"To rule and do according to their wills"

Now for a topic I normally don't talk about, wild sex parties. Yesterday I read a news update about the trial of the former head of the International Monetary Fund. What struck me was how removed the whole thing is from any sense of right or wrong or even a hint of morality.

It reminds me of a friend of mine who was robbed while on his mission in Argentina. After being assaulted in the street and being forced to give up whatever cash he had, his assailant reached his hand into his pocket and removed my friend's watch. When my friend went to the police to file a report they were entirely unconcerned that my friend had been assaulted in the street. They were not willing to even write up an official report, even when he told them that the guy had taken his money and had stolen his watch. It was only when my friend added the detail that his mugger had reached his hand into my friend's pocket and removed the watch himself did the police suddenly get concerned. Somewhere in there they felt a line had been crossed.

My friend got a black eye from the altercation, had his money and watch stolen but, according to the police, that was OK and he should just deal with it. But reaching into my friend's pocket? Now that had gone too far. Usually the legal lines are drawn long after the moral outrage is long past.

Returning to the story of the former head of the IMF (and potential president of France), I could not help but think about the ridiculousness of what was being argued about. This supposedly respectable leader of government and the prosecutors in the case were reduced to arguing whether four wild sex parties per year were excessive and regular. As one blogger put it:

""The prosecution gives the impression of unbridled activity," [the former head of the IMF] testified Tuesday. But in fact, "[t]here were only 12 parties in total. That is four per year over three years," he added helpfully, although that makes it sound a lot more "regular" than he probably intended. Mon Dieu, can the head of an international monetary fund not enjoy one group licentious evening per quarter? he seems to be asking. Yes, he just can't be the organizer, say prosecutors."

 The thing is the current law that he is being prosecuted under, and probably won't be convicted under, were probably written by the former head of the IMF or by his fellow politicians and in the French government. That is, the very laws that make their actions unprosecutable were written by the very people involved in these wild sex parties. As I read these news stories a certain scripture came to mind:

4 And seeing the people in a state of such awful wickedness, and those Gadianton robbers filling the judgment-seats—having usurped the power and authority of the land; laying aside the commandments of God, and not in the least aright before him; doing no justice unto the children of men;
5 Condemning the righteous because of their righteousness; letting the guilty and the wicked go unpunished because of their money; and moreover to be held in office at the head of government, to rule and do according to their wills, that they might get gain and glory of the world, and, moreover, that they might the more easily commit adultery, and steal, and kill, and do according to their own wills—

Seems to describe the state of law in certain countries at the moment.

My comments on the election and other thoughts

Today I voted. I did my research, looked up the candidates, all the way down to the local county elections, considered the options and implications and voted based on what I thought best.

Now without saying who I voted for I will explain four things I thought about before and while I was voting.

First, government debt.

Some people will read that and instantly try to put me somewhere on some insane left-right spectrum so first I will tell a little story. While I was on my mission in Argentina, the first little town I was in was called Bella Vista. It was a tiny town of perhaps 5,000-10,000 people, depending on the time of year and the expected harvest from the surrounding farms. In Argentina fútbol (soccer) was very popular. In some cases it was considered a religion. After being in the country for a few months there were only three teams I had ever heard about: Boca, River and Newell's Old Boys. The town seemed split down the middle. Half the town were Boca fans, the other half were River fans and everyone hated Newell's Old Boys.

I was unfamiliar with Argentine professional sports (I barely know anything about American professional sports) so I was wondering how they could have a championship play off with only three teams in the entire country (I later learned about other teams it's just that no one in Bella Vista talked about them). I thought Argentines were very weird. At one point River managed to win the national championship and half the town was out in the streets celebrating. There were car horns blaring, firecrackers going off, music blasting and people driving through the streets with people standing on the roof of their cars waving River flags.

About four weeks after this happened we heard on the street that Newell's Old Boys had played River and had beaten them. Everyone was shocked. That's when I decided to become a fan of Newell's Old Boys. That way I could have my "team" but my choice of team would not immediately alienate me from half the people we talked to. At about that same time I had a rather interesting conversation with a child of about 8 years old. My companion and I were talking to his family and all the little kids gathered around to ask "los americanos" some questions. The 8 year old looked at me and asked with great earnestness "What is your team?" I told him I didn't have a team. He thought for a second and came to the conclusion that I didn't understand the question. So he asked the question again. Again I told him that I wasn't a fan of any team. He was not satisfied so he rephrased the question and asked again. At this point I remembered that Newell's Old Boys had just beaten River so I told him that I was a fan of Newell's Old Boys. He gave me a look of exasperation and said, "No. WHAT IS YOUR TEAM! BOCA OR RIVER?!?" I told him that neither one was my team and that I was a fan of Newell's Old Boys. At that point he gave a frustrated sigh and concluded that this delusional American was too stupid and could not speak and understand Spanish so it was useless to continue the conversation.

