What I Did On My Vacation and other stuff...

Hi-ho, people of CommentaramaPolitics! I hope you didn't miss me too much. I just spent a glorious week in jolly ol' London and had a mahvelous time. London is a wonderful city of civilized people where autos actually stop for pedestrians crossing the street and the Underground runs like clockwork. If the New York subway system ran one tenth as efficiently, New Yorkers would have to find something else to complaint about! Seriously, London is great.

The most astounding was Westminster Abbey where I stood at the graves of the entire history of the British Empire. I paid homage to Henry V who was immortalized by Shakespeare in the "St. Crispin's Day" speech. I was walking through this glorious Abbey, I stopped to look around. When I looked down, I was standing on the grave of Charles Darwin! I admit that I wept at Poet's Corner where all of the greatest writers of the English language are buried - Keats, Shelley, Audin, Austin, the Brontes, the list was endless. And then there was Sir Isaac Newton. All of it was a breath-taking.

However, on a bitter note, I was disappointed that the Queen did not answer the doorbell at Buckingham Palace. I mean, really, I am about 6 millionth+ in line for the Crown. You'd think that she wouldn't be so ill-mannered to not receive me. But then again, with the pending birth of little Charlotte Elizabeth Diana, I can only assume that she and the other royals were otherwise occupied. But frankly, I thought it was really rude that they couldn't arrange for Kate to give birth while I was there. I suspect that they specifically waited until I was safely on the plane going back "across the pond" to announce the birth. Well, I will certainly return that baby gift!

All bitterness aside and as a complete non-sequitor to my vacation, I want to share something that I read before I left for jolly ol' England. It is one of the most elegant responses that I have ever read on the subject of "Religion v. Science". Of all places, it appeared on the Village Voice blog written by a young man who goes by the moniker of Andrew W.K. To look at his photo, one would suspect that he would not or could not be so elegant. To me this is the perfect example of why I strive to "never judge a book by its cover". I am copying his response to a question in its entirety because it is worth reading: Ask Andrew W.K.: 'How Do I Show Religious Freaks That Science Wins?':

Yo, Andrew.

How can anyone believe in religion? It's so ignorant and obviously fake. I've always backed science since I was a little kid, and now I'm proud to say that I'm studying to be a molecular biologist in college. The thing is, I'm surrounded by a lot of religious idiots at this school, and whenever I try to explain to them how believing in a man in heaven who rose from the dead and all that superstitious BS is literally causing the murder of millions of people, they argue back and tell me that "science is evil and is playing God," and that I should develop my "faith" before I blow up the world.

What is the best way to finally get through to these ignorant people and explain to them simply and finally that they're wrong? If they would just give in and accept the scientific future, they would see that they don't need religion to enjoy life.

Thanks for your feedback,
Enlightened Scientist

Dear Enlightened Scientist,

Science versus religion.

I've always found this to be one of the most unnecessary arguments in contemporary society. Why does it have to be one way or another? I may not be the most mature or educated person, but when I see highly esteemed academics twice my age arguing about this, on and on, it puzzles and concerns me. Arguing about whether science or religion is better seems about as futile as arguing about whether day or night is better. Both have their qualities and shortcomings; neither can (nor should) be expected to replace the other. They are two sides of the same coin, and they both emerged out of — and are aspects of — a fundamental search for reality.

Both science and religion came from mankind's desire to know. Both are striving for truth. Science wants to understand truth. Religion wants to experience it. Science wants to get at truth from the outside in. Religion gets at it from the inside out. Science gives us the how; religion gives us the why. Science gives us the means to an end, religion gives us the meaning of that end. Science wants to bring comprehension to the universe. Religion wants to bring tangibility to the intangible.

You say your argument is that science has never killed anyone like people have been killed in the name of religion. While people may not murder each other "in the name of science," we do know that nuclear bombs, chemical weapons, eugenics and biological experimentation can also contribute to death and killing in an endless variety of ways. Both science and religion can be used as a method or justification by those who want to cause pain and suffering and break the rules of common sense and humanity. And even if one has a more extreme body count than the other, it doesn't mean that one should exist and the other shouldn't. None of the crimes that humanity has committed against itself mean that science is evil or that religion is bad. All it means is that people can do horrible things to each other using all sorts of convoluted reasoning.

Ultimately, it seems that when people complain about the harm of religion, they're often simply complaining about people behaving badly. They're talking about their dislike of people behaving barbarically. As much as the truth of God may be beyond description and intellectual grasp, the truth of human cruelty and ignorance is all too familiar and measurable. And when people claim to talk about the evil of science, they're actually just complaining about those unfortunate scientists who lack the ethical tools or moral integrity to guide and refine the use of their discoveries. Both religious people and scientific people can behave badly. A closed-minded scientist can be a jerk just as easily as a devout religious person can be a fool. No mode of thought or set of beliefs should be blamed for the lack of character in a particular individual. Nor should the vast array of benefits found in both science and religion be thrown away just because some people behave poorly in spite of them.

So your complaint really shouldn't be with religion or people who are religious, but simply with the unfortunately all-too-familiar shortcomings of the human race. Any religion that promotes hatred is not really a religion at all. And any scientist who cannot live with the spirit of brotherly love in his heart has more problems to investigate inside himself than in the material world. Every person who feels it necessary to battle over the definition or location of truth is neither in possession of any truth to begin with, nor do they have the possibility of experiencing any truth while existing in a prejudiced, spiteful, and unloving state of mind. We must do better than this. We have to grow.

Out of all the principles we should tirelessly strive to live with, gentle kindness, flexibility of spirit, open-mindedness, and a type of pure and unconditional love are the most crucial — especially when we feel most compelled not to behave that way. We simply cannot claim to be real human beings until we can learn to live with the other human beings around us, no matter how religious or scientific they may or may not be. Learning to live with one another remains our first and most urgent challenge, and it starts with each of us honestly working at it from the inside. It's much easier and much more tempting to lash out and attack everyone else we think is wrong, but we must start much closer to home. We can't fix the world until we fix ourselves first.

Someday, maybe science or religion really will claim dominance and beat the other once and for all. But until then, it seems that we each have plenty of work to do personally and internally, in order to become more gracious, more tolerant, and more humane human beings.

Your friend,
Andrew W.K.

Please feel free to discuss...

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Mike Huckabee And the Gay Shrimp

For those who missed it, Mike Huckabee has been busy lately trying to get his name back in the news for a 2016 run. He seems to have decided that the one issue that might help him pull this off is gay marriage. For the most part, his comments are the usual stuff. Today, however, he said something interesting. Indeed, buried among a dozen or so comments about gay marriage bring about the end of the world, Huckabee said that forcing Christians to accept gay marriage is the same thing as “forcing Jews to eat shrimp.” Really?

This quote more than any other exposes Huckabee’s view of Christianity and it’s an aggressive view I really can’t support. Indeed, let's consider if these really are comparable things. By forcing a Jew to eat a shrimp, you are actively forcing that individual to engage in an activity that violates the dictates of their religion. Huckabee believes that imposing gay marriage into the law would be the exact same thing to Christians. But would it?

Well, no.

In Huckabee’s example, the Jewish individual is forced to engage in conduct they believe violates their religion. Nothing similar happens with gay marriage, however because no one is forced to marry someone of the same sex against their will. Indeed, no one is forced to engage in any conduct that violates their beliefs. The closest you can come is that the Christian individual will be forced to tolerate their neighbors engaging in behavior they consider to violate their religion. But that is truly, fundamentally different from being forced to actively engage in conduct violating your beliefs.... unless you (like Mike apparently) believe that Christianity requires one to control the behavior of others. That’s simply false, however. If you read the words of Jesus, as Mike apparently hasn’t, his teaching are packed with example after example where Jesus admonishes Christians to worry about themselves, and not their brothers or neighbors. There are even admonitions against politicking, though I’ll save that for another day.

Now, you could argue, I suppose, that the shrimp comparison works for those who are required to provide services to these gay people. But again, that seems an aggressive view of the reach of Christianity. Indeed, once again, the Christian isn’t forced to engage in the activity, they are simply prevented from discriminating in the providing of services to the public between people the Christian views as complaint with their views and others who are not. But this is just another form of the first point, and is no more valid.

The closest I can come to finding merit in Huckabee’s comparison is if you assume that by letting the government endorse gay marriage, the Christian is forced in some manner to support the practice through their tax dollars. I have more sympathy for this argument, except there still is lacking some direct link. The government spends so much on so many disagreeable things and the taxpayer pays so little toward this vast budget that the idea of “contributing” to any particular government spending is basically theoretical at best. In other words, my dollar will be spread over so many expensive causes that my contribution to any one thing is negligible. Moreover, Jesus dispelled this argument very quickly with his “render unto Caesar” quote, which makes it clear that Christians must obey the law and cannot be held morally responsible for acts done by the government in their name because they have no power to shape such acts.

