had short discussion about the fact that Iran has been acting like it wants play nice in the world community and how I thought that it was a bad idea to cozy up to them. Well, today, in the Washington Times, we find a commentary calling more political pressure and more support for Iranian dissidents.

That is probably the least confrontational way of trying to reign in the Iranian thugocracy. Negotiating with them doesn't work. Treaties, agreements, understandings are all made to be broken when convenient for the thugs. Some don't even make it a week before abrogation. Is this the kind of regime we want to be holding talks with? Is a regime that views agreements with non-Muslims as invalid the kind of regime with which we want to have "normal" diplomatic relations?

Ratchet up the pressure. When the regime falls and a more reasonable and trustworthy regime takes over, then we can talk about normalizing relations.

Until then, we need to keep the formal, diplomatic relations on ice.

Should We Cozy Up To Iran?

Faye Bowers of the Christian Science Monitor is asking if it is time for a thaw in US-Iranian relations. I emphatically say "no."

So the Iranians have a few members of Al Qaida. So they might even be willing to turn them over - in return for concessions on our part. What ever happened to the notion that we don't negotiate with terrorists?

If Iran is truly willing to talk about turning these folks over, it is not because of some change of heart regarding terrorism; it's not because the regime wants truly normalized relations with the US. It's because of the pressures that our mounting on the regime, from within and without. Turning over the Al Qaida members removes one of the internal pressures (although it would be replaced with a milder version in the form of angry Al Qaida sympathizers) while also mitigating one of the main external pressures - the US insistence that Iran cooperate in the War on Terror. It would buy the regime time to crackdown on the internal dissidents, so that they can better focus on the external threats.

Iran really isn't showing any signs of changing their ways. They are now admitting to non-compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and there are still calls to withdraw from the NPT considering it to be an affront to their national sovereignty.

The Iranian regime is still not interested in playing nice with the rest of the world. Currently, they're playing a propaganda game, trying to split the West along the pacifist/non-pacifist fault line. Why would such an oil-rich country want to develop nuclear power - unless they had ulterior motives? The Iranian nuclear program is not peaceful in nature and the fact that they have been sloppy with "lab testing" while knowing that Al Qaida is running around in-country is beyond irresponsible.

Yeah, Iran wants to cuddle in front of the fire with us, but it's a bonfire and they plan to try to burn us, again.

This is not the time for a thaw in relations. To the contrary, it's time to cool them of some more.

Art, Messages, & Artists

Yesterday, Dean Esmay posted a lengthy post on Leni Riefenstahl in which he considers whether or not it is possible to separate the art from the artist. It's a very interesting question - one that has made me think ever since I first looked at the post yesterday - and one that I think brings on a side question: is it possible to separate the message from the art?

As Dean noted at the end of his post, there is no clear or simple answer. Reason being the answer is unique for each of us and may even be unique for each individual instance. This isn't a factual question, like mathematics; it isn't even a theoretical debate like economics. This is, at its root, a personal feeling that virtually cannot be influenced by others. Either we can separate them or we can't.

Let's take the Triumph of the Will, the one film that seems to be the most tightly woven into the perception that is Leni Riefenstahl. A documentary of the 1934 Party Congress, it carries an underlying, morally repugnant message of the grandeur and glory of the Third Reich. Outside of a few neo-Nazi skinheads, I don't think that anyone would be at all sympathetic to the message of the film.

First question I come to when looking at a movie like Triumph is can I separate the offensive message contained within to see the beauty and skill in the actual artistry of the film? Some people cannot - the message is simply too overpowering, too obvious. Personally, I can separate the message from the art. Does it make me a bad person to do so? Those who cannot separate the two may think so - and from their point of view, they would be justified. We all get outraged by people who see something worthwhile in something that we view as patently offensive. I felt the same way towards people who thought that the crucifix in urine was art - I simply could not understand how they could find anything redeeming in that image (I still can't, but that's beside the point). So there are times when I can separate and be offended by the message of the art, while still appreciating the artistry involved.

The other question - and the one which Dean posed - is can you separate the art from the artist?

Again, it is a deeply personal issue. Triumph I view more as a reflection of the time and society from which it was created than I do as a reflection on Leni Riefenstahl. I believe that each of her films is capable of standing on its own artistic merit. Her films are not great because Leni Riefenstahl was associated with them, instead she is held in high regard because she was associated with films of such artistic merit. Can everyone or should everyone be able to make this distinction? No. Again, personally, I vary from person to person. For instance, I can't stand anything from Quentin Tarantino. But, it's because I believe his movies are successful because they are his, not vice versa. And after watching less than half of Pulp Fiction, I decided I never wanted to waste any more of my life on his tripe again. But other people love his movies. Does this mean that I'm wrong not to separate Pulp Fiction from Quentin Tarantino? No. It is a personal decision; a personal choice and one that I have to live with the consequences of.

None of this is intended to be a foray into moral relativism. The unmistakable message of Triumph, and Olympiad to a slightly lesser extent, is revolting. Just because I am able to see past the message to the art and to the unique genius of the artist doesn't mean that I condone the message. If you can't see past the message, that's ok. There is no absolute answer available here. Different art speaks to different people in different ways.

The work of Leni Riefenstahl isn't the only art where I see these issues at play. I see it also in the Moscow Subway and the Coliseum in Rome. The Moscow Subway is generally considered to be one of the architectural gems of the world, yet it was designed so magnificently to promote to the world the grandeur and greatness of the Stalinist Soviet Union - not exactly a model of virtue by any reasonable standard. It, too, celebrated and propagandized for a regime that murdered tens of millions, yet it is rare to hear people deploring it, or it's architects and engineers, as the symbol of a barbaric regime. The Coliseum in Rome was a great, glorified, public death chamber. Thousands of men and animals might die there in a single day, all for the amusement of the mob. It is the lasting symbol of a violent expansionist imperial tyranny that conquered most of the known world through force of arms. It is the symbol of a regime that practiced decimation as a form of military discipline. Yet no one is complaining about the artistic merit of the Coliseum.

Separation of art from the message or the artist is a personal issue. Some people can do it in some cases; some people cannot in some cases. The ability or inability to do so in a particular instance does not reflect in general on a person's intelligence or morality, it only reflects on their personal feelings about a particular work of art.

There is no clear cut, right or wrong, answer. Opinion is simply opinion, everyone has one.

Rush To Judgment, Rehab & Review

This morning I had a rare opportunity to listen to Neal Boortz while I was at work. His primary topic this morning was, of course, the Rush Limbaugh drug issue (can be found here on the 13th). Listening to the show, I thought that Boortz had two good questions - ones that no one seemed willing to attempt to answer. First, he asked if Rush should be sent to jail for his illicit purchasing. The second question was whether or not this should be a basis for revisiting the war on drugs.

Boortz's point with the first question was to expose the hypocrisy of many of the dittoheads who want to see the crackhead down the street locked away for years, while their hero goes free. And a few fell for it. They promoted the idea of treatment and intervention. They expressed sorrow and shame, but they avoided taking the hardline "throw away the key" stance that many conservatives are notorious for (a somewhat unfair characterization, but the rise of compassionate conservatism lends credence to the idea).

Apparently, the federal penalty for the illegal procurement of narcotics is up to twenty years in jail. Now Rush didn't steal from anyone (no political cheap shots here) and he didn't cause physical harm anyone other than himself. Was it a stupid move? Yes, it most certainly was. Does the punishment fit the crime? No, not really. It seems a bit extreme to me. That being said, if the crime calls for imprisonment, then Rush needs to serve his time, just like anyone else. He is no more above the law than anyone else.

Now there are some things about this situation that make it different than the crackhead down the street scenario. Rush only harmed himself. He publicly admitted to having a problem. He voluntarily placed himself in rehab. Rush has been proactive towards the situation. When it comes time for any sentencing that may be in his future, these factors need to be taken into account. But they are not reason for cutting him some sort of a special deal.

So is it time to revisit the whole war on drugs? I think we need to at least look at the end results to see if we're achieving our goals. So what do we have?

We have a situation where first time non-violent offenders are going to the pen instead of to rehab where they would be better served. We have a situation where violent criminals walk free to create more room for the guy who was trying to buy Xanax on the street. We have a situation where violent drug related crime is rising, while the quantity and quality of the drugs available continues to increase. Is this a success? I don't think so.

Boortz kept referring to a Rand study from 1994 (a synopsis, along with ordering information, can be found here), supposedly rejected by the Clinton Administration, which proved rehabilitation and treatment to be the most effectively spent money in the fight against drugs. I haven't had a chance to read through the study for myself, but it seems to be in agreement with my own beliefs: targeting the suppliers doesn't work - they're a dime a dozen, targeting the users for punishment doesn't work - it goes back to the coarsening of our society, we are afraid of intellectual pursuits, so the quick and easy high provided by drugs is considered acceptable by many, and finally rehab, which has a relatively high recidivism rate, is still the best of three poor options for correcting the problem.

I'm no big fan of Rush. I generally find him to be a little too far out to the right for my tastes. Despite that, I still respect him for the strength of his beliefs. I still appreciate what he has done for the conservative movement.

I am also disappointed in his action. More than probably anyone else, he should have known that his Oxycontin addiction would be fodder for the left and an opportunity for the left to discredit the conservative message by discrediting its most articulate messenger. For being such an active political player, I would have expected him to be more astute.

In the end, however, Rush is simply human. He is a man, no better and no worse than any of the rest of us. He is fallible, as this episode proves. If there is a punishable crime here, he needs to accept his punishment and move on.

As evidenced by his admission of a problem and his action in checking himself into rehab, he knows that he did wrong. He has taken the first step in rebuilding his now sullied reputation. The question still remains as to whether or not he can carry through to completion on the rest of the steps.

Only time will tell.

Coarsening Of Language

This morning on my way into work, I noticed a new billboard along the side of I-4. It was an advertisement for some kind of new chip dip. No big deal, except for the name of the dip: Heluva Good.

Now the name in and of itself is no big deal. Let's face it, the phrase "helluva" has become very commonplace in today's society.

But it is representative of a coarsening in society. We are no longer willing to use the full richness of the English language. It seems like people are no longer willing to learn how to speak without using foul language. Curses are used in place of actual thought.

Certainly no one is immune to this trend. I try not to use foul language whenever possible, but on occasion I slip, or like the other day in my response to an Atlanta Journal Constitution article, I use it for stronger emphasis than italics or bold type provides.

I don't see the problem getting better anytime soon. I noted a few weeks back that the kids coming out of high school today don't seem to have a vocabulary that contains many words in excess of four letters. They are also, almost to a kid, unwilling to read anything more than absolutely necessary as they view reading as boring or waste of time, especially since it requires imagination and thought, whereas TV - their favorite medium - does not.

The real shame of all this is that it is creating an American aristocratic elite. The elite are those who are educated and well spoken. The underclass will be those who cannot communicate effectively whether it be by linguistic barriers or a lack of vocabulary. Too many people are throwing away their opportunities.

Language is not just a tool, it is the most important tool that we have in becoming successful. Without the ability to communicate, a genius is wasted. Without the ability to communicate, the average person is wasted. A lack of language skills is a great equalizer - it makes everyone equally inferior and makes society less rich and life less fulfilling.

That's a helluva a lot of consequence for allowing the coarsening of society and the degradation of our language.

George Bernard Shaw said the Americans and the English are two people separated by a common language. Rapidly, the Americans are becoming internally a people separated by the English language.

Touching The Third Rail

This may seem a bit disjointed as it was written over the course of three days sitting in outside in a tent in the Florida sun, baking my brain. If so, I apologize.

You know, I read articles like the one I recently noted about the NAACP complaining about the "Caucasian Club" that some high school student wanted to start and I begin to ask myself: just how much of an issue is racism, and will we ever fully eliminate it?

Now I'm not trying to deny that racism exists, or to claim that it isn't a problem, I just question whether or not it's as serious as groups like the NAACP or MEChA would like us to believe. I also question if the true problem is still white on black racism, or if it has shifted.

Since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, the country has made significant progress in the realm of white on black racism. Even in the Deep South, it is no longer acceptable social practice to call someone a "nigger" or a "darkie" or any of the other racial epitaphs that used to be part of the everyday vocabulary - even of the little kids. Racially based jury nullifications are nearly non-existent anymore. The Klan has gone from being a social institution viewed in the same light as the Boy Scouts or the Salvation Army to being a group that is vilified just slightly less than the Nazi Party. Lynchings have become so uncommon as to be a huge event when they do happen. Blacks are no longer prejudicially dismissed as job applicants due to their skin color. In those regards, and many others, things have significantly improved.

Of course, there are still some folks who have no clue when it comes to racial harmony. There are still some white folks who view every black as a mugger, a thief or a rapist. There are still some white folks who would deny even the existence of a black person based solely on the color of their skin. We certainly have not achieved anything near nirvanic perfection, but we're also not in a time of open and violent racism either.

But what about the reverse, black on white racism? Where do we stand on that?

I don't think that we're really making progress in that arena. In fact, I believe that an argument could be made that we are actually regressing.

To give an example, my kids ride a small little school bus with maybe 15 kids total. Out of those 15 kids, 9 are black. Now we really don't care that 9 of the kids are black. Every morning I still bring the kids down to get on the bus to go to school. We figure that it's healthy for them. Gives them an opportunity to interact with other kids who may be of a different background than ours. Sounds great right?

Well, it is - sometimes. We have a real problem, however, with one of the black parents who is hyper sensitive to any perceived racist comment. She has accused every white child on the bus of being a racist bigot (understand that most of these kids are haven't made it to the third grade yet). The other day, a first grader was telling a friend on the bus that a seat was a "white seat." Now, as it turns out, the seat has White Out on it. But this parent, rather than maybe discreetly saying something to the offender's parents, went off the chain. She got up on the front step of the bus after everyone was on and proceeded to scream at and berate the kids on the bus for being racist. She riled up one of the black fathers to the point that he got on the bus and was pounding on the handrail while screaming at the kids. And then, as the bus left, both of the screamers were standing there laughing, presumably at the hilariousness of their terrification of the kids.

And it's not as if we're in a position to be able to go to the school and register a complaint about this. These parents have already gone to the school claiming racism on the bus. If we complain, then the kids suffer the consequences of being labeled by the school as racist kids in need of intervention, which they most certainly are not. Heck, they're just barely old enough to consciously realize that there is a difference in pigmentation between them and some of the other kids. We try to do everything we can to raise them with good judgment, but without prejudice. But now we can't feel comfortable putting our kids on the school bus in the morning, not because of racism, but because they might unfairly be branded as racists, a tag which would be long lasting in the school system around here.

Of course, this is all just based on personal observation. Maybe I've been affected by the one bad apple of the bunch, but I kind of doubt it. Certainly not all blacks are racist any more than all whites are, but I do believe that the problem is more prevalent than some people would like to admit.

I believe that part of the reason for the rise in black on white racism is due to the unintended consequences of affirmative action. Some blacks, as characterized by the NAACP, feel as though everything is due to them - that they have an entitlement to special favor. But in an ironic way, by demanding and receiving these entitlements, they are only perpetuating many of the stereotypes that lead to racism.

I recently read an article (I'll try to track it down again) which pointed out that the federal government employs blacks almost three times as frequently as demographics would indicate that they should. But generally, the blacks in the government tend to hold the lower level positions, while the whites (who are the most significantly underrepresented demographic in the federal government) tend to rise to management positions more rapidly. Think about the unconscious effect that this might have.

Certainly we are all aware of the real and perceived ineptitude of federal employees. We've all at some point ran into an unaccountable front line government employee who either provides flat out wrong information, misleading information, or answers a question we never asked while ignoring the one we did. Often times when they provide this erroneous information, they do so with a command of the English language that is normally only associated with the ghetto. Quite often, it is easy to identify the black government employees simply from their dialect.

And generally, when you do complain, you end up speaking to a manager who is white.

The end effect is a subconscious reinforcement of the stereotype that the front line blacks mess things up and that the whites in management are there to clean up the mistakes and make things right. You also have a subconscious reinforcement of servitude, that the whites are the group that is in control and that the blacks are there simply to serve the wishes and desires of the whites.

There are certainly more than a few blacks who don't fit this profile, just as there are more than a few whites who don't either. But the unintended consequence of the hiring of blacks out of proportion in the federal government is to create exactly this type of environment.

But all in all, I don't really view black/white racism as a huge issue these days. I see there being more a of problem with Hispanic racism, both against and by.

I can only comment on the Hispanics I see here in Florida, which are primarily either Cuban or Puerto Rican. And I must also preface this by pointing out that there are huge differences in the degree of racism found among Hispanics. Some are nearly as colorblind as Martin Luther King's dream envisioned; others can make the Klan look like the Rotary Club. The degree of variation found within the Hispanic community, I believe, points to the fact that the ideas of integration, assimilation and racial harmony are relatively new concepts as compared to the blacks and the whites. They will eventually achieve the same degree of harmonization as whites and blacks currently enjoy, but it is going to take some time to achieve.

For Hispanics, the biggest impediment to racial harmony that I see is the absolute refusal to use the English language except when absolutely necessary. Their use of Spanish in any setting, regardless of the type of company in that setting, is one of the worst Balkanizers in America today. There are many Hispanics who are segregating themselves willingly by refusing to adapt to the general society.

Nations that are divided cannot thrive and have trouble being able to survive. The private industry boom of the last 30-40 years is due not only to technological advances, but is also partially attributable to the fact that black/white racism was reduced allowing for a more efficient use of intellectual resources. The federal government and its inborn inefficiency, is a beautiful case study for what happens when institutionalized racism - of any type - is allowed to persist.

