From The Files of Nefarious Newt

Normal Isn't

2012-02-08T13:06:00.002-05:00

The idea of "normal" is a statistical affectation. It is an attempt to take a large assemblage of disparate items and find some significant middle to them, that ties them all together into a neat package that can be leveraged to make "value" judgments. It is an imaginary line that runs through each and every grouping imaginable, placed there by outside agency, a wholly artificial yardstick against which each and every thing in the group is measured.

From statistics, the idea of normal has progressed into the realm of human society. When you have a group of numbers representing data points in a continuum, you can use those to find a middle, an average, a norm. Then you can place every number in relation to the norm, leading to "above average" and "below average," and "normal," where something varies very little from the mean. And if that works for numbers, why not people? It starts with physical, measurable characteristics: height, weight, percentage of body fat, age, etc. Gradually, it expands to more ephemeral and esoteric regions: intelligence, beauty, wealth, and the like. Soon, we speak of people only in terms of their relative "value," and just how far from "normal" they stand.

This process of measuring and charting and cataloging humanity can be shown to be the determining factor behind the basest of human interactions: spite, envy, bigotry, racism, snark, superiority, hypocrisy, lack of empathy, judgmentalism. Where some artificial "norm" exists, and where we choose to compare others to it, we set up the conditions for placing people in category we find desirable or undesirable. We reduce human beings to numbers, names, categories, and so on; we place ourselves above others through wholly artificial and self-serving measures. We act as if this is how it is supposed to be.

Over seven billion people inhabit the Earth and the genetic variation between them may be unbelievably small, but it leads to a rich and varied species that has come to dominate the planet like no other. If that seven billion can be reduced to any number, it is one -- one species. The individual variations that appear in each and every one of us are part of a pre-programmed inheritance billions of years old, that drives even a singular species such as ours to display as much diversity as possible, to allow for a greater chance at survival. No measure of such variation can lead to anything that resembles a "normal" human being; we must pursue a varied, divergent, and expanding course in order for humanity to survive.

There is no fractionating humanity. Like the picture that is made up of millions of dots, humanity is a species made up of billions of variations. The drive to create conformity, to place everyone in their box, to hold up some as paragons to be aspired to, is to go contrary to everything that gives our species its strength. Unity of purpose and breadth of vision are far greater reinforcements for our advancement as species, than attempts to anchor us to artificial measures that hold no basis in our evolution. Appreciation of our differences makes us human; anything else makes us mere animals.

Turning Bones To Dust

2012-02-06T11:05:00.000-05:00

The streets of Homs in Syria are slowly becoming caked in the blood of people whose only offense is that they prefer freedom to tyranny, as the tyrant shows his love for "his" people by showering them with a fusillade of rockets and mortars. Not unlike Libya in the recent past, a people seek to throw off the yolk of oppression, and are willing to fight if that is their only recourse. But there is fighting for freedom and then there is being an animal penned for the slaughter, and right now freedom lasts only as long as the whistling shriek of the shells.

The Syrian government refuses all calls to remove itself from power. Any deals brokered to do so are quickly cast aside or forgotten. The Arab League seems powerless to act. Certain members of the United Nations obstinately refuse to acknowledge the dying shrieks that ring forth amid the shuddering blasts that fill the town. Condemnation is rife, but action is nigh invisible. No sanctions, no blockade, can shield a populace from the hellish fury of a dictator bent on retaining power.

It is perhaps incumbent upon the United States to once more be forced to take the lead, as it is ever so. Surely, there will be nattering in many corners by some, who will first chastise us for doing nothing then chastise us again for taking action. But, do we dare stand idly by and let innocents suffer? No one has ever handed us a badge, but many have looked to us in the past to take up the mantle of protector of freedom and defender of liberty. There can be only be hand-wringing in engaging in another conflict, but there can be no peace while blood is spilled in the name of tyranny.

What to do? We must come to a decision soon. Where we wish to keep the sword, we do so with the tacit knowledge that we will be called upon to wield it. We must be unwilling, we must be reticent, lest we become enamored of our power, but the time comes when other considerations must be laid aside and the greater good must step to the fore. We cannot allow people to die where we can do something to stop it. Let it be that we take action now, and when it is done, take that same energy of destruction and turn it to energy of construction. A people cry out; how can we not answer?

No Longer In The Pink

2012-02-03T14:43:00.000-05:00

Breast cancer is a scourge. It can, unchecked, eat away a woman's dignity, as well as her life. Like so many chronic, noncommunicable diseases, there is no cure, only treatment, and the treatment is sometimes worse than the disease in debilitation of the body and depression of the mind.

Sadly, I have been privy to the monster's ravages, both within my family, a friend's family, through an associate of my wife, and through the glimpses brought to light by people I follow on social media. Something which I had thought of in the abstract, has become only too clear and terrifyingly close to me in recent years, like a tide advancing and eroding the barrier between my quiet life and the bedlam of the raging sea.

So, when Susan G. Komen For The Cure decided to pull its funding of breast exams at Planned Parenthood, due to a "policy change," thereby depriving women of limited means access to critical health care, I became incensed. And I was not alone.

The "policy change" was spearheaded by the fund's Director of Policy, and stated that the fund would pull its funding from any organization or program that happen to come under investigation by authorities. Now, this would seem to be a prudent policy on the surface; no organization would want to be caught in the glare of publicity for funding another organization that might be engaged in malfeasance.

The trouble is, that the investigation that triggered the debacle, is less an "investigation" and more a "witch hunt," started by Rep. Cliff Stearns, who started it at the urging of -- of all possible groups -- an anti-choice organization, Americans United for Life, which claims Planned Parenthood has been using Federal funds for abortions, which is a violation of the highly contentious Hyde Amendment. The subtext is simple enough to decipher: anti-choice elements are attacking legal access to abortions by any means necessary.

Of course, enlisting the aid of Susan G. Komen for the Cure was not difficult; their recently hired Director of Policy happens to be a failed candidate for Governor of Georgia, Karen Handel, who ran her campaign with an anti-choice platform. The CEO and founder, Nancy Brinker, is a long-time associate of Republican causes, and was George W. Bush's Ambassador to Hungary as well as Chief of Protocol of the United States. The many and varied threads of this twisted narrative can be knit together into a fairly convincing picture of an organization throwing its weight behind the anti-choice cause, especially with the recent revelation that the foundation will also be withdrawing funding for stem-cell research.

Let it be said that as a private foundation, Susan G. Komen for the Cure is allowed to what it thinks are in its bests interests. Let it also be said that the foundation has done as much, if not more, than any group in raising the awareness of breast cancer. But, given the prominence of "cure" in the name, and the fact that so little (roughly 17%) of its money goes toward finding that cure, and its tortuous attempts to manage the dialog about breast cancer by throwing its weight around, this transparent move toward the politicization of breast cancer and aligning itself with forces that do not have women's health at the forefront of their interests, leaves us disgusted.

No woman's health -- or any person's for that matter -- can be, or should be, made subject to the whims of personal politics and false morality. The extent of the hypocrisy in the "right-to-life" movement is well known, and their obvious attempts to place women into involuntary gestational servitude are reprehensible at a minimum. That such groups would now attack a woman's health beyond the womb by such blatant means only causes them sink further into the fetid morass of their pseudo-morality.

And now, as if to finally acknowledge that perhaps they made a mistake, an "apology," and a promise to restore the current grants to Planned Parenthood. But... if you read the fine print (emphasis mine):

We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.

So, the foundation, watching substantive support drain away by the minute, attempts to appease its detractors, by making it appear that they have reversed course, where a semantic analysis tells us otherwise. There is no promise here, no guarantee. Perhaps, thinking that a few months from now the dust will have settled, this seemed an expedient course. Hindsight will, of course, prove them wrong.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure has lost its way. It is no longer -- if it ever truly was -- about a fight to end breast cancer. It is about appearance, reputation, gravitas, and power. It is about pink-coated gewgaws and tchotchkes, about guiding a narrative rather than supporting research, and exploiting a horrid disease in a self-indulgent and reprehensible manner. Slathering pink on things to peddle does not replace mammograms, breast exams, laboratories, and scholarships in biology and immunology. Effort and resources are better spent on the soldiers on the front line, than on the generals in the rear.

Will they learn from this? Only time can tell. It is up to those of us of good conscience to continue to apply pressure, lest Susan G. Komen for the Cure think they have weathered this particularly egregious storm. We must let them know that until they get their head out of the clouds and back into the game, the ill winds are still waiting for them, just beyond the horizon.

Giant Steps Are What You Take

2012-01-30T10:17:00.000-05:00

Newt Gingrich knows how to play to an audience, and in the upcoming Florida primary, there is no better group to pander to than the thousand along the Space Coast, home of Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. The roll out and roar of the Space Shuttles is now a dim and fading memory, and while commercial payloads and scientific exploration may still find harbor there, the heyday of America's spaceport seems to be behind it. Gingrich stood before them and proclaimed that he would put America back on the Moon, building a lunar colony in only eight years from the time he took office.

Bombast and braggadocio are Gingrich trademarks, and anyone who has any inkling as to what was required to even put Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin's boot-prints on the lunar surface in 1969, would have worked very hard to suppress a guffaw. Even with bits and pieces of previous promises percolating still trough NASA, to go from essentially a cold start to a full-blown lunar colony in eight years is a cup of tea even Jack Kennedy would have not dared to sip from.

Those of us who listened to the brash pronouncement could not also help note the timing, coming as it did during the week of NASA's Remembrance Day, when the space community and the nation pays respects to the crews of Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia. Their deaths are reminders that even the most noble goals come at a cost, a payment we must be willing to make if we are to continue the tradition of exploration that marks humanity's history.

Many pooh-poohed Gingrich's remarks out of hand, and how can you not? It was just another election-year promise, after all. Strip it, though, of an unreal timeline, unreasonable expectations, and self-indulgence, and the goal is not as absurd as one politician made it. After all, even before the creation of the Saturn V rocket, Werner von Braun had space stations and lunar colonies on his mind. It was his hope that the Moon program at NASA would not become a crazy, flash-in-the-pan leap to beat the Soviet Union, but would instead be a continuous and growing series of step to lead humanity into space. His dream was not realized, with political expediency pushing aside long-range thinking, and he would die a frustrated man.

Plenty of people still miss the point of the exercise. They will go on-and-on about the things undone on Earth, as if we cannot work on more than one thing simultaneously, and as if the technology built to accomplish such a goal would have no application here on the ground. They will go on about the waste of money, even though NASA's budget is a tiny fraction of the money spent on wars, subsidies, legal wrangling, and political campaigns. They will complain about how few will be able to make the journey, as if the Mayflower were comparable to the Queen Elizabeth II. There are a thousand reasons not to invest in a lunar colony, and only one reason why we should, but it is a big reason: survival.

Our home seems a solid, reliable, and vast place, but we are beginning to see that it is not so. Resources that seemed unlimited are approaching their limits. The systems that protect us are breaking down. The weather is slowly changing in ways we could not fathom a hundred years ago. We are only now realizing our total interdependence on even the most insignificant life forms and their by-products. As we look outward, we see a universe filled with not only wonder, but danger. Our planet is not invulnerable, it is not enchanted, it is not incapable of being done harm by any of a myriad of natural forces extant in the great spaces around us. Our species is not immortal, and right now, all our eggs are in the one basket.

Imagine if we could tap the Moon for its mineral resources, its energy, it's pristine conditions, and turn it into the workhorse that supplies us. Imagine no longer filling our skies with pollutants, our water with poisons, and restoring the natural environment to a level where it could support the teeming billions. Certainly this would not happen in fifty or a hundred years, but it will not start at all if we do not take the steps, even the first step. Every giant leap of humanity begins with but a single step, and that first step having already been taken, how long until the next? A virgin world awaits, if we have the willingness and the foresight to go.

Pointing Fingers

2012-01-27T13:51:00.000-05:00

When is it acceptable to dress down a President?

Never.

Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona has joined a long list of her Republican compatriots, who have sought, at one time or another, to grab a moment in the spotlight (Remember Joe Wilson?) at the expense of President Obama. An intemperate wag of a finger at the sitting President, over his disagreement with the contents of her book, and she has taken her rightful place if the Hall of Political Ignominy.

I will not belabor the point; what more need be said? Whether a finger wagged, an intemperate expostulation, or an ill-time interjection, it seems that, where during previous Presidencies, the "loyal" opposition was more than content to hurl objections from afar, this President has seen more legislators get at him in close quarters. These can be equated to the taunts of a bully, who would like nothing more than to have you take a swing, to justify the pummeling they have laid out for you in their mind.

President Obama will have none of it.

This man, this paragon of calm, with a demeanor as still and cool as an isolated, mist-shrouded tarn, stands before the world and takes every epithet, every rebuke, every lie, every racially-tinged word with an equanimity that actually enrages some, who would like nothing better than for him to fire back, cut people to the quick, go on the attack, and savage his opponents.

He is not that man.

If I am asked to point to only one attribute that makes this man more qualified to be President than any of those on the Republican side currently engaging in their circus sideshow, it is this: his comportment. The man can be strong, the man can be bold, the man can attack, but he does so on his terms, not those of his opponents. He is cool, calculating, and his vision ranges far ahead of those around him, certainly further than his opponents see. He is steeped in the big picture. He is unflappable and unerring in going beyond the moment to put words and actions in context. He is a silent disciple of Sun Tzu, playing governance at a level that leaves others swathed in the impenetrable murk of their own ignorance and foible.

He will not allow himself to be goaded. He will not allow himself to explode into pedantic rage. He honors the office he holds, as did its originator, George Washington, by keeping a level head, staying beyond the fray, and applying his power liberally, but carefully. He carries with him, not only the weight of American expectation, but the expectation and regard of a race, so long down-trodden and disregarded by the halls of power, they thought a day like this would never come. While he knows his place as regards his race, he also knows that to transparently bend to it at every turn would do his ground-breaking position damage and the race further disservice. So he fights for everyone, at every level, much to the chagrin of many.

His demeanor makes him the best man for the job. Gingrich is given to bombast, hyperbole, and reckless speech. Romney, at moments, cannot connect with his audience nor muster a smooth and coherent refrain he has not chanted a hundred times. Santorum is too busy proselytizing to recognize the ignorance he spouts as truth. Paul hearkens back to a time that exists only in his dim and diminished memory, where no one seems to have died of poverty and Jim Crow was certainly excusable. Only President Obama can keep his head about him, and has, even as a whole party has spent every moment since his Inauguration doing its level best to discredit him and work toward his dismissal, to the detriment of a nation.

Before you allow another thought to enter your mind, look at the body of work of those who seek to demonize the man, and ask yourself this question: just what are they afraid of? The answer is simple: they are afraid he will succeed. If he does, if he wins a second term, if he brings the nation back its dignity and prosperity, it will crush their long-cherished belief that he and those like him have no business being in power. It will be a staggering blow to the modern Jim Crow.

The Womb Of The Unknown Woman

2012-01-24T10:56:00.000-05:00

You did not know her, and if you did, you did not know of her. Her life appeared in the broad view of passing time as a smooth, flowing continuum, wearing a path through the world along well-worn channels, but the quantized fragments of that path at the level below the skin and behind the eye were an unknown universe of misery, heartache, doubt, and uncertainty. The end point of her journey was at a place and time unforeseen in the delta streams of motion through her life and the world around her, but that end point was no less certain for being unknown.

A point before the end came, and that moment was either quite well illuminated or somewhere in the murk of human interaction, but cell met cell, and triggered a sequence of predetermined events that, unchecked, would lead to an irrevocable altering of her life. The product of the merger of many functions collapsed into a certainty, and with that, a potential new being was formed, consisting at first, of undifferentiated bits, merely dividing and expanding to fill space, mindless and automatic. Straight replication gave way under coded signals and altered to become differentiation, and at this point, still an insignificant and insubstantial mass, it settled down in a new home, tapping into the environment surrounding it, and drawing on the power it found there, accelerated its growth.

She was pregnant.

The path from that initial moment to its the end point was not a given, ever. The fluctuations of energy and chemistry do not allow for pure certainty in a universe governed by quantum mechanics. At any point, the new cluster of cells, slowly growing, replicating, differentiating, could hit a wall, or take a path leading from the norm to a place that would leave it wrecked. No guarantee is given, no bargain offered.

That initial moment though, itself, was not the most important part of the story, but how it came about and the environment she was in when it occurred bore greater weight. It might have been wholly unintentional, this fusion of male and female reproductive packets. The odds are normally stacked against them meeting in the normal course of circumstances, in a manner conducive to the start of reproduction. It can happen though, at times not chosen or for reasons unfathomable, and leave a woman with a dreadful and life-altering decision.

So we do not know what happened, we do not know how it came to pass, and we could not see the day when the test came back positive and the hand reached to parted lips to tamp the escaping gasp of shock. We did not have an inkling of the rush of adrenaline and endorphins and neural activity, as the import of the moment became clear. We don't know the myriad paths her mind calculated, the thoughts that rushed hither and yon behind weary and wary eyes. We could not feel the rapid pulse, nor the hammering heart, nor feel the sweat beading upon her furrowed brow. We only know that a choice had to be made, and was, and given circumstances and the time, was committed to with great reluctance and trepidation.

Then she died.

Died in a room in a back alley.

Died of a coat hanger.

Died of an overdose, or many deep cuts, or a rope, or the screech of tires on pavement.

She died. Died because she was pregnant, with a fetus growing insider her, and a future shrinking outside her. Handed a surprise, a shock, unwanted or ill-timed, or worse, the production of a crime, but given her with no thought as to her welfare or wants. She died, because at that time, abortion was not a safe medical procedure, but a product of arcane arts, dark practices, folklore, and fear. To wish to terminate a pregnancy, no matter the reason, was a heresy and a blasphemy, compounding the evil of having sex out of wedlock or with someone not your betrothed. So, backed into a corner, she took matters into her own hands, took a course of action, and paid the ultimate price.

We have marked the thirty-ninth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that cast off the patriarchal power that kept women from being able to make choices about their sexual lives, by ensuring their right to accessible, legal, and medically-regulated abortions. Since that very moment, the patriarchal and self-righteous forces of rectitude have been struggling to put abortion back behind closed doors at the end of alleyways, or upon kitchen tables, or in shady motel rooms. They have sought to ensure that women are kept in perpetual reproductive servitude, working at every turn to strip women of their sovereign rights, rights granted them by the Constitution, itself, inalienable rights that when removed, reduce the individual to slavery. This will not, cannot, stand.