Obviously, this whole issue gets into hair splitting. But what fascinated me about the quote was the sense I got from Huckabee that, in his world, Christians have a right to impose their will on others and being denied that right is the same as being forced to engage in the activity itself. If I’m reading Huckabee correctly here, then his view of Christianity is troublesome.

Thoughts?

P.S. Up yours Tom Brady.

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Religion - A Force for Good or Not...

So I am back "on the grid" again. I just spent the week communing with nature (trees, deer, bugs, spiders etc.) and, well, I learned that I am not really a nature girl and that the world of politics turns without my imput. How rude! But, with all my communing with nature and stuff, an interesting question was raised and I thought it might make for a good and, hopefully, thought-provoking discussion.

I was with a random (or not so random) group of people from around the world from varying backgrounds who very obviously had major "issues" with organized religion. Well, they had real problems with Christianity and specifically Catholicism. [As an aside, they had no problem making the leap that aliens control us from a space ship hovering over Earth, but that's a whole other story] So it got me contemplating the cosmos (real and/or imagined), and my question is really pretty simple:

Has religion had a net positive effect or net negative effect on human history?

Just so you understand, I am not asking about your religious beliefs or whether God exists. The question really is about the institution of "religion". I know what I think, but since we at CommentaramaPolitics are all thoughtful and intelligent people, let's discuss...

By the way, if you have never really looked at a spider web upclose and personal (and sans the big, giant, hairy spider), they really are amazing works of art...spider webs, not spiders. Spiders are scary.

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The Pope’s Apostolic Confusica

I like a lot of what the new Pope has done. In particular, he’s done a lot to push the Church back to its actual mission of spreading religion and away from being about money and politics. Interestingly, he’s done all of that with only a change in tone too, and without a change in doctrine. His latest issue is a little more troubling however... perhaps.

Last week, Pope Fancis issued an 84-page document called an apostolic exhortation. Think of it as his platform. This seems to be a document aimed at pissing off both sides. For example, he did say that the Church needs to bring more women into decision-making positions with the Church, but he affirmed the Church’s opposition to female priests. In fact, he said it “is not a question open to discussion.” He also affirmed the Church’s opposition to abortion. Both of those will upset progressives.

Pissing off the other side, he wrote what I want to talk about today. Specifically, he wrote about capitalism and poverty and what he said is problematic. Before I tell you my problems with it, however, let me explain what I think he really meant substantively, because when you strip out the ideology, what he says actually makes a lot of sense. Observe:

The Pope’s main concern was about extreme inequality. And you know, I can’t disagree with him. My problem with extreme inequality is that it takes away the stake people feel in society and they start to support radical ideas because they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by upending the system. That is why, historically, extreme inequality has led to bloodshed, revolution and typically some form of communism. And in fact, the Pope does note that “unequal distribution of wealth inevitably leads to violence.” So he is being practical in his discussion, i.e. he’s not just saying “it’s not fair.”

And don’t think this isn’t a problem in the US. For decades in the US, any poor person could work their way up to the middle class simply by learning their job, working hard, and staying out of trouble. Those who aspired to more could go further through education or imitative. You could literally go from the assembly line to the boardroom over the course of your life if you proved your merit. Further, the majority of the people who were wealthy earned it by providing some product or service that people needed. They were compensated by the free market and we saw them as heroes for their achievements: they made the world better. The keys were this: (1) wealth was generally earned, (2) political power had little to do with the earning of wealth, and (3) you could work your way up the ladder to each level.

Over the past few decades this has changed. For one thing, the wealthy today rarely earn their wealth through the private market. Instead, they enter the worlds of law or finance, and their wealth comes from the misuse of the legal system to force their way into transactions. In other words, they actually “earn” their wealth by setting up toll booths to clog the free market system, and what they earn is stripped away from companies and people who could otherwise use it invent new products and employ more people. Moreover, their pay does not come from free market mechanisms, it comes from monopoly pricing. Thus, today’s rich make a hell of a lot more money than the rich in the past and they are “earning” it without providing anything useful to society... to the contrary, they are hindering society. Thus, they have gone from heroes to villains.

But this still wouldn’t be a problem if things were going well at the bottom... but they’re not. As I outline in my book, middle class and poor incomes have been sinking badly since the 1970s, even as rich incomes soared (incomes are more unequal today, in the age of Obama, than they’ve been at any time since the age of the Robber Barons). Moreover, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to move up the ladders and to stay on the level you are at. Unlike the past, if you learn your job, work hard and stay out of trouble these days, nothing is guaranteed anymore. Now you need an education, or you will find the ceiling is very low. But even getting an education guarantees you nothing but debt.

The result of this is a poor class who see welfare as their better option and feels entitled because they feel they have gotten screwed by society. You have a middle class that is struggling, which is increasingly turning to “eat the rich” policies, who are also starting to rely on benefits, who see the stock market as fixed, and who see the government becoming a tool for wealth generation on the backs of the middle class who are expected to pick up the tab. That hasn’t led to violence yet in America, but it is the sort of thing that has led to violence elsewhere, and it is the sort of thing which leads people to start supporting destructive policies like increases in welfare for their own class... or worse.

This is why I agree with the Pope’s concerns and why I think conservatives need to start trying to address this issue.

So what is problematic? Well, the Pope’s rhetoric is the problem. He wraps this message in some very anti-capitalist statements. For example, he called capitalism “brutal” and “a new tyranny,” and he complained about “rampant consumerism.” Grr.

First, he’s wrong about consumerism. Consumerism is the ultimate in democracy in action. Consumerism is how billions of humans express their opinions to the businesses and governments around them. It is how we the people reward the good guys who make our lives better and cause the bad guys to fail by ignoring them and their goods. And anything we can do to give consumers more power and more choice, the better. What I think the Pope is really upset about is “materialism,” which is a very different thing. That’s about people choosing stuff over people. He should not be confusing that with consumerism.

Secondly, he’s wrong about “capitalism.” Capitalism is the only way to lift people out of poverty. So attacking “capitalism” is foolish and counter-productive. And again, I think he’s misspoken. I think what he’s really talking about is cronyism, which is obvious from his calls for the reformation of the financial systems.

So the problem is this. Either the Pope simply misused his words or spoken poorly, or he means his rhetoric and is saying something much bigger than what appears to be the substance he intended. If that’s the case, then he’s a fool. If he only misspoke, then that’s fine, except that as someone with this powerful of a bully pulpit, he needs to take more care to speak clearly. His choice of words will wrongly feed statists everywhere. Moreover, for someone whose goal has been to get the Church back to its mission of spreading religion, it’s rather foolish to delve into economic ideology. Further, he offers no solutions by way of guidance. All he says is that unfettered capitalism is bad, but a welfare state is not the answer. So what does he want? It’s not clear.

I get the sense that what he’s talking about is equality of opportunity. He talks about striving to provide work, healthcare and education to all citizens. Those really are the inputs to people living productive lives. In fact, I would suggest that conservatives need a platform that is strong on each of those points: creating jobs and opportunity, improving education, and finding ways to make healthcare cheap and universally available. I also get the sense he’s actually talking about things conservatives should like, and if we could discuss this with him, we would probably find we agree. Indeed, notice that at no point does he call for minimum wages or guaranteed incomes, he never says the government has a duty to hand out these things, and he specifically disdains the welfare mentality.

So ultimately, we probably should be embracing this... BUT his attacks on consumerism and capitalism make it very, very hard to embrace his statement. By saying these things, he has given aid and comfort to people who favor redistribution. He has muddied what he said with sufficient contradictions that it is not possible to know precisely what he wants, which makes it hard to say, “Sure, I agree.” And he has wrongly attacked the very tools it will take to make his goals possible. Frustrating.

Thoughts?

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Poll: Religious Conservatives Shrinking

There was an interesting poll put out the other day. It dealt with religion and politics, and it's worth discussing. What the poll shows is that the Religious Right is shrinking fast. And while some will certainly want to dismiss this poll, they probably shouldn't because the implications are rather startling.

The poll in question was conducted by a group called the Public Religion Research Institute in conjunction with the left-leaning Brookings Institute, and it found two interesting things.

First, the poll found that Americans are split religiously: 28% of Americans identify themselves as religious conservatives; 19% identify themselves as religious progressives; 38% identify themselves as religious moderates; and 15% identify themselves as non-religious. The poll did not identify intensity, so these numbers overstate the actual support each group would get politically, but that doesn't change this analysis; indeed, it only strengthens the point because what these numbers tell us is that no religious agenda can prevail with the public unless you win the moderates, i.e. there just aren't enough conservatives, progressives or non-ists for any of those three groups to push through their agenda without pulling in moderates. That’s bad news for Team Santorum, who argue that getting more extreme and more exclusive is the answer.