Our biggest racist obstacle facing us today as a society is racism for or against Hispanics. And the potential damage to our society is even greater than it has been in the past because we are not only dividing along pigmentation lines, but we are also beginning to divide among linguistic lines. Rome may have become reached its zenith as a multi-lingual empire, but no world player since has successfully been able to negotiate the associated issues. Canada has probably handled the issues best and they are still wracked every few years by a Quebecois separatist movement. Linguistic separatism is the solvent that dissolves the bonds of societal unity.

I'm not trying to slam the diversity movements or the "save our cultures" crowd. Both have some very valid uses and our society is made richer by assimilation of diverse viewpoints and the selective adaptation of the strengths of other cultures. They only help to make our own culture that much better, that much stronger and that much more resilient.

It is when those movements morph over into racist movements that I have a problem with them. America is founded on a uniquely American culture. We may adopt better practices and we may welcome folks from other cultural backgrounds, but ultimately, America is America because of our culture. Those who wish to replace the culture that we have developed over the last 225+ years don't wish to make us better, they only wish to destroy us and to tear us down.

Their primary tool is racism. As such, we will never be able to fully eliminate it as there will always be those who wish to destroy us from within. It's just such a shame that they have to corrupt the names of well-intended organizations like the NAACP and ACLU, just like they are attempting to corrupt our language.

Rush, Football And Racism

At lunch today, every TV in the restaurant was breathlessly reporting on the Rush Limbaugh/Donovan McNabb story and Rush's comments about his comments that created the whole furor.

Now I'm no great fan of Rush and I thought that ESPN was really taking a chance bringing him on board. And as it turns out, that decision has come back to bite ESPN in the rear.

But what about Rush's comments? I'm going to hang myself out here and defend him, although maybe not in the way he would have liked.

Rush, in essence, said that McNabb is the phenomenon he is because the media wants to see a black quarterback succeed. And to a large extent this is true. But is it true solely for racial reasons?

I don't think so. I agree that the sports media wants to see a successful black quarterback. But not just because he's black. Sport is the ultimate equalizer. Your success or failure on the field is based solely on merit. I cannot believe that there would be a single person reading this who would knowingly deny someone an opportunity to play QB in the NFL solely because they were black. There is, however, an unspoken and unwritten assumption that the QB position is a white man's position. Think about the great, winning quarterbacks of the game. Do the names Warren Moon or Doug Williams come to mind? Likely not. But they were both solid quarterbacks who were black and who won. Maybe there are some sportswriters who are writing with an agenda of breaking the "white man's position" reputation. If highlighting the successes of a quality black quarterback furthers that goal, good and so be it.

I'm guessing that more often than not, the current crop of black quarterbacks, McNabb included, get so much attention, not because they're black, but because they bring a new dimension to the position. Think about it. McNabb in Tennessee, Daunte Culpepper in Minnesota, Steve McNair in Tennessee, Michael Vick in Atlanta - they are all considered to be special quarterbacks because they bring a real run threat to their position. They bring excitement. They put defenses on their heels and fans on the edge of their seats. Excitement sells, both at the ticket booth on Sunday and on the newsstand on Monday.

And it's not all racially motivated. Jake Plummer, a white quarterback in Denver probably gets more attention than he's earned - because he, like McNabb, Culpepper, etc., brings that added dimension on Sunday. On the other hand, Quincy Carter the black quarterback in Dallas doesn't bring the run threat to the table and he is generally regarded as a run of the mill quarterback. So race really doesn't determine whether or not a quarterback is considered great, solid, or mediocre. It doesn't even determine if they're overrated or overlooked. More often than not, that is all judged on what they bring to the field every Sunday. But again, if highlighting the successes of a black quarterback brings more opportunity that's fine. The ultimate judgment of success in made on the field, not the newspaper. Breaking the "white man's position" stigma equalizes opportunity, not outcome.

Now many of the commentators on the situation have almost seemed to have been accusing Rush as saying Donovan should not be playing the position because he is overrated in the media, which in turn was based on the color of his skin. Now I didn't read anything in those comments that indicated that Rush doubted McNabb's ability to play the position. He only seemed to question the level of regard given to McNabb.

McNabb is a solid quarterback. I remember watching him when he played for Syracuse against the Miami Hurricanes. He has talent. He has leadership ability. He is playing in the NFL because he earned that position.

To determine if he is truly overrated, we have to examine the true job of an NFL quarterback. Part of it is throwing the ball, part is running the ball, but the largest component is leadership.

McNabb is a leader. No one has ever questioned his leadership ability either in Philadelphia or at Syracuse. The players in Philadelphia seem to have faith in him and believe in him. McNabb inspires those around him; he makes them want to play at a higher level. If leadership is the most important aspect of quarterbacking, it can be argued that McNabb is underrated, not overrated.

Obviously he can run the ball, but it is always his passing game that has led to the questions about him. True, McNabb doesn't have the best completion percentage and he can be inaccurate at times, but you really can't hold the poor passing game solely against him. He has never been blessed with a great receiving corps. He has never had a go to guy that could make spectacular grabs as a matter of course, or that could make an average play a great play, a la Jerry Rice. Even given the best receivers in the football, McNabb likely would not have the best passing numbers, but they would certainly be better. The receivers help make the QB, and you can fault the Philadelphia organization for not having surrounded McNabb with better receivers.

So is McNabb overrated? Maybe a little, it depends on how much you want to weight his leadership skills against his passing skills. Has he opened himself to criticism through his action? Probably. His passing game hasn't really improved any during the time he's been in the league. Donovan has a responsibility to himself, to the team and to the fans to work to improve himself. It could be argued that he has failed or possibly even ignored this responsibility. But that still doesn't take away from the fact that he is an NFL caliber quarterback and that, up until this year, he's been a winner.

Defense may win games, but not too many. Offense may win games, but by itself, it won't win too many either. A winning team, which Philadelphia has had, is made up of both a good offense and a good defense. A great defense may reduce the burden of perfection on the offense, but it will never fully eliminate it. And this is where Rush was wrong. Philly's defense never could completely cover for Donovan if he was a failure. He would have been exposed as such in his rookie year, just like Ryan Leaf was.

So what did we learn from the Rush brouhaha? That he's a more astute political commentator than sports commentator - nothing we didn't already know. Politically, he correctly called out the sports media - although for the wrong reasons. Sportswise, he incorrectly placed too much value on physical skills and not enough on mental and intangible skills.

If the end result of all this - the media focusing on successful black quarterbacks and Rush focusing on the media focusing on successful black quarterbacks - leads to more equitable opportunity for black quarterbacks then where is the harm? I don't think that Rush intended his remarks to be racist. I think he was trying to point out that successful black quarterbacks get more press time than similarly skilled white quarterbacks, which I believe is a fair observation. Is it wrong? That's up to each of us to decide.

All I know is that as a football fan I want to see the best possible players playing on Sunday. That's all.

But if the Miami Dolphins ever get a choice between McNabb or Culpepper - they had better take Daunte or they'll be getting a nasty letter from me.

Lovable Losers

This morning as I'm driving in to work, I notice that the Orlando Sentinel billboard just north of town (it's kind of cool, it uses light bulbs - like a car dealership sign - to promote three things every morning - articles, sections, coupons, whatever) is promoting an article in today's paper that examines why movie heros are such losers right now.

I haven't read the article in the paper yet and they don't seem to have it linked on their website, but I figured that I would go ahead and comment on the loser hero concept anyway, as the Sentinel article really won't change my position in the least.

Loser heros are so popular because people like losers. Admit it, you know someone like Jack Black in that new movie The School of Rock. They might be a coworker, a neighbor, a relative. But someone, somewhere in your life is a loser.

And while you love watching their incessant screwups and you love how they make you feel better about yourself, deep down inside, hope springs eternal. Even though they're a loser - an unreformed, uninformed, unrepentant, and unlikely to change loser - you still pull for them to, for one moment, one day, to actually do something to contribute to society.

And that hope welling up is why we like the loser hero movies. It gives an opportunity to root for the lovable loser who finally makes good, unlike that lazy coworker. It gives us an opportunity to believe in the potential of losers, despite the actions of your loser brother-in-law.

Movies with loser heros are movies of hope and goodness. They act as a salve in a cyncial and oftentimes negative world.

Loser heros give us hope. That is why we love the losers.

UPDATE: Curt of The Happy Husband has pointed out that the Sentinel finally has the story linked on their site. Here it is for your reading pleasure.

Is Amtrak Trying To Commit Suicide?

Today when I got home from work I turned on the TV and found it on the local all news channel. One of the big stories they were talking about was the possibility of Amtrak workers walking out on Friday.

If you're an employee in a failing business that is in desperate need of a bailout, what do you do? Do you look for another job? Do you make sacrifices for the company? Or do you threaten to go on strike if the bankers don't give you enough money?

Someone needs to remind the TWU that Amtrak is not fighting for market share or for greater profits, it is fighting for relevance. If the Amtrak workers walk out, will very many people really care? If Amtrak stops operating, is it really going to have a significant impact on our nation's transportation grid?

The answer to both questions is "No."

When Eastern Airlines or Continental Airlines or Pan Am went through strikes there was a measure of sympathy that could be had for these great corporate icons. When the private railroads turned passenger rail operations over to Amtrak in 1971, there was a sense of loss as people realized it was the passing of an era.

If Amtrak suffers a strike that permanently shuts the company down there will be none of those feelings. Amtrak isn't a great company, it's been a ward of the state since inception. It won't lead to the mourning of the passing of an era as that would indicate that people actually felt nostalgic about the Amtrak era. Even among railbuffs Amtrak is referred to derisively as either Slamtrack or AmCrash.

I like riding passenger trains, I really do. I even support the idea that intercity passenger rail service should qualify for public funding as a common good. But Amtrak has been a government boondoggle since day one.

The only reason it has survived this long feeding from the public trough is because of political inertia and pork barrel politics. It operates too many money losing routes and misses the basic point of travel: it rarely takes anyone where they want to go.

There are entire states that have no rail service via Amtrak. There are other states that have only one or two stops. And then there is Florida where, on a good day, you have so many stops it takes at least four and half hours to go from Orlando to Ft. Lauderdale - a three and a half hour drive. No one ever rationalized the Amtrak route structure. No ever looked at real market demand. The trips cost too much, don't go where you want them to, and tend to drop you off in a fairly rough part of someplace you don't want to be when you get there.

And for the most part, they tend to accomplish all this with a surly, don't care attitude.

The TWU is claiming that they fear a major accident or disruption in the next year. OK, but why do they fear that? Excepting the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak doesn't own the rails they travel over. Is the union claiming that there will be some sort of equipment failure? If so, how will increasing the funding help? If it's a major wreck that they're anticipating, that tells me that it is because the equipment is simply worn out and needs replacement - something that most likely cannot be accomplished in one year or for even a billion dollars.

How would the TWU propose that Amtrak spend the extra money? Or are they going to simply propose that their members need to get paid more money so that these types of accidents don't happen?

I hate to say this, but if the workers walk out on Friday, it will almost certainly be the end of Amtrak. And I can't really say that I'll mourn it's passing.

It's long since been time to denationalize the passenger rail network anyway.

More People Observations

This morning, as I was taking the kids over to the bus stop so they could head off for school, I noticed one of those things that makes you want to go "Ewwww..."

No less than three people were out cruising the neighborhoods - garbage picking. And this wasn't discrete picking, this was stop the car in the middle of the road so it holds up traffic so that you can go over and rummage through the rubbish. I got stuck behind one lady in a fairly new minivan who stopped on the main road out of our neighborhood, turned on her emergency blinkers, got out and found a broken broomstick handle in someones trash can, opened the back of her van - which was full of other garbage - tossed in the broomstick and then left. I had to sit there through the whole ordeal as there was too much oncoming traffic to go around her, but the most amazing part was the amount of garbage she was hauling around in the back of her van.

Now it's not like I live in some tony neighborhood - I think, think, we're one step above the ghetto. And it's not like these folks were taking anything that might be worth something - like a broken TV or a washing machine.

No, they're taking broken broomsticks and split pieces of PVC pipe. And they're picking through God only knows what to get it. Are things really that bad?

I do have to say that I am now offended that no one went through my garbage. What, I'm not even good enough for the garbage pickers??? This has to be a violation of some right, right?

One word: Ewwwwww.

A Few Personal People Observations

So, last night I'm sitting in the parking lot of the local Winn-Dixie waiting for my other half to pick up some necessities and while mulling things over in my mind, I found myself watching the various people coming and going. And I noticed a few things that I thought were interesting.

Two of the teenaged cashiers came out to put something in their car. Now realize, that I'm maybe a bit sensitive to swearing right now as it has caused a great deal of grief in the household, but these two walk by and just about every other word was f**k, d**n, or s**t. My car window was down while I waiting and their conversation carried very well.

As I started thinking back to conversations I've had with other teens lately, this seems to be a growing trend. Many of them are unable to put together a coherent sentence without using some curse. I'm not trying to say that my generation was perfect, God only knows that there were enough kids in my school who did the same, but they were the minority. Now they seem to be becoming the majority. There are exceptions, of course, but by and large kids are losing their ability to communicate except in vulgar terms.

If this trend doesn't change, we're eventually going to end up with an elitist society, which is separated along communication lines. Those who can effectively communicate will prosper while those who cannot will become an underclass. This has always been true to an extent, but there were also always enough effective communicators across all lines to minimize the effects. Now it seems like there is becoming a very distinct line being drawn.

I also noticed one other odd and useless thing. You can identify former marching band members by the way they walk. Their upper bodies are almost always absolutely still because they roll their feet. I was watching people walking through the parking lot and most were bouncing all over the place. But there were two or three couples who walked perfectly in step with their feet rolling, just like they were marching in a halftime show.

I've got to get back to normal so I can quit noticing these kind of things. I liked being so wrapped up in useless stuff as to be unobservant - it's so much easier.

I Am Learning Way Too Much About The Law

OK, so the last few days I've been relatively quiet due to my small little family emergency. Essentially, someone forgot to think and decided it would be fun to run their mouth. As a result, they will be learning all about our justice system from the inside, which is not exactly the way that I would have liked it to happen, but no matter, we have to deal with the situation at hand.

Now the offense itself is not a big deal, well it is to us, but not to the system. We're not talking about murder or theft or anything severe like that. It's basically a serious traffic offense (in which there was only property damage). In fact, had the newly minted defendant kept their mouth shut this probably wouldn't have even gotten this far. But, as usual with most teenagers, their mouth was their worst enemy.

So, for the last couple of days, my other half and I have been trying to figure out how to approach the criminal trial coming in mid-October. Along the way, we have been debating the reason for needing a lawyer. And it has, for me at least, become an intellectual exercise in figuring out exactly what the teen's rights are in court.

My other half believes that the Miranda Rights "You have the right to remain silent" section indicates that the defendant can use a lawyer to respond to every single question, i.e. that they would never have to open their mouth for anything (which would probably be good in this case, since one of the comments to a cop was along the lines of "I ain't f**king stupid." Lucky for the kid that the cop threatened an immediate arrest before I could get on a roll about how stupid it was to say that. But I'm digressing.).

I agree that having counsel is probably going to be necessary, but I have been taking the position that he would be there for, well, counsel. Ultimately, the kid is going to have to talk to the judge, there is just no way around it.

But my other half did bring up an interesting intellectual question for me: are the Miranda Rights absolute? Do you, in fact, have a true right to remain silent, or is there an implicit assumption of guilt in Miranda?

Now I'm sure that every lawyer (VK?) is asking themselves how I could be so dense as to not know the answer, but this is something that has never been an issue before in my life (and had better not ever be again). But maybe someone out there would be interested in how I come up with my conclusion that the Miranda Rights are not really well constructed.

First, I looked at the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution, as they seemed to be the ones that are the most relevant to criminal matters:

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

OK, so the Fourth and Fifth Amendments seem to be the basis for the Miranda Right to remain silent. But they don't really seem to provide a basis for completely refusing to cooperate in an investigation (like these people did with their cards invoking Miranda). You are not required to provide testimony against yourself and there needs to be some reason for the questioning, but asking basic factual non-incriminating questions would appear to be legit.

Basic identifying information like name, address, date of birth are all legit (noted on the About.com page on Miranda Rights - no link provided because the page crashes my computer every time). Questions that elicit only facts or information about others should also be legal. So a question along the lines of "Are you aware of anything that would indicate that Joe did X?" should also be good as it is a simple yes or no question that inquires about someone else. The follow-on of "What would that be and how did you come about this information?" may be a question on which your 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination could be invoked.

But at no point should the Miranda Right protections be able to be used to completely hamper, shut down or otherwise obstruct an investigation. Even the suspect or defendant has a basic level of required cooperation - so long as it doesn't violate the 4th or 5th Amendments.

I believe that this is why the 6th Amendment provides for counsel. The counsel is there to advise their client on when it would be wise to invoke the protection against self-incrimination. But that does not release them from the obligation to assist, as much as possible, in the conduct of the investigation or trial.

The purpose of our judicial system is to find truth. Anything that detracts from that is only going to make things worse. The blanket Miranda Right to remain silent is used more and more to hamper and impede the search for the truth and in that regards it is ill-conceived. It assumes that the person being interrogated is guilty (the only Constitutionally legitimate reason for being uncooperative with certain aspects of an investigation) and essentially gives them a free pass on their duty as a citizen to cooperate with an investigation - even if they did nothing wrong and may have information that could assist in finding the truth.

I think that, as they usually did, the Founders got it right with the Fifth Amendment.

The Fifth does not release anyone from cooperating with the quest for truth. It only allows them to force the burden of proof on the State - where it should be.