In the last year, Congressional and State legislators made it a mission, while the economy continued to slump and jobs were in short supply, to turn their energies toward further stripping women of their rights to bodily autonomy, as if by turning back the clock before 1973, suddenly America would be magically restored to prosperity and goodness. Spurred on by the full-throated roar of hundreds of thousands of sycophantic religious hypocrites, they wasted time and effort looking to block access to abortions, looking to place further restrictions on legal abortions, and trying to turn cells into citizens.

Abortion, like it or not -- and who can say they actually like the thing itself -- is here to stay. The problem is, in what form? Are we to return to the days of monstrous deaths at the hands of ill-trained butchers? Are we to promote the deaths of thousands of pregnant women from infection, internal injury, or disease? Is the product of a hit-and-miss reproductive system so much greater than the system itself, being that two gametes may never produce a viable embryo, but certainly a grown and fertile woman is already alive? Is a woman, already violated at the hands of a stranger or a family member, to be forced to bear the fruit of rape or incest?

It is very easy to stand at the sideline and pass judgment on a woman who has become pregnant, but ultimately, if we honor the freedom and liberty our nation was founded on and has codified in its highest laws, we must leave the decision to bear or not to bear a child to her. If individual liberty is the valued prize it is made out to be, we have no business trying to take it from women, no matter our intentions. If we believe abortion to be abhorrent, then it behooves us to do a better job educating women and men as to human sexuality and their responsibilities therein, to prevent it, where we can. To ban abortion is not to end abortion; it only serves to swell the ranks of the needlessly dead.

Blackout In The Age Of Information

2012-01-18T10:16:00.000-05:00

If you are reading this today, January 18th, 2012, then you are lucky. These words, saved on a server somewhere, accessible by typing a name into or clicking a link on your web browser, which sends a request to that server for the information over the various interlinked computers that comprise the Internet, are being displayed before you for your perusal, having survived an arduous journey at incredible speeds through various and sundry networks and via any number of different types of wires or conduits. To you, the user, the reader, it is virtually instantaneous, and you are left unaware of the sequence of events that must transpire for this information to reach your eyes.

As Arthur C. Clarke once noted (paraphrasing), any sufficiently advanced technology would appear as magic to us. No doubt, the Internet and all the things that are on it, appear to arrive magically at the window that sits before you now, with just a few mouse clicks or keystrokes or swipes of a finger on glass. Not unlike a car, the mechanics of what transpires do not enter in to our minds when we turn the key on the Internet. It is just there, ubiquitous, waiting for us.

What if it that were not so?

You will have not heard much about what I will tell you, perhaps because the principals involved tend to hold the keys to your information supply. Corporations that provide news and entertainment are up in arms about what they perceive as the "misuse" of their intellectual property, given the propensity of the denizens of the Internet to take the content there and share it, or rearrange it into new and even more interesting forms. To that end, these corporations, acting like petulant children, are prepared to take their ball and go home, or more precisely, prepared to force those who manage and run the Internet, the Internet Service Providers (ISPs), search engine managers (Google, Yahoo, etc.), and web content providers (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), to remove content based on their intellectual property, and block sites that use it without permission.

The bills are H.R.3261 -- Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and S.968 -- PROTECT IP Act of 2011 (PIPA). While I suggest you read them for yourselves, their density may make comprehension a bit difficult, but here is the gist of it: should either come into law, they will give intellectual property holders the right to force those companies that handle Internet content and its dissemination to remove content they consider a violation of their intellectual property rights, without so much as a warning. In essence, these corporations can turn off your access to information at a whim, whenever they feel like it.

You may wish to believe this is hyperbole, but it is the stone cold truth. The fact is, it is not terribly hard to block Internet content; at any point along the chain required to bring information from a server to your web browser, the signal can be cut off, dropped, or blocked. Your request for the information may never reach the server to begin with, leaving you with an error message and a corporation safe behind the walls of it information fortress, having successfully forced its Internet serfs to do its bidding.

At its most basic level, this is a direct assault against the First Amendment. Speech, in any form, cannot be censored where such censorship is enforced haphazardly and with malicious intent. And believe me, the ideas behind this, which seem reasonable enough to the common citizen when couched in the terms corporations would use, go to the very heart of what makes this the Information Age. These corporations seek to treat information as a commodity, to be regulated, bought, and sold. Now, it is not beyond the pale for the author or creator of a work to wish to profit from their labors; such is the essence of American values that we do protect intellectual property in the first place. However, with the rise of a globe-girdling, nearly-instantaneous communications network slowly wrapping itself around us, there comes a point where, once information, any information, has made it into the public sphere, control of it nigh impossible. This is not unlike the revolution created by the printing press, where suddenly great works could be cheaply copied and distributed to the masses. Of course then, the rapidity with which information was glacial compared to its speed in the Information Age, but the principle is the same... in theory.

The practicality of measures to prevent the unregulated spread of information via the Internet are absurd at best and constitutionally challenging. When one bit of information is put anywhere on the web, withing a very few minutes it may be replicated across the globe, outstripping any chance the author might have of controlling its spread. Information now moves at nearly the speed of light, and as such, can be bounded only by relativity. Any method a person can think of to control its spread, can be circumvented by another person similarly motivated.

So, we have these corporations, calling upon their duly paid-for lackeys in Congress, attempting to swat flies with a sledgehammer in the form of these bills. The metaphor is apt, because though one might hit the fly with such a prodigious weapon, there will be more misses than hits, and more collateral damage than dead flies. The impracticality and hubris behind this legislation is the hallmark of what a corporation can dream up, limited as they are in the areas of imagination and connection to reality. Believing their own press, they fully believe that they are masters of a world that passed them by long ago.

To put it simply, these bills seek to treat the creativity and inventiveness of the common citizen as a disease, and seek to treat the symptoms. The fact is, the old paradigms in publishing, writing, movies, and television no longer work. Slowly, the ice man and the milk man faded from the scene, and so, too, will the mega media conglomerate. Even now, people can publish their own works, write their own plays, film their own movies and skits, taking the control of content away from those who cling to it so desperately. Across the globe, citizens are learning to entertain themselves, and this scares those corporations that have made a living giving the people what they wanted to give us.

Today, across the Internet, many major web sites and quite a number of minor ones have gone dark. They do so, to illustrate how information may be taken from you and I, to point out that our ever expanding appetite for information can be choked off quite easily, if such bills are allowed to become law. It would only take a little thing -- a sentence fragment, a trademarked name, a piece of an image -- to allow some corporation to run rampant through the Internet and force the shutdown of sites simply because they felt their property was misused. It is the equivalent of holding Chrysler or Volkswagen responsible when one of their vehicles is used to commit a crime.

I implore you to take the time, learn what there is to learn about this, and then contact your legislators and voice your opinion. If, like me, you see this as an attack on our freedom of speech and the free flow of information, you must do your part to let our legislators know we will not stand for them caving in to corporate interests, no matter how much they received in campaign contributions from them. Freedom and liberty are more important at the end of the day, than the size of a corporate bank account.

Believe It Or Not

2012-01-17T20:57:00.001-05:00

It becomes clear that a great schism wracks human society with spasms of outlandish idiocy, foments titanic battles between groups of otherwise normal people, and leaves the foul stench of hypocrisy lingering on the breeze, like the wisps of Winter wood smoke. On one side, the fervent religious believers, who take their scripture to heart, using the very words to conjure up visions of how secular society will doom humanity to an ignominious fate. On the other, the rationalists, believers in unbelief, clad in the armor of science and pointedly against anything that even hints of human invention, determined to expose the machinations of religious zealotry in committing us all to a hideous fate.

I tire of them both. As usual, the answer to it all lies in between.

It is clear that fundamentalists in many of the worlds religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, to name the most prevalent offenders), use their "superior" knowledge of God's will and word to shake the air with exclamations of how blasphemous modern society is, for straying so far from them. The Ultra-Orthodox Jew spits upon a woman for daring to sit anywhere she likes on the bus, in contravention of "law." The Islamic fundamentalist has no trouble rallying followers to strap explosives upon their person and detonate them in the marketplace to punish those who do not abide their strict interpretation of the Qur'an. The Christian zealot has no trouble with the murder of an abortion doctor in the name of "saving lives." The number of examples are seemingly endless.

However, we must, as with all things, do our best to refrain from applying too broad a brush to converts and believers. No color, creed, gender, or orientation is so completely shot through with one type of trait as to make the whole irredeemable, much as we would like to believe it. Adherents of the word of Jesus Christ cannot be universally reviled, for many of us who believe in his words and deeds see them for what they are: examples of how to live a better life. Even the Dalai Lama, scion of Tibetan Buddhism, admonishes us to not run so quickly to one religion from another where we have not considered fully the lessons within the first.

Belief is a very touchy subject now, given how the advance of science over the centuries has peeled back the curtains to give us a glimpse of the mechanisms behind the universe we inhabit. Science has erased superstition and storytelling as viable explanations of everyday events. No longer are lightning bolts the weapons of Zeus, nor the whipping waves Poseidon's wrath. We now look warily at any story that seeks to explain a phenomenon, where there appears no rationality or logic behind it. The "old ways" no longer seem to have the same grip they did when humanity was younger and more ignorant of the magic just beyond our fingertips, below the surface of perception.

And still, we have not abandoned wholesale those old -- and sometimes primitive -- belief systems, not because we are incapable, but more because, like a well-worn sweater or family heirloom, we find some comfort in them. Science may be able to tell us the composition of the atom, or how the Sun converts hydrogen into the warm fingers of energy that tickle our skin, but it cannot answer the deeper questions of our lives: why are we here, what is purpose? Religion still purports to fill that role, and while sociology and psychology might tell us the whys and wherefores of human behavior, neither can put to rest the subtle and nagging questions that lie at the back of the human mind.

Some have, in this modern world, managed to divorce themselves from the need to have a ready-made system to help them cope with life and all its sundry disappointments and triumphs. For them, it is enough that they are, that they live, and that their choice to go without a stock belief system should be respected. Among them, as well, do we find zealotry, for it is not enough for some to have reached this state, without using such "enlightenment" as a sword with which to try and cut down those who still stand on the rock of their religious beliefs.

No matter which camp you call yours, the end result of this need to purvey the beliefs you hold, and to do so in contravention of the inherent right of the individual to hold onto whatever beliefs they choose, creates unnecessary friction at a time when peace is a precious commodity and the endless cycle of conflict on our planet seems like it will never cease.

There is a reason the Founding Fathers found it necessary to place both freedom of speech and of worship so prominently in the Bill of Rights; the First Amendment, which is held up often as the greatest expression of American freedom, set the tone for the nation. Their religious upbringing and beliefs being very different, being exposed to the ideas of the Enlightenment, and realizing the necessity for the rights of the individual to be guarded stringently, the Founders set forth in the First Amendment those things which would matter most to the growing country: the right to worship freely, speak forthrightly, and to do so without government interference.

So where we are given these freedoms, we must be reminded of the import of the statements in the amendment, for it is not enough that we be allowed the right to worship (or not) freely and of our volition, and to speak our minds on this and other subjects, but it must be recognized that such freedom is not a guarantee that our beliefs or our speech are in the best interests of all Americans. We must accept, if we are to have these freedoms, that a certain amount of hatred, bigotry, and intolerance will be shielded by them. We must also accept, for it is the core of individual liberty, that religious belief or non-belief is inherently an individual choice, irrespective of whether that belief is part of an organized structure or not.

It is not a case of Us vs. Them, for Us plus Them equals We, The People. If we must fight something, let it be the gross fundamentalism of so many, who, "knowing what is best for us," would seek to impose their belief structures on us unconditionally, in contravention of our individual liberty and freedom. Let us not turn this fight into an organized war on belief, itself; down that way leads to tyranny. The universe is vast, mysterious, complex, and foreboding. We understand it in only the grossest detail. Until our understanding reaches a deeper and more expansive level, there is still room for unsupported belief, where it is a candle in the darkness, awaiting the illumination that comes with the rise of knowledge.

Stop. Listen. Think.

2012-01-16T11:49:00.002-05:00

On this day, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the will be many an unfortunate attempt to turn Dr. King into something or someone he is not, or to claim a reading of his legacy as reality where it it lies far from actual fact. This is nothing new; it is an extension of the need of some in this society -- read, Caucasians -- to put their imprimatur on something.

While I, as a Caucasian male, may strive to interpret Reverend King's dream in terms that match my world view, and take from his words the motivation to create the world he envisaged, it is beyond my purview to interpret the events and happenstance of his life beyond my limited understanding of it. I was not a black person living under the thumb of Jim Crow laws in the South of the 1950' and 1960's. I was not subject to depredation and degradation of white Americans seeking to enforce an ignorant and bigoted view of the world. I certainly did not have to fear for my life simply walking down a street or staying at a motel.

Flash forward to the 21st Century and I still have no reason to fear. My privilege -- though I am not desirous of it nor wish to be party it -- still shields me, for fifty years is not enough time for centuries of inequity to be so simply erased, even by the powerful and righteous words of one black man. Though I strive to treat others as the human beings they are, though I work to eliminate the prejudices that society has attempted to build into me, though I try and live my life as an honest a decent man, I am no more subject to the vicissitudes of my race than any before me. I may live in poverty, I may lose my job, I may be required to make sacrifices to keep my family safe and warm, but no matter how badly my life may go, I will not have the added burden of fighting against stereotypical and bigoted behavior.

As such, while I may promote and hope to encourage the vision of a world that Dr. King revealed to me and others through his actions and words, I have no greater claim to know exactly what he went through to reach the point of that vision, nor can I truly understand the forces that shaped that vision for him. I cannot and should not assume that I can read the history of black Americans at that time and be able to fully commiserate with them in their misery and fear, no matter how palpable it may feel to me.

The legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. is not in the events themselves, but what caused the events to come to be and how the man responded to them, and how he encouraged others to respond to them. If I wish to be true to his legacy, it us up to me not to impose my will upon it, but to stop, listen, and learn. In that way, I can do my part to bring Dr. King's dream to fruition.

Dream Catcher

2012-01-16T09:42:00.000-05:00

There are no more words to adequately express the meaning of the life and death of Martin Luther King, Jr., beyond the billions already spoken by far greater luminaries than I. This man, this sweet, kind, gentle, fiery soul, has been at once enlarged and mitigated by the run of years from his heyday. A holiday bears his name, America's soul bears witness to his touch, but American society has not quite caught up with his dream. That a black man sits in the highest office in the land is not an accomplishment, but a step, one plodding footfall toward a higher and holier world that this black Southern preacher saw from his vantage point on the mountain top.

While he may continue to be lauded -- or reviled -- even to this day, it is not the man but his dream that should interest us more, for his revelation to us of his vision, a day when no person would be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, was just that: a dream. It was not a fully-formed thing sprung deep from within the recesses of a man's heart and soul, but a tapestry of the wishes and hopes and prayers of millions, woven into a transformative vision by this man's conviction and his belief in God. It was a thing built of the words and actions and history of the people around him, absorbed by every touch of a hand or every earnest conversation or every horrific scene of racial intolerance. The man took those skeins of human misery and hope and knit them into panoramic tableau, then shared it with us all, and we recognized ourselves in it even as his words spilled into the air.

It might be too much to ask that everyone who has heard his words has been so moved as to be changed at heart. In the pits of some, the darkness is too deep, and even the stirring words of a Martin Luther King, Jr. bring scant illumination. Many of us, however, have been transformed. We seek that world he showed us, a world where our humanity counts for more than the skin we were born with, the faith we were raised with, the gender we follow, or any of the myriad differences we impose on others. Having caught the dream is not the same as creating it, though; the vision outstrips reality, where no matter how delightful and empowering and righteous it seems, not all share our enthusiasm for its establishment.

On this day, let us remember the man who placed the hope for a more peaceful and just world at our feet, by doing what is necessary to pick up that hope, make it our own, and carry it forward. Though the man is no longer here to help carry the burden, may his spirit enrich us and help us to shoulder the load.

Losing Your Religion

2012-01-13T14:48:00.000-05:00

Her name is Jessica Ahlquist, she is 16-year-old, lives and goes to school in Cranston, Rhode Island, and is one of the braver people you will meet. Why? Because she dared to stand up and demand that the First Amendment be respected in her school.

The problem: a banner, hanging in Cranston High School West since 1963, which starts with the words “Our Heavenly Father” and concludes with the word, “Amen,” and is headed with the phrase “School Prayer.”

Ms. Ahlquist took exception to such a blatant Christian display in her school. She sued the school. And on January 11th, 2012, Senior U.S. District Court Judge Ronald R. Lagueux ruled in her favor, in a detailed ruling which outlined the genesis and the course of the banner and the subsequent public squabble over it. In the end, Justice Lagueux made it clear that the whole history of events pointed to a clear and distinct attempt to use Christian religion in a public school in a manner inconsistent with the First Amendment prohibition against government establish or endorsing a religion.

Perhaps it goes without saying, those of Christian faith have been less than charitable in their disagreement.

Justice Lagueux put it succinctly (reproduced from Opposing Views):

“The Cranston School Committee and its subcommittee held four open meetings to consider the fate of the Mural. At those meetings a significantly lopsided majority of the speakers spoke passionately, and in religious terms, in favor of retaining the Prayer Mural. Various speakers read from the bible, spoke about their personal religious convictions, threatened Plaintiff with damnation on Judgment Day and suggested that she will go to hell. The atmosphere was such that the Superintendent of Schools felt compelled to discuss his own religious beliefs at length when he made his recommendation to the Committee that they vote to retain the Prayer Mural.
“Similarly, five of the seven School Committee members expressed avowals of their own religious beliefs at the meeting, including two of those who voted against retaining the Mural,” Lagueux continued. “This is precisely the sort of ‘civic divisiveness’ that the Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause cases repeatedly warn against. When focused on the Prayer Mural, the activities and agenda of the Cranston School Committee became excessively entangled with religion, exposing the Committee to a situation where a loud and passionate majority encouraged it to vote to override the constitutional rights of a minority.”

In essence, as the only arguments for having a religious banner in a school were religious, this clearly violated the First Amendment.

This victory, however, takes on a Pyrrhic quality, as those people who identify themselves as "Christian" by word and ideal, have acted in a far less than exemplary manner, bombarding Ms. Ahlquist both before and after the ruling with egregious epithets, threats, and violent condemnation. The hyperbolic and irrational firestorm this has created, does not reflect well upon those who purport to be adherents of Jesus Christ, for among his admonitions was to love thy enemies, and still further, to treat everyone as human and worthy of respect. Clearly, many of these people who now wish hate and violence upon a 16-year-old girl may have skipped those passages in reading their copy of The New Testament.