Indeed, it suggests what should be obvious: if you want to change the public's mind on this (or any other issue), go slowly. As Walter Williams once wrote, you can't boil a frog by throwing it into a boiling pot. You need to turn up the heat little by little. It's the same with persuading the public. You need to win them over bit by bit, winning their confidence with each step and making the next step seem less intimidating and less significant. That's the only way to win people over.

The second thing the poll investigated was the future of religion in America. This is where the really bad news for the Religious Right arises. What the poll found was that the number of religious conservatives is shrinking in each generation:

● 47% of the WWII Generation are religious conservatives
● 34% of the Baby Boomers are religious conservatives
● 23% of Gen X are religious conservatives
● 17% of Millennials are religious conservatives

This means the number of religious conservatives is collapsing and the Religious Right will lose about half its size over the next 20-30 years. Among Millenials, by the way, religious progressives (23%) and the non-religious (22%) will both easily outnumber them.

So what does this mean? Well, on the one hand, it means the Republicans have hitched their wagon to a dying horse. They have essentially become a party that caters to what may have been nearly 50% of Americans at one point, but will soon be less than two in ten. That's suicidal for a political party.

On the other hand, it stands as a warning for the Religious Right. Various statistics I’ve found suggest that conservatives have around 30% more children than liberals, and presumably religious conservatives would have even more, yet "religious conservatives" aren’t managing to get their kids to adopt their beliefs. Nor are they apparently able to attract others to their beliefs. Each of the other categories is growing, but religious conservatives are not. This suggests that religious conservatives are doing something that is driving young people away. Now far be it for me to suggest, but if the Religious Right wants to reverse this trend, I would suggest figuring out what the problem is and addressing it.

What's the solution? Well, that's up to you. But I think it's instructive that the Pope is facing a similar problem and his response has been to make a push for the Church to return to the substance of religion rather than the pomp and procedure. Just this week, he told his bishops to get out of their ivory towers and go help people. It's also interesting that this has resulted in a severe backlash by conservative Catholics, who view the pomp and procedure as the purpose of the Church. Interestingly, the nature of that backlash is explained by this poll as well. The poll found that religious conservatives are much more likely to believe that "being religious" is about having the right theological views rather than being moral AND that "being moral" is about being religious rather than how you behave. In other words, they subscribe to dogma over substance... the very thing the Pope is trying to reverse within the Church. It will be interesting to see if the Pope's plan works. It will be just as interesting to see if the Religious Right can turn this trend around.

Thoughts?

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Christianity and the Left

This probably won't appeal to all readers, at least not in the same way, but for those whose religious faith is a big part of their life, I thought this was worth bringing up, since it appears anyway from time to time.

Especially in the past few years, under Obama, there has been a particular philosophical/theological debate, on and off that has accompanied his expansion of the welfare state with health care and so on. (It predates Obama by a long shot, of course, but it was all the rage a couple years ago.) Maybe his programs are socialist and maybe they aren't, but even if they are, many leftists have argued, what's so bad about that? America is still a Christian nation (sort of), and taking care of the poor is "the Christian thing to do," so why not embrace socialism or knock-off versions of it? Why should men of faith be fiscal conservatives?

I could flesh it out further, but no doubt everyone understand what I'm getting at. As one anecdote, back when ObamaCare passed, I was discussing the bill with a very liberal friend of mine who of course supported it. In the course of the conversation, she said something like the following: "I don't see how you can oppose this bill. You claim to be a Christian, right? Didn't Jesus say it was the duty of his followers to help the poor and needy? And isn't that what this bill is trying to do? You talk all the time about how much you hate socialism, but it's something you should be supporting."

An irksome statement, but not a very surprising one. The fact is, a lot of mainstream Christians have said the same thing. As a lifelong member of the Methodist Church, for example, I have heard many in that body call on Christians to support "social justice," whatever that means. One can also find such elements--often prominent ones--among the Catholics, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, and so on.

At the time, I dismissed my friend's comment with a few derisive snorts and a mention of the difference between the spiritual and earthly realms, and the difficulty of applying the principles of the former to the politics of the latter. Upon later reflection, though, I don't think I gave a satisfactory answer. After all, citing the words of Jesus, "My Kingdom is not of this world," or Luther's "Doctrine of Two Swords," doesn't exactly explain why one should support or oppose a living wage or a single-payer health care system. And the original question is a powerful one. If I consider myself a Christian, which I do--a fairly crappy one, to be sure, but I make an effort to live up to the name--how can I stand against a philosophy such as socialism, which offers a program to improve the material conditions of the poor by giving them more care and socioeconomic equity? Aren't I called on to perform good works for those less fortunate? And doesn't socialism--or socialistic policies--offer a chance to do just that?

Yes, kind of, but. The problem, I think, when one talks about following a "Christian socialism," a socialistic policy that adheres to the Gospels, is believing that the end goal of performing such good works is to help the poor. Make no mistake: acts of charity and material aid for the benefit of those in need is, from the Christian perspective, an absolute good, and pleases God. The trouble, however, is that helping the poor is not the end goal of good works. Controversial, I know. But consider this: when St. James penned the famous line, "Faith without works is dead," whose faith was he talking about? Those for whom the works were being performed? No. He was referring to the faith of those performing the works. For service and charity to others is how Christians express their faith here on earth. Neglect it, and faith becomes stagnant, a mere internal acknowledgement of the Good News and making no tangible difference in the believer's life and character. Moreover, these works are not intended merely to provide comfort and security for individuals the rest of their days. They are intended to provide a conduit for the transmission of the message of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, and the salvation of all those who believe in Him, without which no one can enter heaven.

And this is what I think those who talk about social justice or some similar term forget. Christianity is not Christianity without the transcendental message of salvation and eternal life. Nor is it Christianity without that personal expression of faith. The emphasis is on the inward, individual soul, and its transformation through faith and the works that faith results in. What happens to that emphasis, that relationship between the divine and the individual, with the implementation of a so-called "Christian socialism"? Simply put, it is destroyed. Because while a state might, theoretically, achieve the goal--of providing for the less fortunate--that Christians often strive for, it cannot--especially when the state is as populous and far-flung as ours--provide that same faith, that same connection with the heavenly realm that the traditional faith-based religion can. By having an impersonal, bureaucratic structure performing the function of material support, it not only prevents individual Christians from taking part in the relief of the poor, more importantly, it destroys their initiative to do so. In a world in which everyone's needs are supposedly taken care of, what reason is there for a believer to interact with the downtrodden when the state will do it for them? And what does that do to the development of one's own faith? If it cannot go forward, it stagnates. Thus, by seeking to fill the spiritual void in men with material satisfaction, "Christian socialism" guts the transcendency of the religion, inevitably coming to mean nothing different from regular socialism.

This process is clearly on display when one considers the developments in once-Christian nations. It is surely no coincidence, I think, that Europe, where the idea of a far-reaching welfare state has long been accepted, has rates of church attendance that are in many cases abysmal. America is guilty of similar trends, true enough, but this interventionist ideology is less well established, and its citizens also happen to attend church more frequently. Is it too much of a stretch to say that the two are connected? Can one, for God's sake (so to speak), pick out a country or region where a strong tradition of left-wing government goes hand-in-hand with widespread, evangelical Christianity? (And no, Latin America doesn't count.)

There is no coincidence. And this is the virus within liberal Christianity. If it sets as its goal a world of "social justice," well, that can in theory be realized, but once it is, then what? When the socialism in Christian socialism has been put into practice, what's the use of hanging on to the Christianity, when the religion has been subordinated to worldly aims? For that matter, is there any religion left at all? The fact is, Christianity and socialism/socialistic ideas are incompatible. They not only pursue different aims; those aims bring them into conflict with one another.

So, there. Obviously this won't be of much interest to those who aren't Christians. And it's not intended as an analysis of the economic ideas behind liberalism or socialism, or to suggest that one cannot be both a sincere Christian and committed to a communitarian ideology. I would hate to live under a government run by the likes of Jim Wallis, for example, yet I have no doubt of the man's personal faith in God. What I wish to do here is to refute the argument often presented to Christians, and to propose that not only is it possible to be a Christian and a small-government conservative, but also that if Christianity can be said to favor any political system (a very big if), it not only is but must be closer to capitalism than to socialism. As philosophical systems, Christianity and socialism don't have room for each other.

(Note: I'm gone all this week on a family trip, and will not be back until Sunday evening. I won't be looking at my computer, so make whatever critical comments you want, just know that I won't be around to read them, so nyah nyah nyah.)