If the State believes that a person committed a crime, the State has a responsibility to find evidence, to build a case and to present it to a jury without forcing the accused to get on the stand and say "Yes. I did it."

The Fifth does not prevent someone from waiving their right against self-incrimination (hence, confessions are legal), but it also does not grant them a right to completely shut up. The ultimate goal of the system is still truth and everyone has an obligation to work towards it.

In one sentence, the Fifth Amendment recognizes the importance of the burden of proof being on the State with what it says and recognizes the importance of the search for truth with what it does not say.

Interesting intellectual exercise, but it really isn't too useful given my current practical problem.

But I think it's time to get a lawyer on board. If I spend one more night researching the Florida State Statutes online, I'm going to scream.

All because someone couldn't keep their mouth shut.

Why Gay Marriage Cannot Exist In Its Current Form

A few weeks back, I expressed support for the idea of gay marriage, if it was legalized along with stiffer divorce laws for both hetero- and homo-sexual marriages. I also expressed concern about the irresponsible actions of a homosexual gentleman (I use that term very loosely in this case - he is a gentleman only in the physical sense, other than that he is as close to pure evil as I have ever met) with whom I work. I held him up as my example of why I thought that the divorce laws needed to be strengthened first.

Today, my new gay coworker absolutely reinforced that idea and almost managed to turn me against the whole gay marriage movement.

To give the quick version of the story: he was in a gay "marriage" complete with rings, living together, and all that good stuff. He went into the Army, got kicked out (he claims because he violated "Don't ask, don't tell," which I can completely believe) and came home to find his husband's home up for sale. His "in-laws" told him that his hubby was dead. So in response he became, essentially, a male bimbo.

Last night, while grocery shopping, he ran into his "dead" husband. Turns out he was just in jail in the UK for drug trafficking.

OK, so they were separated for three years due to a lie on the part of his "in-laws." So they were separated for three years because the hubby was in the pokey for being a doper. My coworker never bothered to go to public records to find out why his beloved hubby died. He showed a complete and utter lack of commitment to the his husband. He simply shrugged off his "death" and moved on to "take advantage of his freedom."

Tonight, they were supposed to be going out on a date during which my coworker was going to inform his husband that they were no longer married. He no longer wants to be married, so he no longer will be. Simple for him.

This is exactly what I was concerned about when I talked about the people who have no real commitment to their marriage. Marriage is nothing but a word to him. By his action, he cheapens the very meaning of the word to those around him.

In his own little way, in his own little world, he is working to tear down the institution of marriage simply because it is no longer convenient for him to be married anymore.

His problem isn't limited solely to homosexuals. There are many heterosexuals that suffer from the same lack of commitment. But a hetero does not the option of simply declaring themselves divorced.

I realize that there are a great many homosexuals that want to play by the rules, just like everyone else. They don't want anything other than equality. And that's fine; that's a fair request of society.

But society is also within its rights in demanding that the responsible homosexuals apply pressure to the irresponsible in their community. It may not change things right away, but the pressure will eventually help. And that is the best we can work for right now.

What A Week

So I'm sure that a few of you out there have been wondering what happened to me this week. Simply put, during the last server upgrade my webhost somehow "changed the ownership" on the blog database files and essentially made the blog think that there were none. Since I no longer existed, I wasn't able to get in to make any new posts.

I'm working on converting all the database files over to MySQL, although that has run into a small snag also - but I'm working on it! Once the conversion is done, the site should become much more stable.

So what did I do during the week? Spent a lot of time reading various websites: blogs, mainline media, etc. Later tonight I'll post links to some of the more interesting stories I came across. Some of them were really, umm, unusual.

I do want to bring a bit of special attention to a new blog I found the other day, The Happy Husband written by Curt Hendley. He describes it as "celebrating marriage in a hostile world." That covers it pretty well, although I would also say that it's pretty insightful and enjoyable to read as well. Go take a look, it's worth the time.

Have I Ever Mentioned...

Just how much I hate Progress Energy? The power surge I mentioned a few days back was actually more damaging than I thought. I sat down at my good computer Saturday night and found out that both the power supply and the motherboard had been fried in the surge. Luckily the CPU survived, but I had to buy a new case, a new motherboard (and new memory to boot), and I spent yesterday taking apart what was left of the old computer and put it all together in the new box. What a pain! Surge protector was too slow I guess.

I've got some good stuff that I hope to get up before Monday Night Football tonight.

Oh yeah, my web host One World Hosting says that they're going to be doing some server upgrades and to expect the site to be intermittent between midnight and 6 am Eastern tonight.

Today Has Sucked

You know how you can tell when you're having a bad day?

You wake up at six in the morning to find out that your power has been off for 2 hours - and will still be off for two more (Thanks Progress Energy! You guys couldn't maintain a battery operated flashlight properly - even if it had fresh batteries.)

I get to work and decide that today is the day that I'm going to deal with the Case of the Missing Employee. He left early on Saturday and we haven't seen him, heard from him, or anything else since. I go over to his house, and as I'm knocking on his door, I notice that someone either keyed or nailed a swastika onto his door.

Now this guy has some issues that the neo-Nazi's would just love to pick on. He also has some medical issues that could have possibly been dangerous. So I decided to report him as a missing person. All I really wanted was for someone to find a way to check to see if he was in the house (I tried talking to his landlord, but the guy wouldn't answer his door.)

I've figured out why 9/11 happened and why all the kids on the milk cartons would now be about 30 years old. No cop wants to take a report.

I figured that since our store in the city of Orlando and the guy lives in the city of Winter Park, that the best place to call would be the Orange County Sheriff's Department, as they should have jurisdiction in both cities. The SO wanted nothing to do with it, and advised me to call the Winter Park PD, since that is where he lived.

So I called the WPPD and they sounded very receptive to taking the report, asking many questions and so on. They then told me that they could not send an officer out of his jurisdiction to take the report, so I had to go to Winter Park and then call back. So I drive over to the guy's house and call again. The WPPD then decides that since he was last seen at work, he disappeared in Orlando and therefore I need to drive back to Orlando and report it to the Orlando Police Department.

By now, I'm getting really, really ticked, but back to work I go and I call OPD. They send their officer over and the first question he asks is, "Where does he live?" I say Winter Park and he starts down the "Call the WPPD instead" route when I stopped him and explained the runaround I had already been through. So he called the WPPD and asked them to send someone around to do a "well-being" check.

In the end, it took me well over 3 hours of phone calls and driving around town to get this guy reported as missing - and even now he hasn't officially been reported, pending the outcome of the well-being check.

I now understand why some people don't get found for weeks or months after their death. The process of reporting them as missing is a royal pain in the butt.

I just worry about how I'm going to react if I find out that he dehydrated or bled to death on say Tuesday or Wednesday - and I didn't call until today. The people I work with keep telling me I should feel good about having done something, but is something done too late good?

Too much deep stuff to consider on a day like today.

6 Reasons The Roadmap Will Fail

WARNING: GRAPHIC PICTURE IN THIS POST

I've been of the mind for a while now that the "Roadmap" was a dead-end. Some still want to believe that there is hope for it to bring about peace in Israel. Here are six reasons why I don't believe that the region is ready for peace:

Israel obviously doesn't trust the Palestinians yet:

Israeli army soldiers assemble a new concrete checkpoint tower, or pillbox, along the main route connecting northern and southern Gaza, at Deir el-Balah refugee camp, near the Israeli settlement of Kfar Darom, Gaza Strip (news - web sites), Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2003. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

The Palestianians have reason to distrust the Israelis:

A residential building is detonated by the Israeli army in the divided West Bank City of Hebron. A Palestinian boy was killed by shrapnel from an Israeli missile while a local head of Hamas' armed wing and his aides were found dead in the building besieged by the army during the operation.(AFP/Hazem Bader)

And as the murder and mayhem continues in Israel:

The weapon and uniform of an Israeli soldier lays amid broken glass at the scene after an exlosion outside an army base near Tel Aviv September 9, 2003. A Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up outside a major army camp near Tel Aviv on Tuesday, killing at least two people and wounding several, police and rescue workers said. REUTERS/Nir Elias

EDS NOTE GRAPHIC CONTENT: Israeli medics evacuate a wounded woman from the scene of a suicide bombing at a Jerusalem cafe, late Tuesday Sept. 9, 2003. A suicide bomber blew up outside a cafe in Jerusalem Tuesday night, killing at least four people and wounding about 40 others, witnesses and rescue workers said. The Palestinian militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for both suicide bombings in Israel Tuesday. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

The Palestinian people celebrate:

Hamas supporters celebrate in the streets of Gaza City after a suicide bomb attack in Jerusalem, September 9, 2003. The military wing of the Islamic militant group Hamas hailed two suicide bombings in Israel in a statement sent to Al-Jazeera television on Tuesday. Picture taken September 9. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

Hamas supporters celebrate in the streets of Gaza City after a suicide bomb attack in Jerusalem September 9, 2003. The military wing of the Islamic militant group Hamas hailed two suicide bombings in Israel in a statement sent to Al-Jazeera television on Tuesday. Picture taken September 9. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem




The time for peace is not yet upon us. An atmosphere of trust and respect, by both sides, must be built before real progress towards peace can be made. As long as the Israelis feel a need to dig in and fortify or the Palestinians feel a need to celebrate the murder of Israelis, there will be no peace.

True peace begins with the removal of Arafat. Sharon will likely have to follow pretty closely behind. Both men are too polarizing for the other side. They are lightning rods for criticism, founded and unfounded.

Celebrating the murder of a human being or destroying the home of many to get one: those are not foundations of trust or respect.

A house without a foundation will sink and collapse in short order. A peace without trust or respect will do the same.

The region needs to learn to crawl before we can expect it to walk.

Environmental Colonialism

As I mentioned last night, I bought a copy of The Independent Review and have been reading through it in between football games and spending time with the kids. Today I read through an excellent article by Robert H. Nelson that discusses how the environmentalist movement in Africa has taken on the attributes of being neo-colonialist.

He starts by examining the traits of the environmentalist movement which have brought us to this point. I have always been annoyed with the dismissal of fact in favor of fiction that the environmentalists are so good at, but I had never put my finger on exactly what it was that made me so uncomfortable with the environmentalist movement.

Mr. Nelson points it out very succinctly as the Messianic qualities of the environmentalist message:

For many of its followers today, environmentalism has been a substitute for fading mainline Christian and progressive faiths-its religious quality obvious to any close observer of its workings. Its language is often overtly religious: "saving" the earth from rape and pillage; building "cathedrals" in the wilderness; creating a new "Noah's Ark" with laws such as the Endangered Species Act; pursuing a new "calling" to preserve the remaining wild areas; and taking steps to protect what is left of the "Creation" on earth. At the heart of the environmental message is a story of the fall of mankind from a previous, happier, and more natural and innocent time-a secular vision of the biblical fall from the Garden of Eden.

It is this quality, the false religion, that bugs me more than anything else. Zealots, manipulators and charlatans create new religions to advance their goals. An honest person with an honest agenda doesn't need to hide behind a facade of false morality.

But the environmentalists have raised their cause to the level of being their religion, complete with vicious, unrelenting, and uncompromising attacks on any heretical thought that is counter to their ultimate purpose.

The fundamentalism of the environmentalists rivals that of the Iranian clerics. They have shown a willingness to silence their critics by any means necessary. They have taken to terrorism using the "righteousness" of their cause as their Machiavellian justification for the evil and deadly means. And most importantly, they have shown a complete and utter disregard for anyone who might be harmed or disadvantaged by the environmentalists’ actions.

The worst shame here is that the prosaic goals of environmentalism: cleaner air, protecting rare plants or animals, and acting as a counterbalance to unchecked expansion are all worthwhile causes and goals in and of themselves. If they were sought after in a reasoned and responsible manner it would be virtually impossible, except for the most cold-hearted person, to rationally object. But instead of the reasoned and responsible route, the goals have been hijacked and are now used, much like children by the Messianic For-The-Children cult (another group that annoys me to no end), to force people to accept otherwise unreasonable positions.

There is no justification for allowing people - human beings - to die because of a "need" to protect some particular species or landscape. Yet that is exactly what the environmentalists have been doing in Africa for years. They pursue policies that allow the tsetse fly to flourish while denying the native Africans the ability or right to use the land to provide for themselves. So the Africans starve as the environmentalists tell them that they cannot produce food in fertile and traditional areas. The environmentalists are issuing their edicts about what is permissible and what is not from their ivory towers without a care, concern, or shred of knowledge about what their actions are actually doing to the people - or to their beloved environment.

The neo-colonialist actions of the environmentalists are proving to be nearly as deadly to humans and as damaging to the environment as the hated colonialist actions were. And like their imperialist predecessors, they have no clue. They take the opinion that they, and they alone, are the sole arbiters of right and wrong when it comes to the environment.

And like their colonialist predecessors, they are wrong. In time they will be as hated as the British, French, and other colonial powers were. In time, the Africans will throw off the fundamentalist environmentalist yoke just like they did the colonialist yoke.

Hopefully it won't require as many dead before the Africans can have back their land again this time.

Isaac, Ishmael & Marriage

Had a rather interesting discussion this morning with one of my coworkers. I had to run in to unlock the store and decided that before leaving I would talk to the two employees that were going to be there today - just to make sure that they knew what to do in case of an odd situation and also to be nice and find out how their Friday nights went (which is a scary proposition with the new guy).

So the new guy starts telling me about his night. He had said yesterday that he was going to go out clubbing and looking for sex. But apparently he changed his mind. Instead of going out partying, he decided to go to Temple (he's Jewish).

But then, while I'm standing there feeling happy that he made a good decision, he starts in on some of the most extremist religious talk I have ever personally heard come from someone's mouth (I've read a lot, but this was the first time I've been able to verbally challenge someone on the loony fringe).

He started out by trying to rip on Christianity. His challenges were really pretty simplistic, generally without merit, and showed an extreme ignorance of the religion. But he never really got offensive. Just obnoxious and uneducated.

Then he turned his tirade against Islam. He started ranting about how the Muslims were inferior to the Jews. He was referring to them almost as if they were animals, driven only by instinct, while the Jews were superior beings driven solely by intellect. So I asked him very simply: Weren't Ishmael and Isaac brothers, both sons of Abraham?

He looked at me and said: Ishmael was the son of a prostitute. Isaac was the only true son. They might have been half-brothers, but Isaac was the only one that mattered because under Jewish law Abraham was only married to his mother.

Now he's not far off. Isaac was the only son of Abraham and Sarah. Isaac and Ishmael were half-brothers. But what about this idea of marriage?

According to Judaism 101, Sarah offered Hagar, Ishmael's mother, to Abraham as a wife, since Sarah was barren. The term "wife" implies marriage, does it not? And Genesis does speak of God granting blessings to Ishmael and Hagar - probably not something that He'd be real amenable to doing for an illegitimate bastard. The argument that Islam is a morally reprehensible religion because of Ishmael's parentage just doesn't hold water with me.

I also had trouble with the argument because he was assuming that Jewish law required a marriage of one man and one woman - only. No exceptions, right? I don't think that that argument holds true either. Again, from that same page at Judaism 101, Abraham and Isaac are the patriarchs of the Jewish faith. "They founded the religion now known as Judaism..." If they founded Judaism, how could Abraham have been subject to a religion that he would found in conjunction with his yet unborn son? In addition, how do you reconcile the one man/one woman concept with the fact that the Patriarch Isaac had four wives? And that Genesis seems to accept this without comment?

Of course, he had no answer. At that point he tried to change the topic of the conversation, which we let him do.

Now I have no great love for Islam. I've said many times that I believe the religion is stuck somewhere back in the 15th century and that it's going to require a Renaissance in order to maintain relevance in the modern world. Islam has a lot to learn about shades of gray - not everything in this world is black and white; right or wrong. But those issues don't exist because of Ishmael.

If Islam ever moves into an Age of Enlightenment, Abraham and his sons will have the greatest potential for being the common ground on which a cross-religious understanding can be built. But for the Judeo-Christians to dismiss Ishmael as a illegitimate bastard unworthy of God's grace because of his birth, in contravention of what Genesis says, is to throw away one of the great opportunities for peace and understanding.

Much of the Muslim world views the Judeo-Christian faiths with grossly distorted views. At this point, until Islam reforms from within, there really isn't too much hope of a rapprochement. But as we wait for them to join us in the modern world, we have a responsibility to protect the truth, particularly in areas that might be a common ground to bring us closer. To try to dismiss the legitimacy of Ishmael and the Muslim religion is to do a great disservice to the cause of peace.

This isn't to say that we should give up our defense against the Muslim onslaught. We need to defend our beliefs, while accepting that others may believe differently. One of our great capabilities is that of distinction. We can differentiate between history and the present. We can differentiate between differing degrees of good and evil. We can understand that the current actions of the Islamic extremists, don't preclude them from reforming and truly becoming the "religion of peace" they would ideally like to be.

Maybe the opportunity for rapprochement will never arise. Maybe we'll simply be wasting our time and effort in trying to maintain the Ishmael/Isaac brotherhood as a common bond, rather than simply demagoguing Ishmael into illegitimacy as some obviously would like to do.

But I think we owe it to our tradition of understanding, acceptance and love to keep trying.

Is Man Evil?

A few days back I was involved in a discussion about character traits. In my post I'm Selfish, Are You? I mentioned that I don't agree with the rather common position that man is inherently evil. I wanted to expand on why I disagree.

As I mentioned in one of my very first posts on this blog, I tend towards a libertarian political view. Not an anarchist libertarian, but a reasonable one. I want a small government. I want people to leave me alone unless they have good reason to interfere in my life. Sure, it opens me up to more risk, but I believe in the concept in personal responsibility.