When people ask me if I am a Republican or a Democrat, or if I am conservative or liberal the image that comes to my mind is that frustrated 8 year-old boy who had to deal with an American that was too stupid to know that there were only two choices and you had to be one or the other.

So, government debt. Government debt is a dangerous thing. It has all the dangers and negative consequences of normal debt, but it carries with it the enforced mandate of government. It is not something that can be done away with without undermining the foundation of government. To fail to honor a debt is to acknowledge that there has been a failure with the person who has the debt. For a government to fail to honor a debt is to acknowledge that the government has failed, which is to acknowledge that the fundamental structure of our society can no longer hold us together. It is quite a scary thing.

The thing to realize with debt (any debt whatsoever) is that the overall effect of debt on out society is to take money from poor people and give it to rich people. That is, debt makes poor people poorer and rich people richer (this is not just a trite saying this is something that has been shown with statistics and computer models of economic conditions, see this link for more information and some references). In computer models where the financial transactions of people are modeled we can reproduce roughly the income distribution that we see in US census records (see below).

As the above graph shows the modeled behavior (black line) closely follows the data from the US census. In these models we find that if we allow for debt (with interest!) then that line gets shifted so that there are more people who are "poor" and the "rich" people get richer (see below).

The end result of debt is to make poor people poorer and rich people richer. In these models if we allow for infinite debt (i.e. no bankruptcy) then the amount of debt that some people have will become infinite  and the amount of money that rich people have will also become infinite. Either way the system become unworkable and it eventually collapses. So how do you counteract the inflationary tenancies of debt? With taxes. Just as the models show that debt (with interest) can be fundamentally unstable, taxes tend to have the opposite effect. As debt makes rich people richer, and poor people poorer, as long as you have a minimally fair tax code (as in everyone gets taxed and then everyone benefits from the taxes), then it has the effect of decreasing the number and wealth of rich people and increasing the wealth of poor people. That is, it moved the bottom end of the curve up and counter acts the negative tendencies of debt.

Up until now I have just been talking about debt in general, which includes mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, education loans etc. But government debt is slightly different. Because it is backed by the thing that creates the monetary system in the first place. While government debt can help in extreme circumstances it has the tendency to act just like normal debt except that now everyone has to pay it, just like a tax. Taxes take money from all sides of the spectrum but it redistributes it in a way that poor people become a little less poor. Government debt is essentially the opposite of taxes. It takes money from everyone and transfers it to rich people (to understand this consider this: How many people who make less than $40,000 have bought a government bond? How many people who make more than $100,000 a year are invested in such a way that they make money off of government bonds? Who ultimately pays for government bonds, including the interest? and who ultimately benefits from the interest generated by government bonds?).

So having a consistent, and persistent, deficit in government spending, and then using the issue of more debt to fund the debt is perhaps the most destructive and immoral thing that can be done to people who can be considered "poor". Government debt is perhaps the only legal and socially acceptable method we have of grinding upon the face of the poor.

If you want to help poor people the best thing that the government can do is to balance the budget. Until you do government debt will make us all poor.

Second, oil.

I don't think we all need to give up our cars and use only *non toxic* non-petroleum products (the non-toxic part is sarcastic). Nor do I think that global warming will get so bad that the earth will punish us with a series of super storms, or that we need to give peace prizes to people who bake up a bunch of facts and scare the easily manipulated. What I am saying is that right now in our history oil tends to cause too many wars. It is an out sized portion of our economy and we should find a way to get along with less of it, if only to decrease the likely hood that we get involved in more wars because of oil.

Third, are the people competent for the job.

The Republican candidate for Secretary of State in North Carolina may be a good neighbor, a good farmer, a good father and a generally good man. But the more I looked into his experience and what he was proposing to do as Secretary of State I don't think he knows what a Secretary of State does. If you look at his campaign website he mentions the most important issues that he "promises" to address. The only problem is that all the things he brings up are things that can be addressed in the state legislature, but not by the Secretary of State. He seems a little confused about what the Secretary of State can and cannot do. I would not vote for him.

There was a similar case for several judges that were on the ballot. In North Carolina the election of judges is non-partisan, but there were two Republicans and one Democrat who were challenging the incumbents for no reason, apparently, other than they were of the opposite party and they wanted to make a partisan race about it (even if they knew nothing about being a judge). I didn't vote for any of them. That doesn't mean I voted for the incumbent, but it means I particularly did not vote for the challengers.

Fourth, basic morality.

Over the last while there is a disturbing trend in our society that belittles and scoffs at basic morality. Anything that might possibly require that someone use self restraint and hold to some "old fashioned" moral principles is roundly dismissed as ignorant and oppressive. I will not go into it in this post, but there is very little that voting can do to counter this trend. Still I look for men and women of good character, who have a desire that others also be men and women of good character.