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Necessary Changes To The Republican Party

Back in 2009, I did a series called Rebuilding the Republican Party in which I explained what the GOP needed to do to survive. They didn’t listen. And exit polling shows the GOP suffering from the exact same problems this time. Romney lost because of singles, youths, and minorities. This needs to change or forget ever winning again. It’s time to return to our ideological roots and promote the individual and individual freedom.

Let’s start by highlighting the problem. There is a belief in conservative circles that the country is much more conservative than liberal and we just need to win over conservative independents. This belief comes from polling which shows the country as 38% Democrats, 32% Republicans and 29% Independents, with independents leaning right. But “independents” turns out to be a meaningless category. Indeed, Romney won independents yet lost the election. What really matters are “moderates.”

In that regard, we find 35% conservatives, 25% liberals and 41% moderates. BUT, 60% of the “moderates” broke for Obama, meaning they are liberals. When you break this down, you find that 50% of Americans are conservatives and 50% are liberals. In other words, we're a 50/50 country. So forget the idea of tapping into a pool of hidden conservatives. If we want to move the needle, we need to look at the groups we lost overwhelmingly and we need to figure out ways to win back their more centrist members. Here's how...

● The Gender (read: “Single”) Gap: Women account for 53% of the electorate and Obama carried them by 11%. Romney carried men by 7%. But that doesn’t tell us what’s really going on. The real key is single people.

Romney won married men by 20% and married women by 6%. These two groups made up 29% and 31% of the electorate (60% in total). So how did he lose? He got blown away among singles. Indeed, Romney lost single men by 20% and single women by 40%! These two groups made up only 18% and 23% of the electorate, but the huge gaps made up the difference.

If the Republicans ever want to win again, they need to win more single people, particularly single women. To do that, we need to understand the problem. So realize this. First, Reagan won both groups (he won men by 28% and women by 10%). So there is nothing inherently “wrong” with singles being Republicans. Nor was there something wrong with Romney. McCain didn't face a “war on women” attack or smears about his father being a bigamist, and he did 3% worse with women than Romney. What this means is that the party has a structural problem which developed after Reagan.

When you look at polls or talk to these people, what you will hear is outrage/terror about the Republican Party’s various stances on social issues. This is particularly true with single women who are turned off by the party’s attacks on gays, its obsession with abortion and contraception, and its rhetorical attacks about “family values” which imply that only married people with kids and church-goers are moral.

The Solution: If the GOP wants to win singles, particularly single women, it needs to stop hating gays, it needs to stop conflating going to church or being married with being a good American, and it needs to stop obsessing over abortion. I recommend removing abortion from the platform or stepping it back to “safe, rare, restricted, and no government funding.” Leave the rest for churches to push, not government policy. And shoot the first person to talk about restricting other forms of contraception. . . Rick Santorum. I recommend making gay marriage a question of individual conscience (so as not to interfere with religious freedom) while putting support for civil unions and anti-discrimination laws in the platform. I recommend removing talk of the party believing in God and instead shifting to talking about protecting everyone's right to believe... in any religion or no religion. And I recommend eliminating all talk of constitutional amendments on any social issues -- that's pointless and whacky. Also stop signing those stupid fringy pledges! They're a trap.

● The Youth Vote: Romney won old people, but got crushed with the young. 19-29 year olds favored Obama by 26%. Even 30-44 year olds favored Obama by 10%. Together, they made up 46% of the electorate. The next 38% of the electorate were tied. Then Romney won oldsters by 12%. So there is a youth problem which the seniors don’t make up for.

The youth problem can be attributed to several things. On the one hand, the youth vote is the direct result of GOP stodginess and intolerance on issues like gays and abortion, and its lack of visible minorities. But more importantly, another huge turnoff is the GOP’s rhetorical attacks on college education and seeming unwillingness to help young people leave college without crushing levels of debt, i.e. without making them slaves to banks. The GOP’s attacks on internet freedom don’t help either. Nor does the GOP’s image as the party of Big Business. Indeed, many of these young people drifted to Ron Paul and then Gary Johnson and finally back to Obama because the GOP seemed to offer no hope that it cared about people rather than corporations.

The Solution: It’s time to understand that these are issues of economic freedom. I recommend the GOP come up with a genuine plan to (1) help every American go to college while (2) reducing the cost of college so young people aren’t enslaved for the first 20 years of their economic lives. Don't forget, government caused this problem. I recommend supporting total internet freedom and fighting censorship in any form. That means dropping the heinous idea of regulating the internet to promote morality (i.e. “protecting children”) or doing the bidding of corporate America through anti-piracy laws. I also recommend that conservatives stop defending big companies. Talk about people, not companies. Fight cronyism in any form. Talk about the American dream!! Our party should be focused on helping average people strive to make their lives better, to build a business, buy a house, send their kids to college... not protecting the balance sheets of multinational corporations. All of these are conservative values, so why aren't we doing them already?

● The Minority Gap: The minority gap is beyond critical. Obama won Hispanics by 44%, Asians by 45%, blacks by 88% and Muslims by 70%. Muslims and Asians only make up 2% and 3% of the public, but blacks make up 13% of the electorate and Hispanics make up 11% of the electorate, and growing. There are several glaring problems here.

● Asians are generally industrious, business-minded and education-minded, which should make them natural GOP allies, especially as liberal affirmative action is hurting Asian students in California. How did we lose them by 45%? Because the party comes across as hostile to non-whites. Moreover, the party has offered nothing in the way of education and its focus on “business” has been on oil companies, not small businesses.

The Solution: Court these voters. Also, we need to rediscover the American dream. We need to protect the little guy and not worry about the big guy. Warren Buffett and Wall Street can take care of themselves, and they don't like us anyway.

● For a party that claims to cherish religious freedom, Muslims should be natural allies. But they aren’t. Why not? Because of open bigotry by conservatives, be it accusing all Muslims of being terrorists, to careless talk about bombing the Middle East, to paranoid freak-outs about the appointment of a single Muslim judge to a meaningless municipal judgeship.

The Solution: It’s time to start mentioning Islam along with other religions when talking about religious freedom, and it’s time to stop pushing symbolic ideas like banning sharia law (which can’t be put in place under our constitution in any event).

● Blacks and Hispanics should be much closer to 50/50, but they aren’t. Again, the problem is the appearance of bigotry. Conservatives treat blacks and Hispanics like unpleasant neighbors who need to be humored every four years. They do not treat them like part of the family. They use hyperbolic speech, they are afraid to speak the truth and they talk down to these people as if they are children. They even make bizarre racial-tinged attacks on things like rap music and “ghetto culture.” When they conduct outreach, it’s a token appointment of the whitest black/Hispanic guy in the room to a meaningless position, or it’s an attempt to go along with some Democratic plan to buy loyalty.

On Hispanics, conservatives have created a serious problem with talk of deportation. Polls show that 60% of Hispanics know someone who is here illegally. That makes deportation a personal danger to them. Making this self-inflicted wound worse, talk of deportation is just gratuitous because it won’t happen. Moreover, conservatives talk in racist terms about Hispanics. They imply that all Hispanics are here illegally. They imply that all Hispanics are criminals. And they imply that all Hispanics are the same.

The Solution: Fixing the Hispanic problem will require a radical change in thinking. We need to realize that deportation isn’t going to happen, so learn to accept the idea that these illegals are here to stay. The GOP needs to go on a “listening tour” in the Hispanic community (so they get credit for acting) and then propose an amnesty – don’t wait for Obama. AND conservatives need to shut the hell up about it. The more they whine, the less credit conservatives will get for having changed. Until we do this, we are just delaying the inevitable and we’re making the wound bigger.

The GOP also needs to conduct real outreach. Every Congressman should hire Spanish-speaking staffers whose job would be to do what they do for everyone else, i.e. meet with Hispanic constituents every day of the year and help them get benefits, get permits, and get through the immigration system. They need to actively court Hispanic business owners and hook them up with their other donors. They need to encourage their friends in the banking industry to make loans to these people. They need to court mothers with children by telling them about the educational reforms they want. Start winning them over, one vote at a time, day after day in a thousand districts across the country.

They need to do the same with blacks. Even a 5-10% shift would be seismic.

Finally, they need to appoint a LOT of Hispanic, black, young and female Republicans to prominent positions. Right now there are basically none. I also think the next Republican presidential ticket must include a dark-skinned Hispanic and a youngish woman. This will help with minorities, with single women and with the young.

Conclusion

The GOP can turn this around, but they need to take decisive action. I'm not saying to become libertarians. Their obsession with drugs, conspiracies and their inability to recognize a proper role for government make them too far gone. But we need to offer people something better than the message of: (1) we fear minorities, (2) we want to control single women, (3) we only like married Christians, (4) we hate college kids, and (5) the American dream is to be a slave of corporate America.