One of the corollaries that goes along with the idea that man is inherently evil is that rules and laws have to be used to keep him in line. A lack of rules will naturally lead to anarchy and a society based solely on survival of the fittest.

Now some rules are necessary to keep society functioning properly as there are some evil people in the world. But where does the line get drawn?

If you believe that man is evil you are willing to accept quite a few rules and laws. Proponents of big government usually couch their goal in the rhetoric of protecting the people from unscrupulous charlatans. They argue that big business is evil and that there have to be rules in place to protect the little man.

They ignore the concept of caveat emptor. They act as though people are incapable of taking any step to protect themselves. Man is evil and only government has the key to protect us from the evilness of everyone else.

It's really, in my opinion, a depressing way of viewing the world (and this is coming from someone who is constantly being called an unreformable cynic). It is also directly opposed to my belief that government needs to be smaller.

Now this isn't to say that I believe that man is as pure as the driven snow and therefore rules shouldn't be necessary. To think that man is pure is to completely deny reality.

Rather, man is neutral on whole. Some people are bad, most are good. Good people sometimes do bad things and bad people sometimes do good things. But more importantly, man is smart. Man can analyze a situation and figure out how to take steps to protect himself.

Assuming he's allowed to exercise that kind of personal responsibility. Big government doesn't allow for it.

But why do I keep coming back to this personal responsibility concept? Is it important for something more than just "personal responsibility?"

I think it is. When someone takes responsibility for their own actions, they grow. They become more willing to take risks as they become better able to analyze and respond to the potential problems that they might face. And more importantly, they become more self-sufficient and less likely to look to the government for support.

Small government allows for this to happen. Big government, which is one of the side-effects of the inherently evil position, does not.

It in fact becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Man is evil, so more rules are needed. Man loses the self reliance and personal responsibility that come with freedom. He becomes more dependent on handouts. He becomes lazy. Laziness = evil, which means that we now have to create more rules to stop the slacking. And on and on and on.

I have also never seen any real evidence that man as a whole is evil (if you have some, please post a link to it in the comments). There are some people who are evil. Quite a few. But there have also been quite a few good people, too. Man as a group isn't evil, only some men as individuals.

I can't bring myself to reconcile the idea of man being inherently evil with my libertarian beliefs. The two just don't seem to be able to co-exist as they have fundamentally different approaches to the need for rules. Plus, I just don't like the inherent negativity in the inherently evil approach.

Man is not evil. Just a few individuals.

I'm Selfish! Are You?

A few days ago I noticed a new blog linked to me, Master of None written by Michael Williams. Being curious I went over to take a look around and found an excellent site. It's very well written and has rapidly been becoming one of my favorites.

There was one post in particular that stood out for me though. It was his posting titled "Education: America's Panacea." His whole premise that Americans put too much faith in education to change the unchanging is, in my opinion, correct. Man does not change because of what is taught in a classroom. Rather man changes because of what is taught in the classroom of life.

Mr. Williams brings up three separate examples of wrongs that education has not changed: poverty, racism, and drug abuse. And he is correct in that education has not solved any of these issues. Poverty, when defined as the bottom 10% of the economic strata, can statistically never be eliminated, unless you believe that Marx's pure communistic society is possible in any world outside of the theoretical. Drug abuse can only be overcome by a desire on the part of the abuser to change. No amount of education in the world will reform an unrepentant drug abuser - I know because I've seen them knowingly ruin their lives (in the physical sense of knowingly destroying their vital organs) for a 10 second high. Knowledge meant nothing. I'll come back to the racism in a minute, but he's right in his conclusion that education had nothing to do with the societal rejection of racism.

He then continues on to assert that man is inherently evil and that we are so because we are selfish (among other reasons). I disagree.

For a long time, I have believed that man was inherently good. We didn't always act on our goodness, but by and large, we were good. I've spent the last three or four days trying to reconcile man's goodness with his actions and have actually, to an extent, readjusted my position. Man isn't born pure and then corrupted. No, man is born in a neutral state (tabula rasa) and everything from there on is acquired by a form of education or conditioning.

One of the underlying assumptions of this position is that the basics of being human - those first things we learn after we're born - are subject to Darwinian evolution. Traits that are good for mankind, like societies, religion, conscience, and laws will expand and evolve. Traits that are bad, like racism, murder, and theft will eventually wither away to near extinction (I'm not crazy enough to believe that they will ever die off entirely).

The good traits of humanity give man structure, security and hope. The bad traits cause harm to others and ultimately to the possessor of those traits. The good traits are needed for the building of great societies in which everyone benefits. The bad traits are a reversion back to the law of the jungle.

Now the three bad traits I listed can all be considered to be selfish traits. They assume the primacy of the person who possesses the traits. So if selfish traits can be defined as bad traits which will be evolved out of the mainstream, how can selfishness be a good thing?

The bad traits are all examples of the extreme of selfishness. And like any good idea, selfishness, when taken to the extreme, can be a bad thing.

But selfishness has actually been the greatest engine of good in the history of mankind. Selfishness is the basis that underlies the capitalist system. Selfishness is what underpins our individuality. We are who we are because we are selfish.

Capitalism has been far and away the closest to the ideal economic system that has ever been devised by mankind. It does more to provide for our needs than any of the other variations of control economies have. Capitalism is based on people selling what other people want. But why do some people sell their time, their labor, or their resources to others?

Because they're selfish. They think that whatever the buyer is offering, be it cows and chickens in the ancient barter systems or cash in the modern economy, is worth more than the item that their selling. They want to possess the most possible value because it will give them the best standard of living. They don't care a whit about the other party involved; they're acting on pure selfish, hoarding motives.

Selfishness for time has led man to create machines to do labor. Every machine that has increased efficiency or speed has been built, in one shape or form, to gain more leisure time - time for ourselves. It also led indirectly to the invention of the automobile and the airplane.

It is also selfish to have our own beliefs and to judge others as wrong. It might make us feel better and it will probably make them feel worse. Isn't it kind of selfish to make others feel bad while you feel better in return?

But that is what makes us individuals. Mr. Williams and I don't see eye to eye on this issue. And it's selfish of me to take exception to it in a public way. But if we didn't have points of disagreement or difference what would make us individuals? Without difference, we become part of a collective mass. No one is any better or any worse than anyone else. But through our selfishness, we differentiate ourselves and become individuals.

Selfishness also drives us to achieve more. Selfishness drives us to be better. Selfishness drives the Darwinian evolution of our societal character traits.

Racism in America hasn't been discarded (more or less) because of education. Rather it was officially discarded because of a selfish desire on the part of the whites in power to be magnanimous and to "grant equality" to the blacks. A critical mass of white support had to be achieved before making such a declaration. One of the reasons that racism has waned so much in the last 50 years is because of a selfish desire of that white critical mass to evolve out of their children as much of the racism trait as possible, so that the parents could feel better about themselves for "having done something to help the problem."

Man isn't inherently evil or inherently good. Who we are is a product primarily of evolved character traits and can be influenced just a tiny bit by education. When man does good, it is for selfish reasons; when man does bad, it is also for selfish reasons. Selfishness, in moderation, is a good and even desirable trait. It is the extreme of selfishness that we find so detestable.

Mr. Williams is right. Education is not a panacea for all that ills us in America. Freedom is still the best medicine for our problems.

And freedom is best protected by those who are reasonable and selfish about their freedom. For a reasonable and selfish person will understand that to protect the most individual freedom, it is necessary to have equitable rules for all.

Be selfish for the common good.

And read Michael Williams blog while you're at it. It's worth the time.

Is Western Culture Better?

One of the great tenets of the political correctness movement is that culture is a moral equivalence. There can be no culture that is better than another, as to admit such would kill the equivalency that underpins the movement. So it drives the PC crowd nuts when they see an article like this one, which uses factual example to demonstrate that there are some serious, serious moral problems in some other cultures.

Western culture has its flaws, to be certain. But read about the 9 year old rape victim. Read about the 16 year old who is being pressured by her culture to engage in unwanted sexual behavior. Tell me, after reading those two stories, that there isn't a serious weakness in the particular culture. Tell me that Western Culture, which treats women with a respect unheard of in these cultures, is on an equivalent level.

It isn't. Western Culture is superior.

Culture is evolutionary. The good aspects survive and are built on. The poor parts are left to die away.

The evolution of culture is inevitable, but its speed can be affected by the value systems of the society. Western society is open to new ideas and new concepts. We have allowed the Darwinian cultural process to take place.

Iraq and Uganda, where these two stories originated, are both stuck with medieval value systems. As a result they are stuck with inferior cultural mores. They have slowed Darwin down, but eventually the evolutionary process will complete itself. The natural process cannot be stopped, only slowed.

The great fear of the mullahs of Iran, the clerics of Islam, the communists of China, and the warlords of Africa is that their people will learn of and embrace Western culture. Why are they so fearful? Because they know that our culture is superior. They understand that Western culture would destroy their hold on power. Our culture would liberate their people from their feudalism. They fear Western culture because they know that in the fight for the minds of their people, Mickey Mouse is worth one of their armies.

Blue jeans, Coca-Cola, and hip-hop - these are every bit as important weapons in the battle between East and West as all the Abrahms tanks, F-15 fighters, and aircraft carriers. In the military battles our friends and foes will change. But in the cultural battle it is between modernism, as exemplified by the West, and feudalism, as practiced in the East.

Feudalism drains a person of life and will. Modernism speaks to the soul. It allows for personal growth and fulfillment.

Western culture is distinct from Eastern culture. It is better, too.

More On The ISM Dude

So yesterday I said that I wanted to revisit the ISM Dude post. You've already gotten the first part, now I want to hit the second part.

What ISM Dude did was absolutely reprehensible. He preaches peace and understanding, yet he turns around and disrespects one of the most important religious sites in Judaism. What he did was stupid and indefensible.

But in the comments, one of the posters (Dan 9:21 p, 8/13/03) asks if the ISM Dude could have done something similar at one of the most important Islamic mosques. The implication was that he could not have.

Right now, that's correct. But it hasn't been the case, and may not continue to be the case. I know because I have been on the Temple Mount. I have been in the Dome of the Rock and in the Al-Asqa Mosque. I could have disrespected either site had I chosen. But I didn't. Why? It wasn't the right thing to do.

ISM Dude should have thought a little bit more before he pulled his little minded stunt. There was absolutely no call for it and it has only succeeded in further marginalizing the movement he's a part of. One of these days, he will perhaps grow up and understand how disgusting this action was.

Losing The Debate

Yesterday I posted a link to an IndyMedia posting about a kid from the ISM who went and stuck what can only be referred to as an objectionable note in the cracks of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Today, while I was at work, I happened to take a gander at Dean's World and was somewhat shocked to see Dean publicly upset over some of the comments that had been left in a couple of threads on his site. I've been following the debate in both posts as it was happening and I can certainly see where Dean is coming from. But what do both of these topics have in common?

To put it rather simply, they are emblematic of a far reaching change in the conservative movement in America. The conservatives are forgetting how to debate and influence.

As I was growing up, for some reason I don't remember, my Dad used to always tell me how to argue (this was really targeted at legal issues, but for an overall strategy, I've found it very effective). He used to always tell me "If the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law is on your side, pound the law. If neither the law nor the facts are with you, pound the table." And like I said, focusing on the strength of my position ahead of time has helped me in debating or arguing quite a bit.

For years the conservative movement was out of favor. From the early 1930s right on through to 1960s liberalism was the predominant force in American politics. The only way that the conservatives could get across their message was to articulate it well, base it solely on fact, and keep forcing the debate back to the facts. As a result, the conservative movement was able to take power back as they had a stance that people understood and understood the value of.

Starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s the liberal movement began to base their strategy for debate on "table pounding." It was no longer enough to argue fact and merit. More and more the tactics of misrepresentation and character attacks became de rigueur for the liberal side of an argument. They lost their ability to debate just as the conservatives perfected theirs. As a result, the conservatives have taken control of both the Presidency and Congress for the first time in nearly half a century.

But lately, I've been noticing that the folks on the right have been losing their ability to actually debate. I first noted it in some of the big names, like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Neal Boortz. Now those three have more to worry about than just providing for a reasoned debate. They also have ratings to worry about and let's face it, rude sells. People don't want to hear two people debating the facts; they want to hear a caller getting hung up on. It's kind of like the people who watch NASCAR for the wrecks.

Look at some of the comments left in reaction to the ISM post. They are viciously personal at times. For most, it is easier (and possibly more satisfying) to call the guy a "fucktard", another refers to a liberal poster as "hitler spawn" and yet a third states "May allah send a sidewinder missile up your ass, dumbshit." Are these the voices of reasoned debate? I think not. Personal attacks are not debate. Yet this is the direction that more and more people are going.

Now, I'll grant you that the ISMer post was on IndyMedia, which quite possibly helped to turn this into a bit more polarized issue than it would have otherwise been. But why is this stuff happening to Dean?

Dean is a self-confessed liberal. He is also a very solid debater. I sometimes disagree with him, but have never seen him put forth an argument that is based completely on "pounding on the table." He almost always has a factual basis for his position.

But then read his post on Trackback Ruminations. Look at how the personal attacks have hurt and drained him. Instead of directly taking on his position, folks resorted to distortion, quoting out of context and other deceptive practices. And when he publicly admitted to maybe having gone too far in his original post, he was accused of being condescending (which he wasn't, contrite maybe, but not condescending).

Only a few people chose to actually engage Dean in a true debate, i.e.: the use of fact to rebut fact. Those who tried were almost always rewarded with a real response.

But the debates were drown out by the noise of the personal attacks. Why? It seems as though those who were incapable of making a factual argument (pounding on the facts) instead chose to resort to pounding on the table - and to good effect. In this case, they were able to so thoroughly disgust the opposing participant as to silence him, for a time.

The biggest problem that I see coming from this is that the intellectual midgets among the conservative movement will look upon this as the Holy Grail of debate. It's quick. It's easy. It can be effective quite a bit. But in going all out to win the battle, they are setting up the conservatives to lose the war.

The war of ideas in America is not to win over the hearts or minds of either the conservatives or the liberals. Their minds are usually already made up. No amount of great factual debate will change the mind of devoted follower of either movement.

No the war is for the hearts and minds of the middle of the roaders in America. These are the folks that make decisions based, not on ideological leanings, but on a gut feeling. These are the folks that make up most of the nation.

The conservatives gained power because they could articulate their argument, while the liberals could only engage in personal attacks. The liberal movement is learning the lesson. It is liberals like a Dean at the grassroots level or an Alan Colmes at the national level who can articulate a real liberal argument. If the liberals can continue their movement towards clarity as the conservatives continue their movement towards table pounding then we could be seeing the beginnings of a fundamental shift in the political structure of the US.

The conservatives still have the upper hand. They had fifty years in which to perfect their ability to argue factual arguments. The liberals are, generally, only now realizing that they will have to do the same. But the more we see arguments that consist only of name calling, the more likely it will be that the conservative movement has begun its trek back into the political wilderness.

It's time to get back to national debates of facts and not personal attacks. Otherwise, we're heading for a wreck better than anything NASCAR has ever seen.

My Greatest Americans List

So you want to know what my list was like for the 75 Greatest Americans. Well, ok. Here it is, but it's not in order.

I have them grouped instead by what they did: politicians, scientists, military men, etc. Some of the more obscure choices have explanations. I'll be interested to see what the final list looks like when Mr. Prather publishes it.

Also, I do realize that some people like George Washington or Eddie Rickenbacker could fall into other categories, but they are in the category that I was thinking of when I included them on the list.

Politicians:

Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Ronald Reagan, James Monroe, John Marshall, John Jay, Andrew Jackson, Alexander Hamilton, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy

Patriots and Military Men:

John Pershing, Omar Bradley, Chester Nimitz, David Farragut, Sam Houston, Davey Crockett, Samuel Adams, Stonewall Jackson, Jimmy Doolittle, John Paul Jones, Hyman Rickover, Paul Revere, George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, Robert E. Lee, Curtis LeMay, George S. Patton, George Washington, Douglas MacArthur

Inventors, Designers, and Philosophers:

Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Werner Von Braun, Jonah Salk, Eli Whitney, Alexander Graham Bell, George Washington Carver, George Westinghouse, Samuel Morse, Clare Johnson (SR-71), John Browning, Samuel Colt, J. Robert Oppenheimer, The Wright Brothers, Thomas Paine

Builders and Businessmen:

Herb Kelleher, Walt Disney, Ray Kroc, C.E. Woolman, Jack Welch, Michael Dell, Eddie Rickenbacker, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Roberto Goizueta, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Bill Allen, William Boeing, Juan Trippe, John Edgar Thompson, John D. Rockefeller, JP Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Flagler, Donald Douglas, Henry Ford

OK so this section has quite a few builders of transportation empires. It is my firm belief that without the cheap transportation provided first by rail and then by air, America would not be half as prosperous as it is.

Activists, adventurers, and athletes:

Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackie Robinson, Neil Armstrong, Susan B. Anthony, Booker T. Washington, Rosa Parks, Branch Rickey

One oddity here – the inclusion of Branch Rickey. He was the man who had the foresight to sign a baseball player the caliber of Jackie Robinson and the internal strength to stand up to the pressure of being the insider that sold the whites out.

There you go. All 75 of my choices. I realized afterwards that I left off some other great people (Lewis and Clark came to mind almost as soon as I hit the send button) and I’m sure that at some point I’ll think of some others that I left off. But all in all I’m pretty comfortable with the list. Besides it was supposed to be my opinion, right?

Does The Government Oppose Christianity?

I've been noticing lately a fairly sharp increase in the number of politicians that are taking cheap potshots at the Church. A few days ago it was John Kerry, now it comes out that one of Gray Davis' aides has chastised a bishop for reminding Davis of his religious teachings. This is getting to be too much.