This is another moment where religious zealotry rears up and proceeds to further infect our society with brutish intolerance and holier-than-thou self-aggrandizement. It was precisely this level of religious fervor that the Founding Fathers were attempting to inoculate our nation against by placing the idea of legalized religious tolerance in the Bill of Rights. By enjoining the Federal government against establishing a national religious movement or supporting one religion over any others, they made it clear that, no matter what they or any Americans to follow may have thought regarding God and belief and worship, a person's religious choice was that: their choice.

It was an artifact of the Enlightenment, which, far from dismissing religious belief out of hand, sought to codify the natural rights of humanity and put them in their proper place. Christian religion, which had dominated Europe and driven much of its history, both in its establishment of its own legitimacy and in combat against other religious movements, was put into its proper role as a personal choice. To be part of the larger structure of a religious organization was, nonetheless, no reason for the individual to be so subsumed in it as to lose their individuality. The Catholic or Protestant or Anglican or Muslim or Jew... while holding to a greater system of beliefs, makes that system their own, and subjects it to their own interpretation. Even further, faith, belief in God, or lack of belief in a higher power (atheism), could also be seen as a system of beliefs deserving of equal consideration.

Men of the Enlightenment, the Founding Fathers sought to ensure that religious tolerance was an absolute in the new American nation, not just a "good idea." They were not so far removed from the history of Europe and Britain that they did not understand the role of religious divisiveness in fomenting conflict between religious groups and nations. They refused to consider allowing such divisiveness a foothold in The New World, where they could prevent it from doing so.

This leads us to a 16-year-old girl, who, realizing the impropriety of a public institution endorsing a particular and obvious religious prayer not in the context of an educational forum, bringing a request before the American judicial system, which made the correct judgment based on the evidence. While many of religious bent would make her out to be a pariah, Jessica Ahlquist is, in fact, a patriot. We may bemoan the quality of American education at times, but it occasionally shows us that despite attempts to water it down, certain lessons invariably get through to those who are receptive. We should honor this child, for her willingness to step up and accept upon herself the ire that she knew would inevitably come, in the name law and justice, for that is the greatest measure of what it is to be an American: seeing what is wrong and setting out to change it. If there are more Jessica's out there, in our country, then I do not fear for this nation's future, as it will be in very good hands.

The Unbearable Continuation Of Bigotry

2012-01-12T09:54:00.000-05:00

Her name is -- as far as we know -- Taylor. She is -- apparently -- a Girl Scout. She is fourteen-years-old and is apparently concerned by the direction the Girl Scouts of America is taking, specifically with the admission last Autumn of a seven-year-old transgender child to a troop in Colorado. She is calling for a boycott of the sale of Girl Scout cookies, to send a clear message of disapproval over the inclusiveness that the organization is supporting by sanctioning such a move.

She is a bigot.

It's bad enough when adults, who have the benefit of a breadth of education and life experience, decide to treat other members of the human race as somehow misguided or alien or worse, subhuman; it's quite another thing to see such blatant intolerance for others spring up in the bloom of youth. With so much life ahead of them, planting the seeds of anti-social and anti-humanist thought and having them grow in such fertile soil is a bitter harvest waiting, indeed.

Bigotry is not something that springs full blown on its own, like a weed. No, for bigotry to appear in one so young is the work of someone actively sowing the seeds, perhaps reaping several crops. This is not some accidental discovery by a young person; they have been exposed to a constant blatter and bleating of thoughts and ideas that seek to take those who are different and disenfranchise them. Misguided misperception and blind ignorance have been spouted as if they are the word of god (and all too often, it is precisely from a religious source that such ideas stem), and a child has no critical filter by which to sieve the good from the bad.

Perhaps Taylor is in earnest. Maybe she truly believes that a transgender child has no business in the Girl Scouts. If she is adamant, if it offends her sensibilities, that it is her prerogative to have her say and leave the group. We would cluck our tongues and hope that, someday, when she has a greater font of experience to draw from, that her attitude would change. Yet, in making a video to place in the public sphere, calling on other like-minded individuals to attack the venerable institution of the Girl Scouts in the place it hurts them most -- funding -- in order to purvey her twisted idea of normalcy, she seeks to offend us and our human sensibilities. It is not enough for her to salve her conscience by resigning and deporting herself to ignominy; no, she must hurt others. She must try to cripple that which refuses to validate her bigotry.

This is where the actions of a child go from the simple unknowing schema of youth, to the planned and coordinated ignorance spawned by unmitigated fear of the wider world. Those who cannot divest themselves of the need to place others in societal compartments, who look with horror upon those things that break with long-outmoded but still prevalent beliefs, who are wont to deny another human being their inherent and natural rights, they salt the waters of youth to prevent tolerance and understanding from taking root.

A child steeped in bigotry, no matter how subtle and unassuming it would appear from the outside, is destined to suffer a poverty of empathy that will be difficult to enrich. When one has been taught over and over that things are "just so," that we do not question them, that those who say otherwise are simply misguided or lacking in true moral firmness, those layers and layers of farcical and antiquated thinking build up, the sediment of ignorance and intolerance, to be pressed into the firmer stone of distaste and disgust and disharmony. A child so weighted down by this sedimentary rock, cannot hope to break free of it of their own accord, and must somehow tolerate the slow erosion of a human society totally at odds with their backward thought, that it might one day provide the cracks and fissures to allow in the cool, clear flow of reason.

We can only pity this child, in the iron grip of something that is anathema to our humanity. We could certainly unload our ire on her, but that would be unfair and unwise, for it would simply confirm many of the lies perpetrated to convince her that she is in the right. We must make a stand, we must do what we can to counteract this, and we must make it clear that we hold her no malice. By showing her compassion and tolerance, no matter how wrong-headed we know she is, we can teach a more important and powerful lesson than those that seek to turn her into carbon copies of their bigoted selves.

Blind Squirrel

2012-01-11T11:12:00.000-05:00

Congressman Ron Paul of Texas has a unique ability to find the one thing you care about, speak to it, get you to rabidly follow him, all the while ensuring that you don't notice the full panoply of pernicious and quixotic positions he holds. His brand of what I term "Constitutional nihilism," combined with his ethical hypocrisy and Libertarian leanings should be enough to disqualify him from becoming county dog catcher, let alone President of the United States.

And yet, as we saw in New Hampshire, there are those who would boil out of the woodwork to worship at the feet of the man, as if he were some political messiah, sent to them by providence to restore the balance in government. They are attracted by the relatively healthy ideas he has, legalizing marijuana, stopping wars, etc., but most are none too familiar with his remaining cavalcade of rather troubling ideas, banning abortion, eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency, returning to the Gold Standard, etc. Perhaps, as is said, ignorance is truly bliss? To find a candidate who seems -- on the surface -- to care about the one thing you truly care about is enough for these people?

His obstreperous supporters aside, the litany of political claptrap that is the building material of the Ron Paul campaign platform, while snaring those who choose to focus on minuscule portions that warm their soul, is a wholly unsupportable and rickety mass with a limited lifespan outside the Republican/Libertarian womb. While he may have youthful enthusiasm on his side, it is aged guile that will be the undoing of his campaign. The 'Baby Boom' generation, now starting to reach the time of Social Security and Medicare, will not support someone whose intent is to dismantle those entitlements, no matter how much marijuana they would be allowed to smoke. The Military Industrial Complex will certainly not be in hurry to promote someone seeking to mitigate their profit flow through the cessation of American combat and non-combat involvement overseas. Decent, rational Americans, will not hand the reins of power to someone who talks about reducing the influence of Federal government, even as he is using it to force women into gestational slavery and removing the programs that have attempted to create equity in an inequitable, WASP-centered society.

In short, if you wish to be the leader of a Republic, stating that your avowed goal is to strip that Republic of everything that makes it worthwhile, and will do it in the name of the document -- the Constitution of the United States -- that is actually antithetical to your stated intentions, while reducing nearly seventy-five percent of its citizenry to second class status (if they are not, in fact, already there), invalidates your claim that you would make the best candidate for President. A Republic cannot -- and should not -- be run by a man whose stated intention is to tear it down. No patriot, living or dead, would stand for it.

The Glass Campaign

2012-01-09T13:23:00.000-05:00

I am unemployed, yet again. This is only really a failure on my part, to be in a field (IT) where the business model is to hire a "hired gun" to come in and do work until they are done or prove themselves incapable of working to the company's time-lines. I certainly don't blame the President of the United States for my fate -- he has little to do with whether companies actually hire or fire people, despite what you may hear in the popular media.

So as I while away the hours searching for work, fielding recruiting calls, answering questions, setting up interviews, I have the time to absorb the goings-on here in my home state of New Jersey, and the one thing that catches my ear is the constant talk of our Governor, Chris Christie, out on the campaign shilling for his Republican compatriot, Mitt Romney. Governor Christie's favorite subject at these events is President Obama and his "failure" as President, especially when it comes to jobs and taxes. To hear our Governor tell it, the President has single-handedly deprived the economy of labor and shackled the wealthy with draconian taxation in an attempt to keep killing jobs.

As you might have guessed from the title of this tract, those who live in glass houses...

Perhaps Governor Christie would like to explain the following: From October 2010 to November 2011, the unemployment rate in New Jersey went from 9.2% down to 9.1%., while during that same period, the U.S. unemployment rate went from 9.6% down to 8.6%. Of course you will say, it's apples and oranges, because how can one compare a State's unemployment problem to the general unemployment problem in the nation. However, when one claims that the business policies of the sitting President are failing, doesn't it behoove one to make such a declaration from a position of relative strength, rather than weakness? After all, the man Governor Christie is stumping for claims that as a private-sector employer he made jobs, while the President of the United States has lost jobs. Isn't that apples and oranges, too?

The fact is, that Governor Christie is one to talk. He has done little to bring unemployment down in New Jersey. Property taxes continue to increase, which further burdens a NJ housing market gutted by the financial crisis that started in 2007, and makes it more likely that more houses will go into foreclosure. The budget gap, though not as bad as when he took office, remains stubbornly large, mainly due to his inability to work with the State Legislature -- though to be fair, the State Legislature is too busy maintaining its system of patronage and kickbacks to care. In essence, Governor Christie has accomplished little that puts him above the President in stature; this is party politics at its finest.

The fact remains, that such statements as made by Governor Christie, Mr. Romney, Mr. Santorum, Mr. Paul, and others of that ilk, are not critically challenged in any serious fashion. The press seems content to roll cameras and recorders and take what candidates and legislators say verbatim, without attacking the underlying hypocrisy and self-aggrandizement with facts. The candidates surround themselves with loyal party retainers who stroke their egos and stack campaign events so that it seems that no one in their right mind would disagree with what is said. Even the "debates" that are held more resemble high school basement arguments than impassioned and level-headed discussions of critical topics. Candidates are wrapped in such cocoons of self-congratulation that mere facts cannot pierce them.

Elections are no longer about the actual qualities of a person or their accomplishments or their beliefs, but are about what sells them to the electorate. Elections have become glorified year-end car sales, Black Friday specials where goods are unloaded regardless of cost to generate the appearance of value and of consumption. Slick packaging and manageable chunks of misinformation that can be gobbled up by an attention-span-deficient citizenry flood the airwaves, substituting rhetoric for reality. Obfuscatory mantras are chanted at every stop, repetition being the surest way to flood the short-term memory and wedge malarkey firmly into sycophantic synapses. A modern campaign is a political weather vane, twisting and turning with each new breeze, to keep the candidate pointed directly at the people that will vote for them, no matter how contradictory current statements are to prior ones.

Ask yourself a question: if the President is such a failure, why hasn't the nation collapsed? For America is only as strong as its President, and a weak one condemns us to be lashed by forces we cannot command or contain. Yet unemployment is slowly falling, the economy is slowing gaining strength, and as Europe falls apart at the seams, the United States continues to shrug off the vicissitudes of the global economy's shuddering. Clearly, we are not free of the precipitous drop we stood on the edge of in 2008, but we have taken several steps back from it. How can this be categorized as failure?

It is clear that the Republicans now seeking to turn President Obama out of office are whipped into a lather that blinds them to the reality of the situation they are in. As each month passes and America recovers that much more, they must press every button they can to convince voters that only they can successfully save us from ourselves. It will mean turning over every stone, looking for the unenlightened and ignorant, stuffing their ears with tired, fabricated tropes, and hoping there are enough of them to counteract that vast number that will be able to synthesize reality from the muck that is campaign politics. They act as if victory is assured, because to do otherwise might expose the fact that the Emperor has no clothes.

It would behoove Governor Christie, if he has any hope of higher office in the future, to return to his desk and work on solving New Jersey's problems, and not to stay hitched to the Romney train, lest he be caught in the derailment. The time will come before long, when Romney -- or possibly another -- will have to answer to the full weight of Americans and the President, and getting caught in the shower of glass that follows will not be pleasant.

Editorial Note

2012-01-08T11:36:00.000-05:00

If you've wondered at the relative scarcity of posts here, it can be chalked up to the vicissitudes of life, the exigencies of maintaining home and providing for family, and the fact that writing is hard to accomplish in a whirlwind atmosphere. As events unfold, I am stirred to write, but often cannot find the time or peace to allow me to do so as coherently and cogently as I wish. I prefer to put out a quality product rather than simply throw up words in a fit of pique or as rage or dumbfoundedness consume me.

One thing I have meant to do, and have decided to start this year, is a compilation I hope to put into book form, on the problems of our nation, and how many groups are working to leverage an ill-educated electorate to hand them power on a level that was never meant by the Founding Fathers. It is my intent to outline where America came from, the real motivations of our founders, and how we have managed, subtly and with ill-considered judgments, allowed their vision to be corrupted in their name.

I have named my effort Defending Liberty, Defeating Idiocy, and it is my intent to undo, in whatever way I can, the rush toward the chasm that stands before us, a chasm formed by allowing power-mad political parties and self-described political soothsayers and corporately-run media outlets to chip away at the bedrock of our nation. It is an attempt to set right the misperception that there is something wrong with our nation, that those who know what's best for us intend to put right at the expense of the very thing they choose to venerate: the Constitution of the United States. It will also be my way of showing what is actually wrong with our nation, and how our energies are being spent in such a scatter-shot and ineffective fashion that we stand on the brink of wrecking the best nation in the world and the best hope for humanity, all in the name of what is "right."

So, I enjoin you to read my new efforts, and to continue to read my writings here, for there are still things happening that require addressing regularly, especially now that we are in a Presidential election year. Honest, decent Americans all, we must continue to be vigilant, for the same forces that have been operating to secure a stranglehold on political power in this nation will use this election to tighten the noose, if we do not continue our efforts to cut the rope. Stay informed, my fellow countrymen, that we may continue to enjoy the blessings of liberty.

Turn The Page

2012-01-02T10:54:00.001-05:00

The Earth turns about its axis, pirouetting through its orbit about the Sun, which swings its partners in their reel about the center of the Milky Way galaxy, which itself waltzes among its brethren in the local group, part of the march of galactic clusters that mark the expansion of the universe. The whole elaborate dance in choreographed by the forces of nature, by physics seen and unseen, in a whirl of motion so complex, it defies comprehension.

That we tie our short and relatively insignificant lives to the patterns and rhythms we see around us, from the rising and setting of the Sun, to the monthly sweep of the Moon through the sky, and the procession of our world in its orbit, is only natural. Through millions of years of evolution, as our distant ancestors worked their way up from simpler organisms, the change of seasons, tides, and environment drove their continued transformation into the species we are today. That we hearken back and carry around those predilections, that the changing Earth is both without and within, is a truly remarkable thing.

The calendar is a means to somehow make sense of our place on Earth, to allow us to anticipate what is to come. It is meant as a tracking device, a reminder, a measuring stick, to give us some sense of proportionality to the motion of our lives through the life of our living world. In recent decades, it has become less a celebration of continued life and more a harbinger of doom, as people see in it portents and prophecy that spell the end of humanity.

We have lost touch with the fact that the calendar is an artificial construct; we chain ourselves to it and the measures it provides, as if each moment is somehow etched into the fabric of the universe. The idea of fate speaks of skeins woven into life that cannot be altered, only revealed in turn; free will tells us that our path through life is unwritten, only bounded by the slipping of each moment through the hourglass, beyond our reach if we do not take it up as it happens. The calendar is the marker of regret, passion, success, pity, longing, belonging, and the myriad emotions tucked away inside is. We travel along its linear confines, not by some trick of mechanics, but impelled by our own thoughts. Each page that turns is the physical representation that tells us our life is "slipping away."

That the mechanisms of the unfolding universe operate on some level that requires a means of tracing a path and that this tracing is often thought to be temporal, we become slaves to the ephemeral. No one "feels" the advance of time as a force or physical object. Within us, we do not notice the change we undergo overtly, only chancing to take it in when we look in the mirror or take part in conversation or look at the numerals on the calendar and begin to do the unconscious sums in our mind. We rail against our march along time's path, we seek to slow it down, alter it, avoid it, or paper it over, convincing ourselves that we are somehow better for not having "aged."

Age, we must. It is an inevitability and we are condemned to it by the laws of physics, mainly the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which tells us that all attempts to create order out of chaos are futile, because entropy is the engine of disorder and we cannot separate ourselves from it. We may stretch our lifetimes through the auspices of science into seemingly indefinite lengths, but even the universe ends, and we along with it. It is this inevitability, in the specter of death, that frightens us, because deep in our DNA is encoded the will to survive, and every fiber of who we are is dedicated to our individual survival and through that, the survival of our species. Human society has been built on that inner fire, and it has driven us to soaring heights and profane depths.

So, given our lot, do we quit? Certainly not, for what may seem a surety at this stage in our evolution and understanding may seem like folly and ignorance a thousand years hence. The universe, as we see it, is infinite, and so within it lie answers to questions yet asked, and perhaps a means to escape a "certain" fate. What the future holds, despite the word of the soothsayers, remains unknown, but we shall not know it where we tie ourselves down to the ticking of the clock or the turning of the calendar. Our life is ours, to do with as we will, until it isn't. We owe it to ourselves and whatever forces allowed conscious and curious humanity to arise from primordial atoms, to loose ourselves from the confines of artificial measure and live each day as if there were an unlimited number to come. Only when we break free of the cage we have created, will we learn and grow as we must.

Look Not Forward, Nor Back, But Within

2011-12-31T11:53:00.000-05:00

As the hours close on another calendar year, this is often the time for reflection on the events that have transpired since the last time the calendar turned and the making of resolutions for how things will change in the coming year.