Conservatism needs a reboot. It’s time to talk about personal economic freedom, the freedom to build the American dream on a level playing field. It’s time to fully include minorities in that dream. And it’s time to stop undercutting that message by acting like the morality police. It’s time to give people a reason to support us, not fear us.

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Republican Wacko Should Resign Now

This is going to be a nasty article and some of you won’t like it. I don’t care. I’m finding myself really pissed off at the retard who will be representing our side in the Missouri Senate Primary. His name is Todd Akin and he seemed pretty decent until his dogma shut down his brain. He needs to resign.

Akin was asked this weekend during a television interview about his view on whether or not abortion should be allowed in the case of rape. His answer was this:

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

By which he meant that victims rarely get pregnant from “legitimate rapes.” He then stated that he thinks abortion should be banned in the case of rape.

Uh... f*ck you.

First of all, what is a legitimate rape? And what kind of piece of sh*t would believe that rape comes in degrees of legitimacy? I hate the word “insensitive,” but I can’t imagine a better use for it than the way Akin just smeared rape victims. This is so reminiscent of Texas gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams, who obnoxiously said about the rain: “It’s a lot like rape. As long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”

That a human being would utter either of these statements is frankly incomprehensible to me. How f*cked up do you need to be to believe that only certain rapes matter or that rape is something women should enjoy? Where does the Republican Party keep finding these sex-obsessed troglodytes?

Secondly, what is this crap that somehow the female body “has ways to shut the whole thing down”? Where does this medical quackery come from? If a doctor said this, they would lose their medical license for incompetence. If a teenager said this, we would laugh at them for being stupid. Yet here a grown “man” says this? This is dogma, this is not science. This is a man who believes in witchcraft, who sees women as unclean deceivers, and who fears the atheists under his bed. This is not a man whose judgment can be trusted. This is the kind of crap which gives Christians a bad name.

Akin, of course, apologized for this obscenity, but this is one of those moments where you can’t un-ring a bell. We now know what he believes, and this is not a man I would want near any female I knew and I sure as heck don’t want him in a position to represent my side of the aisle on women’s issues. He is unfit and needs to resign.

And let me say, this is exactly why young professional women will never vote Republican, but that’s not even what bothers me here. What bothers me is that a man with a Fourteenth Century understanding of sexual relations could be chosen to serve in the United States Senate. He needs to resign. If he doesn’t, I will support McCaskill.

Conservatives need to rid themselves of these people.

And while I’m at it, let me say that if you believe women should be forced to carry children to term when they’ve been raped, then you are wrong. There is no legal or moral justification for your position. You are suggesting sexual slavery. You are suggesting that you have the right to victimize these women every single day until they give birth because you think your religion tells you to use the force of law to control others. You are wrong.

UPDATED: It is now being reported that Akin will resign. Good. But there's one more bit to add to the story. The mouth-breathers at the Family Research Council have been giving strong support to Akin throughout the day. Their president Tony Perkins claims this is nothing more than an attempt to distract from the record of that unclean woman Claire McCaskill and Satan’s workshop at Planned Parenthood. Pathetic. Seriously, if you don't see the problem with this, then there is something wrong with you.

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My Advice To Social Conservatives

I said last week that social conservatives have not done a great job winning over the public on social issues. There are some minor advances here and there, but for every advance there is full retreat in some other area. I think a change of strategy is called for on all fronts.

Let me start with three broad principles:

● Principle One: It’s time to get rational about the goals social conservatives want to achieve and how to achieve them. This means putting an end to pie-in-the-sky ideas like constitutional amendments to force change. Not only is that easily lampooned in light of the conservative claim to states’ rights, but it’s pointless because there is simply no way to get any constitutional amendment through the Congress and then passed by enough states. It is impossible, and talking about it wastes time and diverts resources from better causes. Moreover, talking about changing the constitution, scares the public, who will automatically see this as extreme and dangerous. So drop the idea of trying to solve everything with one shot and learn the art of incrementalism, i.e. achieving your goal little by little. This isn’t sexy, but it’s the only effective way to achieve controversial goals under our system.

● Principle Two: Drop the harsh rhetoric. The fiery pulpit speeches may work well in church, but the public sees them differently. To the public, they are evidence that social conservatives are hateful people who can’t deal with the modern world and who want to judge everyone else. This is a self-inflicted wound.

● Principle Three: You can’t win with religion-based arguments. Those simply don’t work with the modern public because the vast majority of the public doesn’t see the Bible as the thing which runs their day-to-day lives. Indeed, while 90% of the public claims to believe in God, only 40% claim to go to church “regularly” (there is reason to believe the real number is closer to 20%). And even of those who go, there is a disconnect between what the churches teach and how people live their lives -- the classic example of this are Catholics, who love the Pope, but ignore his rules. And even then, different denominations and different religions have different views about what their religion tells them, e.g. some accept gay marriage, some don’t. So premising arguments on religion is a bad start because you lose most of your audience. Moreover, in making these arguments, social conservatives end up bypassing the stronger arguments they should be making.

Ok, now let’s look at specific policies.

● Abortion: Abortion is an area where social conservatives are largely doing it right because they’ve adopted incrementalism. In the 1980s and early 1990s, abortion opponents kept looking for the home run, and it never came. It wasn’t until they learned to take the issue step by step that they began to make progress. The goal right now should be to entirely eliminate public funding, which is what keeps the abortion lobby alive, and to impose restrictions which the public will find reasonable.

One thing that needs to be dropped is this ridiculous idea of extending 14th Amendment rights to fetuses. Not only does this scare people, and thus is counterproductive, but it cannot pass, and it is almost the classic example of unintended consequences. Give fetuses rights and they can sue pregnant women if they don’t stop smoking or drinking or otherwise fail to follow doctor’s orders. This is a Pandora’s box of legal insanity which liberal interest groups will gleefully use to invade families. Think twice people.

● Gays: The gay marriage battle is lost. Yes, it won’t gain any more support in conservative states for the moment, but this issue is inevitable because the younger public really doesn’t see gays as a threat. Indeed, gays have pretty much proven there is nothing to fear from gay marriage. So so-cons better find proof fast to refute this.

A better strategy would be to switch over to a religious freedom argument. Right now, social conservatives have let themselves by placed on the wrong side of the gay marriage debate because gays have argued they are the ones seeking “freedom.” The reality is they have freedom and they are really seeking to use government power to impose their beliefs on others. But so-cons aren’t arguing that. Instead, they talk about “morality,” which is a loser. What they need to do is argue the religious freedom aspect, i.e. that gays are seeking to take away freedom by forcing others to accept them. Americans always vote for whoever is offering the greater freedom, so-cons need to learn to explain this better.

I also recommend giving serious thought to getting the government out of the marriage business entirely, as I discussed HERE.

● Drugs: Social conservatives are losing the drug war, particularly marijuana, because they’ve adopted the wrong argument. They’re arguing that drugs are bad for you/society. But that’s a nanny state argument. And indeed, the pro-pot people have merely had to argue that pot isn’t that bad to slowly win over a near-majority. The better argument involves civil freedoms. If we allow people to take drugs, then we either need to change negligence laws dramatically (in ways people really won’t like), or we will end up imposing huge costs on employers, employees and the economy because of the need for widespread drug testing. Why? Because any company that makes any product or provides any service which can injury someone (i.e. any company) will need to take steps to ensure that their workers are not high when they are working. That means widespread drug testing of everyone with a job. Right now the argument is “should the government be allowed to stop Person X from smoking pot at home.” But the argument should be, “are YOU willing to undergo constant drug testing to protect your employer from lawsuits just because the government decides to legalize drugs for the few who want it?” That’s a very different matter. I’ve discussed this HERE.

● Religious Freedom: This one’s a can of worms. A lot of social conservatives are going down a very dangerous path with the idea of religious freedom laws. Specifically, they are pushing bills which prohibit employers from stopping employees from engaging in religious practices or wearing religious items, e.g. crucifixes. This should send up huge red flags for conservatives. For one thing, conservatives have opposed employment-discrimination-based lawsuits almost across the board when it comes to gays, blacks, women and disability. Why make an exception for religion? Shouldn’t a private employer be entitled to impose whatever restrictions they want on the people they pay to be their employees? Can’t the employees just go elsewhere if they don’t like it?

Further, there is an obvious flaw here which social conservatives are overlooking because they tend to equate the word “religion” with their brand of Christianity: our Constitution doesn’t allow discrimination amongst religions. Thus, if you give people absolute power to act out their religious beliefs at work, that would include things like the wearing of the Islamic veil or separation of men and women, the handling of snakes, the smoking of peyote and whatever other crazy ideas these fringe religions can dream up.