Bishop Weigand is justified, even required by his position, to remind Davis of the teachings of the Catholic Church. As a citizen of the United States he has every right to participate in the political process regardless of his position. In the political process his voice carries as much weight as a homeless man in Oakland - which is exactly as much as Davis himself assigns it.

The Bishop has no explicit authority over Davis. It is entirely Gray's choice as to whether or not he remains a practicing member of the Catholic Church.

The Bishop cannot force Davis to change his stand on abortion. He can only end the Church's relationship with Davis. At that point (or any point for that matter) Davis is free to find another, more liberal Church or to renounce his faith.

By the same token, Davis cannot force the Church to change its view on abortion. He can, however, also end his relationship with the Church. Losing a high profile member such as Davis certainly cannot be good for the public image of the Church, especially if the split is contentious and public.

So, if both parties are essentially free to choose this relationship, why are the politicians throwing such a fit all of the sudden about the Church actually doing what they said they would?

Probably because many of the politicians don't really care about their faith any more. They subscribe to a particular faith simply because their parents were of that faith or they think that there might be some votes from joining.

They cloak themselves in religion, but they don't actually care about the moral teachings that the religion provides. As such, when a religious leader reminds them that faith actually involves paying regards to moral and ethical guidelines they throw a fit about "separation of church and state." Religion is a club they join, not a faith they practice.

The rules and moral teachings of faith are a hindrance to their unfettered hedonism. Morals mean giving up some of the pleasures of the flesh. Ethics mean giving up some of the evils of the mind. In either case, it's not anywhere as much fun.

It seems like lately the Church, in particular the Catholic Church, has been taking a more proactive stance on reminding their parishioners of the moral teachings of Christ. And they're doing it publicly: Daschle has already been excommunicated, Kerry was publicly chastised, and now Davis. If there is one thing politicians hate, it's being publicly called out on their hypocrisy.

I think perhaps we'll be seeing more of these types of articles as we go on. And that's a good thing. The Church shouldn't be an integral part of the State, but they should remind the "faithful" of their responsibilities as people of religion.

The Church has every right to participate in the political process. It's good to see them finally doing so again.

More On The Constitution

So yesterday I mentioned how I was in agreement with Jeff at Caerdroia about the problems with the current expansive interpretation of the Constitution. Today, though, it hit me that I don't agree with the main premise of his post which was that we need a new Constitution.

Our current Constitution represents an ideal that we are constantly striving towards. We may never get there, but it is the ultimate goal for us politically.

America is a land of strivers. We try and try and try to achieve the impossible - and quite often we succeed. Our Constitution gives us something concrete to shoot for.

Now it's true that ever since FDR stacked the Supreme Court the literalist interpretation of the Constitution has been under attack. Government has expanded and morphed in ways that the Framers never could have imagined. And I don't disagree that we have moved away from the original intent of the Constitution, which was to limit the power of government.

But there is hope. While reading an article in the Washington Dispatch, I came across this (talking about Reagan):

For the previous fifty years, the premise had been that the government had a role and responsibility in just about everything. All problems, real or contrived, were appropriately within the scope of government action. The debate had been about what was the best way for government to address a problem. How large a role should the government have? How much should it cost? How should the program be structured? Was it better to have the problems addressed by the "efficient" Republicans or the "compassionate" Democrats? How would the government program be most effective so that we got "the biggest bang for the buck"?

Republican or Democrat, Ike or FDR, Nixon or Kennedy, Ford or Johnson, the details may have differed but the underlying debate was based upon the same premise....the government had a role and a responsibility.

Reagan changed that debate. The debate became about whether the federal government should be involved at all in addressing a problem. Perhaps the government did not have a role in every corner of life and economic activity. Perhaps by being involved, the government not only did not help, but made things worse. This was a dramatic change and if Reagan could not implement or enact all he wished, he had taken a very important first step, a step that had to be taken before action and accomplishment could follow.

We're trying to undo fifty years of damage, most of which was caused as a reaction to a great calamity (the Depression). The process won't be easy, as evidenced by the fact that it took fifty years just to change the nature of the debate. Those were just the first baby steps in swinging the pendulum back towards sanity. It will be a long and tiresome process to reign in the expanse of the federal government, but it is something we can do.

If we want to.

And our Constitution will sit there as the end goal of the effort. It will be the beacon that we strive for.

To replace it with a mediocre document would be to ignore the American mindset. It would almost be an admission of defeat - a statement that we couldn't live up to the expectations of the Framers.

And I don't believe that that's true. We can live up to those expectations. We can honor the wisdom they passed on to us in that document.

In order to have a successful call for a Constitutional Convention, people would have to be educated on what is so wrong with the current system that it requires a radical overhaul. If that kind of effort can be organized, it needs to be used to educate people on why they need to elect representatives that actually respect the document and don't just look at it as a hindrance to their unfettered access to political pork.

Then we could keep striving for the elusive ideal and we wouldn't have to change the Constitution.

Let the other countries wimp out on their goals. We need to keep working towards ours.

Another Anti-Anti-Bush Article

Lately I've been noticing a marked increase in the number of anti-Bush bashing articles, like this one, that have been appearing in various places around the web and in the media.

I'm starting to think that the angle has been played out. Sure the articles are generally well written, well thought out and will almost always have some unique, insightful, or witty commentary. But come on. Do we really need three or four a week?

It's getting to the point where you can almost see the outline of the generic anti-Bush bashing article forming. Find a particular event (the event du jour is the State of the Union line), talk about how it has been over hyped. Then continue on to talk about how the point is being over hyped because the Democrats are losing relevance due to extreme leftism, September 11, whatever. Throw in a couple of comments about the War on Terror and a snide shot at Clinton and voila! You've got your article done.

Now I'm not a fan of the Bush bashing either, but this is getting ridiculous. It's like a cookie cutter. Show some creativity already.

Politics is a war of ideas. These "why do they bash Bush?" articles do nothing to further the conservative cause. There are no new ideas in them, only reaction to accusations of the liberals. Whoever breaks out of this cycle of accusation and rebuttal to come up with a real thought will have the advantage.

If the conservatives want to keep control, it's time to change the game.

Marriage & Parenting

The whole gay marriage discussion over at One Hand Clapping has been morphing somewhat into a discussion (a good one, I might add) of why the institution of marriage came about and what strengths it brings to a society. The whole discussion, which I've been following pretty closely, has really clarified in my mind a few points.

First, "marriage" is probably the wrong word to use when referring to homosexual unions which enjoy the same legal protections as heterosexual marriages. The phrase "civil union" has already been bandied about as a possible replacement term. I don't know what else to call it, but the term "marriage" to describe two partners of the same sex seems to be a real point of contention (and I can understand why).

Second, regardless of the legal status of homosexual unions, under no circumstances do they have the right to have them blessed by a church which stands opposed to same sex unions. If the Catholic Church wants to remain opposed to the unions, as it probably should since they would go against all the teachings of the Church for the last couple of millennia, it is the right of the Church to decide what its stance is and to discriminate against those in violation of that stance. That means if the Church wants to refuse to bless the union, that's fine. If the Church wants to excommunicate homosexual partners, that's fine too. The gays have no right whatsoever to dictate to the Church what its teachings should be. And the government has no right to tell the Church that they can't discriminate against those who violate its teachings. The whole "separation of church and state" thing is a two way street.

And my final, and most strongly held, point is that just because a man gets a woman pregnant, does not necessarily mean that he is the best possible father for that child. Just because he was the sperm donor doesn't mean that he's going to care a lick about those kids.

And I know that this is true.

For those who haven't caught on yet, I "live in sin" with my girlfriend and her three kids. Three kids, two fathers. And neither one gives a damn about their kids.

One of them has literally stolen food from his two kids. He also stole and sold toys and electronics that he knew his kids used. In the last five plus years, he has paid a grand total of $25.00 in child support. We buy them birthday and Christmas presents, and put his name on them so that he doesn't look to them as a total deadbeat. The last time he came to a birthday party he was drunk. Is he really the best possible parent out there for those kids?

The other one is over $2000 behind in his child support payments. He promises, promises, and promises everything and anything to his daughter, yet he never follows through. He borrowed $100 from his mother, supposedly to help buy his kid a car; he spent the money on beer instead. He is constantly drunk; he has also come to birthday parties for the little ones drunk as a skunk. His only concern in life is where that next beer is coming from. Is he the best possible parent out there for his kid?

I'm not claiming to be perfect, far from it. God only knows that I've made more than my fair share of mistakes as I came into this whole parenting thing and had to take on an 11 year old, a 3 year old and a two year old - without any preparation at all.

But part of why I'm here is because right after I met my girlfriend, her ex was a drunk and the little ones' father stole her last food money. For some reason, I decided to be charitable and kind and I loaned her the money to get them food. Five years later, here we are. We aren't wealthy by any means - right now we're just barely making ends meet - but the kids have never wanted for food. They haven't had to worry about Daddy stealing the car and disappearing for weeks on end. They don't worry about the landlord coming around with the sheriff to evict them. They actually have somewhat normal, if monetarily poor, lives.

I have to believe that I'm doing a better job than their biological fathers ever would have cared to do. They're not "my" kids, but they are my kids.

It isn't right to define parent, mother or father by using biological donations. Procreating does not make someone a parent. Caring for and protecting a child, that makes someone a parent.

The best possible parent for a child is the one who truly loves it. Marriage or biological relation is not the only determining factor.

John Kerry & Gay Marriage

John Kerry is ticked off at the Pope. Why? Because the Pope had the audacity to remind the good Senator of the teachings of the Catholic Church as the US considers the legalization of gay marriage.

Now I don't always agree with John Paul II - I thought he was out of line with his condemnations of the war in Iraq - but in this case I think he did exactly what he is supposed to do as Pope.

He reminded his flock of the principles of the Church.

Kerry, who apparently wants to legalize gay marriage, of course immediately took offense and started preaching about "the separation of church and state."

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that the "separation of church and state" prohibits anyone affiliated with the church from participating in the debate and expressing their opinion. If I remember correctly, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was, well, a reverend. He participated in the process - even brought about a few changes in government. Jesse Jackson is a reverend. And what about that Al Sharpton guy running for President? Isn't he a reverend, too?

And it's not as if Kerry even hinted at the idea that the Pope couldn't participate because of his status in the US as a foreigner. Not that it would matter. We take advice from our foreign allies quite often. Just look at the influence that Tony Blair had on how and when and under what circumstances we prosecuted the war in Iraq.

So why the broadside at John Paul? Is it maybe because he and Kerry disagreed on an issue? Or does Kerry really believe that the church should be stripped of its First Amendment rights to express its opinion?

The church is every bit as much a part of the American fabric as the corner liquor store, strip joints, and adult bookstores. Why would we want to give the latter three a voice while denying the same to the church?

If Kerry doesn't like what the Pope had to say, he should have just thrown out the letter. If Kerry wants to turn his back on the teachings of the Catholic Church, that's his right as a Senator and an American citizen.

But it's the Pope's responsibility to watch over his flock and to try to steer them onto the path of righteousness.

Kerry needs to find something else to rail against. The Pope was in the right here.

However, over the last few days, I've been kind of quietly reading a few of the debates going on about the whole issue of gay marriage and I finally feel myself formulating a fairly strong belief about the issue.

I think that it should be allowed, but it should only be allowed with some other changes being made at the same time.

Now I know that that sounds way out there and will probably just serve to tick everyone off at me, but let me explain.

I was reading Andrea Harris' post in which she takes Glenn Reynolds to task for disapproving of the Pope's stance on gay marriage. And she's right in that you have to expect the Pope to say Popey stuff and that you shouldn't expect the Catholic Church to turn its back on 2000 years of teachings to embrace homosexual unions.

But if two people of the same sex are in a loving, committed relationship why should they be denied the same protections under the law as a heterosexual couple? They don't have a right to have their union blessed by the Church, but they're not the first to run into that issue. Henry VIII had a problem with the Church enforcing its rules on him. So he left and formed the Church of England. But the Catholic Church remained opposed to his divorce and remarriage.

John Kusch put it pretty well in the comments to Andrea's post (3:44 AM, 8/2/03).

But what are the changes I want to see along with the allowance of gay marriage?

I want to see stricter divorce requirements. The problem with the American family isn't homosexual; it's a lack of commitment. People go into marriage nowadays figuring that if they don't like it, they can just get a quickie divorce and move on to the next partner. Marriage, whether hetero- or homosexual, should be a real commitment, not the consummation of an infatuation.

Make divorce more difficult. Make it more consequential - for both parties. Make marriage an institution again, instead of a convenience to be discarded when it's no longer useful.

I think most of the truly committed homosexuals out there would agree with this stance as they are looking not to change the world but to attain the same legal protections as heterosexuals who are married.

Now, of course, if this were proposed we would hear much gnashing of teeth from parts of the homosexual community as there is a sizable ultra-liberal contingent that wants the legal protection, wants to destroy the church, wants to destroy the institutions on which America is founded, but also wants the ease of separation that currently exists. I know that they exist and are prevalent as I work with one of them. He has a different partner every few days. He's had several come into the office to scream at him, call him unfaithful, and other such niceties. But the actions of a few should not reflect on, or deny rights to, the majority

I also work with another one who believes in long-term commitment. He cares more about his partner than quite a few married heterosexuals I've seen.

He is the reason I would support gay marriage. He doesn't want to rip asunder the fabric of our social foundation. He wants to be able to enjoy the same protections as a married heterosexual.

The first guy is the reason I want to see the divorce laws strengthened first. He would be getting married to a different guy every week. He views everything as having no consequence that he can't avoid.

But even if we don't approve gay marriage, they still need to do something to put some teeth into the divorce laws so that it really becomes an option of last resort when every attempt at reconciliation has failed. There is no reason for anyone to be thrice divorced.

I don't agree with the position of John Paul, but he has every right to express it and to contribute to the debate.

It's too bad that John Kerry doesn't want to listen. He might occasionally learn something by being open-minded and listening to the other side.

A Day Late....

Remember the story about the dog? Well, there is one last chapter that was written today.

I've been gently pushing to get him back ever since he was taken down to the Humane Society. Today, we went down to get him, figuring he would look at it as a big vacation.

He was adopted yesterday.

My girlfriend keeps trying to put a happy face on it, saying that he's probably in a better place, that it was fate, etc. She just doesn't understand that I don't believe it.

Oh, I believe that he was adopted by a wonderful family and that he's going to have a great life.

It's just that buying into the "better place" theory makes me feel as though I failed him somehow. Like we were neglectful or abusive or mean (which we weren't). I want to believe that his life will be as good as it was here, I really, really hope it is. It's just that saying that it is better would have to mean that we weren't good enough.

I let him down the first time when he was taken there and now I was a day late to bring him home.

Such a wonderful feeling for a Sunday.

Not Looking Good For Gray

If you're Gray Davis, sitting out there in Sacramento, looking at your chances in a recall election, the last thing you need to see is your "friends" edging away from you, throwing around words like lacking "charismatic leadership" or "devoid...of tactical skills."

Even the head of the California Democratic Party is seeming to prepare for the inevitable successful recall and is already beginning to explain the reasons why Davis is in the position he's in.

I really hope that politicians other places are watching this whole affair and learning. Maybe this can get some of our elected officials to start concentrating on actually governing, instead of trying to dig dirt on opponents and create 30 second sound bites (and maybe some Martians will come down to teach me the secret of building flying saucers).

Like I've said before, it's going to be interesting to watch the fallout from this one.

Thanks For The Kind Words

Thanks to all who have sent kind words and encouragement over the last week. I'll try to respond to each of you over the next few days.

As an update, the leg is getting better. It's still bleeding a little (2 weeks and a day now, but the doctor says it's ok), but the infection appears to be completely gone. Still have a couple of days of antibiotic to go, but it looks like it should be better soon. Still a little pain, but not as much as before.

As for the dog, that it still a real, real tough situation for me. I still feel like we made the wrong choice and that we should have kept him. I feel like I abandoned a friend when he needed defending more than ever. What he did was wrong and terrible, but I honestly don't believe that he intended to do it or that he would have done it to a person. I worry because he is a very vocal dog - he'll communicate by growling when you do something he doesn't like - and I'm afraid that someone will misunderstand that as aggression and will put him down. It is that reason that has been keeping me up at night ever since we gave him up.

I really am trying to make more of an effort at getting back to a regular posting schedule. I just have to ration my computing time a bit more than usual right now as I'm spending a fair amount of time trying to find a new job. This leg infection has shown me just how important it is to have a job that can provide for that health insurance stuff (as if I didn't already know it before).

I Don't Want To Grow Up

Lots of personal emotionally type stuff ahead. Probably sounds like whining, but it's really just venting.

I'm starting to understand why some people get so screwed up mentally.........

Sometimes it really sucks to be an adult.

It seems like every time I start to get things headed in the right direction again I get visited by the demons of unreal stress and freak events. To a point it makes me wonder if this is the life I'm supposed to be getting together or if I'm supposed to be heading off in a new direction.

The last couple of weeks, since I got back from San Francisco, have been a living hell for me. It seems like, with the exception of my father, everyone in my life is putting the onus of everything on me. If anything goes wrong (like my boss forgetting to pay the phone bill), I get blamed (would have been nice if I had screwed it up before I got blamed). Anything I get done isn't quite good enough to be fully acceptable. With some things, I'm told simultaneously that I'm doing too much and not enough. Everyone says that they "appreciate" me, yet they are constantly jumping down my throat, trying to pick fights, and getting ticked off at me - because they have stress in their lives (I guess they all figure I have a nice stress free life).