Maybe, however, we should not be concentrating on these things. Maybe, this would be a good moment to disconnect from the societal externality that surrounds us and withdraw within ourselves. Maybe, we should be dissociating ourselves from the things which drive us from the outside, and look to those things that should drive us from the inside.

Our modern world, in supplying us with a seemingly endless stream of information and drawing the various cultures of our globe in tighter toward each other, is creating an undeniable pressure on each of us, whether real or perceived. That which was local is now global; events we thought hidden from view are thrown into stark relief in the glare of attention. From its dark corners and dank places, the true breadth of humanity bubbles up, exposed to the light of day, and leaves us wreathed in fetid miasma. We are not the enlightened and social species we convinced ourselves we are; we took our societal progress to be a finished product, rather than the papering over it is.

We may strive each day in vain hope that Utopia lies within striking distance, but as a twist to the admonition goes, objects in society's mirror are further than they appear. Struggle though we have, gain though we may, voices raised in protest or in song, we have not breached the smog to find clean air, only pockets slightly less choked with the by-products of hubris and fear. Our moment in the calmer air is all too brief.

I often speak of human duty, that idea that lies dormant below the surface of many, wherein it is our responsibility to see others as we see us, to provide for them as we provide for ourselves, to do for others as we do for ourselves. While this is a noble aspiration, and many have known it full, it is not a state of being that can be attained without knowledge and understanding of the self. Without seeing our true reflection in the mirror, without reading the lines etched upon us by time and life, without casting a critical eye at each thought, action, or utterance, striving to free ourselves of our selfish tendencies is a course in futility.

Those of us who have worked tirelessly to alter ourselves, who have given up so much of us that we give more to others, have done so with the knowledge that in as much as we have done these things, perfection lies beyond our grasp. To deny discrimination, to suspend judgment, to reach beyond the surface to see behind and beneath the person... these are things that we find ourselves capable of doing, but not completely free to do. Breaking the last ties that bind us to a primitive past is not so easily accomplished.

We must accept that we are only human. Our cerebral capacity for free thought and free action is built upon a bedrock of primitive survival instincts, and the power of the modern neocortex to control all aspects of the human body through the auspices of mind is still easily sabotaged by unconscious mechanisms that dwell in the deep recesses. To overcome fear, ignorance, hatred, and malice is to start a war within, a war that is not always completely won, because the reptilian brain is not so easily chained.

So, at this moment, think not about what has passed, or what is to come -- think about who you are and where you stand. Take no pledge or oath, nor wallow in regret; instead, look down into your soul. There you will see yourself as you are; recognize that person, cherish that person, accept that you are both unique as an individual, and the same as each and every other human being. To change the world, you can start by changing yourself, not radically, but gradually. Enlightenment does not come in a second or a minute or an hour or a day or a year; it is built up each passing moment, through the length of a life and more. Take the time you have, use it well. Treat yourself with care, and you will find it easier to treat others that way.

I bid each and every person on this planet peace, prosperity, and long life.

America, The Incorporated

2011-12-12T11:33:00.002-05:00

Even more ridiculous than the idea that a fertilized human egg is a human being, is that large, amorphous agglomerations of people can form a person. A company, a corporation, an interest group... that these clusters of people, brought together by similarity of thought or by economic necessity, are artificial creations, a form of human breccia, which cannot be construed as having a homogeneous mind and singular being. They are aggregated together from disparate portions of society, and are entities whose existence is totally dependent on human law for definition. They did not arise spontaneously from a primordial ooze, nor were they birthed by some titanic polyglot mother.

This is an important distinction, in that such groups of people in their various forms, believe that somehow their mere existence provides them the same access to rights and privileges that a natural-born person enjoys, namely in the area of freedom of speech, and under that, the ability to influence elections based on their desire for certain outcomes. The absurdity of this notion is lost upon corporate boards and self-important leaders, alike; their belief in the rightness of their cause or business is such that it blinds them to fact.

The Founding Fathers made no provision in the Constitution of the United States for the treatment of corporations or groups as people, save where such were subject to local, state, and federal law. There was no intention to grant them such, either, nor has any great portion of America seen feet to so endow the Constitution with provisions to rectify the situation. If the separation of Church and State was actually outlined in the Bill of Rights to make it clear that it was so, no equivalent need was found to do so in defining to whom the rights and privileges so enumerated were applicable to. It never occurred to the founders to do so, because no one in their right mind would think groups equivalent to men and women.

Now, as transparent as this is, of late our country has seen a burgeoning growth of groups who feel that their existence warrants the same protections as natural-born Americans, to the extent that they should be allowed -- in all save the ability to vote -- to influence elections and the composition of government. And they have had an unlikely ally in their cause, a body that has the power to oversee the application of law to issues revolving around the Constitution: the Supreme Court of the United States. Recent decisions, not the least of which was the celebrate "Citizens United" case, have shown that the current court has lost sight of the protections the document they are pledged to defend contains. They seem to have overlooked the fact that freedom of speech is not a prerogative of groups, only individuals, even if the group speaks as one voice.

This would not be an issue, had a system for elections been worked out that would have worked solely on public funds and provided for equal opportunities for all citizens to partake in the political process. Thanks to the ceding of political power by the electorate to political parties, name only two political parties, those parties, their retainers, and their backers, have managed to enfold the nation in an electoral system that is beholden to private money. Candidates who cannot raise private funds or do not have sufficient personal wealth, stand at a serious disadvantage, making elections a witch's brew of favoritism, patronage, back-stabbing, and power-swapping. This has led to the electorate allowing themselves to be led by the nose by the political parties, to the point of turning each election into a sycophantic whorl of hyperbole, obfuscation, and mud-slinging, rather than a differentiation of candidates based on ability, knowledge, and above all, reasonableness.

So, with the parties firmly entrenched, it is up to the corporations to choose sides and augment party politics with a not-so-subtle avalanche of rhetoric, diversion, and disinformation. A corporation or lobbying group has no desire to see anyone but "their" candidate win, with the tacit understanding that such a candidate will "owe" them for the privilege of their support, even where such understanding cannot be found written down.

With the help of the Supreme Court, the corporations and lobbying groups have managed to put a veneer of legality on their actions, which has further allowed them to manipulate government to ensure any attempt to alter conditions against them is watered down or dismissed outright, under the false pretense of depriving them of their "right" of free speech.

There is one flaw in the argument that such groups have yet to notice, or have paid no heed to, but which bears mentioning, because it cuts to the heart of matter. If it can be said that a group has the right to freedom of speech, and that the group with larger resources and greater power has a greater right to it which cannot be infringed, then I beg to say that there is one group in the United States that trumps all others: Americans. Bound together by the commonality of a nation built upon laws outlined by the Constitution, not unlike any group or corporate entity, over 300 million people are welded together as one unit, have far more wealth and power than individual group or corporation beneath them, and are therefore not subject to the will of such groups. If a corporation can have free speech rights, then the sum total of Americans have such rights in greater abundance, and, as such, have the ability to reject corporate and special interest influence.

When the Founding Fathers built up this nation, they intended American and her citizens to be stronger than any nation or anything that could threaten it, even from within. It is time that we harness that power to put an end to the farcical notion that a company or interest group has an unfettered right to alter the political process in this nation. This nation is built on the idea of one person, one vote, and no group can be allowed to usurp such a right in the name of their own greed or lust for power. Let it then be written in stone, amended to the Constitution itself, that all people may be created equal, but no group may ever consider itself the equal or superior to any American citizen.

Misconceptions

2011-12-11T09:56:00.001-05:00

Human law and human beliefs cannot alter physical systems. No decree can change the motion of the Earth's crustal plates as they slide across the face of our world. No amount of determination can bend the Second Law of Thermodynamics to create unlimited energy. No declaration will place the Earth at the center of our solar system. No force of will can alter the motion of the stars through the heavens. No avarice can force chemical processes to turn lead into gold.

So, it is laughable to think that some in our country believe, wholeheartedly, that they can command the very mechanism of the creation of life through law, by declaring a fertilized egg a "person." At its most elementary level, the idea is farcical, and the stolid determination of those who seek to bring this about would be comical if they were not so earnest, and more importantly, if they were not in positions of power in government. The shame in it, is that ignorance cloaked in belief is being used as a yardstick for legality, and reason is being shoved out of the room. Worse still, is that there is no hue and cry from the vast majority of reasonable American, shouting down this travesty of lawmaking.

Let me, then, light the fire of outrage, as we take a little tour of why this execrable legislation and all its kin need to be consigned to the dustbin of history.

First, let us be clear: the impetus for such legislation is to eliminate abortion by claiming it is the intentional destruction of a life. If a fertilized egg (a zygote) is declared a person, then any attempt to prevent it from developing can be seen as committing a murder. This, naturally, is meant to ensure that abortion could not be performed, because the doctor and the woman having the abortion could be so charged for removing the implanted zygote (a fetus).

Now, clearly, given the number of stages that a zygote must successfully pass through to become an embryo, then a fetus, and finally a fully-developed child, there are many points of failure for the "person" that has been created, and this creates a bit of a problem for advocates of such laws, though they would not deign to admit it.

First, though egg and sperm may meet and fertilization may take place, there is the possibility that no mitosis will take place and begin the process of reproduction. That leaves a fertilized egg eventually drifting from the Fallopian tube with no hope of becoming a child. Should mitosis be successful, and division begin, there may be biochemical issues of viability which may cause the developing embryo to cease division. If division is viable, then comes the formation of the blastocyst, which will allow the embryo to attach to the uterine wall. Should the blastocyst not form properly, should the process of lysis of the zona pellucida not take place properly, then the embryo cannot attach to the uterine lining, and again, will drift to oblivion.

Even if the embryo has become attached to the uterine wall, development can be derailed at any juncture, where cell viability is questionable, where the integrity of the embryo has been compromised, or where the embryo has been subject to conditions that make its further reproduction difficult or impossible. Many of these happenings are part of the natural cycle of gestation, and lead to miscarriage, where the uterine lining is divested and the embryo removed from the body.

In all these cases, the fertilized egg goes on to die, often through perfectly natural processes, due to circumstances that an expectant mother might never be aware of. So the question is: if that fertilized egg is a "person," do we charge the mother with murder? For the earliest stages of human gestation, it is absurd to think that we can equate a natural process with a crime, as there would be no way to know that fertilization had even occurred. And where a woman is confirmed to be pregnant, but gestation spontaneously aborts due to cellular or biological abnormalities, how, exactly, can that be equated to the commission of a crime?

Let us even assume that there are no abnormalities that will lead to a spontaneous abortion of the embryo or fetus. Now, what happens when a miscarriage is caused by an auto accident, or being thrown down the stairs by an abusive partner, or over-consumption of alcohol? Is the expectant mother, now bereft of child, to be clapped in irons as if she were a heinous criminal? Will her life now be scrutinized in microscopic detail, to pick up the tell-tale clues that indicate she "planned" to murder her child? Is she, not unlike the rape victim, to be told it was her fault, to have her every move and utterance turned into another reason why she is at fault?

What of a pregnancy that occurs without fertilization? Rare though they are, they have been known to happen. What of the ectopic pregnancy, where the embryo develops outside the uterus, in a manner which may slowly kill the woman carrying it?

The fact remains, that human reproduction is a natural system, not subject to human law, any more than physics, chemistry, evolution, etc. There is a great gulf between what does happen and what we want to happen. It would be good if human beings took their sexuality and the potential for reproduction more seriously, though it should be noted that the same people seeking to turn fertilized eggs into people are the same people, generally, carping about the teaching of sexual education in schools and attempting to deny men and women the right to use contraception.

If your personal belief tells you these things are wrong, that can and should be respected, in line with Constitution of the United States and the right to personal freedom and liberty outlined within. However, such rights extend to all persons, and as such, your beliefs cannot be legislated upon others simply because you think they are best, especially where those beliefs are at conflict with the natural order of things. Turning fertilized eggs into "people" and demonizing women who do not wish to -- or cannot -- carry a fetus to full term in order to birth a child is not the answer. It never was. Compassion is a far more powerful persuasion than denigration, and it is time to put such unsupportable notions to rest.

What Was Plan A?

2011-12-09T13:12:00.001-05:00

Kathleen Sebelius does not strike me as an intolerant or ignorant person. Surely, being Secretary of Health and Human Services, President Obama had faith in her knowledge and ability. Why then did she feel the need to block the FDA's plan to push the Plan B pill to over-the-counter status? Further, why did she feel the need to engage the President on this issue, when he has more pressing matters to attend to, such as high unemployment and a sluggish economy?

The suggestion is that is was done for political reasons, and there might be some truth to that. A second term for President Obama rests in the hands of independents, especially those in key swing states, and to be seen erring on the side of caution would no doubt grease the wheels with some more conservative independents. But surely, there are not really enough of them to cater to in this regard, and as sex, sexuality, and teen pregnancy are polarizing issues, the dividing line is pretty firm. There is really no hay to be made through making this decision for political reasons.

Perhaps, the truth lies, as always, somewhere in between what we see and what we know

There is no question that young girls, 16 or under, are sexually active, though the rates do not suggest some "epidemic" of sexual activity. Furthermore, teen pregnancy rates are the lowest they've been in two decades, suggesting that inroads have been made in teaching boys and girls about sex and its role. Though many still scream incessantly about sex education in schools -- or lack thereof -- the statistics bear out that teen sex, while problematic, is not an overarching problem.

What is it then, that brings such a decision to the forefront of our consciousness, and puts froth on the lips of the Liberal mouth while simultaneously placing a smile on the lips of the Conservative?

The fissure in society's treatment of sexuality that began to open during the 1960's has continued to widen into a gaping chasm here in the next century. An American society hell bent on keeping talk of sex in the bedroom and off the table, even as it celebrated women as sex objects, is now stretched into a new and distended position, where the divisions and dynamics in how sex and sexuality are treated are mixed with the growing combat over abortion, the rise of homosexuals making inroads in claiming their due civil rights, and the transgendered fighting to be recognized. It is no longer a simple subject, and within the milieu of topics, teen pregnancy is being swallowed up by a culture that now is trying to deal simultaneously with so many of these other issues.

In essence, proponents and opponents of the plan to put Plan B over-the-counter are not doing so for a singular reason, but for a multitude of reasons, and those many and varied reasons cloud and distort the basic issue: providing emergency contraception to teenagers. Statistics and science and bureaucracy and morality and politics are all being stirred into a witches brew that poisons the potential for a constructive debate on the topic. Riding various lines of thought, creating specious, straw man arguments, and muddying the waters, only serves to prevent a thorough, logical, and reasonable approach to handling the issue.

Broken down, the issue is simple: girls are entering puberty and becoming sexually active far earlier than they have in centuries. Previously, it was so, mainly due to a retarded lifespan, wherein fifty might be considered old and a girl in her early teens was considered suitable material for marriage and pregnancy. Even with the advance of time and medicine, while the rate of miscarriage and labor-induced death has decreased, a teenage girl is still at a very high risk of suffering complications from a pregnancy. It is something best avoided until she has developed sufficiently to bear the strain that carrying a fetus will put on her body.

It is quite clear that, even as low as teen pregnancy rates are, teens are still having sex, and unprotected sex at that. There can be no clear picture of the actual rates; anecdotal, self-reported evidence is to be looked upon with great hesitancy when it comes to teens reporting their actual sexual experiences. As such, it is important that teens receive regular health screenings, to detect and treat the complications that may come from unprotected sex, not the least of which is pregnancy, but more importantly, the possible transmission of STDs.

Now, of course, the best plan would be to ensure teens have adequate and accurate sex education. This starts in the home; parents have to get over whatever hesitancy they may have in discussing the subject if they want to ensure their teenage children are well-informed. Where that cannot be counted on one hundred percent, it is important that schools provide sex education at an early enough age to give teens the information they will require to make informed and reasonable decisions about their sexuality. This is not limited to the sex act itself, but also teaching teens about their bodies and their bodily autonomy when it comes to sex, especially for girls. Girls need to know that the sexual appetites of boys do not override the right of a girl to refuse sexual contact on any level, and boys need to know that a girl's refusal to have sex is an absolute, at any time, at any age, and for any reason, and that tacit consent in some form is required to avoid committing rape.

In a perfect world, if our society could get past its hangups over sexuality, admit that even the most pious among us knew of, and perhaps had, sex before wedlock, we might not only reduce teen pregnancy but ensure a healthier and happier teenage experience. Where we continue to lock horns over the style and substance of sex education, and where we shirk our responsibility as parents, educators, and governors, we leave our teens exposed to a vacuum into which they will fall unprepared.

To that end, this desire to keep Plan B behind the pharmacist's counter is short-sighted. Yes, there are risks, yes, this is an end-around around parents and doctors, and yes, this is an admission that teens are having unprotected sex and making bad mistakes due to ignorance or incautiousness. None of this obviates the fact that, given the facts at hand and state of sexual education in the nation, there can be no good in keeping such a tool out of the hands of those who need it. As usual, this decision is treating a symptom and not the disease, and nothing good can come of it. If there a risks to using Plan B, they are over-shadowed by the risks to a teenage girl not using it when she needs to. Does condemning a girl to a pregnancy that may harm her or lead to her death really cost less?

A Date Which Fades From Memory

2011-12-07T09:16:00.001-05:00

Seventy years later and so few remain who woke to that tropical Sunday morning in the Territory of Hawaii, prepared for just another leisurely day in the sunshine. As men drowsily stirred, splashed faces with water, and stood in line for chow or assembled for the morning colors, most did not realize that their destiny was about to be writ in blood and cordite and shrapnel and smoke. On that morning, the subtle hints of the pending attack could not rouse a sleeping giant to readiness. A submarine being sunk, a large radar blip, the drone of planes where they did not normally assemble... it was not enough.

As bands struck up the anthems and flags were drawn to poles to be raised, the long, isolationist idyll of America was shattered by the snarling of aircraft engines, the howl of diving planes, the staccato bursts of machine gun and cannon fire, and the body-flexing crump of explosions as bombs and torpedoes found their mark. The seemingly invincible United States, "master" of two oceans, was caught napping in its island paradise. Ships were torn apart and capsized. Planes were wrecked. Buildings and men and women immolated, wreathed in fire. The Japanese nation, dismissed by many as near-sighted toy-makers, has pulled off a stunning coup, catching America flat-footed and wrecking the powerful United States Navy within the confines of its own "safe" harbor.