This also applies to things like prayer in schools. If you seek legislation to allow that nice Protestant Principal to say a prayer each morning, except that your kids may also find themselves forced to sit through an Islamic prayer or Buddhist ritual or even an atheist’s speech. Unless you want other religions forced upon you and your children, it is best to always keep in mind that any new power you give yourself can be used by others as well.

Frankly, the best bet here is to vote with your feet and your wallets. Don’t support businesses which are hostile to your religious beliefs. Do support friendly ones. Stop seeing movies, watching television shows, or buy videogames with bad messages in them. Use the power of boycott. Send your kids to religious schools and volunteer to make sure those schools are the best (a shining example). In this regard, support legislation which lets federal money follow the students to whatever schools they choose -- trust people to make the right choices rather than trying to use the government to force the right choices upon them. Remember, you have to win people over, you can’t force them to believe what you want them to believe.

The big takeaway here is that social conservatives need to learn to speak to people who don’t share their religious beliefs -- framing things in religious terms simply will not work for anyone who doesn’t agree with your religious beliefs. They need to learn that a thousand small victories are better than the false hopes of complete victory in fell swoop. And they need to think more about the unintended consequences of the policies they propose and they need to realize that others will get to use the same powers they create in the law.

Thoughts?


P.S. Don't forget, it's Star Trek Tuesday at the film site.
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Despicable Newt

Romney’s win last night likely decided the Republican nomination. What I want to talk about today, however, is the damage being done to conservatism by the desperate and despicable creature that is Newt Gingrich. Specifically, he’s been smearing Romney and anyone he thinks supports Romney in ways which are causing long term harm to the cause of conservatism, and it’s time for conservatives to turn their backs on this troll.

Let’s start with Romney. Newt has been slandering Romney in ways that will make it very hard for Romney to beat Obama. Indeed, he’s engaged in a scorched earth policy premised on the idea that we better pick Newt or Newt will make sure Obama wins:

1. Newt has repeatedly called Romney a liar, dishonest and pathetic, when Newt’s actually the one who’s been lying. A reputation for dishonesty is nearly impossible for a politician to live down and harms everything they do because much in politics relies on trust.

2. Newt has made misleading attacks on Romney for investments made by the blind trust Romney is required to use to hold investments. These attacks are anti-capitalist, class warfare attacks and further suggest fraud or tax evasion on Romney’s part.

3. Newt promoted a ridiculous conspiracy theory involving Romney trying to unseat Allen West, suggesting that Romney seeks to destroy the Tea Party.

4. Newt has recycled Rick Perry’s vile “heartless” attack for Romney’s stance on deporting illegal immigrants, a stance shared by all conservatives.

5. And vilest of them all, Newt has tried to inflame religious bigotry while smearing Romney as anti-religion. Observe. Newt began this smear by suggesting that Romney hate religious freedom:

“I think Governor Romney is extraordinarily insensitive to religious freedom in America and the Obama administration is clearly engaged in a war on religion.”

He then told Fox News that Romney made a decision to cut Medicaid funding for health services which would benefit Jewish and Catholic facilities. This was an attempt to both claim Romney didn’t care about religion and to imply that Mormons could not be trusted to protect other religions. And if you think I’m overstating that, look at how he repeated this on CNN:

“You want a war on the Catholic Church by Obama? Guess what: Romney refused to allow Catholic hospitals to have conscience in their dealing with certain circumstances. . . . Romney cut off kosher food to elderly Jews on Medicare. Both of them [Romney and Obama] have the same lack of concern for religious liberty. . . I’m a little bit tired of being lectured about respecting every religion on the planet, I would like [Romney] to respect our religion.”

Note that Newt singles out a war on Catholics and Jews and then finishes with the suggestion that Romney is not a Christian and that he would protect other religions, but not Christianity. What Newt is doing here is playing on the religious bigotry of fundamentalists like Robert Jeffress who still view Mormonism as a non-Christian cult.

Gingrich then issued a truly despicable robocall claiming that Romney forced Holocaust survivors to eat non-kosher foods:

“As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney vetoed a bill paying for kosher food for our seniors in nursing homes. Holocaust survivors, who for the first time, were forced to eat non-kosher, because Romney thought $5 was too much to pay for our grandparents to eat kosher. Where is Mitt Romney’s compassion for our seniors? Tuesday you can end Mitt Romney’s hypocrisy on religious freedom, with a vote for Newt Gingrich. Paid for by Newt 2012.”

When confronted about this robocall, Newt denied having any knowledge of it and incredibly then said, “You might check and see whether the accusation is true.” Note the lack of condemnation of the call and, more interestingly, his adoption of the message.

This is all despicable and will not only dampen conservative support for Romney, but will hang around his neck in the general election and throughout his Presidency. These aren’t policy disputes, they are bigoted smears and slanders.

And it’s not just smears against Romney which are the problem. Indeed, Gingrich has been busy reinforcing generations of leftist attacks on the foundations of conservatism:

● His attacks on Romney’s wealth and investments and Wall Street bankers have been anti-capitalist.

● His attacks on Romney’s immigration policy play right into leftist claims that conservatives hate immigrants and are “heartless” on the issue.

● His attacks on Mormonism feed fundamentalists who oppose all but their own sects.

● His attacks on the Republican establishment, particularly his false description of them and the conspiratorial nature of his attempt to claim victimhood, widen the gap between Tea Partiers and the Republican party, again splitting natural allies.

● He undercut conservative attempts to reform Medicare and Social Security (the Chilean model), and on the flat tax.

Moreover, Newt’s surrogates are smearing anyone who disagrees. Ann Coulter, Jonah Goldberg, and George Will, all solid conservatives, have been labeled RINOs. Elliot Abrams, who pointed out that Newt is lying about supporting Reagan in the 1980s and produced copies of Newt’s attacks on Reagan from the Congressional Record, where Newt did things like call the Reagan Administration “a failed presidency,” was smeared by a Newt surrogate who suggested with no proof that Abrams was lying because he had been offered a job in the Romney administration. Another Newt surrogate smeared Matt Drudge, who does more to help conservatives than a million Newts combined, for “bias” and “being in the tank for Romney.” Etc.

In a world where liberals already smear conservatives in this manner, and thereby try to rob them of their credibility, conservatives should never give aid and comfort to liberal smears. Yet that is what Newt is doing. He is systematically burning key conservatives and conservative principles to the ground and insanely destroying the foundations of conservatism all in the name of his own aggrandizement.

Further, Newt told us last night exactly what kind of administration he would run if elected. He demanded that the Republicans in Congress give him things that cannot be delivered, i.e. a repeal of ObamaCare on the first day, and he made it clear he would lump Republicans and Democrats into the same group and fight them all if he didn’t get his way.

This troll must be stopped.

Finally, let me say a word about Herman Cain. Cain endorse Newt this week. I find this extremely disappointing. When Cain left the race, it was clear he would endorse Newt because he and Newt are friends. But Cain didn’t do that. Instead, he created this rather corny, but oddly genuine political theater of endorsing the people. This rekindled the Tea Party’s love for him and was enough that they picked him to give the Tea Party response to the State of the Union.

Implicit in all of this was that he would represent the views of the Tea Party. As such, he should have worked to make sure each of the candidates acknowledged the Tea Party and agreed to address its concerns. Endorsing Newt (or anyone) was a violation of trust. This was like being appointed commissioner of a sports league and then cheering for one team. Cain should not have done it and should apologize for it now. You’re better than that Herm.

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(Un)Exempting Churches From Gay Rights Laws

One of the concerns religious groups raise whenever they are confronted with gay rights laws is that they will be forced to condone something they consider immoral. “Nonsense!” say the proponents of these laws, “we’ll exempt religious organizations from the law.” Well, England has now shown exactly what those exemptions are worth, and churches are right to be concerned -- especially since British leftism eventually infests our left as well.

Some time ago, England passed laws forbidding discrimination against homosexuals in hiring. At the time, those laws included an exemption for religious groups that consider homosexuality immoral. In the past month, the British Labour Party has tried to pass a law “clarifying” those exemptions. What they tried should send up huge red flags to anyone who thinks that people have the right to maintain their own beliefs.

Specifically, Labour tried to pass a law that expanded the anti-hiring-discrimination laws to all aspects of religious organizations, except for the hiring of clerical personnel. That's right, everyone except the actual priests, ministers, rabbis, shamans or imams.

Calling this a “cautious aim” and “fairly modest,” The Economist said:

“[The government] was not questioning the right of religious bodies to follow their own beliefs when hiring priests or imams; it merely wanted to clarify that, in recruiting for non-religious jobs (accountants, for example), churches must obey the law and refrain from discrimination against gays.”