Now I'm not trying to whine. Most of my life I've dealt with higher levels of stress than most people. When I worked for the airlines, I used to be responsible for the lives of up to 325 people - if I screwed something up, the pilot may not have been able to save it. I worked as a stockbroker, both full commission and salary, in a crashing market. The current stress far and away exceeds anything I have ever dealt with in my life.

Then tonight, as the topper, the dog decided to kill one of the baby kittens. One bite just ripped through the baby kitten and it basically bled to death extremely quickly. And again, as the Daddy-In-Fact, I ended up being the gravedigger and mortician. I have an ability to segregate my feelings most of the time and usually can only show what I want people to see. So everyone seems to assume that I don't hurt when this kind of stuff happens.

I do hurt. Very deeply.

It kills me to have to pick up the remains of this baby kitty and bury it. It's a very deep sinking feeling - a sense of loss as to what could have been (even knowing that we were going give it away in a week or so).

And then the talks about having to put the dog down - how I hate that. I don't want to do anything like that. I know that it's probably going to happen soon, it just kills me that I might have to be part of that decision making process.

But taking it to the humane society and giving it up isn't much easier. The thought of having to look at his face one last time as I walk away, it's an emotional pain that makes me want to cry. It's like walking away from a friend, with no explanation. It just doesn't seem right.

But we also can't keep it with the kids after an attack like that. No matter how bad the pain is, the safety of the kids is more important. I'll deal with nightmares (and I will have them - I already know how my mind works) if that's what's needed to keep them safe.

I hope tomorrow is at least a wee bit better.

I'm Supposed To Feel Sorry, Why?

The more I keep reading about the .mp3/RIAA battle, the less I feel any compassion whatsoever for the RIAA and their goons.

Now it's still not right to illegally download .mp3s, I'm not condoning that. However, it's not as if the moneygrubbers are completely perfect either.

.mp3s have changed the way the music industry works. And as a result the RIAA has lost total control over the creation of anything musical in the US today. A small artist can now circumvent the RIAA, use the .mp3 format as a promotional tool and can probably end up making more money self-publishing than they would ever net out through the RIAA. Yeah, they don't get the MTV exposure, the instant celebrity status or the groupies from day one, but in the end they are better able to support themselves with a job they love.

And that scares the dickens out the RIAA. They don't want self-sufficient, intelligent, hard working musicians because those deviant musicians could prove that there is an alternative to the monopoly. The effect could ultimately be more damaging than a successful anti-trust suit. The RIAA wouldn't get broken up; it would cease to exist.

The author of the article is obviously a fairly frustrated musician with an axe to grind. And that's ok, he doesn't exactly go out of his way to hide the fact - you pretty much know exactly where he's coming from.

But he does bring up some excellent points about the inferior quality of today's "music." Much of it is a blatant rip-off of a 70s or 80s tune. Much of today's music does seem to be more focused on shock value than on any actual musical quality.

That's why I basically stopped buying CDs. Why waste $20 on an inferior product?

Want me to start buying again? Come out with something worth buying. Until then, I'll use my money to pay down bills or to buy books so that I can learn more about stuff I like.

Hemingway, Meet BART

So Saturday night, we hung out in downtown San Francisco until fairly late - nearly midnight - before heading back out to our hotel in Walnut Creek. We, in a fit of environmental correctness (and convienence), were, of course, taking BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system.

As we went through one of the stops in Oakland (I think the first one as you come out of the tunnel under SF Bay), a gentleman got one the train. Heavyset, he was wearing a bright red T-shirt, jeans, a ball cap, and a pair of the Coke bottle glasses. In many ways he reminded me of the guy from the movie Office Space. He was also carrying his little cooler lunchbox. All in all, he looked like he was probably a dockworker, probably a very good one. He seemed like the kind of guy whom you could give direction to and walk away knowing he wouldn't stop until your job was finished. He also, and I don't know how to put this politely, seemed to have a few neurons that weren't quite firing right.

When I used to work in the model train store here, I met quite a few people like this guy. Some people would say that they don't know much, but let me tell you, for the stuff they know, they know it. And this guy knew BART, down to virtually every detail.

He may not have been able to utilize polished communication skills. He may not have been able to throw around big words like they were confetti. But, for someone with BART, this guy could be a wealth of information. He could pick up on details of the operation that no one else would even think to look at as potential problems. If only he could talk with the higher-ups at BART.........

Saturday night, he could. There was a BART supervisor on the train, sitting directly across from him.

Now I've been in the position of the BART supervisor; I've had many, many conversations with folks like the dockworker. Sometimes, when you're in the right frame of mind, it's a wonderful, informative conversation. Sometimes, you just can't get into it. When you can't get into it, it might end up feeling painful to listen to the person or you might find that you're talking down to them. Not intentionally, mind you. It just seems to happen.

The supervisor was quite obviously in the latter state of mind. He seemed to alternate between one word answers, "you should forward that to BART administration," and the occasional condescending remark. He didn't ignore the guy, but he never fully devoted his attention to the conversation. He was very polite and accommodating, but also fairly cold and disinterested.

I could completely empathize with the supervisor. He was supposed to be off work, on his way home, and here's this guy, again, talking to him at length about the length of the trains, bicycle policy, the number of out of service doors, where trains were turned, and a whole myriad of other issues. Frustration, interest, boredom, and an over-riding desire to be polite at all costs were driving the man.

As I sat there watching the conversation unfold, I was, for the first time, able to see the conversation from the point of view of the dockworker. Normally when I see these kind of conversations happening, I steer well clear, unless I'm in the frame of mind to join the talk. But this time was different, as I saw both sides of the conversation taking place, I found myself almost hurting for the dockworker.

It brought back memories of Ernest Hemingway's A Clean Well Lighted Place. The dockworker was the old man. The supervisor was the young waiter and I found myself naturally falling into the role of the old waiter.

I found myself sympathizing with the situation of the dockworker. I found myself wanting to see him have a successful conversation. I found myself gaining a much deeper understanding of him.

The supervisor was perfectly polite. Yet I felt a pain at watching him slight the dockworker. I don't think he ever did it intentionally, but the coldness of some of the replies........

The train finally pulled into Rock Ridge, all of about four stations up the line, and the dockworker got off after a very friendly goodbye. I watched him walk along the platform, a little extra spring in his step, thinking that he had made a difference. For a guy getting home from work at midnight, he was extremely happy.

Then I turned in time to see the reaction of the supervisor. It was the sigh of relief that comes with the expulsion of any memory of the conversation. He turned to look out the windows on the other side and slumped in his seat, drained after a long day of work and what for him was obviously a difficult conversation.

It just didn't seem right; didn't seem fair. Here was the dockworker bounding down the steps in the bliss of making a difference, of being important to the world in some small way, at the same moment that his whole conversation, his whole attempt to contribute, was relegated to the dustbin of bad memories.

Now maybe I'm reading the supervisor wrong. Maybe I'm imposing some of my previous actions on to him unfairly. Maybe he went into work on Monday or today and took some bit of information and used it as part of his attempt to make BART better. I really, really hope so.

As I got back to Walnut Creek and laid down to go to bed, I found myself lying there wide awake, thinking. Part of it was about the absolute stupidity that was happening back home at work (that's a story for another time), but mostly I was thinking about the interaction I had witnessed. I resolved to try harder to not be like the supervisor - even though he really did nothing wrong (if that makes sense!).

And I found myself in the role of the old waiter again:

...he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it's probably only insomnia. Many must have it.

Maine, Canada, Kyoto

This was written twice somewhere between Atlanta and San Francisco. The worst feeling in the world is when the computer decides to reset just as you get ready to hit the save button on a masterpiece.

OK. Maine, Canada, and Kyoto.

Had a nice long, well thought out post written and then somehow lost it, so this one may be fairly short and to the point as I don't want to rewrite the same thing, again.

To recap, Maine and several other Northeastern states got together with their Canadian counterparts and devised an agreement to implement the Kyoto protocols in their region, despite the fact that the US Federal government is not a signatory to the treaty.

Bottom line, in my opinion, is that the law is good, but the agreement itself was unconstitutional.

First, the agreement. The Constitution clearly states that foreign policy and agreements with foreign nations will be the purview of the Federal government and that the States of forbidden from entering into transnational agreements. The agreement between the Northeastern states and the Canadian Provinces is an international agreement and as such it is illegal.

The Federal government needs to take the signatories to court to censure them and to defend the Constitutional separation of State and Federal rights, but also to get the agreement nullified. The last thing that we need is for some envirowacko to use this agreement in front of a sympathetic judge that's looking to create law from the bench. The risks of not nullifying the agreement are fairly substantial. The agreement was wrong and it needs to be declared as such fairly quickly.

But the law itself should be allowed to remain in force. If the State of Maine wants to be known for being unfriendly to business, that's their choice. If they want to have these onerous restrictions in place, that's fine. So long as they don't try to force them upon companies operations in states other than Maine, their fine. I think that the law is not really all too bright, but if that's what the people of Maine want, who am I to say that they're wrong?

Now I'm sure that someone is probably wondering how I can condone the law when the agreement that brought it about was itself unconstitutional. I actually believe that the law was probably being considered before the meetings with the Canadians, and it is not unconstitutional for a state to decide to implement the terms of an unsigned treaty, so long as they don't sign the treaty itself. It's a fine line, but I am not convinced that Maine wouldn't have passed this law even without the agreement with the Canadians. Unless the Feds can convince a court otherwise, the law should be allowed to stand.

This is certainly not the most brilliant move that could have been made by Maine. Implementation of the most restrictive environmental laws this side of California is going to do some real damage to their economy.

But the people of Maine, the ones who actually have to live with the consequences of this lunacy, have recourse if they don't like the effects of the law.

They can vote out the folks who put the law in place.

And that will be the best condemnation that anyone can make against this kind of lawmaking.

Progress Energy - The Great Leap Backwards

I've been living in this house for going on five years now. When we moved in, the electric company was Florida Power. For four years, we had maybe two real outages of more than 10 minutes or so. Maybe two. They just didn't happen.

Sometime during the last year, Florida Power was taken over by Carolina Power & Light and the name changed to Progress Energy.

Today, I have had five seperate power outages, the last one lasting a little over two hours.

The only person to show more "progress" on energy is Gray Davis.

Also, for what it's worth, a power outage last night explains why there was no Quick Links post last night.

This sucks.

Intervention In Iran Evil? You Decide

OK, I've been seeing a few articles coming out lately that are basically saying we need to leave Iran alone with the excuse as to why usually being something along the lines of how we've failed in Afghanistan and still haven't found evidence of WMD in Iraq.

Let's review:

Afghanistan

Before US intervention:

Remember this joker? (AFP File Photo)

After US intervention and "failure:"

Unveiled Afghan schoolgirls walk with burqa-clad women in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, June 21, 2003. The vast majority of Afghan women still wear the burqa, however many younger Afghan girls are wearing unveiled garments, showing an increasingly liberal side of the country. (AP Photo/ Rafiq Maqbool)

Wait! You mean there are girls going to school? And they can walk the streets without a burqa?? How could we have done this to a nation that was obviously so well off under Osama and the Taliban?

US intervention: a force for good or a force of evil? You decide.

Iraq

No evidence of WMDs:

An Iraqi man holds the identity papers of two of his missing brothers as he hopes to find their remains in this mass grave, 50 kms south of Baghdad, May 24, 2003. Thousands of Iraqis are believed to have been tortured and killed under the ruthless regime of Saddam Hussein. Bodies at this mass grave were all blindfolded and handcuffed. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

The WMDs themselves:

Saddam Hussein poses with his sons Uday and Qusay (R) in a photo from the private archive of an official photographer for the regime. The most important Iraqi captured by U.S. troops yet has told his interrogators former President Hussein is alive along with his two sons, who fled to Syria after the fall of Baghdad and later returned to Iraq, U.S. officials said on June 21, 2003. REUTERS/Stringer

WMD a little different looking than you expected? They still directly caused the deaths of thousands upon thousands of civilians. Does the fact that they were killed by men instead of bombs make their deaths any less significant or deplorable? Were Saddam and his sons not as great a threat, if not a greater threat, to humanity than an inanimate weapon? He was a threat to the US, his opportunity to strike at us just hadn't presented itself yet.

US intervention in Iraq: a force of good or of evil? You decide. Of course if you need help, you could always ask these guys:

Iraqi Shi'ite demonstrators march towards the interim U.S.-led administration's headquarters, in the republican palace area of Baghdad, June 21, 2003. The protesters were demanding more representation in Iraq's political affairs. (Akram Saleh/Reuters)

For the first time most of their lives, they can tell you without fear of appearing in the first picture.

Iran

So what to do about Iran? They're a nation without energy or environmental concerns, yet:

The United States wants the International Atomic Energy Agency to voice concern about Iran's nuclear programs and its failure to answer questions about them, a senior U.S. official said on June 11, 2003. Washington does not expect the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog to refer the issue of Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program to the U.N. Security Council at a board meeting on Monday, the senior State Department official told reporters. Workmen wearing protective clothing walk away from the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power reactor under construction in southwestern Iran in this March 11 file photo. Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters

The Iranian students are protesting calling for more freedom. How does the regime respond?

Young Iranians sit in a hallway of Evin prison, in Tehran, after being arrested in recent student protests, on Sunday, June 15, 2003. The anti-government protests, which began on Tuesday, were the largest in months and included unprecedented chants calling for the death of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (AP Photo)

Notice the looks on their faces. Wonder why they look so glum and dejected? It's not because this arrest might hurt future job prospects or political aspirations. No, it's because they may be about to die (second paragraph).

US intervention or the status quo? Which is more evil?

You decide.

The American Empire - Again??

There are a few things that get me really, really ticked off. Complaining about the "American Empire" is one of them.

If you look at my other site, you'll notice that most everything I have for sale is related to a real empire. The Romans knew how to run an empire. Even the Byzantines had a pretty decent empire for a while. But the United States has never even come close to acting similarly.

We are not out conquering for pride. We are not out conquering for tribute. We are not out conquering for food. We are not trying to support the social structure of a failing state.

The author contends that every empire has some great cultural idea to spread. That is false. The spread of a cultural idea is just a side effect of empire building. Rome didn't conquer Egypt to spread the idea of Republicanism or aqueducts, they conquered Egypt for food.

Food, tribute, security and pride are the foundations of any empire. The US has food, has the ability to provide for our own security (if we would ever put our minds to it), we don't need tribute - we actually pay other states, and if pride were a real issue for us we would have completely conquered the entire Western Hemisphere by now.

But we do have a great cultural idea to spread, one that is relatively unique in history. Liberty.

Not democracy. Not republicanism. Liberty.

Our great idea is more powerful than Islamic fundamentalism. It is more powerful than communism. It is an ideology that believes in humanity. Instead of trying to repress certain traits or to make everyone equal in outcome, liberty allows every person to make their life the way that they want. The other ideologies all presuppose that man is evil and must be given rules and controls to prevent him from hurting himself or others. Liberty presupposes that man is good and able of making rational decisions that will benefit both himself and others.

Neither absolute is completely true, but I believe that the basic assumptions of liberty are closer to the truth. And so do most other people. If man is evil, why would Iranian students be calling for liberty's twin sister, freedom? Fundamentalism runs contrary to the human spirit; liberty quenches the thirst of the spirit.

We must remember that our great idea is not a form of government. Our government, our economy, our way of life are all derived from that basic idea of liberty.

As I read the article on Free Republic this morning, I was reading through the comments after the post and noticed that some people were keying in on this phrase:

"...but democracy is a vehicle for resolving disputes. It is not an ideology like communism or Islamic fundamentalism..."

Democracy (by which most people actually mean republicanism) is a product of our idea - liberty. Liberty and totalitarianism don't go together. A liberal form of government is required to most fully realize our idea. Therefore, we ended up with republicanism as the best way of protecting our liberty from the whims of tyrants and from the tyranny of the majority.

When we engage in nation building around the world, everyone looks at what tangible traits we bring to the table and then they decry of imperialism. They never realize the power of the intangible we bring. If liberty is such a bad thing, why do the nations of Europe still have, for the moment, representative forms of government? Why hasn't Japan reverted back to the reign of the Emperor? Why did the nations of Eastern Europe all change to representative forms of government?

Because liberty is a more powerful idea than communism, fundamentalism or any other -ism that's out there. Liberty speaks to the soul. The -isms speak down to the mind.

In Iraq, they are just beginning to find out about the idea again. They have not reached the point of unfettered liberty yet, but economically, they're experiencing it. And they're loving it. Their standard of living is already on the way up. But notice, that they are currently paying no taxes. What real empire doesn't collect taxes (also called tribute)?

We are not an empire. To become one, we would have to sacrifice our national foundation - liberty. As a people, we're not ready to do that.

We want to spread our idea because we, as a people, believe in the basic goodness of man. But we cannot impose it, we can only expose it. It is up to the other party to embrace liberty as their own.

Iraq was/is an exercise in ensuring our security. Afghanistan is also. Iran, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, wherever our travails take us next, we will bring our idea with us. If the people decide that they want to embrace it, we will support them in every way possible. If they don't want to, we will let them go the way of Western Europe, allowing them to establish a non-representative government. The choice is theirs, just as it always has been.

The American Empire. Great expansionist emperors like Augustus, Vespasian, Trajan and Hadrian would laugh at the "American Empire." They would be amazed at the empire building potential of the nation. They would be dumbfounded that we could let a little idea like liberty stand in the way of total domination of the known world. They didn't. They knew how to build and run an empire.

Like the author of the first article, they would never comprehend that we don't want an empire.

America is an idea, not an empire.

Carnival of the "-tys"

So what exactly is the Carnival of the "-tys?"