With those four things in mind I went to vote. I marked my ballot and turned it in. I was number 108 at the polling place that day.

Cops and a Free Society

I randomly came across this comment on a news site a while back. I guess in some strange way I can understand their "logic" but I have to say it is not very good logic.

The quote: "when will we Americans wake up and see that police depts are the most dangerous institutions to a free society?"

Wow. That's about all I can say. Wow.

Maybe a corrupt police department is dangerous, but then again you will only have a corrupt police when the people themselves are corrupt. This quote is either expressing a desire for extreme anarchy or extreme libertarianism, neither one being good or conducive to peace. I don't often agree with Hobbes, but he does have a point when he talks about how the State of Nature is a State of War. (also you can check out Wikipedia)


Maybe someday I would like to meet the person who wrote that comment so I could get an idea as to how their brain works (or doesn't as the case may be), because up until now I have never been able to talk to anyone who sincerely held this opinion.

Perspective on Government Debt

I came across this the other day and I thought that it gave an interesting perspective on government debt. One of the problems with a lot of statistics about the debt is that they are never put into perspective. It is common to always talk about the debt in terms of a raw dollar amount. I think that that is wrong, we need to look at it in terms of ability to pay the debt. For example, if I have a credit card debt of $2,000 then that would be very significant for me right now considering I only make ~$20,000 a year. So my debt reflects 10% of my yearly income. If I graduate and get a job paying $100,000 a year then suddenly my $2,000 debt is no longer as significant (now only 2% of my annual income). As a matter of fact I could probably pay it off with a single pay check. So debt has to be considered in terms of ability to pay it off. While this movie may not be perfect I think it does a good job at putting the debt and our ability to pay it off into perspective.



The question here is who is to blame. Some would say it is the Republicans, others the Democrats, or Ronald Regan, or LBJ, or FDR, but I think it was a fundamental change in the way our society functions. I think it has to do with many people living beyond their means, which means there is only one way to solve this problem.

President Obama and Constitutional Law

Lately a lot of media focus has been on President Obama's policies. There is constant talk regarding the policies he endorses, or does not endorse and whether or not he will push his "agenda" through Congress effectively, as past presidents have done (or failed to do). In the past some presidents have presented whole pieces of legislation (pre-written) to Congress for their vote. But that does not seem to be the case with President Obama. As has been noted by both critics and supporters alike President Obama tends to talk about broad political issues but rarely about specifics.

This approach to presidential leadership has been noticed and has been alternately ridiculed by the opposing side and questioned by those of his own party. Some liberal commentators have wondered why the President does not take a more active role in writing legislation, and why he seems to leave it all up to Congress. Again, the President's opponents use this as a basis for political attacks claiming that President Obama simply left the stimulus package, the budget, cap and trade and now health reform up to Congress. This has certainly put Congress in the spotlight (or under the microscope as the case may be), but it has opened President Obama up to accusations of incompetence, inexperience and political weakness. Those that support him (as far as I can tell) offer no explanation but issue calls for more specific leadership from the White House.

In certain cases it goes beyond legislation and spills over into other political issues. Some issues on which President Obama is receiving criticism are areas where he made campaign promises and has not as yet acted on them. When he first became president he was widely applauded by liberals for issuing an executive order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, albeit some still criticised him for giving the military a whole year before it had to be closed. Some of his most ardent supporters were expecting him to issue sweeping change to the American system in a very short amount of time, whether through Congressional action or executive order it did not matter. Those same supporters who wanted him to close Guantanamo Bay probably fully expected him to continue issuing executive orders to repeal the Don't ask, Don't Tell policy for the military or to repeal the Defence of Marriage Act. When these executive orders did not materialize some of President Obama's liberal supporters began to cry foul and insist that he make good on his campaign promises.

For that group of supporters they felt betrayed and began to criticise President Obama for failing to listen to their demands. A few of the more prudent among them noted that he already has a lot to deal with and he didn't need another issue to try to push through which would cost him a lot more of his already precious political capitol. This pragmatic view seems to be the prevailing view among those that advocate for these issues. But just to test the waters, so to speak, they have already brought these issues (Don't ask, Don't tell, and DOMA) to court but were surprised when President Obama came out in defence of these issues. They were probably expecting him either remain neutral on the issues for the time being or to give some indication that he would push for their removal. But instead he (or his attorney generals) have defended them and President Obama insisted that if they are to be removed that it must be through an act of Congress.

This assertion came as some what of a surprise to many liberals, that the President of the United States would not change policy through executive order, nor would he give to Congress pre-written legislation to pass. Some might be asking, "What went wrong?"

Now I will enter the realm of speculation. This is the realm of trying to figure out the personal motivations behind the President's actions, which because I do not know him personally I can not give an accurate assessment of. But I can speculate and throw out some ideas that just might be right. As I have mentioned President Obama's critics (and some supporters) insist that he is doing this because of inexperience or out of political expediency, but I will present another option that may not be obvious, but may be correct. The reason why President Obama has taken this approach towards Congress and also in defending DOMA and the Don't ask, Don't tell policy, may be because he has actually read the Constitution. Novel idea.