The seminal moment for America had arrived, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt anointed it as a "date which will live in infamy." Though it certainly lived as such for many decades, it could be said to be on life support now, seventy years after the fact, when so many of the nation's peacetime warriors who fought back that day and lived to tell the tale, have now left us.

While there is no point in belaboring the past, no valor in finger-pointing, and no use in weaving conspiracies that do nothing to change the moment, there is value in remembering the moments that changed the course of American history, and none is greater than Pearl Harbor Day. The world we lived in, still vast and distant, was at war, and we, Americans, were content to hide behind our oceans and remain aloof, not unlike the child who covers their ears and spouts sounds in order to not hear the admonishments of parents. As others fought and died for their freedom and liberty, and as a systematic campaign of extermination was beginning to take place, we turned away. FDR, still trying to wrestle the nation back to health after The Great Depression, saw the way the wind was blowing, knew the time would draw near when the conflict would reach our shores, and did whatever little he could to prepare.

It was not enough.

Sunday, December 7th, 1941, our complacency, our self-interest, our smug belief in our invincibility, all were dashed upon the ground, as a people we though inferior showed us that they could outwit us and play our game better than we could. The hubris our nation has dragged with us through every generation, labeling certain groups as "inferior," "incapable," "unintelligent," and the like, caught up with us, as it still does even to this day. Our dismissiveness, our egotistical belief in the certitude of our actions and history, our inability to recognize our own foibles and flaws... it was all laid bare that day. We were dragged, bodily, into war, and while we won it eventually, it was won more with the truncheon and the bludgeon than the scalpel and the surgeon's skill. Our massive resources and industrial power allowed us to create a war machine of phenomenal size and scope, which substituted raw power for precision. Perhaps it was just the way of things at the time, for we have certainly honed our power since. But the underlying flaws remain.

Which brings us to a date which, while infamous, is now more relic that resource. History does not forget the day so many died in defense of a nation, but that nation forgets too easily, even where heroes of the day are still in our midst. Even the holidays, Memorial Day and Veteran's Day, where we are expected to honor our warriors living and dead, do not receive the attention they are due. This date and the events thereon, should have created a stern enough warning to remain vigilant and prepared, for attacks that can come at any time, and from any place. But no... as the dust settles, and the years pass, the lessons so many shed blood to punctuate become faded pages in the book of our history. September 11th, 2001 was a not-so-subtle reminder of what happens when we refuse to pay attention to the world in which we live and take the threats to our liberty seriously.

So, before you blithely go about your business today, take a moment to cast your mind back to a quiet Sunday morning in a sleepy island chain, when America awoke to the shrieks of the dying and the roar of destruction. Remember those who stood their ground that day and paid the ultimate price, and remember their colleagues who survived the day, only to lose so many good comrades to the scourge that was Japanese aggression. Remember a day when, bloodied by the foe, we remained unbroken. Let this date, December 7th, 1941, continue to live in infamy.

The Man Who Will Never Be President, Take Two

2011-12-06T07:59:00.001-05:00

In April of this year, I outlined why Newt Gingrich will never become President. Now it is December, and after the implosion of several Republican candidates for President in varied and fantastic ways, we see something which makes me wary of the true intellectual capacity of the American voter: Mr. Gingrich at the top of the polls, challenging Mitt Romney for supremacy at the top of the GOP heap.

Perhaps it has been too long since he last held the national spotlight, and maybe you who have thrown yourselves in his camp have forgotten, so let me bring up a few things about the peripatetic Mr. Gingrich which you might deign to consider before you continue to support him...

We can start, of course, with everyone's favorite peccadillo, the divorce of his cancer-ridden wife for a new model, punctuated by his coming to her hospital bed to discuss how the divorce would proceed. Though much hyperbole has been attached to this happening, the bottom line remains the same: Newt was busy "trading up" as his current wife lay sick in her hospital bed. Mind you, this is the same man who so zealously pursued impeachment against President Bill Clinton for an ill-advised White House dalliance.
We could mention -- if it is not too inconvenient -- that he was and is the only Speaker of the House to be brought up for ethics violations
We might note the peculiarity of his taking millions of dollars from Freddie Mac for consulting work, an agency he spent a good deal of effort trying to close and which used to suggest that certain members of Congress be arrested and tried for malfeasance because of their support for it.
It may be noted that for someone who has taught history and claims to be steeped in it, his historical knowledge is many times, to put it politely, badly flawed.
Even one of his strongest character traits -- his ability to buck GOP convention -- becomes a weakness, because he is too willing to change course for the sake of pandering. Look at how he called out Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan for what it was, bad, and then proceeded to apologize when the party backlash became too strong.
For every cogent theory that he manages to come up with (health care reform), there are several that defy description (ending child labor laws). He is, in essence, a slightly less cantankerous, slightly less insensitive version of Ron Paul, with better bona fides in the Republican Party.

Now, probably about the only person other than a Gingrich supporter who is happy to see Newt at the top of the polls is President Obama. It would not be much of a stretch to say that the ethically-challenged former Speaker and his wild-and-wacky roadshow would be easy meat for the cerebral and well-spoken President. Still, if the GOP ultimately manages to install Newt Gingrich as its 2012 Presidential nominee, it will be solid proof that the Grand "Old" Party has lost complete touch with modern reality. Dragging up a GOP icon of the 90's with questionable personal and political ethics and using a patchwork agenda that relies on tired tropes of the same era, Republicans might be better served attempting to reanimate the fetid corpse of Ronald Reagan.

Morality Is As Morality Does

2011-12-05T09:53:00.001-05:00

There are many who would claim a superior morality, owing to personal earnestness, religious certitude, and societal position. They feel it incumbent to tell the rest of us about our moral failings, to attempt to impress upon us their way of thought, as they see us incapable of making the "correct" choices for ourselves. They would, at every turn, attempt to harness us to the yolk of their faith, even though the bedrock principle of individual liberty upon which this nation is built and which is codified within our most sacrosanct document -- The Constitution of the United States -- says they cannot.

Morality is an artifice built of human mien; not a solid, load-bearing construction, but a more amorphous form, cobbled together from the vast swathes of human experience. A time comes at various intervals where the morality of society is tested, found wanting, and modified to excise those bits that no longer have relevance or were, in a new light, found to be barbaric, and to add new parts that modify or strengthen the remains, that we might all be brought closer together as a community without stripping away individuality.

Where morality fails us is when some choose to substitute their own judgement for that of society, attempting to bend the general welfare to their own ends.

Nowhere is that clearer in the arena of human relationships, physical, psychological, and religious. As human knowledge has expanded, as the breadth of human experience has increased, and as human society has unfolded into an even larger and more complex milieu, those belief systems that have thoroughly ritualized themselves and worked to maintain conformity in the face of change, continue to rail against that change, attempting to drag society backward into the folds of darker times.

We are no longer the primitive society composed of scattered tribes that wandered in search of food and shelter. We are no longer the collectives hiding from the lightning and thunder for fear it is the retribution of the gods. We are no longer the hungry masses, supplicating prostrate before idols, begging for rain. We are no longer the people who throw stones upon our fellows for their "transgressions." We are no longer the people who take the different and strange for signs of witchcraft and sorcery.

At least, we shouldn't be.

There is nothing wrong in seeking guidance, strength, and comfort in the assumption of religious belief and the pursuit of its teachings. But such pursuit of a bulwark against the vicissitudes of life must work within the strictures of a world that has passed by a great many of the premises upon which religions were formed. The world was in a far from known state until several ancient cultures began to posit more reasonable explanations for events in their environment. For the longest time, belief held sway over logic and reason. Slowly, inexorably, reason and logic began to move to the fore, leaving religious faith to continue its attempts to dominate human society in the face of the slow erosion of its power. The eternal verities, the unknown questions, the mysteries of life are falling before the lens of logical and reproducible investigation, and the ancient, sacred explanations for the workings of the cosmos no longer retain the aura they once did, being superseded as they are, by rational, secular explanations.

Rationality and the attendant shift to a more secular and free society chafes against the authority long assumed by many a church or religious organization. They see constant motion of humanity toward a more enlightened and less spiritually-laden future as a threat to their "moral" authority. They feel the need to take matters into their own hands, fighting against the secular wave and imploring their followers to resist the tide of change. In the end, their efforts will be for naught, but while the balance of humanity is still chained to the resistance of hypocritical moralists painting themselves as ultimate authority, we will continue to see a struggle for control of our nation and our world, and in this struggle, there will be far too many needless casualties.

Proof of exceptional morals is not simply a function of being part of a belief system; it is, in fact, a function of showing that you have applied critical reasoning to your beliefs and have gleaned from the body of a religious tradition those core tenets that allow you to have your faith and appreciate that not all other human beings will share that faith. To simply impose your view of the world based on your faith on all others, is tyranny, plain and simple, and anathema to those who walk in the bright light of freedom and liberty.

No one should denigrate those who hold contrary positions grounded in their faith, but nor should we back down in pushing the inconsistencies and hypocrisies inherent in their views back at them, not with malice, but with solid, unshakable reasoning. If people refuse to critically examine their faith, if they feel that no rational explanation supersedes its pronouncements, it they are recalcitrant when challenged, then it is clear they may be considered hopeless cases. That does not mean that everyone who falls under the same belief system is also to be written off. We must show the inherent superiority of reasonable discourse by not making assumptions, and by engaging each and every person in the same way. Along the way, despite stubborn resistance, we may yet free more minds from the chains of Medievalism. Eventually, when enough minds have been so freed, the scales will tip in favor of a human future based on thoughtful guidance and human duty, not blind obedience and false piety.

The War At Home

2011-12-04T11:29:00.001-05:00

If you were wondering, the United States is at war. It is not the war of declared intent and fixed enemies that we have fought over the centuries; it is an amorphous, shape-shifting war, in which the enemy can be anywhere, at any time, doing things we do not see until they raise themselves up into the light. It is the ultimate war of fear, where noncombatants -- read "civilians" -- are the avowed target of the enemy, and military combat is a sideline. It is a war that defies the use of conventional weapons and tactics. It is a war that may never, ever end.

As such, some in the United States have seen fit to codify and enshrine this war in the very fabric of the nation. Places like Guantanamo Bay, legislation like The Patriot Act, and processes like military tribunals are all being given extended value, becoming permanent fixtures in a the American landscape, rather than temporary expedients. This new type of war has given those who have sought an extension of American power an excuse to use the potential for enemy attack in many insidious ways on our nation the leverage to place into law the removal of restrictions on government's ability to infiltrate the life of law-abiding citizens, in the name of "national security."

And now, soon to come before President Obama, is the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (currently known as S.1867, which includes the following:

TITLE X--GENERAL PROVISIONS

Subtitle D--Detainee Matters, SEC. 1031. AFFIRMATION OF AUTHORITY OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES TO DETAIN COVERED PERSONS PURSUANT TO THE AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE.

(a) In General- Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition under the law of war.
(b) Covered Persons- A covered person under this section is any person as follows:
     (1) A person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks.
     (2) A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.
(c) Disposition Under Law of War- The disposition of a person under the law of war as described in subsection (a) may include the following:
     (1) Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.
     (2) Trial under chapter 47A of title 10, United States Code (as amended by the Military Commissions Act of 2009 (title XVIII of Public Law 111-84)).
     (3) Transfer for trial by an alternative court or competent tribunal having lawful jurisdiction.
     (4) Transfer to the custody or control of the person's country of origin, any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity.
(d) Construction- Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.
(e) Authorities- Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities, relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.
(f) Requirement for Briefings of Congress- The Secretary of Defense shall regularly brief Congress regarding the application of the authority described in this section, including the organizations, entities, and individuals considered to be `covered persons' for purposes of subsection (b)(2).

In essence, the President of the United States is being enjoined by Congress to use the power of the United States military on American soil to fight the potential terrorist threat posed by those we are currently at war with. When the wording of such was made public, the howls from civil liberties organizations and citizens led to the bolded section, to affirm that this use of military force did not necessarily extend to American citizens.

Emphasis on necessarily. As the wording shows, rather than stating unequivocally that these provisions shall not apply to the detention in U.S. citizens, the rather weak "shall not be construed" was used instead. In essence, a very convenient loophole was left in place, to allow for the abuse of military power in the cause of fighting terrorism on the home soil. Should such power be abused, it would be easy enough for a person or persons to be detained for indefinite periods, then released under the mea culpa of it being a terrible mistake, and leaving those who were wrongly detained no recourse under law.

This nation was founded under the aegis of liberty and justice for all. Along with The Patriot Act, this addition is placing into law a further erosion of the strength of those principles that we hold most dear. In a war which could seemingly have no end, because we were the ones to declare it and only we will know when that end actually occurs, such laws essentially give the military and the Department of Homeland Security carte blanche to bring about the rendition of anyone, under any pretenses, for anything which can be twisted or construed as aiding the "enemy" and their cause.

The saddest part of this legal peccadillo, is its broad support, now that sub-part (e) has been added as some sort of "protection" for American citizens. The bill should not, cannot, stand as it is; sub-part (e) is but convenient cover for when this authorization is abused, and it will be abused, no question. At every turn, where the forces of national security have been chained behind the legal protections of the Constitution, any weakening of the chains that bound them have led to their breaking free and running rampant, to the detriment of the citizenry. There is no need for the military to be involved in criminal matters on American soil, even if they involve those we might consider "enemies of the State." We have a national apparatus in place, the Department of Homeland Security, which is supposed to deal with domestic terrorism. To allow the military into this arena on our nation's soil, is to bring about an increase in the military's power that was distinctly against what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

The President must veto this bill, and stand his ground on the removal of the execrable extension. We cannot sit idly by and allow Congress to continue to water down individual liberty with impunity, which it seems bent on doing at every turn. Should this be enshrined into law, it will no doubt not be long before a less scrupulous President will use it to go after his or her enemies under the guise of "national security." Such power cannot be handed, unfettered, to the President, and this President should know that. Let us all urge him to do the right thing, and let us make sure we make our displeasure with our legislators know at the voting booth. Such men and women who would so easily sell out liberty for security do not deserve to run our nation.

What Passes For Conscience These Days

2011-12-01T08:07:00.001-05:00

Some nurses in New Jersey are garnering attention for the "stand" they are taking, in refusing to assist in abortion procedures at their hospital, because to do so violates their ethical tenets. Their "heroic" stand against abortion has garnered them the support of notorious women's rights foe Representative Chris Smith, who has come out in full support of their actions, because he has an election coming up and it is time to energize his base constituency: the self-appointed moral guardians of New Jersey.

If you've noticed a particular odor wafting through the air as you read, that is the taint of hypocrisy that clings to the air whenever a government official or some member of the community stands up and claims that to have anything to do with sex, the aftermath of sex, or abortion of a fetus goes against their "principles." I put principles in quotes, because in many cases, their moral and ethical system of values is so fraught with contradictory and confounding rules that it makes no sense. Conscience, as such people define it through their words and actions, involves denying others their rights because something those others do upsets them in ways that are usually tangled up more in belief than reality.

So let's examine this "conscience" these people claim is being so offended.

Let's start with the obvious: those who go into the medical profession in any capacity -- not just as physicians -- have a responsibility to help others regardless of circumstance. Medical service is one of the ultimate forms of human duty -- using your skills, talents, and knowledge to promote the health and healing of others. It would make sense that anyone wanting to go into a health career would count empathy and compassion among their personal traits... or hopefully so.

The skills and training required to be a nurse, a doctor, a pharmacist, a paramedic, is not easy, requires dedication, and takes time and money. Those who go into such professions cannot make the decision lightly; they will be asked to make sacrifices, both personally and professionally. It is a serious commitment, and, as such, should not be approached with anything less than serious contemplation.

The knowledge that is imparted to medical professionals is usually comprehensive and complete. There are no surprises or hidden traps awaiting them, save where they have not fully applied themselves to their craft. A doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist... they will know, when their education and licensure is complete, what is expected of them and how to go about carrying out their duties. They will know what procedures must be followed, what actions are required in any situation.

Given all this, for such people to suddenly have an attack of "conscience," shows a complete and total lack of conscience on their part. Having gone through all that is required to become what they are, having spent the time and effort to learn all the necessary skills, having taken oaths, having gone into work/practice, they suddenly have the temerity to claim that they find an important part of their profession objectionable. Yet, all through the process of getting to this point, at no point did they find the very thing they are now complaining about objectionable!

Of course, because they are objecting to participating in abortion, they are held up as paragons of virtue. And yet... if becoming entangled in the process of supporting the medical procedure that is abortion offends their sensibilities, why don't other things? A drunk driver crashes their car and is brought into the emergency room -- why aren't they refusing to help treat them? One would think becoming blind, stinking drunk and endangering their lives and those of others would be considered sinful. How about reviving someone who has attempted suicide by overdosing on pills? Isn't the commission of suicide a sinful act? Wouldn't they be within their right to refuse to pump out the patient's stomach? If you are a pharmacist, and you think it amoral to dispense birth control or the morning after pill, why not refuse to supply obese people with insulin? Didn't they bring about their diabetes because of gluttony? And what of erectile dysfunction medication? Wouldn't a pharmacist be supporting someone's debauchery by filling the prescription? The person might be having premarital sex! There's another thing: if they are so put off by the idea of aborting a fetus because it offends their morals, why aren't they similarly put off delivering the baby of a woman who is not married? Surely, that too is grates against their moral superiority!

When one signs up to serve humanity, questions of morality do not come into play. The police officer, the doctor, the firefighter, the teacher... all are expected to carry out their duty with equal fervor for each and every person in the community. Every person in this nation is guaranteed the right of personal liberty; in essence, they can do as they wish, and as long as they harm no one else and do not attempt to force others to do as they do, that right is inviolate. Every person in this nation is also guaranteed the right of personal belief; shared by others or yours alone, whatever belief system you choose, you have the right to practice such, again with the restriction that you cannot impress it upon others. If what you believe in interferes with your ability to do your job, then it is up to you to either set aside your beliefs while doing your job, or to find a new job. It is not the obligation of the employer or society at large to cater to you.

This situation is another example of the inability of some to grasp the fundamental disconnect between where their personal rights end and where the broader tenets of being a member of human society begin. The events we see in our country and around the world at this time, are evidence of the friction caused by some who put their personal causes, beliefs, and needs ahead of humanity, to the extent that they look down upon the rest of us because we will not simply accede to their view. Whether is it the profiteer, the power broker, the religious fanatic, or the dictator, where one person places themselves above their fellow humans, shirks their human duty, and proclaims their "morality" or judgment superior, they must prepare for the day when humanity will call them into account for the folly of their self-indulgence. One cannot claim membership in human society, while simultaneously doing everything within their power to place themselves beyond it. Acceptance leads to unity; intolerance leads to extinction.