Oh, is that all? So churches have the right to their beliefs, but they can only exercise those rights in rare occasions -- when it comes to choosing actual priests. For all other jobs, they need to follow the beliefs established by the government, instead of their own?

Does anyone see a problem with this? The Economist surely doesn't because they don't really believe churches should be doing this. But I wonder how they would feel if we looked at this principle more broadly. Indeed, while we’re busy defining when you can and can’t exercise your beliefs, why stop with sexual orientation? Why do we allow religious discrimination for example? Shouldn't we force churches to hire atheists? So long as we don’t require them to hire atheistic priests, then we aren’t really questioning their right to follow their own beliefs, are we?

No doubt The Economist would approve of that because they have over the years shown a pretty clear dislike for Christianity. But Christianity isn't the only religion. Maybe we should force Mosques to employ Jews and Synagogues to hire Muslims? I can't see why this would be a problem so long as they were free to pick their own imams and rabbis?

By the way, if you think this can't be a problem, let me point out part of an argument before the Supreme Court this week. In a case where the court is deciding whether universities can ban Christian groups who refuse to admit gay members, one of the justices asked the representative for the gay group: if we don't let the Christian group control its own membership, what keeps others who disagree with their views from flooding into the group and voting themselves into the leadership and, basically, taking over the group? The answer: well, they could go form a new group if that happened. Seriously? Ok, let's run with that...

With that in mind, let's not forget that these laws apply well beyond religious institutions as well. So shouldn't gay groups be forced to hire devout Catholics and Muslims. . . except for their most senior positions of course. Though, now that I think about it, I'm not even sure why we should exempt their senior positions as those aren't "religious" positions, are they? And while we're on a roll, why shouldn't pro-abortion groups be required to hire devout Roman Catholics? Shouldn't feminist groups be required to hire devout Muslims? And if not, why not. . . as The Economist says, it’s not like this will interfere with their beliefs. And if they don't like it, they can just go form another group, right?

Seriously, this shows the left’s promises for what they are: lies. They promise an exemption and then quickly redefine the exemption into absurdity and then eliminate it all together.

It also show the danger of letting the government decide what you can believe and when you can act on those beliefs. If we take this law seriously, then no group can be safe from a determined opposition seeking to infiltrate the group and destroy its message. . . all sanctioned with the force of law.

If you believe, as I do, that people have the right to their own beliefs, be they right, wrong, stupid, offensive or otherwise, then this is the sort of thing that should scare you: the government telling you when you can and cannot exercise your beliefs.

And if these things do happen, then activists on the right should get their resumes ready. It's open season on leftist interest groups!


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“We’re more popular than Jesus!”

In 1966, John Lennon uttered the above-phrase to a good deal of consternation worldwide. Now a Danish newspaper has gone one further: “Obama is, of course, greater than Jesus.” Wait till you read this. . .

During the election and shortly afterward, a great many losers on the left (if that isn’t redundant) came to see Barack Obama as a religious figure. They spoke of him as a god and genuinely seemed to expect Obama to use supernatural powers to remake the world. Of course, that didn’t quite work out, and, by now, even his most ignorant supporters seem to be struggling with the idea of the Messiah who couldn’t. . . or wouldn’t.

So it was rather strange when, last week, the second largest newspaper in an obscure country called Denmark choose to compare Obama to Jesus. Indeed, in one of the most bizarre and poorly reasoned articles this side of the comments section at Huffpo, the Danes lay bare their incredible power of self-delusion and declared that Obama has a greater legacy than Jesus. Let’s take this one piece by laughable piece:

The article starts by offering a Bible-worthy description of Obama:

He is provocative in insisting on an outstretched hand, where others only see animosity. His tangible results in the short time that he has been active – are few and far between. His greatest results have been created with words and speeches – words that remain in the consciousness of their audience and have long-term effects. He comes from humble beginnings and defends the weak and vulnerable, because he can identify himself with their conditions.

Oh brother. He insists on an outstretched hand? Could they mean to beg China to keep buying his debt? Or perhaps they mean his penchant for obtaining bipartisan agreement? Or maybe they meant the way he didn’t prejudge the Honduras situation?

As for his words “remaining in the consciousness”. . . riddle me this: give me one single Obama quote. Seriously, what has this man ever said that anyone remembers?

But the Danes sure are right about his humble beginnings. Harvard is certainly a humble place, full of the downtrodden. And they’re right about his defending the weak and vulnerable too, if by “weak and vulnerable” they mean HUGE international banks stuffed to the gills with bankers who earn seven figure bonuses. Yep, he sure helped those needy souls.

Next the Danes go in for a little historical revision:

For some time now, comparisons between [Jesus and Obama] have been a tool of cynical opinion that quickly became fatigued of the rapture that Obama instilled prior to and after the presidential election last year. From the start, Obama’s critics have claimed that his supporters have idolized him as a savior, thus attempting to dismantle the concrete hope that Obama has represented for most Americans. The idea was naturally that the comparison between Jesus and Obama – which is something that the critics developed themselves – would be comical, blasphemous, or both.

Yeah, that’s right. It was the right that made the morons on the left speak in messianic tones. Indeed, I personally recall brainwashing a couple of the little darlings into calling Obama “God” and gushing about the tingle up their legs. Yep, that was me. Heck, I probably even made the Danes write this article.

Next, the Danes go beyond historical revision and just substitute fantasy for history:

If such a comparison were to be made, it would, of course, inevitably be to Obama’s advantage.

Really? Obama comes out better than Jesus in a head to head comparison? I can’t wait to hear this. Let’s start with Obama’s ‘accomplishments’:

Despite all the compromises, it has finally been possible to ensure something so fundamental, as the right of every American not to be financially shipwrecked when their health fails them. Add to that the biggest ever financial support package in America’s history, a major disarmament agreement and the quickest-ever re-establishment of American reputation.

Alright my little Danish friends, enough of your Obamanography. First, there is no disarmament agreement. There is an agreement to agree to some nuclear weapons cuts -- far less than were achieved by Ronald Reagan by the way. And, interestingly, while this Danish Messiah dithers the current treaty has expired and the Russians are talking about building new missiles. So contrary to the Danes' assertion, their God is on the verge of creating a nuclear arms race. . . not to mention the one already going on in Korean and Iran that he’s failed to address.

Secondly, that financial support package went to huge banks. . . banks that didn’t need it. . . banks that paid their officers and directors seven and eight figure bonuses with that bailout money. Is that the achievement they’re touting? Oh, and the health care “reform” -- if I may paraphrase my favorite Spaniard, “that reform, I don’t think it means what you think it means.”

And they think that’s better than Jesus huh?

On the other hand, we have Jesus’ miracles that everyone still remembers, but which only benefited a few. At the same time, we have the wonderful parables about his life and deeds that we know from the New Testament, but which have been interpreted so differently over the past 2000 years that it is impossible to give an unequivocal result of his work. Obama is, of course, greater than Jesus – if we have to play that absurd Christmas game.

Give me a break. Now I’m not as historically ignorant as the people of Denmark, but I will try to keep this on a very simple level so as not to frighten any readers from Denmark with too many things of which they are so clearly, deeply ignorant. But here goes. . .

Whether you believe Jesus is the son of God or not, the fact remains that Jesus was a philosopher, much like Plato or Aristotle. Plato and Aristotle gave us ethics. Jesus gave us compassion. He introduced a way of thinking that fundamentally reformed the way the Western World thinks and behaves. At the time, the Romans (like most societies of the era) believed in might and power, and engaged in human sacrifice, blood sport, and blood rituals. Sympathy, empathy, charity, sharing were all considered signs of weakness. Jesus changed that with his words. Which is a heck of a lot more than Barry’s ever done with his.

Jesus’ words directly or indirectly led to the creation of all that liberalism that the Danes take for granted today. Christianity is directly responsible for the creation of hospitals, for the idea that helping the poor is a good thing, and for many of our ideas about charity and community. Christianity gave the West an impulse to work together to help our neighbors rather than to fight for the supremacy of our tribes. What has this Danish Messiah Obama done to compare to that? A few billion dollars handed to rich bankers?

Moreover, the criticism that bad things were done in Christ’s name is as ridiculous as blaming unethical conduct on Aristotle. And if we want to play that game, the Christians have already taken responsibility for most of what was done in the name of their religion. When will the Danish God “Socialism” apologize for the hundreds of millions of people butchered in its name during the Twentieth Century?

The truth is that without Christianity, the world would be a much nastier, darker place today. Without Obama, it would be a better place. A world without Denmark. . . no one would notice.

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The Democratic Party Alliance

Last week, we discussed the composition of the Republican Party. Today it’s the Democrats. Whereas the Republicans are unbalanced, the Democrats are dysfunctional. The Democratic Party really is not a party at all, it’s an alliance of angry tribes or gangs. Indeed, they have no guiding philosophy, instead, they have an agreement to support each other’s grievances. This lets them remain competitive in elections, but makes it impossible to govern. Read on. . .