You see there is are two minor details here that I want to point out. The first minor detail is that the Constitution clearly states that "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States" (Article I Section 1). By definition, legislative power is the power to make and enact laws, which in turn determine public policy. The second minor detail is that the job of the President is to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" (Article II Section 3). To put this in simple High School Government Class terms, Congress writes, votes on and passes the laws. The President makes sure the laws passed by Congress are kept. As many high school government teachers like to point out, the President does not have the power to write the laws. That power is explicitly reserved to the Legislative Branch. Also as the like to point out that Presidents get around this "minor issue" by giving someone in Congress their pre-written bill and then that Congressman presents it as his own, even if everyone "knows" that it was actually the President who wrote it (maybe not him literally, but you know what I mean). Again as high school government teachers are so fond of pointing out, this violates the spirit of the Constitution and the principle of separation of powers, but nobody really listens to high school teachers anyway.

Now it is well know that President Obama was a professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago (senior lecturer, whatever), but the point is that he had plenty of opportunity to deal with constitutional issues. And somewhere in there he may have actually read the Constitution (Shocker! I know) and somewhere in there he may have realized that it is the duty of the Legislative Branch to write, pass and enact the laws, and not the duty of the Executive Branch. Which means that in his personal approach to being President he has decided to actually live up to both the letter and spirit of the Constitution (at least on this issue) and let the Legislative Branch do what it is supposed to do and let the Executive Branch do what it is supposed to do. This may come as a shock to politicians on both sides of the aisle, but based on what President Obama has done so far while in office this appears to be how he is approaching being president.

This may come as great disappointment to many radical liberals because up until now their main tactic for advancing their agenda has included a blatant disregard for Constitutional Law. They have insisted that courts (the Judicial Branch) enact laws (a Legislative power) from the bench (the seat of Judicial Power), or they have insisted that Congress pass laws without regard for the enumerated Legislative powers. And now that radical liberals have a dear friend in the White House they insist that he use (abuse) his office to enact legislation to their personal benefit. But much to their chagrin he may actually respect the Constitution and won't abuse his powers. I find it particularly revealing about radical liberals that when they are confronted by one of their own, and one who at least says he supports their causes, who stands by the Constitution, and the rule of law, they vilify him and criticize him for not fulfilling his promises to them, even if that means blatantly disregarding the Constitution.

Again I must state that this is all speculation because I do not know the President personally, but it does seem to fit the facts and reflect how the President appears to run his administration. What do you think?

The Religious Origins of Our Democratic Society

One contemporary issue that confronts us today is the role of religion in public life. Unfortunately the issue is whether or not traditional religious values or morals can or should be used to determine political and governmental questions. While this issue warrants an extensive review, for now I will only touch briefly on one topic, the origins of a democratic society. In mentioning this I will draw on an unusual source, Friedrich Nietzsche.

In several of his books, most notably in the first section of On the Genealogy of Morals and in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche deals with the rise of Christian morality, or as he calls it, slave-morality. I will not attempt to give any type of analysis of his Master-Slave morality beyond a simple explanation to give context to his comments.

Simply put, according to Nietzsche the "strong" people of the world have the ability to create morality. They are the "masters" and they determine what is "good". After determining what is good the masters then consider everything else to be bad, or at least everything that impedes the good. The masters then impose their morality on the "weak" forcing them to accept it. In Nietzsche's interpretation the strong make up the minority, but they have the ability and the right to impose their morality (or value system) on the weak because they are strong and they can do it, and the weak must humbly or meekly accept their judgments of value (i.e. what is good and what is bad).

Nietzsche continues and explains that the rise of Christian morality was merely a reaction by the slaves to the master morality. The slaves in seeking to dominate the strong could not do so through force (as the masters dominate the slaves) thus they must do so through other means such as creating a morality where the strong must "voluntarily" abdicate their power for the "good of the community". Through this means the weak gain power over the strong and all people are "made equal", which according to Nietzsche means that the strong cannot exercise that which is their "right". It is this point that I wish to make, and it is also one of the points made by Nietzsche in his Master-Slave morality, that the concept of equality, of legal, political and social equality is derived from Judeo-Christian morality. As Nietzsche puts it in Section 202 of his book Beyond Good and Evil, "the Democratic movement is the inheritance of the Christian movement."

In effect, as Nietzsche argues, the whole concept of a democratic system, a system based on personal equality, is an attempt to deprive the privileged and strong of their right to govern and to create "morality", which is to say good and evil, right and wrong. Because the strong try to (and sometimes do) impose their judgments of value on everyone else, this inherently creates a social order of inequality. Some are privileged due to their "strength" while others are "forced" to meekly follow due to their weakness. On the other hand, under Judeo-Christian morality, or slave morality as Nietzsche calls it, everyone must be afforded the same ability and no one has claim to any special rights or privileges above anyone else, which is the foundation of a democratic society.