Note: This post was inspired by the writing of Erin Gloria Ryan of Jezebel.com

Thank You

2011-11-11T15:36:00.001-05:00

You cannot hear the shot and shell
That punctuate the battle hell
Nor the rocket roar or bullet wheeze
That cover screams amid the trees
Ground trembles from a mine's blast
And bodies and their parts are cast
Like the cordite smoke upon the wind
To sprinkle around where none have sinned
Save to stand and take that ground
From hand grenade and rifle round
Of those as determined to wrest it away
And hold it yet another day.

You cannot hear the silent scream
Of men boiled away in the steam
From a boiler burst by torpedo blow
Rending the hull so far below
While planes swoop down spitting lead
And you think all the while you are dead
But for comrades who rise up from the deck
To fight them off and give them heck
Till they succumb to a bursting bomb
Taking their death with stoic aplomb
Giving their last full painful breath
While you give some meaning to their death

You cannot hear those who fight
But in every sullen, starry night
The fight returns to haunt their dreams
Filled with unholy, painful screams
Sounds of battle, smells of blood
A quiet miasma, a rising flood
Drawing them back to a time long ago
When their life was not just so
When the enemy stalked and fire blazed
And the battle for life left them dazed
A 'thank you' seems a pittance for what we owe
But it's important we tell them, important they know

Pater Familias

2011-11-10T12:41:00.000-05:00

First, let it be said, because we need reminding: Jerry Sandusky is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. That said, the mounting evidence and continual parade of child victims leads one to believe that this man abused a position of power to fulfill his sordid sexual appetite for young boys. Whether as Penn State's defensive coordinator for its football team, or as part of a group working with youth, this man apparently used his power and influence to perpetrate one of the more heinous crimes our society has to cope with: child rape. Anyone and everyone who had contact with this man, who had any information, evidence, or testimony to give, who did not pursue this matter to the fullest, is suspect.

That brings me to Joe Paterno.

For those unfamiliar with NCAA college football and the reputation of Penn State in the sport, let it simply be said that Coach Joe Paterno, "JoePa" to players and students alike, recently became the coach with the most wins in NCAA football history, and under his stewardship, guided the Nittany Lions to glory on many occasions. He was involved with the program in some capacity for over 60 years. His name was held in respect and spoken with awe by friend and foe alike. He prided himself of making his teams strong on and off the field. He was a product of a by-gone era of college football, who at several points, looked as if the game he loved had passed him by in the modern age. He brought Penn State football glory and added to its reputation for excellence.

He will be remembered for little of that now.

The problem with being so involved with one organization/company/program in a position of ultimate authority, is that familiarity breeds contempt, not of an overt nature necessarily, but of the type that allows the individual to ignore or gloss over or pay little attention to things that happen within their purview. Such is the case with Joe Paterno, when he was informed of Jerry Sandusky's crime. He did what was prudent, the minimum necessary, but pursued it no further. For a man of his proclaimed moral stature, a man of unshakable faith, to hear of a grown man using a young boy for sexual pleasure and not having that rock him to the core enough to go beyond such a minimum standard is both shocking and appalling. This man, father to his own children, and "father" to the young men he coached, not having his stomach turned by the information placed before him to the point of turning in his defensive coordinator, is unconscionable.

Further still, and much worse, is the idea that Joe Paterno told his supervisor, and here was another person not sickened and nauseated enough to take action. The whole sad and tragic story, unraveling throughout the years, is a tale of an organization so steeped in the mystique of its proud history, that no one -- from the janitor who first observed the child rape all the way up to the president of the university -- thought to take the simplest, most direct course of action to call Jerry Sandusky into account, by going to the police. Hiding behind a reputation, a university turned its back on helpless, defenseless, sexually abused boys, and did nothing.

Coach Joe Paterno is only the most visible face of the tragedy, but that is enough, because you would think that this man, paragon of his sport and decent human being, would have done something. Perhaps, in the end, this man, too, was entirely caught up in who he was perceived as. Joe Paterno the man was crushed under the weight of Joe Paterno the college football legend.

If he was so consumed by his fame, as it appears, then so was the university, to the point that students, outraged at his firing, serenaded their fallen football idol by taking to the streets and starting a riot. It was, no doubt, without much thought that they did this, for such action said unequivocally that the fame and good name of their football coach superseded the broken spirit and abused bodies of young boys raped by a trusted elder. It never occurred to them that by showing such abject outrage at the simple firing of a football coach, they were creating an object lesson in the pervasive ills of our society and how those we lionize and what they do are put on a plane of importance that far exceeds the reality of their situation. Football coaches will come and go, glory on the gridiron will be had and forfeited, but a young boy raped by a man will lose something that is not so easily replaced, and will suffer pains that will not simply heal over time.

This tale should tell us an important truth: we have sacrificed the reality of a humanity teetering on the brink, for the panacea that is glitz, glamour, fame, and fortune. We turn people, not so dissimilar from ourselves, into icons, icons that cannot hold up against the light and the scrutiny they inevitably receive. We have misplaced our values and our morals, when such a thing as the rape of a child does not bother us enough. Ask the homeless, ask the hungry, ask the jobless, ask the beaten and abused, if the value of winning a football game makes their plight any easier. Look upon his like no more, this man, ultimately fraught with foibles as any of us are, not a god in any sense. Look upon him no more, but cast your eyes upon the withered and destitute, and ask yourself if rooting for your team ever did them any good.

My Values, Your Values, Our Values

2011-11-04T08:58:00.000-04:00

What values do we share? Think on it for a minute.

Certainly, we could all agree that each of us, each human being, has an inherent right to be ourselves, to have our own thoughts, and our individual liberty... right? It was a guiding principle behind the founding of the nation.

Certainly, we could agree that, given the above, the right to that liberty should not be infringed upon by others, as individuals, organizations, or government. Again, another founding principle.

Given those things, and the moral history of human culture, there can be no argument that a human individual, secure in personal liberty, endowed with inherent rights, should be free of fear of malice or murder, correct?

Most importantly, given that every person is thus endowed with rights and liberties, does that not also mean that each is as precious as another, deserving of respect and decency to the same degree?

But wait...

From wherever you or I choose to draw our values, let it be said that each of us is justified in choosing what we feel is best for us. The society we choose to live in and how we participate in that society, says as much about our moral character and beliefs as anything. The individual is endowed with their own liberty and that liberty should be inviolate, if we are said to be keeping to the tenets our founders laid down for us through revolution and in common law. That does not mean that the individual is beyond the reach of a greater organization, be it government, or church, or the like, only that they, in their autonomous state, have the right to be themselves. Where the individual allies themselves with others, in whatever configuration, they maintain their individuality while at the same time, in being a part of a larger group, tacitly agree that they are in accordance with others. That doesn't mean they are their group, only that their participation is of their own accord.

So what do we gain from this, and what does it have to do with our values?

As we move from smaller to larger collectives, from families, to collectives, then to tribes, then to villages, then to towns & cities, then to states, and then to nations, we see that it is harder and harder to stand upon any kind of homogeneity of thought or deed. The larger and larger collections of humans become, the more diverse they are, and that diversity leads to divisiveness rather than consensus. Blocks and factions within a larger collection will do as they wish, thwarting the will of the larger body, insisting that their way of thinking is superior or that their morality is the highest. Even within those blocks and factions, we cannot say with surety that every member believes exactly the same thing, but we use the expedient of assuming so to bolster our rejection of their cause.

Even if we all agree with the tenets I laid out at the beginning, those tenets soon become mired in the social brier patch that is our attempt to integrate them into our system of values and beliefs. Any coherence or consensus we might share with others is quickly reduced to pat ignorance or rank hypocrisy. Rhetoric replaces reason; logic is "trumped" by belief. We are left to shout at each other across the room, hurling epithets when we should be hurdling obstacles. We see this in most of the contentious issues of our times: abortion, birth control, women's rights, racism, classicism, economic disparity, terrorism, wealth, religious tolerance, LGBT issues. What could be issues resolved through frank discussion and willingness to compromise, become battle lines to be drawn, defended by breastworks of intransigence.

The root cause is a stubborn determination to put personal belief above human necessity. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. These are concepts that -- even though writ throughout human culture and many major religions -- feel alien to a great many people. So sure are they that their view of the world is correct, that they brook no interference with it. Furthermore, they insist that their point-of-view dominate, even where it is clear that it is an attempt to impose their belief systems on others, in contravention of the inalienable rights of those others. They see no inherent contradiction in loudly proclaiming the freedom of the individual, even as they are trying to deny said freedom to others.

At some point, where we are an organized society of liberty and law, we must accept that, no matter our personal beliefs or those beliefs of the groups we belong to, greater humanity's needs may very well go against them. We may feel passionately that a thing is wrong in our world view, but that feeling, that belief, does not automatically supersede the feelings and beliefs of our brethren. In order for there to be a society, it must, of needs, find a middle ground, a place of compromise. It does not mean surrendering principles; it does mean putting them aside on occasion where a greater good is at stake. This is how societies are forged and this is how humanity unites, when we recognize our human duty to our friends, neighbors, countrymen, and to the other citizens of Earth. Like it or not, we are in this life and on this planet together, and we must come to accept that, or see humanity perish in a fire of its own making.

I Am Not My Race... But I Am

2011-11-01T16:24:00.001-04:00

Some things you should know:

I am male
I am Caucasian
I am a reformed Catholic, which is to say I believe in the tenets of Jesus Christ, just not in the Roman Catholic Church

The most important thing you should know, is that my world view has evolved quite a bit over my lifetime. I have worked very hard to eliminate the vestiges of prejudicial thinking that pervade the normal human mind. I have sought out knowledge in a wide and extensive variety, to ensure that my personal ignorance is at a low ebb, though I admit I do not know everything, nor can I. I have done my very best to absorb the teachings of human history and learn the lessons of human frailty. I have made the personal determination that it is best for me to approach each and every person as a person, despite any differentiation society would have me make. I refuse to judge based solely on surface features or perceived/actual differences between myself and someone else. As I choose not to judge others, I would expect others to do the same in kind.

Therein lies the problem.

Even those of us who have sought a more enlightened path through life, who have worked to expunge from our world view the perceptions and judgments and stereotypes that dog greater humanity still, show a great deal of hubris if we believe that such thinking elevates us to some higher moral plain that allows us to be "above" those of our brethren who have not "caught on." While it is certainly desirable and admirable to not allow oneself to be mired in the iniquities of human societies past, and while one might be congratulated in trying to promulgate said enlightenment, to simply rest on one's laurels or assume that this changes matters is to miss the point of the exercise.

Any one of the three things I outlined about myself at the beginning of this tract could be construed by any person as a reason to be hesitant about my conversion to more humanist thought. For while I might have them take it as read that I am "not like other people," I cannot so easily be divorced from the categories under which I fall.

While I may do everything to free myself from the dogmas of the past, and hopefully, in doing so, sharpen my moral character, it would be wrong to assume that my example so easily floats down to others that, basking in the radiance of my reason, they will simply see me to be that which I proclaim. For we are all different. We come from different backgrounds, different places, different happenings, different paths through life, and my path, though perhaps no different than that of many to me, will appear so to someone outside my ken. They may interpret my words and actions as arrogance, or self-importance, or worst of all, privilege. No matter the wisdom or thought behind what I say, they will react to it differently because they cannot help but do so.

The world sees us differently than we see ourselves. We encounter this every day. Judgments are made about us that -- were we to know them -- would probably anger us. Any attempt on our part to rid ourselves of our judgmental aspects does not alter this; we can only speak for ourselves. As such, though I may wish to treat each and every person as a human being first, and anything else secondarily, that does not automatically translate to anyone else. I can provide nothing but the idea and the example; I cannot force another to accept that this is a more honorable way to live.

I speak of these things in the most austere manner, but in daily life, it is not so intellectual. Our world is filled with examples of a group making claims that other groups are mistaken in believing they should take offense to a word or gesture or action because "it wasn't meant that way." The speaker or actor who begins the drama is usually unaware that what they say and do could be found offensive until it is found so, and they are called on it. This invariably leads to a defensiveness, a need to "prove" that the other person so offended or outraged is merely "overreacting." This defensiveness is a sign of a refusal to critically examine ones own views in the light of reality and history.

I am a Caucasian male of Catholic upbringing, and it can be said that this particular troika of attributes makes me susceptible to scrutiny of a type that I could easily find offensive, of itself, for violating the tenets of my belief. But I cannot, must not, will not, find it so, for the simple expedient that, while I may feel myself a part of the greater humanity more than a part of any of those attributes, they are still a part of me. I and my family may not have perpetuated injustices on those of different creeds, colors, or the like, but that is no absolution from the fact that members of the groups whose attributes I share did. Perhaps I have bettered myself beyond them, perhaps I have struck a blow through my enlightenment, but even peripherally, I still bear the stigma that attaches itself to every one of those things.

My view of the world is that we will all eventually have to drop the pretense of seeing others in terms of natural and artificial divisions before humanity will make true progress as a species. That day is many centuries hence; we are only at the very cusp of it now. The history of the races of humanity is still fresh, the wounds are still deep, the divisions still remain. The Caucasian portion of the human race has wrought deviltry that catches our breath and grates on our nerves, that we are still living with the aftermath of the ignorance and bigotry of our ancestors. Like it or not, we do represent our race, even if only through the eyes of those of other races, creeds, orientations, and nationalities. As such, we have to be sensitive to that fact, and we have to accept that fact, and, above all, not take it personally. It is not you or I who did these things, but we are nonetheless the beneficiaries of the actions of our narrow-minded and insensitive ancestors, and we will continue to bear some of the burden of their ignominy. What will set us apart from them and the reprehensible actions of the past, is how we act and react in the present and future. So, we stand, we accept, and we work toward showing others that we are not representative of our history, but of a new and better future, and we do so without rancor or spite. It’s the only way that we can equalize the pressure, bring all people together, and fulfill our human duty towards each other.

Return To Hooverville

2011-10-27T18:04:00.000-04:00

It was the laissez faire economic strategy of Herbert Hoover that led to the implosion of the United States economy after the crash of the Stock Market in 1929. It was his ambivalence toward government intervention and his unwillingness to use government to aid American citizens that caused the country to slide into depression. The most he could muster was begging and pleading with businesses to stop laying off workers, but at the time, it was everyone for themselves. When World War I veterans marched on Washington, D.C. in 1932 (the "Bonus Army") and demanded redemption of their service certificates, so they might use the money to survive, Hoover ordered General Douglas MacArthur to clear them out of their encampment, one of the derisively-named "Hoovervilles." A cavalry charge and gassing later, fifty-five veterans were injured; one hundred thirty-five were arrested. One 12-week-old child died after the gas attack.

Flash forward to 2011, when an economic malaise brought about by a collapse of the housing market engineered by Wall Street, leads to demonstrations across the nation. Occupy Wall Street brings forth collections of the disenfranchised and desperate, making the displeasure heard through civil disobedience, in cities all throughout the nation. They want The Monied Powers and their retainers to see the damage they have done to the American Dream, and they want government to recognize that it has failed them, failing to protect them and their livelihoods and their finances from the rapacious greed of the money-changers on Wall Street. Then, last night, October 26th, the mayor of Oakland, Jean Quan, gives her tacit approval for the Chief of Police to move in and drive out the protesters, which he chooses to do by assembling overwhelming force and using tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash grenades. The attack leads to dozens of arrests, and the hospitalization of a two-tour Iraq veteran, who had managed to survive that war without a scratch before being assaulted with a teargas canister, leading to serious head trauma and a trip to the hospital in critical condition.

Those who do not learn the lessons of history...

Occupy Wall Street is not a "movement" in the classic sense of the 60's peace and civil rights movements. It is a re-creation of the Hoovervilles of The Great Depression, thrown right upon the doorsteps of the places that represent the failures that created the economic downturn: the financial industry and government. It is an attempt to make those areas aware of the damage they have caused and the lives they have ruined. These people are a living expression of the damage done to the American way-of-life by corporate greed and government malaise. They represent the detritus left behind in the wake of Wall Street’s incessant need for higher and greater profit. The are exemplars of citizens who, pursuant to the tenets of The American Dream, went about trying to build better lives in the way they were taught, only to find out that the rules of the game had been altered and they were never told.

These gatherings have been, almost exclusively, peaceful. Despite being ignored, lampooned, or skewered by “the media,” despite the ambivalence and/or overreaction of city government, despite tribulations aplenty, these people have stuck it out, in order to make society face facts: this isn’t going away. The bulk of American citizenry is either destitute, verging on destitution, hanging on by its fingernails, or watching their assets slowly, inexorably be drained away, even as forces in Washington, D.C. seek to dismantle the safety nets which might be their last hope until the crisis breaks. Occupy Wall Street is saying: this is what we have created… what are we going to do about it?

The message is not going over well in the halls of power, if what happened in Oakland is any indication. Even as the attack was taking place and peaceful protesters were being assaulted for exercising their Constitutionally-protected right to peaceably assemble, similar actions were taking place elsewhere in the country. This is not how the American system of government and justice is supposed to operate. Citizens are allowed to ask for redress of their grievances before the government that they imbue with its power. That have a right to have their grievances heard and to await a suitable reply. Oakland chose a coward’s answer, treating them less like citizens and more like terrorists, because that is de rigueur in these times; the mayor of Oakland chose to pat her police chief on the back for his effective and unnecessary brutality.

Where a government, any government, can find it expedient to attack unarmed, peaceful protesters in the name of public safety, there is something terribly wrong, both with the government itself, and the people who allowed such a government to come to power. It is a moment such as this that marks it as imperative for Occupy Wall Street to move beyond a mere demonstration of the damage done to America, into a movement toward rectifying the ills woven into the systems of democratic government and capitalistic economy in our nation. It is a galvanizing force, that can be used to light a fire under an electorate that has surrendered its birthright to middlemen, that has allowed party politics to replace practical governance. Our complacency created these problems -- our activism will solve them. Let those who were attacked in Oakland be the focal point and the rallying cry for the change that must come.

Previously Occupied

2011-10-19T12:25:00.000-04:00

I know some have questioned the motivations behind some of the protesters in Occupy Wall Street. Why should they feel they automatically win something by going to college, getting a degree, holding down a job, owning a home? The word “entitlement” is bandied about a lot, as if this is some whiny lot of panhandlers complaining about the change they get standing outside the bus station. It’s not that at all. Far from a movement, in the classic sense, it is a message: "We are the people whose lives have been disrupted by the machinations of Wall Street and Washington, D.C. in the name of greed and power and we're not happy about it."