Well, it's a number of things. It's one of my key observations on life - and the one that I'm most consistently amazed that other people haven't picked up on. It is also a reflection of my current stressor and pet peeve at work.

I wanted to write and post this last night, but I promised not to write about work stuff yesterday and going back on that promise, especially for this topic, just didn't seem appropriate.

One of my many jobs at work is that of personnel manager. I spend a large portion of my day talking with the other employees, trying to identify potential problems so that I can nip them in the bud. I have found that there are two traits that are absolutely critical to a good employee, my two "-tys": integrity and honesty.

I believe it is impossible to have a good employee without them having those two qualities. Skills can be taught and knowledge can be acquired through work. But honesty and integrity are part of a person's character. They are part of who you are.

I currently have two particular people working for me that really demonstrate the difference between a good employee and a poor one.

One of these employees was arrested and has been working his way through the court system, just since he started working for us. The other has owned his own business and can sell anything to anybody for any price.

I want to have the first employee. I don't trust the second. All because of their honesty and integrity.

The first employee, the one with the legal troubles, at least was willing to own up to them and is making a real effort at trying to straighten out his life. He is a pain in the butt. He whines. He complains. He likes to play victim. But when he really screwed up, he admitted to it and set about trying to fix the damage. He has honesty and integrity to go along with his occasionally questionable decision making skills.

But I can work with him on his faults. We can talk about the challenges he poses at work. Even though he's a convicted criminal, I can trust him more than I can the second employee. Simply because he has that certain strength of character to be able to rise to a challenge.

The second employee has lied about the most basic things. He has shown a willingness to do anything, literally almost anything, for a buck. He may be a self-starter and may appear to require no supervision, but in reality I have to watch him closer than my supposedly high maintenance employee.

This man has no integrity. He honesty is lacking, at best. I have to watch everything that he does.

He lies to customers. He changes sales invoices - after the sale has been completed. He tries to claim commissions on items that he never sold.

But what really upsets me the most is that when I came in last Thursday, the first day of our great tent sale, I found him standing in the middle of the tent, ordering people around with a literal wave of the hand. Uppity, arrogant, and condescending are only a few, a very few, of the words that could be used to describe him.

One of the unfortunate parts of my job is that while I'm the personnel manager, I haven't got the authority to fire him (the owner reserved that for herself). I am supposed to correct problems, without having the implicit threat of real authority. Not that it would really matter in this case.

He denies that what I saw ever happened. He denies that what the other employees have described ever happened. The owner, who was not present, talks about how he "busted his a$$" that morning.

I don't think that I'll be at this job much longer. In my time there I have been advertising manager, store manager, personnel manager, sales manager, salesman, warehouse manager, warehouseman, office manager, finance manager, strategic manager, and God only knows what else. The opportunity there is wonderful. I can expand my resume in every which way. I essentially make my job each and every day. I know I'm underpaid for what I do (that's not conceit, that's what everyone around me - my boss included - tells me), but the money is not the issue. If it was, I wouldn't be there.

When I left the brokerage industry I decided that I needed to rinse myself, to get away from the shysters. The company I'm working for was small and struggling, but part of why it was struggling is because the owner wasn't willing to sell out for a dollar. Reputation and character were a little more important.

But now with the latest and greatest salesman her world has ever seen, she's allowing him to sell her out to the almighty dollar. He is slowly robbing her of her reputation in the community as being a business based on integrity and honesty. She says she wants to maintain her reputation and her character and all that. Yet she does nothing, not a single solitary thing, to really address the problem.

Honesty and integrity are still important to me. My character is who I am. The stress of trying to defend that person is incredible.

Never forget the "-tys."

The Most Ridiculous Item Of The Day

Saw Bill O'Reilly taking on Orrin Hatch's comments on remote computer destruction on TV tonight.

Bill O'Reilly, Mr. "Some People On The Internet May Say Bad Things About Me So We Need To Reign In The Whole Free Speech On The Net" is taking on a US Senator for wanting to restrict the free exchange of data on the Net?

I figured O'Reilly would love Hatch's comments because they might encourage the creation of technology that would allow Bill to sit there and zap my site and my computer for saying that I think that he's suffering from hypocrisy. What makes the Fifth Amendment right to due process more important than the First Amendment right to free speech - even when that free speech consists of calling O'Reilly names or cheering for his demise as a radio commentator? Is he condoning illegal downloading of mp3s while calling for an end to speech that he may personally find offensive?

Someone needs to remind Bill that the Bill Of Rights is not a smorgasbord buffet. You don't get to pick and choose. Either all the rights get enforced or they will all be lost.

Which make O'Reilly vs. Hatch my Most Ridiculous Item Of The Day.

Can The Truth Be A Lie?

Had an interesting moral question come up at work today. Actually, it's a two parter: when is the truth a lie and is it ever wrong to tell just the absolute truth?

I believe the answer to the second part of the question is yes, it can be wrong to tell the absolute truth. But to explain it, and the first part, I need to describe what happened.

As a few of my previous posts have indicated, we've been having a tent sale at my work during the last week. I've been sitting out there baking my brain and getting a really nice tan while trying to sell a bunch of furniture. Three of the pieces that were out there with me all weekend were a couch and two silk fabric chairs. The chairs were priced, on sale, at $335 - in the tent ($1038 normally).

On Monday, one of the salesmen (I'm the office manager, but I had reasons for volunteering to go and sit in the tent) came out to the tent and declared the sofa and two chairs as "sold." He put sold tags on them and had the warehouse guys take them out of the tent to be put into storage until delivery.

Then this morning, the same salesman comes out and declares that he is not buying the sofa and chairs. Immediately he starts demanding that they be brought on to the floor - in the store.

So the warehouse guys bring the chairs in and set them in the back room, still shrink-wrapped for storage. Almost immediately a customer walks in the door and starts looking at the chairs.

Same salesman that decided not to buy the chairs comes up to help the customer.

"We just brought them on to the floor today," he says and then proceeds to sell the chairs for $670.

"We just brought them on to the floor today."

It is the absolute, literal truth. Yesterday, they were in a storage shed. Two days ago they were in the tent. But last week, they were on the floor.

His statement was the truth, but it was a lie. The customer is under the impression (because he didn't think to ask) that these are brand new, straight out of the factory chairs. In reality they're almost a year old - almost all of that time having been spent on our show floor as floor samples. The chairs are in excellent, factory fresh condition, but they are not what the customer believes them to be - straight off the factory floor.

The salesman told the absolute truth. At no point did he blatantly tell a lie to the customer. But through his selective telling of the truth, in my opinion, he effected a lie. He misled the customer with truth.

Maybe I'm off my rocker here. But I am absolutely of the opinion that what was done was wrong.

Unfortunately, there isn't much that I can do about it at the moment. I was actually the last to find out about the lie (the disadvantage of being in the tent) as the salesman bragged about it to everyone - the owner included. I found out because it bothered the other employees so much that they came out to ask me for guidance (there's a scary thought!) I can't call the customer, as he didn't enter a phone number into the computer (or even a complete address to write them with).

It just really, really bugs me that he was willing to knowingly deceive someone - and that he could do it without even a hint of remorse. In fact, he was excited because it meant that he would get a higher commission!

Why does the world have to have weasels like that?

OK, I'm done ranting and complaining about work now. Tomorrow, no work stories. I promise.

It Must Be The Cheese

Ed. note: This actually was written over the course of two days in the same situation described in the first line.

I've been sitting outside in a tent playing baitfish for the salesmen inside all day, so maybe my brain is a little fried here.

But I've been thinking. A lot. In particular, for whatever strange reason, I've been pondering the Israeli/Palestinian issues, taking into account the personal experiences that I had in the region a few years ago.

When I was over there, there was a very pronounced dichotomy between the thought processes of both the Israelis and the Palestinians. I understand the problems with using generalizations, but in this case they seem, to me at least, to pretty well sum up the situation.

The Israelis seem to have collectively moved onto a higher plane of the hierarchy of needs. What do I mean by that? To explain, we need to look at what some of the debates were about when I was over there.

I call it the Cheeseburger vs. the Jews in Jericho.

What is each argument about? And what does it say about the thought processes of the people having that particular debate?

The cheeseburger debate is, frankly, the one that I have found to be the most fascinating discussions I've ever come across. Basically, while I was over there, there were two major debates going within the Jewish community. First there was the debate over what constituted "work" on the Sabbath. The second was whether or not cheeseburgers, which are a non-kosher mixing of meat and dairy products, would be permitted to be sold in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.

In the end, while I was there, you could get a cheeseburger at the Burger King on the promenade in Tel Aviv, but not in Jerusalem. The ultra-orthodox had won the fight in Jerusalem. It was simply an amazing that someone would debate something as simple as a cheeseburger. It's not too often that I claim culture shock, but this debate was one of those times.

On the other side of the line, in the West Bank, you had raging the traditional desire to rid the Palestinian lands of the Jews. Being Jewish in Jericho was not a good idea. The Palestinians wanted you out or dead. The Jews were about as welcome in Jericho at the time as Osama would be in New York now.

So what does this tell us about the type of people that we're dealing with here?

It tells me, at least, that the Israelis have moved to a higher level of thinking. There isn't a great national cry for the annihilation of the Arabs. Arabs are part of the Israeli people. They live there, they work there, they go to school there, they vote there and they are members of the Knesset. They can be Israeli, if they want to be.

But why my fixation on the cheeseburger debate?

It was serious stuff there at the time. But it also pointed to the fact that, by and large, the Israeli people were peaceful. They weren't concerned with wiping Palestine, Syria or Jordan from the map. They were more concerned with hamburger condiments. There was no question about allowing Arabs to live or to live among the Jews. The national character accepted that there are different people and that they have every bit as much right to life as the Israeli Jews did.

In the West Bank, however, the debate was about the right of the Jews to have the state of Israel. The debate was about the right of Jews to have homes in the West Bank. In some quarters (most, some might argue) the debate was about the right of the Jews to live. There was no question of live and let live. The Jews could not peacefully coexist among the residents of the West Bank.

The Palestinians questioned the right to life; the Jews the right to cheese on your hamburger. It's a much, much different take on the sanctity of life. The Jews accepted that the Palestinians should be allowed to live - in peace, if they so chose. The Palestinians decided that the Jews had no right to life in the Holy Land (except maybe in token numbers as in Syria, Iraq or Iran where Jews are the diversity poster children for the regime).

There are of course exceptions to the rule on both sides. There are murderous Jews, like the guy who shot up a mosque during prayer and there are Palestinians who desire peace. But, by and large, the national character of both sides can be summed up as cheeseburgers vs. Jews in Jericho.

But how have we come to this and what are the possible effects on the peace process and the "Road Map?"

The real driving factor involved here is education. Israeli students are taught the importance of critical thought. They are taught the importance of education in making a positive difference in their lives. They are taught to use their knowledge in ways that makes the world better, not worse.

Palestinian students on the other hand are taught the idea of blind obedience. No matter how vile or sick the demands, all made in the name of jihad, the Palestinian kids are taught to act without question. Critical thought is virtually non-existent.

But this isn't to say that the Palestinians are stupid. Far from it. Look at the number of homicide bombers that have degrees from US universities. They are smart people, they simply don't know how to best use their knowledge. A college degree is not the difference between a smart bomb and a dumb bomb.

Stalin and Mao both had purges of the intellectual classes. The Palestinians have managed to affect a purge of the intellectual class, but it's different. This time, it's a voluntary purge. The intellectuals are willingly and knowingly eliminating themselves at the beck and call of the intellectual midgets of Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah, and the al-Asqa Brigade. The inability to critically think or to question those viewed as "authority" has led to this self-decimation.

Until someone in the Palestinian world speaks up and breaks the cycle of dogmatic indoctrination, every attempt at the peace process will fail. The sooner it happens, the easier the process will be, as the educated intellectual classes will be larger. As more and more of the intellectuals remove themselves from the gene pool, it will become much more difficult to have a somewhat rational discussion with the Palestinians. The fewer intellectuals there are will force us to try to reason more with a bunch of manipulative demagogues - instead of dying off like the intellectuals, they are multiplying.

Until the debate in the West Bank moves to a higher level, peace will be always just out of reach. The Palestinians have to accept the right of the Jews to live. There can be no debate about Jews in Jericho if there is to be peace. It must be a foregone and accepted conclusion that they will be there and that they will, like their Israeli Arab counterparts, be full and active citizens.

Why can the Israelis have a cheeseburger debate when they face a challenge like this?

Because they know that they have the national character to withstand the best that the terrorists have to throw at them. They know that no matter the battlefield, whether physical or philosophical, they are currently far better equipped than the Palestinians. They don't fear the Palestinians. They don't fear the terrorists.

They pity them. They want to help them. They reach out to them with open arms and unreciprocated concessions.

Each of which only serves to enrage the Palestinians. Their self-image can't accept the pain of actually accepting the help of the Israelis. They can't stand the idea that their way, the Palestinian way, may not be the best way. There inability to process critical thought prevents them from being able to rationalize their pain; it prevents them from understanding the concept of "no pain, no gain."

Cheeseburgers vs. Jews in Jericho.

Never underestimate the power of the cheeseburger.

Good Parents & Bad Parents

I read with some interest the latest post from the Not-So-Venomous-This-Time Kate over at Electric Venom in which she describes receiving the perfect birthday gift. And from the way she describes it, it couldn't have been any better. There is nothing in this world that is more important than family. Nothing.

I just couldn't help while reading her story, juxtaposing it against my own situation. Almost everything is the exact opposite.

My girlfriend has three kids with two different fathers (I have none of my own). But instead of fighting to keep them out of their lives, we spend a great deal of time trying to remind the kids that they actually do have biological fathers.

With the oldest, it doesn't much matter to her. She knows that her father is a drunk whose only really care is where the next beer is coming from. She knows not to expect him to keep any promises.

It's the two little ones that are tough.

Christmastime, we buy gifts and put their father's name on them, so that they think he cared enough to buy them something. Phone messages? We have to make them up, not throw them away. The only thing we lie about is that we don't tell them that Daddy is coming around because he stole from them so he could hit the crack pipe; we tell them that he's working or that he went back to his Mom's house. I hate perpetuating a false myth, God do I hate it, but they're too young to know the brutal reality of their father. They need to be kids first; they can grow up later.

There are times that I wish these kids, my kids, could have parents that cared even one-tenth as much, no one-one hundredth as much, as Mrs. Kate does for her daughter. Even an acknowledgement of their existence would be nice.

If only they could be so lucky.

No posts for tonight

Sorry about the lack of posts tonight. Nothing in the news really grabbed me too hard and I'm working on a bigger post on deflation and economic revolution. I'll have it up tomorrow when I can keep my eyes open.

I Hate Religous Posts

In my searching for topics to write on this evening, I've come across several articles which have extremely strong religous undertones. One was a discussion of homosexuality, the other was a Jewish extremist position against the Road Map in Israel.

Both articles were posted in close proximity to each other on Free Republic, which allows for comments. The homosexuality story had well over 125 comments when I looked at it. I didn't bother to check out the comments on the other article - I never even finished reading it.

In both cases, there was liberal quotation of both the Old and New Testaments. There was considerable mustering of religious text for both sides.

But what I noticed, was that those using the Bible to promote their position, spoke of the Book as the absolute Word Of God. Those using the Bible more for defensive purposes, used other quotations to try to point out contradictions in the Book, but then tended to dismiss it as "a 3000 year old primitive text."

I don't like that - from either side.

For what it's worth, I am not claiming to speak from a position of authority or a position of religious righteousness. At one point in my life I attended Florida Southern College and was required to take two religion courses (I ended up taking four because I found them interesting). These classes really helped to shape the ideas that I had been forming for several years prior.

I don't believe that the Bible is without some Divine influence, but I also don't believe that it is the absolute Word of God.

The Old Testament is a series of Jewish oral traditions that have been written down. Over time and through translation, there have been slight changes to the stories. Wouldn't the Word of God be unchanging, no matter the time or the medium?

But at the same time, they are more than just mere stories. Never has there been a better basic handbook for life written than that of the Old Testament. The lessons of the Book are timeless. The basic lessons are never changing. Perhaps man could have come up with such a collection on his own, but the perfection of ideas, their very timelessness, points to something a bit greater.

Does the Old Testament (and the New as well) contain contradictions? Sure does. Does it mean that there are mistakes in Bible?

I don't think so. The Bible relates stories. Stories of different situations that man found himself in. Different situations require different solutions. The stories relate that.

But they are the stories of man. Man created the oral traditions and man wrote down the stories. Sometimes the details are imperfect, but the details themselves aren't the important part. The important part is the lesson, which remains constant despite discrepancies in the details.

The New Testament makes no pretensions about being The Word. Instead, you have four stories about the life of Christ, written by four men: Luke, John, Mark and Matthew. The second half of the New Testament consists of letter from Paul. All stories by man. The only book that even claims to be of divine origin is the Book of Revelations.

The stories of the Bible can be divided into a couple of categories: lessons that are timeless and lessons that were a product of their time.

The timeless lessons include those like thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not kill. Others like the kosher laws are products of a specific time and environment (The kosher laws were originally written to be a form of a health code. Their effect was to minimize the spread of disease. In the days before the value of sanitation was realized, simple precautions could have wondrous effects.)

But what about homosexuality and the form of the State of Israel? What kind of lessons are those?

I believe that the homosexuality lesson was closer being a product of the time, than to be a timeless lesson. The State of Israel lesson impresses upon us the need for such a state, but the boundaries weren't consistent even in the Bible. They would change with the ebb and flow of wars and changes of government. The lesson of Israel is closer to being timeless, but it doesn't quite have all the qualities.