Thus in the question of what place does religion have in a free and democratic society, I would agree with Nietzsche in that religion, and the Judeo-Christian tradition in particular, is the foundation of a free, equal and democratic society. And if we as a society reject our Judeo-Christian heritage, we will reject the very thing that gives us our democratic society. We will lose the very foundation for our claim that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and that no one should be afforded rights and privileges above, over and apart from all others.

I find it interesting that the portions of our society that most strongly call for the eradication of Christianity from public life are those that apparently have abandoned "slave morality" as they would call it, and have wholly given themselves over to Nietzsche's master morality. They do not live by principles of equality, but rather by the arbitrary and admittedly self-serving morality so strongly and clearly advocated by Nietzsche. But in a fit of irony they do so by claiming it is their "democratic" right and that they should be afforded the "inalienable" right to impose their morality (or lack thereof) on all others.

I find it sad that a price we pay to live in our free society is that we must tolerate the preaching of the false priests and Anti-Christs who are so intent on destroying the very thing that allows them to do so. We must tolerate the Nehors who endeavor to give the "masters" their "privileged" status, and then attempt to enforce it by the sword (despite it being the means to their own destruction). We must also tolerate the words of the Korihors, or Anti-Christs, who want nothing more than to eradicate the very system that gave them the freedom to act, and replace it with a system of masters and slaves, where a privileged few are afforded the "right" to determine what is good and what is evil.

I choose to keep our Judeo-Christian heritage a prominent part of our government and our society, because it is what gave us our freedom in the first place, and I want to keep it that way.

From Animal Farm to Anthem: Warnings of Society's Demise

This week I finally got to sit down and read a classic book, so I chose to read Animal Farm by George Orwell. The book is an allegory of the introduction of communism into Russia. The book has become important in our society and is frequently alluded to. The same is true of Orwell's book 1984. In both books Orwell warns of the dangers of a totalitarian, oppressive society. In our society we see many allusions to things from these books, such as "Big Brother", "The Ministry of Truth" and "all people are equal, but some are more equal than others". These statements are trite statements used to express a distaste or fear of potentially malicious conspiracies.

Frequently these allusions are used by someone to say, "Beware of this government action, or the actions of these people because if you let them do it then we will end up like 1984 or Animal Farm and we will regret it." This is in effect a scare tactic, a kind of bogyman that we bring out to show that we do not like the actions or plans of a particular group of people. But what often happens when someone cries "Big Brother!" or "The Ministry of Truth!" the counter accusation is "Get over it, that will never happen. This isn't even close to the terrible acts in 1984." or "You don't know what you are talking about."

As an example, I recently heard a news story about a woman who applied for a personalized license plate for her car. Her request was turned down because apparently if you read it wrong it would contain offensive language. It was an honest mistake, but what struck me about the story was not that, but rather her reaction to it. In expressing her disappointment with her rejected request she made a comment about the DMV "beginning to censure what people thought" and that their actions were "a little too 1984ish." So here we have someone bringing out the bogyman and crying foul when their personal expression is stifled.

So my question here is, how likely are we to actually end up with a 1984 or Animal Farm situation in the US? In the case of Animal Farm, that actually happened as it tells the story of the Stalinist regime in Russia, but would that happen here in the US? As for 1984, the first time I read it I was also reading the book Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang. At the time I was surprised to see the incredible similarities between the two books. Wild Swans is a biography/autobiography of a grandmother, mother and daughter who grew up and lived through China's communist revolution and the Cultural Revolution instigated by Chairman Mao. When I read the book I was amazed to learn about what happened during the Cultural Revolution because it was as if Mao had read 1984 and said, "That sounds like a good idea. Let's try to do that." So it is obvious that Orwell knew what he was talking about because in some measure the things he wrote about were factual and actually happened. But still there is the question, would that happen here in the US?

My personal opinion is that no we here in the US are not in danger of facing some bleak Orwellian future. We do not have to be over concerned about a "Big Brother" or "The Ministry of Truth" teaching us newspeak. I think that in the US we still have enough rugged individualism and good political tradition to inoculate us against that particular plague. The same may not be true of Europe or other countries, because they do not have the same social or political traditions that we do, but that is another matter. In the case of both Russia and China they were prone to the oppressive Orwellian nightmares because they were already afflicted by corrupt and degenerate governments, which made them fertile ground for what happened. So if we here in the US do not have to fear for an introduction of a totalitarian society of Orwellian proportions, does that mean we are safe from "evil or bad governments"?