For all that many would tarnish these protesters, claiming they are shirkers, layabouts, and well-dressed panhandlers, the members of Occupy Wall Street have a valid concern: the rules have been changed to favor those who are already wealthy and secure, at the expense of those seeking to join that circle. No one is saying that the desire to earn money, be wealthy, and have personal security is in the absolute, wrong; that is the goal of the vast majority of Americans. What is being said is that The Monied Powers and their minions are seeking to create exclusivity, to deny those self-same Americans the fruits of honest labor, and attempting to insulate themselves from their responsibility to the rest of humanity, as if they are somehow "above" us.

This nation's history has been driven on the ideals of freedom and independence of the individual, of hard work leading to greater rewards, of investment in the improvement of the standard of living. Those ideals were rolled into the “American Dream,” the idea that every American should become a landowner, should reap the benefits of their hard work, and become personally enriched through perseverance and sound financial management. It’s a wonderful dream, and it is obtainable, in theory; the problem comes when those who manage the systems under which the dream is pursued change the rules or alter the systems in ways that only seek to enrich themselves, and not the vast majority of Americans. Where greed is unfettered, the 99% suffer.

These people had expectations, based on what they were taught by their parents, what they were told in school, what the pundits and prognosticators kept pouring into the airwaves. Work hard. Get an education. Buy a home. Those were supposed to be some of the keys to success. And they were… until Washington, D.C. and Wall Street rigged the game. Not unlike a casino, The Monied Powers and their minions have stacked the odds in their favor, and shed not a tear for the long, sad stream of gamblers who wander away from the table bereft of what little they had and indebted for more than they can hope to make.

It isn’t about entitlement. It isn’t even about fairness. It’s about a level playing field. It’s about economic systems being controlled and regulated so that everyone, regardless of their economic status, can play and have an equal chance at success. As long as our government allows the economy to be run in the current fashion, the 99% have no hope of making the headway they should be making, given their efforts. Occupy Wall Street is the cry of the ultimate oppressed majority, people of every stripe who are tired of playing by a set of rules that only favor those who already have wealth. If this country is to operate as it should, everyone should have an equal chance at success — any other way, and we are doomed to a slow, choking, violent death.

The One Hundred Percent

2011-10-16T01:10:00.000-04:00

Numbers are bandied about continuously to make a point in the Information Age. Statistics, percentages, tallies, proportions, and the like are becoming the drivers of social change, the mirrors behind which truth is hidden, the towers in which power is created and kept, and the walls that keep groups separated. Even now, across the globe, a battle line is being drawn between the ninety-nine percent of the population that is suffering under the economic and social oppression of the other one percent, in which is invested great wealth and greater power.

While it is all well-and-good to be cognizant of the disparities and divisions that are the heart of our current place in human history, the polarization effected by numerical comparisons in any number of axes, far from delineating and defining the problems and potential solutions of those problems, serves to only increase the divisiveness and demonization extant in human societies all over the planet. If our conscience and social change are to be driven by numbers, then there are only two numbers that should truly count: one and one hundred.

One and one hundred represent the totality of humanity: we are one species, Homo sapiens, differentiated by many and varied categories such as physiology, psychology, faith, nationality, to name a few, but in the end, all one and the same. One hundred percent of us are affected by the actions and thoughts of our fellow humans, even in the most seemingly trivial ways. We all exist on one planet, Earth, which supplies us with one hundred percent of what we need to survive (outside the contribution of energy we receive from the Sun). We each have one life to live on this planet and we are one hundred percent responsible for those actions we take in living that life, even where our actions are dictated by the actions of others.

These numbers represent the most simple math that can be applied to our functioning in this world. They are inescapable, and no matter how we might go about using natural and artificial differences to segregate, calculate, qualify, or quantify our lives, at the end of the day, we as a species are inextricably linked by our common ancestry and history. At no point since the earliest days of recorded history, has any segment of humanity managed to place itself outside the collective humanity, save by the most artificial of means. Money, power, influence, property, intellect, race... despite every attempt by any group to somehow isolate itself from the main body of the species, inevitably that group has been drawn back in or died out, bereft of the mutual benefit and protection that is a function of human society.

We can question propriety, morality, justice, belief, and any number of other derived principles for their "rightness" or "wrongness." We can establish order in any fashion we choose. We can subject the very fabric of space and time to analysis. We, as human beings, have an evolved capacity to move beyond the simple reactive systems that allowed our ancestors to hunt, create flint tools, gather in groups, establish language, and learn to farm the land; we need no longer be slaves to the base emotions that were thoroughly written through the software of our humanity by millions of years of trial-and-error. We have shown that, given sufficient impetus, we can overcome the barriers that keep us from progressing as a species.

Right now, at this moment, here in the beginning of the latest century, we stand on the brink of a momentous change, but it is unclear in which direction the change will go. Old systems tied to dogma and heritage and fear seek to retard the forward progress of humanity, even as new systems make it possible for all the people of the world to harness their individual abilities in pursuit of change on a global scale. Even as the disparate parts of humanity can finally sit down in common dialog, the old, cautious, conservative elements of humanity rebel at the idea of this coming together, seeking to derail or deny the change at every turn. They rally to the cause of the maintenance of their position, unwilling to allow their power and influence to become diluted in the human milieu, choosing to sit behind walls of denial and fear, and attempting to drag as many behind the walls with them as they can.

As humanity struggles to put an imprint on its newest aspects, it must continue to contend with these forces that would drag us back into the Dark Ages. But -- and this is important -- we cannot simply write them off or deny them their seat at the table. What we have to do is ensure that we can level the field, that these forces are clear that they are accepted as part of broader humanity, but gain nothing from whatever artificial constructs they have created to separate themselves from the rest of us. If we are to be true to our new ways of thinking, if we are to honor those sacrifices made to bring us enlightenment, then we cannot offhandedly dismiss our enemies, because they are human, too. If they seek to tear us down, denigrate us, deny us our rights as human beings, so be it, but in the process of enforcing our expansive view of humanity, we must be careful not to stoop to their level or treat them with contempt, as they may have done to us. We must all go forward as one.

Therein lies the challenge: how to move into the future while still anchored to the past by so many among us. In coming years we will be challenged as never before, and the fabric of many a human group will be shaken. If time and history teach us anything, however, it is that we reached our place today through our perseverance and adaptability. We have overcome obstacles and barriers in the past that seemed too formidable or insurmountable, but inevitably, we found a way. We shall overcome our latest barriers, though perhaps not in as platonic a fashion as we would like or hope for. At some point, even the most peaceful are forced to push the envelope of their pacifism, in the name of the greater good, or are driven to take risks they never would, in the name of human duty. We must continue to struggle to make our voices heard, no matter the cost, but we must never, no matter how bad it gets, abandon the principles that make us human.

One Last Appeal In The Matter of Troy Davis

2011-09-21T12:13:00.001-04:00

In one more attempt to bring reason to the case of Troy Davis, and every person The State sees fit to sentence to death, I wrote the following at the behest of Amnesty International UK:

I will not vouchsafe the merits of Mr. Davis' case; to me, they are irrelevant. What is relevant, in his case and the case of every inmate the State seeks to murder in the name of "public necessity," is that by taking such action, you drench your hands and mine in blood that need not be shed.

If we accept the proposition that a living, breathing human has the right to the integrity of their life, whether we are taught this as part of religious teachings or civics lessons, or simply because we enjoy our life and inherently understand the "wrongness" of the purposeful and premeditated ending of such a life, then we cannot, we should not, countenance the taking of life in our name, through the agency of the State, which we brought into existence as an extension of ourselves. If one person has no inherent right to take the life of another person, then we cannot logically conclude that hundreds upon hundreds of us -- in the guise of the State -- somehow has a greater right to do so, nor the implicit right to ignore the admonition against the murder of one person. Execution is a symptom of the hold of Medievalism on our modern society, and it has no place where we consider ourselves an enlightened, just, and fair people.

Do what you know in your heart to be right and end this despicable spectacle.

We cannot countenance murder in our name. Medievalism has no place in the 21st Century. If only each letter, each call, each FAX, each Tweet, each blog post, were a physical poke, like the pecking of hundreds of thousands of birds upon the conscience of everyone involved in this travesty. If only.

Georgia On My Mind

2011-09-20T11:21:00.003-04:00

I wrote a letter. I signed petitions. I voiced my opinion wherever I could. I prayed. And I was not alone.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles did not hear. Did not listen. Did not want to listen. Could not accept even the simplest argument against putting Troy Davis to death: it is hypocritical. Hypocritical for a "Christian" nation to stand by the Biblical and moral admonition against the taking of another person's life, and yet have no trouble with allowing the State the power to do what we ourselves have stated we will not, as if the creation of the State imbues it with some form of shield against moral ambiguity, or worse, proclaims it to have some authority capable of overriding even the highest admonition in human society. Apparently, when handed to the State, a soul no longer has any meaning to anyone.

There is nothing of justice in this decision, only the need to quench a thirst for vengeance. One hesitates to pin ulterior motives on those who are left with the weighty responsibility of determining who shall live and who shall die, but even an iota of doubt should be sufficient for anyone to see it reasonable to choose life over death, for the system must always err to the side of conservation and justice. To beat a hasty path to the executioner's chamber in the face of reasonable doubts is the mark of those who would see their power unchallenged and their prejudices confirmed.

One would hope the merest hint of this execution would stick in the craw of a decent person, but if it were to do so only after the fact of a man's death, this would not say much for those who claim aegis over clemency or those who claim to revere life. Execution is a tool of emotion, a hearkening back to the Middle Ages, to the triumph of fear and prejudice over reason and humanity. It is a tool that is best relegated to the shed, abandoned like so many other ancestral barbarisms: stoning, crucifixion, inquisition, etc. A modern society such as ours should not hold on to the egregious behaviors of our past.

One can only hope that there is yet a bolt from the blue, that some reasonable, sensible member of the State moves to terminate this reprehensible act before its culmination. If not, the death of Troy Davis will be another stain upon our American society, heaped upon the many others we have yet to fully wipe away.

A Plea For Clemency For The Wrongly Accused Troy Davis

2011-09-14T00:01:00.000-04:00

There is a man named Troy Davis, who is in prison in Georgia, and is facing execution on September 21st, unless there is a stay. The simple story is: 20 years ago, Mr. Davis was convicted of killing a police officer, with no physical evidence, and the testimony of several witnesses. Several of those witnesses have come forward to say that their testimony was coerced by the presence of law enforcement officials, and they have recanted their stories. There is a tremendous amount of doubt now, and it behooves the State of Georgia to re-open the case and award Mr. Davis a new and hopefully fairer trial. So far, the government of Georgia has shown no inclination to do so, and so, many individuals such as myself, through the auspices of the Internet, have been involved in a concerted campaign to convince the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant a stay and allow there to be a new trial. As such, after the break, is a copy of the letter I am sending to the board.

September 13, 2011

GeorgiaState Board of Pardons and Paroles

2Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, SE

Suite458, Balcony Level, East Tower

Atlanta,Georgia 30334-4909.

Tothe Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles,

Iwrite to you about a matter which has come to my attention throughthe medium of the Internet, a matter which causes me greatconsternation, as it involves the life of a man, scheduled to betaken by the State. I speak, of course, of the impending execution ofTroy Davis, now set for September 21^st, 2011. No doubt,your offices have been bombarded by the letters, the faxes, and theemails of many concerned Americans, deploring this action and askingfor leniency for Mr. Davis. To that tumult, let me add one moreletter, in the vain hope that my words might fall upon the eyes ofsomeone who is in a position to stop this egregious act.

Iwill not sit here and belabor points that you have no doubt readthousands of times over, in many and varied forms, suffice to saythat it appears that there is much in the case against Mr. Davis tobe found wanting. Were that not the case, I would feel compelled towrite nonetheless. For this execution speaks to a larger failing ofAmerican society – our inability to separate justice fromvengeance. For all that he is guilty or innocent, those are conceptsfor men and women to decide; that he is a human being, is a fact thatcannot be denied. Is it so important that this one man die? For hisis not the body of a savior upon a cross, in that his one death wouldmean so much to broader humanity. His death would have no othermeaning, save to feed a need for vengeance and blood that we, ashuman society, should be far beyond now.

Thisman's death can right no wrong. It cannot resurrect the victim of thecrime for which Mr. Davis is being punished, rightly or wrongly. Itcertainly does nothing to advance the cause or care of humanity, forthere is no more important admonition than one person shall not takethe life of another. Surely, if we truly honor that admonition, weare left to ask: if one person may not take a life, what greaterright do many people have to do so? The State, for being a multitudeof human beings, can have no greater right or privilege than that ofits least member, and even that person may not kill another.

Iimplore you to reconsider this man's pending execution and dowhatever must be done to grant him a stay of execution. Once thatimportant work is done, we may address the issue of non-guilt, but ifthat work is not done, I fear we will be sorely judged for failing totake one simple step in the name of justice. I thank you for yourtime and indulgence during what must surely be a hectic period.

-----

If you wish to learn more about the case and what you can do to help in these waning days, I suggest you read “A verdict that is not ironclad is not good enough to support the death penalty.” by my friend Emily L. Hauser. And if you want to read a wonderful piece, also by esteemed friend, on how she explained what she was doing to her children, read Explaining the Death Penalty to My Children, published by The Atlantic.

The Long Roll

2011-09-11T10:37:00.001-04:00

One by one
The names waft
Upon the air
Sent aloft in pain
And joy
And sorrow
And remembrance
To take flight
To rise above
To soar over
The huddled masses
To fill that space
Where once stood
Mighty towers
That they might
Rise above
The hate that
Felled them
And fill once more
Hearts with hope

They Fell, We Rise

2011-09-11T08:46:00.000-04:00

10 years.

A decade of birthdays, anniversaries, births, deaths, new homes, graduations, retirements, that 2,977 people (at last count) have missed, because on an ordinary day, September 11^th, 2001, they were going about their business, oblivious to the machinations of nineteen men bent on destruction in the name of their perverted idea of Islam.

There is no singular tragedy of that day. Radiating out from the moment at 8:46 AM when the first plane slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, the tragedies moved outward at the speed of information, rippling waves of doubt, uncertainty, pain, and horror. These waves swallowed up and swamped people from New York City, out across the United States, and into the wider world. Some were devastated. Some were elated. Some were confused. Some were numb.

In an oblique way, the Twin Towers were, as the terrorists saw them, representative of America, or more specifically, the core of our values and beliefs. Together, they were tall, strong, elegant, powerful structures, a commanding presence at the lower end of Manhattan, as America had been in the world. They reached upward, pointing the way toward the sky, toward the future, as America has always done. They were filled with a broad cross-section of our society, from the powerful to the poor, the old and the young, from many creeds, and many races, and many places, just as America was (and is). Their collapse -- abrupt, slow, stately, smoky -- represented perfectly the fall of our air of invincibility, the wrenching of our expectations for our nation, the tearing away of blinders from our eyes, and the desolation that would be left behind after the smoke cleared.

10 years.

The rubble may be gone from what was named "Ground Zero," but it has not been cleared from the hearts of many of us. Some think that we are belaboring the tragedy. Some think that we are disturbed. Some think that those of us who were not directly affected that day -- losing a loved one, being a first responder, working on the site -- have no business being upset. So many, too many, have written the day off, pushed it to the side, accepted it as history, and chant the mantra of "it's time to get on with life." But... it's not so simple. Wherever you were that day, whatever you were doing, whoever you were, to be exposed to such a momentous and devastating event was to have to process something inconceivable to the normal, steady mind of the average citizen. Perhaps some have the mental capacity, the intestinal fortitude, the hardened feelings to simply allow such a thing to hit them only a glancing blow. Perhaps some can absorb, process, and deal with the matter.

Some of us are not so lucky.

Call it whatever you like, by whatever yardstick you use, but I still carry pain from that day, pain that does not simply bloom and flower ever September 11^th, but lives with me and intrudes on my life in unexpected ways. It may rear up its head when I hear my children fighting in the way siblings do. It may manifest when I have left my home and cannot remember if I told my wife I love her. It may seep from the shadows whenever a plane flies over my house at low altitude. It hides within the folds of memory, and pours forth unbidden. I believe much of it is due to the incredulity of the moment; more of it, I feel, is some pent up guilt I hold, for not running downtown to help. I know, in the light of reflection, that there was little one more person could have done, but I have never been the shrinking violet when there was an emergency around me. To be rendered so immobile, to be held in abeyance by abject fear, is so unlike me that perhaps I have had trouble reconciling it. Others might be willing to overlook it, but I am having trouble doing so for myself.

I will be there on Sunday, along with the throng of others in their various states of grief and memory. I will be looking to perhaps, finally, put aside the worst of the day, to wash off the feelings of horror and despair that have clung to me like barnacles. I can't say if I will be successful. I can't say if it will help. But for the memory and for the hopes of 2,977 people, I must try, for as they fell, I must rise. We must rise.

Take Not A Life Lightly

2011-09-08T22:56:00.000-04:00

By now, the tumult has swept over the nation from corner to corner: a Republican Presidential candidate stands before a room as states he has had no trouble exercising the death penalty, and is lauded by the crowd with applause. For a moment, one might have noted the exuberant and keening voices of the Colosseum amid the clapping, for it was a spectacle best suited to that forgotten time when fighting men and condemned souls were made to dance in death for the approval of the crowd, and their Emperor dispensed his own brand of "justice," by making it a sport of blood.

You might think your author hyperbolic, but I report only what sensation comes to me when events transpire before my eyes and ears. It was a singular moment, like so few I have witnessed, that horrified and enraged me. Were I not better prepared for it from the commentary I read prior to watching it, apoplexy might have welled up from within me. For this moment, unlike many of late, sets the tale of this country in the starkest relief, casting a shadow across a nation that prides itself on equality, integrity, faith, and justice.

Governor Rick Perry of Texas was responding to a question from NBC's Brian Williams about potential struggles with the record number of executions -- 234 at last count -- that he had authorized. While Perry's answer is telling:

"No, sir. I've never struggled with that at all. The state of Texas has a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place of which -- when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing, they go through an appellate process, they go up to the Supreme Court of the United States, if that's required. But in the state of Texas, if you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you're involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that is, you will be executed."

It was not the answer that elicited the response from the audience, but the question. Before Perry could even expound on his concept of frontier justice, the crowd had already bestowed approbation upon him for those actions.