These are the stories that really define a religion. No one doubts the timeless lessons; few adhere zealously to the lessons for a different time. It is the position on the middle lessons - the homosexuality, Israel, the institution of marriage - that make the Judeo-Christian religions unique, even amongst themselves.

So what is the right answer to these questions? Is there a right answer to these questions? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. All I know is that on the day I meet my Maker, I'll be sure to find out (I have a lot of questions for Him. In fact, He'll probably send me to Hell for being a pest.).

In the meantime, I'm going to go on believing that homosexuality is wrong, but not an abomination that damns one to Hell without hope. I'm going to believe that Israel does not absolutely have to have every single territory mentioned in the Old Testament - two people in two states is, I believe, an acceptable solution in the Eyes of God.

The Bible is a book written by man. It has a divine inspiration, but like everything man does, it is open to interpretation. It targeted a certain people at a certain time in history, but many of the lessons it teaches us are timeless.

My views on religion are not orthodox. I know this and as such I never try to force them on someone who doesn't want to listen. I try to live my life everyday following the lessons of the Book. Sometimes, I fail. Some would say that I have failed because I interpreted the book wrong, and that that alone is enough to damn me to an eternity in Hell. I don't believe them. My God is the kind and understanding God - one with a sense of humor (or else I really am screwed).

For those who would berate me for not accepting the Bible as the absolute Word: you live according to your interpretation; I'll live according to mine. I'll bet we'll meet in the same place on the other side.

In fact, I've already bet my soul on it.

My Take On Martha

I've been quiet about the whole Martha Stewart fiasco because I've been wanting to see all the details as they came out.

I know all the allegations against her, insider trading, fraud, etc. But two nights ago, I happened to have on Bill O'Reilly who was interviewing a former SEC investigator. The guest mentioned that Stewart had once been a stockbroker. Since then I have been looking a confirmation (not really diligently looking, but I've been looking).

Today, in an article over at OpinionJournal.com I found it. "[T]he CEO and former stockbroker is also smart about business...."

So now I have my ammunition. If Martha is convicted of the charges against her, she needs to be made an example of. Not because she's Martha Stewart, Mrs. Prissy Perfect, but because she's Martha Stewart, former stockbroker.

She knew what she was doing. She would have known that the information she was given was illegal. She knew that once she got that info, she was barred from trading the stock temporarily. She knew that any trade, previously arranged or not, could be construed as insider trading.

You learn all that when going through the licensing to become a broker. You get the lessons drilled into your head during the annual compliance meetings. As a broker, you know that any appearance of insider trading will bring down the full weight and wrath of the SEC on you.

Yet, she chose to trade anyways. And then, she tries to cover it by claiming that the order was already in place. If so, there is a record of that. Why hasn't the record been produced? The trade would still get her a slap on the wrist, but she probably wouldn't be looking at jail time for it.

Don't let the spin fool you. This is not an attempt to deflect attention from Enron, MCI or any of the other accounting scandals out there. This is an attempt to remind brokers and inside traders that there are serious consequences for illegal trading. Martha is not being treated any differently than other licensed miscreants. The National Association of Securities Dealers publishes monthly a listing of penalties for broker violations. $50,000 fines, lifetime bans from practicing and even jail time are not uncommon - especially in an insider trading case.

If Martha is guilty she needs to pay a big price. She had sophisticated knowledge of securities transactions and securities laws. She had no excuse for taking the action she did.

Should be an interesting trial to follow.

An Executive Decision

OK, I've made an executive decision that relates to this blog. Starting this evening and maybe only going through tonight, maybe going for a few days, I'm going to run a series of informational and education lessons on the stock market and the economy in general. My goal is to spread some of the knowledge that I acquired in my years of being a stockbroker, I also want to put somewhat in context my interest in the ups and downs of the dollar.

Coming soon! Watch for it!

Trade Sanctions To Fix The Economy?

I talked the other day about the potential benefits of depreciation in the value of the dollar. But it is wise to bear in mind that there is more than one way to work on staving off the threat of deflation.

William Hawkins of tradealert.org is proposing to raise punitive tariffs instead.

Raising tariffs does achieve the goal of reducing imports. In order to get the US economy kick started, we really need to start getting American consumers to buy American goods instead of imported ones. Depreciation and raising tariffs both work towards that goal.

Tariffs also have the additional benefit of being targeted. Depreciation affects all imports, no matter what they are or where they're from. Tariffs allow the targeting of certain industry segments or the products of certain nations.

So if both paths achieve the same goal and the tariff route affects fewer industries, products or people, why not use punitive tariffs to bring about the economic recovery that we need?

There are really two big reasons why the raising of tariffs is not the proper path: one is political the other is economic.

Politically, the raising of tariffs is a very dangerous thing. Other nations expect a certain level of stability in their dealings with the US. If we raise tariffs, we change the rules of trade midstream with introduces additional risks to trading with us. When a foreign company is unable to ascertain within reason their profits, they will be much more likely to avoid trading with us at all. And we have to remember that the idea is change American spending habits, not to discourage international trade.

Economically, the tariffs smack of a controlled economy. The dollar represents, like shares of a corporation, a degree of ownership in the US economy. And like a corporation, the US economy is subject to various cycles and pressures, some make the economy more valuable; some make it less valuable.

During the last five to ten years we have experienced foreign investors putting money into the US market because the opportunities offered elsewhere weren't all that great. The reward that was being offered overseas wasn't commensurate with the risk. As a result foreign investors were making investments in the US, not because of our strength, but because of weakness elsewhere.

Recently the Euro had depreciated to the point where investment in Europe started to look attractive again. The economies there are stumbling along, but the Euro had become so depreciated that the potential for outsized returns (in relation to dollar denominated investments) began to overcome the inertia of having to unwind positions in the US. As a result, investors having been buying Euro denominated investments, financed by the sale of dollar denominated investments. Hence we see the decline of the dollar and the rise of the Euro.

As the dollar depreciates and more consumers begin buying American goods, the US economy will begin to strengthen at the fundamental level. The combination of a cheap dollar and improving fundamentals will bring foreign investors in search of better returns back into the US capital markets.

Allowing the depreciation mechanism to run its course tends to lead to the economy correcting itself. Using tariffs imposes a correction that may not be supported or justified by the current economic state.

It was tariffs and protectionism, as exemplified by the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, which helped to propel us into the Great Depression. At the time the economic situation was not all that dissimilar: the US was coming down off a boom, Japan and the European economies were weak to the point of collapse. Hawley-Smoot really helped to tip the balance in a way that ultimately hurt the American workingman.

Tariffs are not the answer. Beating our trade partners into new, more favorable to us, trade agreements is not the answer. Only a fundamental rebuilding of the US economy is going to get us out of this mess.

Mr. Hawkins likens the imposition of tariffs to stopping the bleeding of the economy.

A Band-Aid doesn't really help on an infected wound. It may stop the bleeding temporarily, but the infection will eventually spread - and could be fatal.

We need to treat the problem, a weak US economy, not the symptom of a weak dollar.

A Followup

This will probably make no sense to anyone except the person whom it is directed towards.

Posting will probably be light this weekend as I need some time to unwind a bit. It's been a very, very stressful couple of weeks.

I thought that it might be good to write some of this. It is usually much, much cleaner than when I try to verbalize it.

You already have some of the background and basics. I want to look more at what has brought me in this direction and some of the other factors that might be important.

That feeling. The one that I tried to explain. It is incredible; unique. It pulls at you, tries to bring you closer, but at the same time keeps you away. You get close enough to know it is there; to want to reach out to touch it. But it is just far enough away to be out of physical reach. It leaves you wanting. Wanting to find it again. Wanting to understand it. Wanting to feel it. It is at once both a deep-felt pain and an absolute elation. Unlike many other feelings, though, it has no fear associated with it. It is unknown, unseen, and unbelievably powerful, but it does not instill fear. Instead it envelopes with an odd warmth.

It is indescribable with mere words. What I have above is but a small fraction of what it is truly like.

I have sensed it in many places. Canterbury was the first and most powerful sensation. St. Paul's in London, Lincoln, Sacre Coeur in Paris, Jerusalem, Bethlehem - almost as strongly as in Canterbury. Also at home, in stores, around town, driving alone through the backwoods, driving around town - but never at work, oddly enough.

It is incredible. Never there when I expect it. When I think I need it the most, it is not there then either. Only when things appear to be beyond pale, or when I least expect it, that is when it appears.

It is my confirmation. It is the justification for my personal belief. And it keeps coming to me, especially recently.

I have always enjoyed teaching, at least those who want to learn. I have often thought about going back to school to get an advanced degree and to teach something like economics or investment theory. But both of those, while being interesting and useful, leave me lacking somewhat. I just need to feel as though I'm doing something more than teaching someone how to balance a portfolio.

Many things will be changing over the next few years. I have no choice on that. The status quo cannot continue. If I'm going to be making significant series of changes, might as well make sure that I’m happy when I'm done.

Email me at blog-at-cbnoble.com with any comments.

Bin Laden's Strengthening Of America

Dean Esmay has accused me of being a "worried paranoid" about the threat posed by terrorism (ok, so that wasn't exactly what he said, but it sounds good). I don't think that the issue is one of the degree of worry, but rather is one of being able to comprehend the threat that we're facing.

Pre 9/11 everyone knew that the terrorists could hit us. But no one expected the WTC style attacks. No one could comprehend the evil being planned.

Today, we think of ourselves as being more "with it." We "understand" the threat of Bin Laden & Friends. We pretend that nothing he can concoct could possibly be so evil, so beyond comprehension as to be a surprise to us.

I'm not saying that it will happen, but it could. How many people have thought about a situation in which the Air Force is forced to actually shoot down a civilian airliner? What would the effects of that be like?

First, it would demoralize the Air Force. The pilots don't want to be taking off on each sortie fearing that they will have to pull the trigger and kill 200 innocent Americans. They don't want every call to escort a civilian airliner to be a potential heart-wrenching event. Our Air Force will begin to fear their job, not because of the threat to the fighters, but because of the threat that they are forced to pose to civilians.

Second, if one or two airplanes had to be shot down, it would create an incredible level of fear among the American public. What if the next flight I'm on is one that for some reason, valid or not, gets shot down? How can I even attempt something like passengers of Flight 93, when I'll probably still get shot down? The fear and trepidation would be enough to shut down the American domestic airline industry for quite a while.

Now, here's a real stretch, what if that was actually a good thing for the nation?

Everything bad and evil has to have a little good in it somewhere. Economically, shutting down domestic air travel would be crushing to the airlines and their support structure, but for business, we already have the technology to communicate without the benefit of airlines. We can hold virtual meetings instead of real ones. We can sign deals via fax. Everything that can be done in person can be done electronically, except to shake a hand. Short term there would be an economic setback, but long term, it really wouldn't hurt us too much.

Tourism would suffer more as it would take longer to get to a destination. But is that all that bad a thing either?

Too much of the American lifestyle is go-go-go-go-go. Everything is fast paced. Vacation isn't so much the trip itself, but how much can I get crammed into it. We don't take the time to get to know each other. As our lives have sped up, we have started to lose the sense of community that can come only from spending the time to get to know each other.

With the airlines, you get in an aluminum tube and for maybe 2 hours, maybe 4, you can get to know the person next to you. It's hard to get to know the guy three rows up or the girl five rows back. The time and space just isn't there. There isn't a community, just 200 random people going to the same place.

Getting out of the air would mean more human contact. To travel, we would have to drive (where we could meet fellow travelers in restaurants or at rest stops), ride a bus (similar effects to driving), or ride a train.

Last May, I went to Illinois to help my sister move back home. One of the days we were there, me and my mother decided to take a day trip up to Chicago. We chose to get there via Amtrak's City of New Orleans.

Other than my sister, I knew no one in Illinois. In the three hours it took to get to Chicago, we met folks on their way back from the New Orleans Jazz Festival, a single mother in the process of moving to Minnesota, and many other interesting people. These are people that I never would have met any other way. We didn't form any lasting friendships, but for three hours, I got to learn more about what life is like in Middle America.

I also was able to see what small town America actually looks like. Small towns of 20 homes, all cookie cutter homes from the turn of the century, along the main street; corner grocery store. It was just like it is always described. They are a kind of town that we don't have in Florida. It was something new and different.

An evil and despicable act by a Saudi terrorist could be one of the best things to happen to this nation. It would force us to slow down our lives; give us an opportunity to meet our fellow Americans. It would bring us closer together as a nation, as a people.

And this is why I don't "worry" about a terrorist attack, no matter how evil or incomprehensible. The great irony of Bin Laden's attempts to destroy us is that he succeeds only in making us stronger. 9/11 did, and whatever he comes up with next will do the same.

The Siren Call

The world is a dangerous place today. Bombings in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, at Yale. Attempted hijackings. Suicidal maniacs. Osama at large; his friends making tapes. Strength is required; cowardice abounds. Our "friends" willingly ship us up the river; our enemies want nothing less than our total annihilation.

And what's that sound we hear, faintly, off in the distance?

It is the clarion call of the siren Isolationism.

Tempting us in to the "peaceful bliss" like we had during the 1920s. Calling us back to the calm of the early history of our nation, before foreign adventures were a part of our history. Reminding us of Washington's admonition to avoid "foreign entanglements."

It promises us peace. It promises us untold prosperity. It promises us security.

Forget the lessons of the past. This time is different. There is no Treaty of Versailles to create another Hitler. There is no chance of a world economic depression. Everything will be peaceful and safe in the American cocoon.

Close the borders. Stop immigration. America for Americans only. That is the only true path to security from terrorists.

And in the other ear, we hear another sound.

It is the quiet whisper of the nymph Internationalism.

We must subjugate the United States to the UN, as it is the only true government. The day of the nation has passed us by. The United States is itself archaic and in need of being given a proper burial.

We don't know how to deal with other people, as we are not diverse enough. Our government is ill equipped to balance the needs of all. Only an international organization can ensure the proper distribution of resources so that no one is left behind. Only when we have worldwide equality will the terrorism end.

Forget the lessons of the past. This time is different. The UN won't abdicate its responsibility again. There is no hope of a world economic recovery without a redistribution of the worldwide wealth so that everyone can enjoy the same standard of living. Everything will be safe and secure in the cocoon of the international community.

And as we look ahead, what do we see? We see the path of Americanism.

It is through turbulent waters. There is a fog in the distance. It seems as though it is brighter than the other choices; maybe there is something better out there. Maybe not. We won't know until we get there.

But we know there is no voice calling us. There is no promise of anything at the end of our journey. We know not what is there; we only know that getting there won't be easy.

It is a path that requires us to be strong. Not for others, but for us. It is a path that requires us to be thoughtful. Not to be smarter, but to overcome the impediments to our progress. It is a path that requires us to be true to our principles. Not because they are perfect, but because to stray from them would take us into the clutches of Isolationism or Internationalism.

We cannot forget the lessons of the past. They are the map that we must follow to stay on the path. Our Founders and our ancestors passed many of the same obstacles that we face. We have much to learn, but the lessons have already been taught.

There is no cocoon. There is no guarantee of safety. There is only the promise of America.

We already know what awaits us at the "end" of our journey. It is more of the same. Our journey is one that will end only when we allow it. It will end only when the path becomes "too difficult" for the American people.

The easy way out will always be there. At any time we can choose Isolationism or Internationalism. But they mean certain destruction of the American path. Once we fall into the clutches of either, we lose the choice to go forward our way, the American way.

If we choose Isolationism foreign enemies will destroy us as they gain sufficient strength to overwhelm us. It might be militarily; it might be politically. But our ultimate destruction will come from outside.

If we choose Internationalism we will be destroyed from within. We will give away all of our rights to be American.

If we look ahead on the American path, it looks difficult and fearsome. No one is promising anything. But we will still be American.

If we turn around and look back, we will see a path every bit as difficult as the one that faces us, maybe even more so. We will the bright light of hope that is the illumination for the way forward.

And we will hear a cry. We will hear the cry of millions as they encourage us on the American path. They know that they cannot promise an easy path or a safe future. They know that they can only impart to us knowledge of overcoming significant and minor obstacles. But only when we're willing to listen.

Those who have come before have faith in us. They have entrusted us with the greatest experiment in human history. They deemed us worthy of their gift. They await, but not too anxiously, the day when we join them in helping our descendents on the same path. They alone believe that we can complete our portion of the journey.

The twin temptations have no such faith. They pray for our failure, yet gird themselves for our success in staying the course.

We are at a decision point in our history as a nation. The temptations are sensing victory. They are grasping at the American miracle, trying to rip it asunder. It has been nearly 80 years since they have been this close to defeating us.

Our history is watching closely, hoping we make the right choice. The light of hope has faded, beaten back some by the evils of the sirens, but it still illuminates the path of the American people.

Are we willing to follow it, despite the trials and tribulations ahead?

Or will we take the easy way out?

The Islamic Threat In America

Cal Thomas has a pretty good commentary in the Jewish World Review in which he discusses what he sees as the coming Islamic threat to America. The threat that he foresees is real and the first step towards its implementation of being worked on right now. But I don't agree with the basic premise that it is necessarily a bad thing.

Thomas sees the Islamists invading America through immigration and naturalization in order to take over our political system and to eventually turn the US into an Islamic theocracy. And there is a movement afoot to accomplish just that goal.

But, so what?

The Islamists have figured out how the US political system works. They intend to try to use it to their advantage to change how the United States operates and lives.

That's what the US political system is for. It gives a voice to those who care enough to exercise it. The majority of Americans like to complain about the political system, but they aren't willing to go out there and vote. During the election of 2000, one in which the potential importance of every single vote was reinforced, there was a huge number of re