I would say that even though we do not have to worry as much about facing oppression of Orwellian standards there are other forms of degenerate society that we should be vigilant to protect ourselves from. In that vein there are another set of books that were written, much like Animal Farm and 1984, to serve as a warning about the dangers of a particular type of society. They are the books by Ayn Rand, such as Anthem and Atlas Shrugged. These books, I think, give a more accurate depiction of the degenerate society we may be facing in the US, unless we heed the warning and work to preserve those things that make us free.

In these books by Ayn Rand the characters do not face a sinister or intrusive government like those found in Orwell's books, but rather a society that discourages personal productivity and talent, a society where people are hated for their good works and personal productivity. In this kind of Randian future (as opposed to an Orwellian one) we would face a society where people are rewarded for their laziness, charity would be enforced at "the point of a gun" (or a threat of fines and imprisonment) and no one would be recognized for their own abilities and talents. All things (money, housing, health care), would be reduced to the lowest common denominator until no one would have much of anything.

It is a society such as this that we are more likely to have in the US rather than the overtly harsh and oppressive Orwellian societies. Because of inherent protections in our society and constitution we do not have to worry about the reintroduction of an aristocracy to our country, but we do have to worry about an active discouragement of personal responsibility, thrift and industry. The signs of this degenerate society can already be seen in our country. Take for example the effect of Hurricane Katrina. After the hurricane hit the biggest disaster was not destruction from wind and rain, or even the flood water, but rather the response to it. Many people sat there waiting for "the government" to come "bail them out" (literally).

About a year after the Hurricane hit I had the opportunity to travel through that part of the country. I was surprised by the extent of the damage and devastation even a year later. I also noted that on the highway between Baton Rouge and New Orleans almost every company, business and building had a sign on it saying, "Help Wanted". This by itself would not have been remarkable if it had not been for what I saw just a few miles away in Mississippi. In Louisiana everywhere I looked I say piles of trash, rubbish and broken and demolished buildings. But as soon as we crossed the state line in to Mississippi everything changed. Even though Mississippi bore the brunt of the storm, all the rubbish had been removed, the land had been cleared, and everywhere I looked instead of seeing "Help Wanted" signs, I saw signs saying, "Willing to Work". It was such a difference that I was truly shocked by the bipolar response to the storm. On the one hand there were the people who waited for "the government" to do everything, while on the other hand, the government of the people had taken charge and had cleaned up the mess.

So I ask you, when was the last time you participated in a celebration of (your) personal accomplishment and achievement, instead of a generic celebration of "diversity", meaning anything that is not you or yours? How often are our children (maybe not your personal children, but the children in our society) congratulated for mediocre work and effort? And those that do preform exceptionally are not recognized? Have you ever had a school award ceremony canceled or omitted so as to not "offend anyone" or "hurt anyone's feelings"? When was the last time the administrators thought about the feelings of the people that actually preformed well? When was the last time someone who was productive was told that "Now they can contribute (ahem) more to charity (ahem, cough)."? When was the last time someone could read about the Horatio Alger Myth (i.e. rags to riches, The American Dream) without having to wade through a lot of criticism? (I would recommend looking at the Wikipedia article on the Horatio Alger Myth, it makes my point. Also try the page on The American Dream, and pay particular attention to the first section and think why it is there.) When was the last time someone spoke about what they had done (and not be criticized for it) instead of what they were entitled to? When was the last time someone had asked what they could do for their country and not what their country could do for them? Did these questions make you think? Was it because the questions are revealing of our culture or because they are irrelevant? Or irreverent?

Our political, social and cultural demise will not come from an overtly oppressive Orwellian future, but rather from one where personal freedom is denied. Freedom to be responsible. Freedom to be reasonable. Freedom to be productive. Freedom to be

Odd NC Tax Code

I have seen some pretty impressive things while wading though pages of tax code and instructions while preparing my own taxes. Federal taxes are difficult but are nothing compared to state taxes. As usually happens things get difficult and I have to read all the instructions and then read the sub-instructions and then read the instructions for the instructions, and then read everything again, before I can figure out how to do my taxes (which should be pretty simple considering I don't make very much but...).

Of all three states that I have lived in, North Carolina has the most confusing tax code by far. It also has the distinction of winning the "Oddest Line of Tax Code Award". Recently while I was deep into doing my taxes I found a rather peculiar line in the tax code that, quite honestly was odder than any sentence I have ever come across in tax instructions before.

In the instructions for Form D-400 (Individual Income Tax Return Form) on page 14, under the section on "Credit for Charitable Contributions by Nonitemizers" I found this gem: "The credit may not be claimed for contributions for which credits for certain real property donations, gleaned crops, or recycling oyster shells are claimed." (emphasis added) Recycling oyster shells? As a "Charitable Contribution"??? WOW!!! That's a first. Who was the state legislator that got that inserted in the tax code? And apparently recycled oyster shells are such a hot commodity that they had to explicitly state that you can't claim tax credit for recycling oyster shells and claim them as a charitable contribution. Glad we got that one cleared up, I was about to double count my recycled oyster shell tax credits until I saw that line. I would have been in trouble.