The Democrats like to claim that they are the party of Jefferson, of FDR and of JFK. Technically, this is true, but Jefferson, FDR and JFK would all be horrified at what the Democratic Party has become. Remember Reagan’s famous quote, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, it left me.” He’s right.

At one point, the Democratic Party represented middle class America and its values. It stood for limited government, state’s rights, free trade, and patriotism, and eventually a public safety net. But that changed.

Beginning with Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic Party began to break apart. Instead of a unified party representing working Americans, the party membership began to break into a balkanized collection of grudgeholders. In place of middle class, working Americans, you suddenly had militant unionist, violent peaceniks, privilege seeking civil rights activists and gender-obsessed feminists. The 1968 Democratic Convention riots were merely a hint of things to come.

By the 1980s, the Democratic Party had changed forever. No longer would it defend traditional American values from a liberal perspective. Instead, the Democratic Party became an alliance of hateful tribes, each seeking to have their grievances ensconced into law. If there was a unifying theory to the party, it was the desire to use government power to take from those who have.

In 1992, Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council tried to pull the party back from the brink. They tried to pull the party away from its worst extremes, to get it to recognize the benefits of capitalism and a social policy based on something other than identity politics and spite. But those who hate are blind, and Clinton’s efforts failed.

Today there is no party left and there is no Democratic philosophy, there is only the alliance and the demands of its groups. Under their Faustian bargain, each group within the alliance agrees to vote for the pet projects of the other members in exchange for getting their own pet projects approved. But there is no agreement on a general party philosophy. And if you want proof, ask yourself when was the last time you heard a debate about “what the Democratic Party should stand for”?

As it stands right now, the following four groups dominate the party leadership:

• Unions. The most powerful gang within the Democratic Party are the unions. Even though they account for only 7% of private sector workers (12% if you include government workers), more than 25% of Democratic delegates are union members. Moreover, unions provide the manpower needed for get-out-the-vote campaigns. Of all the unions, the most powerful are the teachers. Hence, you will never see genuine education reform from the Democratic Party. Unions are concerned with overturning right to work laws, bailing out unionized companies, opposition to free trade, and transferring health care obligations to the taxpayer.

• Blacks. The second most powerful group within the Democratic Party is the black lobby, though their influence is fading. When they originally rose to prominence within the party, they did so on the basis of the moral authority of the civil rights movement and on their ability to deliver 90% of the black vote. However, having obtained affirmative action in most matters and having guaranteed the continued flow of public assistance dollars, there is little left that this group seeks to achieve except remaining in power and enriching themselves. They remain powerful because of their ability to deliver large numbers of voters and their ability to agitate their voters by fanning the flames of racism and victimhood. Though their lack of goals, the realization that black voters will vote Democratic even without guidance, and the fact that the percentage of blacks in the population is shrinking are all diminishing their influence.

• Professional Women. This is the third most powerful group within the Democratic Party. This is the group that evolved from the feminist movement. While they claim to speak for “women” they in fact speak for upper class, white, single, professional women. The issues that concern this group now are almost exclusively keeping abortion easily available, ensuring that women gain access to private mens clubs, board room representation, and competing with blacks for set asides.

• Big Business. Fancy meeting you here? The biggest givers to the Democratic Party year after year are bankers, lawyers, technology companies and defense contractors. And even though the Democratic Party repeatedly attacks “the rich,” “Wall Street” and “Big Business,” Big Business’s money is well spent on people like Christopher Dodd, Barney Frank and Joe “the Senator from MBNA” Biden. If you ever want to see an interesting correlation, look at the stocks Nancy Pelosi owns and the legislation she introduces (as compared to the things she says). Big Business actually fits more easily within the Democratic Party, e.g. fewer conflicts, than it does within the Republican Party.

These groups control the leadership, yet they have little power to set the agenda. Indeed, because the Democratic Alliance isn’t large enough to create a consistent majority, the alliance as a whole is subject to being held up by even the smallest member -- in many ways it is like a parliamentary government that can be held hostage by the smallest coalition member. This gives an incentive for each member to hold out in hopes of getting more of their agenda put in place. This, naturally, results in infighting and stagnation. It also means that there is little will to create an agenda beyond the individual grievances because the effort will only result in more hold up attempts. Thus, each group sticks to its most important issues.

This is the reason the Democrats have such a hard time governing. Unlike the Republicans, who have a general intellectual founding and fight at the edges, the Democratic Alliance has agreed to work together to achieve the edges, i.e. each of their pet issues, but they cannot agree on general intellectual principles.

Here are the other groups that form the alliance:

• Jews. A few years ago, Jews would have been listed above. Not only do 87% of Jews vote Democratic, but 13% of the Senate and 9% of the House is Jewish, despite being only 1.7% of the general population. Moreover, they represent some of the wealthiest districts (i.e. donors) in the country. However, a rising anti-Semitism on the left, particularly aimed at Israel, is causing their influence to wane. This group’s primary concerns are ensuring that the United States supports Israel and opposing the mixing of Christianity and government.

• Gays. Although representing only 1-3% of the population, gay advocates have gained significant influence within the party because of their financial strength and their over-representation in government and the media. Gay groups are concerned with gay rights legislation, redefining marriage to include homosexuals, age of consent laws, incorporating gay “tolerance” into education, and obtaining partnership benefits. Their biggest opponents within the party are blacks who are uneasy with homosexuality and who object to the application of the civil rights analogy to gay issues.

• “Environmentalists”/Socialists/Internationalist. In the 1970s and 1980s, environmental groups like the Sierra Club gained significant influence within the Democratic Party. That influence has grown significantly. However, that influence has been hijacked by a new group of faux-environmentalists who are not interested in specific environmental goals, so much as they are interested in pushing socialistic policies and the surrender of United States sovereignty to international organizations.

• America Haters. This group likes to describe themselves as “pacifists,” but they aren’t. Pacifism has a long and principled place in American history. But these people aren’t part of that. Rather than supporting non-violence, this group instead cheers for American failure. They revel in the deaths of American soldiers, knowingly offer aid and comfort to America’s enemies, and clamor for things like war crimes tribunals against American leaders and soldiers. Yet, when the war is against a rightist regime, or is fought by Democratic leaders, this group becomes mysteriously silent. Jimmy Carter and Frank Murtha fall firmly into this group (as do many journalists). The goals of this group appear to be simply to interfere with American foreign policy when being implemented by Republicans, with the aim of eliminating America’s status as a superpower.

• Anti-Christians. This group should not be confused with atheists, as it includes individuals of many faiths as well as some (though by no means all) atheists. This group is obsessed with eliminating all traces of Christianity from the public sphere. And while they claim to be protecting the separation of church and state generally, they rarely complain about state sponsorship of non-Christian religions.

• Public Assistance Recipients. Public Assistance Recipients wield significant influence over the party even though they have no leaders. Their influence derives from three facts (1) they are the largest voting bloc within the party, (2) they have a single, easy to recognize demand -- getting the benefits “to which they are entitled” and ensuring that others don’t get more, and (3) they are loyal supporters of anyone who ensures that those benefits keep flowing but will turn on anyone who threatens to cut them off. Thus, while this group makes no attempts to participate in party leadership, they are extremely successful at getting the party to guarantee their demands.

There are others, but they haven't really gotten any power yet. In any event, this alliance is ungainly and unworkable. With each group having the power and incentive to hold the others up, it becomes virtually impossible for the Democratic Party to act.

Earlier in the year, many wondered why the left remained so angry even after the election of Obama and the clean sweep in the Congress. This is the answer. They were angry because the fighting had only just begun -- they had won the election but now they had to fight with each other to get what they wanted. It also explains why Team Obama doesn’t seem to have a coherent strategy and why his initiatives have faced such resistance even though the party has enough votes to ram through anything it wants.

Consider health care reform. Big business, the unions and the socialists want the government to take over health care, and want the tax payer to pay for it. So they demand a public option. But women, Jews, and gays, whose members are generally much wealthier than the general public and who already have health insurance, are concerned that they will lose the plans they have and will be forced to pay increased taxes to cover others. Thus, they oppose the public option. The Public Assistance Recipients didn’t care until word came out that their benefits (Medicare/Medicaid) would be cut, suddenly they became angry and concerned. Since any one of these groups has the power to paralyze the party, this created a stand off which the Democrats have yet to be able to resolve.

So what does this mean for us? For one thing, it tells us how insidious the Democratic “Party” has become. It also instructs us how to fight them. If you can peel off the right group or two, the entire structure collapses into in-fighting.

And you thought the Republicans had problems!

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