When Ideals Meet Practice

Quite frequently someone gets a great idea that would make the world a better place and they want to share that idea with others and get them to participate because they think that it will greatly improve the lives of all those involved. Unfortunately these great ideas meet the harsh trial of reality and fail because frequently what seems like a simple solution to a problem is just that, too simple a solution.

I used to teach beginning level lab classes in physics and invariably the students who were just getting used to solving problems in physics would encounter something that made doing the labs difficult. They would solve the equations given to them and do the experiment but in the end their results from the calculated equations and the actual observations did not match. The projectile did not fly as far as they calculated it would or something happened in the collision that thew off their data, and when they asked me why the equations did not match perfectly with the observations I would usually say it was because of friction (it was in most cases). It's just that the equations they were using did not account for friction.

When some students realized this they came to the conclusion that if there were no friction then the world would be a lot better. With their beginning understanding of physics they could conceive of perfect engines that were perfectly efficient, cars that could go for miles, easier travel and shipping and all kinds of things where friction decreases the efficiency of a process or where friction prevents us from doing something. Thus they come to the conclusion that a world with out friction would be better off.

Of course when they come to this point in their thinking I would begin to ask them a series of questions to get them to think about the implications of what they were proposing. I would point out the cases where it would be desirable to have less friction, but then I would ask them to think about situations where friction was not only desirable, but necessary. I would ask them about walking and say, "If there were no friction then how would your foot push you forward?" Or "Even if you had a frictionless engine in a car, what good would it be because the tires would just spin endlessly because they need friction to make the car move?"

When the students thought about these questions they would realize that friction was not something that was completely undesirable and just an inhibition to things we want to do, but it was something that was necessary for normal life. In the case of friction it was a simple matter to have the students see the potential problems of eliminating friction, but this is not always the case. There are some things that people observe and want to eliminate because they view them as undesirable, but all too frequently their idea fails one simple question, "How?"

Unfortunately there are even times when people see something they view as a moral and public evil and when they get into the actual practice of eradicating it their method of choice is simply a reclassification of the original problem or a completely new and troublesome problem. This is to say that when ideas meet practice they tend to either create new problems or at least replace the original problem with a very similar one.

If we apply this concept to the noble and worthy goal of ending discrimination and prejudice we frequently run into problems. I agree that this is something good to work for but all to often the methods chosen result in more problems rather than fixing the original one. If we consider racism there are very few who would not say this is a good thing to eliminate, but when it comes to the actual mechanics of identifying and eliminating racism then we very quickly run into problems.

I say this from personal experience as I was once accused of being racist. This happened while I was living in Argentina. I was at the time conversing with a native Argentine and we just so happened to be walking through a trash heap that existed in the middle of the city. While some of the larger cities did have proper rubbish disposal, the citizens of the particular city where I was at simply took their trash to a marshy area that could not support houses and dumped their trash there. The Argentine who I was with asked me if such things existed in the United States. I told him that I had never seen or even heard of this kind of thing in the United States. I went on to explain that the nearest landfill to my house when I was growing up was on the Pima Indian Reservation. Of course this landfill was nothing like the one we were walking though at the time, but in the mind of the person I was talking to he equated the sanitary landfill I was telling him about with the unregulated dumping of trash we were currently walking past. When I explained that it was located on the Indian Reservation he became indignant and called me a terrible racist for dumping on the poor defenseless natives and contributing to their demise. When I protested and tried to explain the truth he would not listen and insisted that he did not want to talk about my racism. With that the conversation ended.

Bringing this back to my original topic, if we are to eliminate undesirable things such as racism then we must first establish what it is we are eliminating, and how we are to do it. For how are we to eliminate racism if people are accused of being racist simply because of the location of a landfill near their house, especially one that was planned and begun when I was in elementary school? Should I be "reeducated" simply because I grew up in a neighborhood that that was predominately white? Am I automatically racist because I was born a White American (some people I have talked to seem to think this, ironically enough)? How do we eliminate racism? Do we discriminate against people because historically people that look like them discriminated against others? The questions could continue forever, but there is a simpler way.

As it is with my original example, that of friction, there is a way to solve the problems. In some cases we do not want to eliminate something altogether, such as friction, as that would make normal life impossible, and other things such as racism we may want to eliminate but are unsure of how with out creating problems, or implicating the innocent. The simple solution to the problem is not social, or political, or even cultural, it is personal. But this is the most difficult of all possible solutions because it requires the most individual involvement of all.

It is striking that almost all of the solutions proposed by politicians, activists and proponents of ideals involve the actions and responsibility of everyone except the individual. Even the movements that emphasize the individual and personal involvement somehow fail to require first personal change and/or require complete personal change throughout. There is nothing wrong with requiring others to uphold a standard as long as you yourself first hold to that standard.

This way when ideals meet practice it is backed by experience and knowledge which will prevent misunderstandings and mistakes. I would not ask others to live a principle I have not first tried to live.

Who Really Supports You?

This post can be considered a follow up to a previous post I had where I asked the question "Who do you really support?" In relation to that idea I was thinking about the obvious corollary to that question, "Who really supports you?" As I was walking through a building at UNC-CH I noticed a flier tacked on to a wall advertising a rally that was to happen in a few days. The flier advertised a rally against Prop. 8 and in support of the "LGBT Rights Movement". As I was not going anywhere in a hurry I stopped and read the flier. It started out giving the time and place of the rally, why they were doing it etc., but then the emphasis of the flier began to change and it mentioned that the equal rights could only be won by "fighting for a democratic socialist future." At the end it finally stated who had written the flier and organized the rally, "Carolina Socialist Alternative". It then listed a couple of web sites about the organization and its afiliations (socialistalternative.org and socialistworld.net (mundosocialista.net)).

If you go and check out these sites you quickly realize what this is about. These organizations are the modern iteration of the communist party (though if you read their sites they very adamantly deny any association with communism. As they point out: "We believe the dictatorships that existed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were perversions of what socialism is really about.") . As a matter of fact, despite what the flier advertised these organizations have little to do with the LGBT "rights" movement. You have to dig pretty deep into the sites before you find anything mentioning LGBT rights.

The point is these socialist organizations may say they support LGBT rights and even organize rallies in support of them (at least here in NC), but there are a few things that must be considered. Would the LGBT community really want the support of the socialists? They may agree (right now) on many things but this appears to be a political alliance of convenience more than anything else right now. It would appear that the socialists are taking advantage of the current situation and are voicing their support for the LGBT community so that they can get their support. In the end they (the socialists) may not be interested in preserving the "rights" of the LGBT community any more than they are interested in preserving the "rights" of religion. Situations and political alliances will change depending on the political climate.

While I have used this one example, this idea is not limited to this one situation. Many times a particular movement goes looking for support, and they find it, but sometimes that support may be more than they bargained for. Also they may find that even though they welcome the support initially, that means that they now become associated with that support and it may be detrimental to their movement later on.

Historical Parallels

Many people have already noted the parallels between the election of Barack Obama and the election of John F. Kennedy. To briefly sum up the parallels: both are young (for a president), both had a lot of support from younger voters, both are/were viewed very favorably by the international community upon election, both talked about and advocated change. Kennedy was the first Catholic to be elected president even when people said that an Irish Catholic would never be elected president. Obama is the first black man to be elected president even when people said that a black man would never be elected president. In both cases Kennedy did not let his religion be the defining factor in his campaign, and Obama did not let race be the deciding factor in his. This is to say, in both cases each candidate never tried to fight against or even downplay their biggest respective possible liabilities. These are the standard parallels that the media are observing but let's look at other parallels that the media are definitely overlooking. Let's look at context.

Kennedy: Elected in 1960 (becomes president in 1961). This was 15 years after the end of World War II, and with it the end of the nationalistic era which came from the Age of Empires that had dominated world history for hundreds of years previously. While the Cold War had been building for a while, it was reaching its height and during his presidency would have some of its most dramatic events. It was a time of rapid social change and where a new medium of communication (TV) played an integral part in the election.

Obama: Elected in 2008 (becomes president in 2009). This was 18 years (17-19 depending on who you ask) after the end of the Cold War, which was created in the aftermath of WWII. The War on Terror had been going on for sometime and had already had a number of dramatic events. But like Kennedy in the Cold War, Obama is also at a key turning point. Obama was also elected in a time of rapid social change and a new medium of communication (The Internet) played an integral part in the election.

So with these parallels and with the assumption that history repeats itself, let's try to see what may be in store for us and for Obama. After JFK was elected the Cold War lasted another 30 years. Because the War on Terror and religious extremism is unlikely to go away anytime soon we can probably expect it to last another 20-30 years, in some form or another, and at the end there will be a drastic change in the world much like the one at the end of the Cold War or WWII. It is possible that the next few years could see similar social upheaval to that was seen in the 1960's.

So now that we have seen the parallels let us consider the key differences that Obama faces. The country and the world is on the verge of a global depression on the scale of the Great Depression. The United States is at the end of a long war in Iraq (hopefully) as opposed to the beginning of a long war in Vietnam. Kennedy was elected president in a bi-polar world dominated by two superpowers. Obama was elected in a time when the world was shifting from a uni-polar world to a multi-polar world, dominated by several different powers. So there are many key differences that differentiate the era in which Kennedy became president from the era in which Obama will be president.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Hopefully there will be some more differences (or less) and hopefully something will be done to shorten the time until the next world changing event. In any event we will watch and do our best.