Where Rick Perry is tainted by this is not just in the number of executions and his folksy, frontiersman take on "justice," but the fact that he did nothing to interrupt the applause. An avowed man of Christian faith, he stood mute, as applause rang out and Brian Williams waited to finish his thought, not acknowledging the accolades and taking that moment to chastise the crowd for being enthusiastic in their response to the idea of execution. When his response came, it rolled off his tongue, cool and assured. He has never struggled with it. Never.

In that moment, between the crowd's perplexing and perturbing enthusiasm, and the slick and savage response of the man, Rick Perry painted himself as a self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing, hypocritical, and cold man. The taking of a life, wrapped up in the trappings of a "fair and just" system, does not bother him, nor, apparently, many others in our nation. In that moment, one could only imagine a tear rolling down the cheek of a crucified Jesus, not for his own pain, but for the pain of knowing his gift to so many was being squandered by those who give lip-service to his name and no thought to his teachings. That a man, a man in a position of power, has no trouble executing the people he serves -- criminals though they may be -- should frighten us. It speaks to a lack of compassion, a lack of empathy, and, above all, a lack of thought. That he does not reflect upon nor seek guidance in the taking of a life, and is happy to hide behind the power of the State, is troubling.

A man so easy with such power and so free with human life is a problematic; how can we be sure that, upon a whim, he will not commit the nation to a course of action that is ultimately destructive, because he does not fear the loss of lives? How can a man be trusted, who is willing to flex executive power without due consideration to the effect or the consequence? How do we trust a man, who claims belief in a religion where he so easily violates some of its highest precepts?

What can be said, but that there is a vast gulf between those who support the death penalty and have agonized over their decision to support it, and the sycophantic, “Christian” masses on display at the “debate,” who allowed a crescendo of accolade to damn them in the eyes of a nation and possibly in the eyes of their God. We may wish to find a reasonable accommodation in our beliefs for the idea that some people are beyond redemption, that there can be no turning them from evil’s side, but even there, they represent a life, and taking that life serves no purpose. The guilty must live with the shame and humiliation of their guilt — there is no other way for them to be redeemed. To simply put them out of society’s misery condemns us, for if we believe in life and the soul and forgiveness, how can we countenance murder by our government?

To the eyes of any decent American, Rick Perry, through action and inaction, has removed himself from serious consideration as President. We cannot afford to hand the power to manage a nation to a man who cannot let his conscience be a firm guide in his judgement. To do so, would be to sentence our nation to an ignominious death.

People Who Don't Belong In Government

2011-09-08T10:52:00.000-04:00

Those who think government is evil
Those who think government is incapable of solving problems
Those who think government should not be solving problems
Those who think government has no obligation to support its citizens.
Those who think their form of worship is superior to the works of humanity and want to impose it on all citizens

Government is only as capable as those who run it. Placing people incapable of accepting government for what it is in positions of importance, is the surest way to destroy a nation. We need people who can be open-minded, fair, reasonable, compassionate, and who will compromise to get work done, not party sycophants or fear mongers or power grabbers. America suffers, where it cannot follow the precepts outlined for it by its founders: that each of us is equal and each of us is responsible to ourselves and to our fellow citizens. Those who cannot see themselves as part of a greater whole cannot possibly work toward the greater good.

They Pledge Allegiance...

2011-09-02T08:29:00.000-04:00

Of late, we note the spate of candidates for, and holders of, high offices in our nation signing pledges, to groups and organizations, that they will not raise taxes, that they will ban same-sex marriage, that they will repeal the health care law, and so on. They are all in earnest, believing that such pledges make them exemplars of what it means to govern the United States, that they are willing to commit such action to paper and place their name upon it.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

You see, to have gained or to be placed in such positions requires only one pledge: a pledge to the citizens of a town, or a state, or the nation, that they will uphold and defend the Constitution (and/or their local charter), and will bound by its precepts, the highest being the principles of individual freedom and liberty, and the necessity to promote the general welfare. Such a pledge -- an oath, really -- is designed to make them aware of the seriousness of the task they are about to undertake and to remind them that they are not simply sovereigns, but beholden to the people who granted them the power.

When a lawmaker decides that a pledge to an individual group that espouses principles that align with their party or personal beliefs, they are voiding that oath they took. When a candidate for office does so, they marking themselves as unfit to govern. To place the interests of a small group against the interests of a state or nation, is to allow undue influence. It says that you are willing to listen to some but not others. It says that you are preordaining inflexibility and rigidity in governance, rather than maintaining open-mindedness and compromise. It says you place your beliefs and values above those of the full body of citizens. It says you are unwilling to do what is best for all, only what will gain you votes and "glory."

Personal belief and morality and honor do have a place in governance, but they must be tempered by the overarching need to maintain the greater good. It is not above us or beneath us to admit that, though we may feel it wrong or against our personal beliefs, some things are best for all Americans, if we are not simply paying lip-service to the words written down by the Founding Fathers. Governance requires the view of the grand scale of humanity, not the swathes we are bound to. It requires the acceptance that we are not infallible, that we must constantly tweak and tinker to create a government that runs smoothly and efficiently. It demands that we put aside other considerations, that we treat our nation as one group, indivisible, as we also treat it as a group of individuals, each with their own rights and privileges to enforced, maintained, and extended. It works only where all voices can be heard and given equal sway.

So I say, be wary of one who would so easily pledge allegiance to a group or organization that does not represent the best interests of all Americans, for it is quite possible that, though you voted for them, when the time comes, a knock upon their door will be met with stony silence.

I Don't Feel Your Pain

2011-08-27T09:55:00.000-04:00

The world as we know it is a rough place, a series of nettlesome problems laced with personal disagreements, differing opinions, and a variety of points of view. The only constant is that the trials and tribulations are happening to people such as ourselves, people who may be very different from us through casual inspection, but upon deeper reflection, are not that much different. They, too, are trying to survive, trying to flourish, trying to have a decent life.

What disturbs us more than anything, is how so many seem to be unable to empathize with others, for reasons beyond comprehension and through rationales which test rationality. It is so easy for one person to look at another, and allow surface impressions to form their whole opinion, and to parse the information that comes in through various media as proof of that opinion. These opinions, far from fluid and malleable, become the bedrock of intolerance and ignorance, driving people further apart. It is as if the contraction for the world through technology and transportation is being resisted by a visceral repulsion, not unlike the collapse of star being slowed or halted by the fusing matter within.

This repulsion is more a revulsion, an inchoate force that is building by the day, seeking to halt the inevitable collapse of humanity from its tribal origins into a unified whole. The inevitability of a unified humanity is as clear as the eventual death of our home star once it's nuclear fuel is expended. Barriers between people have eroded over hundreds of thousands of years, as the first true humans spread out from their enclaves and roamed the surface of the world on foot and by boat, spreading like a drop of ink in a still pond. Eventually, we humans made it to almost every nook and cranny of our globe save the most inhospitable, which stood mutely defiant until such time as our technology brought us the ability to conquer them as well. We even brought our power to bear to leap the gap to our nearest neighbor in space, the Moon.

With the spreading, came settling, and with settling, came populating, and with population came the need to expand resources, and to do so meant some level of cooperation, or in some cases, enslavement. A species, formerly simple and working from only its instincts, reached a point of requiring new skills and capacities to develop. The rise of the cerebral cortex was the rise of humanity. And yet, the primitive parts of the human mind would not be dispatched so easily by their new neighbor in the brain-case. Even now, they prey at the edges of our rationality, forcing otherwise reasoning and reasonable beings to do unwise and unreasonable things. One of those things, is to see our neighbors as being different, and therefore, some sort of threat. That primitive instinct, latching on to the enhanced capacity of the human mind, now drives human beings into intolerance, bigotry, and leaves them with an inadequate sense of compassion and empathy.

Not all are so afflicted with this insidious disease, this gnawing relic of primitive ancestry, but the number who are is staggering enough to make it seem as if we are surrounded by an unholy sea of the unreasoning. We are shocked at the heinous indifference some feel toward others and that shock may drive us to greater heights to make up for the deficit, or may cause us to rock in despair for our species. No day goes by that some story does not cross our eye or ear that makes us cringe, for the wanton disregard for human beings whose only crime is that they were "different," or did not believe as others believed. That the disease so prevalent in The Middle Ages -- which was allowing us to burn and stone people until only a few hundred years ago -- could survive into the 21st Century is incomprehensible to any reasonable person, though it should come as no surprise, given that the malevolent poison of intolerance is spread through words passed on from generation to generation in tomes, from pulpits, and behind closed doors.

What may shock us further is how that indifference and intolerance is mutating, afflicting new populations, making them regard others as somehow "diseased" for having feelings or emotions, denying the need of some for solace, becoming inured to the malice in the hearts of their fellow humans. That a world becoming so close knit can see a new crop of people rise who would look around at the staggering load of humanity upon this world and feel no connection to it, becoming ever-so-tired of hearing about their travails, seeing themselves as above it all, unable to empathize, is troublesome. It is to be expected, given the advance of knowledge, that some old precepts should fall by the wayside as outmoded and proven untrue, but it is baffling that such a process of realignment with what we know of the world should advance to a point where nihilism is more acceptable than human duty.

The vast bulk of humanity falls well under that curve that represents an empathetic and rational humanity, but it is the fringe elements, those that hold on to a dying past, and those that look to a future disconnected from their fellow humans, that should trouble us, lest they poison more minds. We cannot discard the lessons of human history, and we certainly cannot discard our humanity. We survive and flourish only where we work together, as part of a coordinated whole. We die out, where we abandon our connections to others. We must do what we can to damp out the messages that those on the fringes would have us accept as fact, lest we doom all humanity to obsolescence and burial in the dust.

We Do Ordain And Establish

2011-08-20T11:57:00.002-04:00

The Establishment is not the problem.

Those who are elected to run The Establishment are the problem.

President Obama said it best:

You’ll hear a lot of folks, by the way, say that government is broken. Well, government and politics are two different things. Government is our troops who are fighting on our behalf in Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s government. Government are also those FEMA folks when there’s a flood or a drought or some emergency who come out and are helping people out. That’s government. Government is Social Security. Government are teachers in the classroom. Government are our firefighters and our police officers, and the folks who keep our water clean and our air clean to breathe, and our agricultural workers. And when you go to a national park, and those folks in the hats — that’s government.

So don’t be confused — as frustrated as you are about politics, don’t buy into this notion that somehow government is what’s holding us back…. [D]on’t buy into this whole notion that somehow government doesn’t do us any good; government is what protects us. The government is what built the Interstate Highway System. Government is what sent a man to the Moon. It’s what invested in the research and development that created innovations all across this country.

The Federal Government in the United States is, in and of itself, not broken. It functions as it should, protecting us, providing for us, and ensuring the liberty of all. The bulk of our government is bureaucracy, people who vary little from one administration or one Congress to the next. They go about their business, day-in and day-out, ensuring the operation of a nation. Much of what is the function of the government is done automatically, without the direct interference of elected officials.

Where government ceases to operate as it should, is at the upper levels, the realm of the elected, where representatives of The People jostle and joust for control of the vast machinery of governance, seeking to place their own imprimatur upon it. Here is where the breakdown occurs, the disconnect between The People who are the nation and the government that is supposed to support them. This disconnect occurs because the representatives we elect -- and this has been true for decades -- do not actually represent us, but their political party. They are far more concerned with shuffling for supremacy within their party, or fighting over their message, than applying their will to following the commands of the people who elected them. They see their party's agenda as superior to the magnanimous and broad-reaching freedom granted us by the Constitution. The seek to alter and tweak government to ride their party's agenda exclusively, to the detriment of anyone who chooses not to see their "brilliance."

Political parties, their adherents, and the back-door organizations that fund them, are allowed to run -- or better yet, not run -- the country in contravention of the Constitution's precepts by we, The People. We put these people in charge, over and over, never calling them into account for their obfuscations and obstruction. We listen to their flowery and fiery rhetoric, believing every word uncritically, failing to peer behind the words to see their meaning. We do not keep an eye on them, follow them closely, stay observant of their actions, allowing them to operate with nigh-impunity in the vacuum that is Washington, D.C. We allow them to frame the dialog on the state of the nation, rather than making them listen to us about how it really is.

If you want to complain about how this nation is run and how it works, fine, but I suggest that before you do, you take a critical look at just what is broken. You might be surprised to find that your assumptions are due to a lack of focus. You can start by looking at those who claim to have your best interests at heart and see exactly what they have been up to. Yo may find their claims do not match the evidence. Once you have done so, take it upon yourself to take up the mantel once more, and work to fill Washington, D.C. with responsible governors and not political party sycophants. We control the government, and it is time we reasserted our authority.

The Excess Of Unreasonable Expectations

2011-08-20T10:16:00.000-04:00

For all those who voted for Barack Obama, who thought that he would sweep into Washington, D.C. and cast out the political demons of money, power, and influence, much as Jesus cleansed the Temple, I have news for you: wasn't going to happen. You knew it, too; you knew, deep down, that over two hundred years of ingrained political glad-handing was not going to be erased by one man in one Presidential term. Still, there was, dare I say, hope. Hope that he would be different. Hope that the change he represented would sweep out like a tidal wave, engulfing the power-hungry minions of The Monied Powers and restore order. And while it's true that a wave starts with but a single drop of water, it gets its power from the billions of other drops that join it in surging forward.

So, we anointed the man, broke down a barrier many thought insurmountable, and swept him into office. Then, staggeringly, we sat back and waited. And waited. And waited. Waited for the change to appear. Waited for the exodus from Washington, D.C., of those who had long made profit of their power. And still, many wait, forgetting that the maxim that change requires action, and the action of one man would not be enough to turn back the corruption rife within the denizens of the nation's capitol. We abandoned him to his fate and now have the temerity to claim he is not fighting for us.

One begins to wonder if we are not the victims of our own beliefs, that so much has changed in the world, that the election of a black President would somehow finalize the destruction of the "way things used to be." Perhaps, wrongly, we were certain this would be the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, and segregation, and discrimination, and the division of the nation into colors and types. Did we think President Obama would be the bogeyman to come along and scare away all those who had been hiding behind their power and privilege, a modern-day Moses come to take us from our bondage to The Monied Powers?

If we did, then we severely underestimated the tenacity of privilege, and overestimated the raw strength one man could turn to the task of rooting out the corruption of our political process and forms of governance. The beast was not in some state of repose, resting from the beatings it took during the era of civil rights and Vietnam; it was simply lying in wait for the next sacrifice to be thrown its way. We obliged. The villagers cowered behind the rocks, as their knight-in-shining armor was sent into the dragon's lair, armed only with what he could carry. That he should emerge scorched and battered is no great shock.

What gave us the idea that, once elected, he no longer needed our help? In case you have forgotten your American history classes, let me point out that he is the sole occupant of the Executive Branch, beholden to the Legislative Branch (Congress) for the legislation that he must deal with, and warily eyed by the Judiciary Branch, to ensure that he and the Legislative do not overstep their bounds. He is not a tyrant, not a dictator, not a monarch. He is part of a system of governance, one part in a troika that is tasked by The People to run the nation by the expedient of the Constitution of the United States, the document that outlines the purpose for our union and the rules by which it will be operated. His power is limited; he cannot simply wave his magic wand and create change. For that he needs the help of Congress... and us.

Yes, that's right: just because we elect a President or members of Congress, does not mean our work is done. If our expectations be that we can send these people into the belly of the beast and turn our backs to them to go about our lives, we cannot stand slack-jawed as we look around and realize that things are not the way we would like them. We may elect representation, and in a perfect world they might be thought to require no guidance form us, but we cannot assume that what happens in Washington, D.C. has anything to do with what really matters to us. Placed in the political cage, our representatives are no more than gladiators now, fighting each other to death for supremacy through the auspices of political parties. The disconnect between what happens in the ring, and what needs to happen out here, could not be more stark.

So, it was wholly unreasonable to think that President Obama could simply wave a hand and part the politics, especially when he had no backup from us. You cannot hand the President a mandate and then slink back to the safety of your easy chair, and then be appalled because you think he is "not doing anything." The fact is, the President works hard for us every day, and receives little but scorn for it, because he cannot work miracles. True, he has himself to blame for it, partially; he sought the approval of the masses, and so claimed he would work tirelessly to turn the tide of politics. He may have done so under the assumption -- invalid, as it seems -- that we would all be right behind him, exhorting our lawmakers to follow the man's lead and to begin to make the changes required to bring about a rebirth of governance. Instead, we turned back to our televisions, and the man has spent three years in pitched battle, with his own party, and with the "loyal" opposition, trying to get things done, and receiving very little congratulations for the the things he has accomplished.

turn the tide. Even now, he scans the horizon, wondering if help will arrive in time. So I ask of you: will you march into the maw and help rout The Monied Powers, or will you sit in your tent like Achilles, and sulk? The fate of a nation depends on you, and the man who would lead us to a brighter future cannot wait much longer for you to make up your mind to help.

The Parties Are Over

2011-08-12T14:17:00.000-04:00

There may be no "I" in "team," but there is in "independent."

If you look up my voter registration, it will say "Democrat," but only because there are no open primaries in my state. Frankly, I'm not sure why there should be primaries at all, but I avail myself of the system that exists, a system that, frankly, shouldn't exist.

The Constitution of the United States makes no mention of political parties, minority whips, or any of the other baggage that has been dumped on the floor of the House and the Senate, or at the door of the White House, or in the vestibule of the Supreme Court. There are no Articles pertaining to how power shall be apportioned between political parties, or how parties can manipulate the Rules of Order and Procedure to create, maintain, or thwart power. The system in place now -- the unwritten system -- that lies atop those actual rules supplied by the Constitution are fabrications of the political parties that run the nation.

It's time for the parties to depart.

In case it has escaped anyone's notice, and how can it, when the news media waves it in your face unceasingly, the government in Washington, D.C. is broken. It has become an ungainly series of flanking maneuvers, reckless charges, holding actions, and stalemates masquerading as governance, perpetuated by an electorate which has, wholesale, shirked its responsibility to hold its leaders to account and remove those who cannot get the job done. Actions in Congress are made based on their effect on the next Presidential election, which is coveted by each party so that they may try to manipulate the Supreme Court. The system of "checks & balances" has now been turned into the system of "charges & counter-charges." Where one party controls both the Legislative and Executive branches, the other is "forced" to fight holding actions and use delaying tactics to make it to the next election. Where power is spread out between the parties, governance, such as it is, grinds to a halt.

A nation cannot afford to be locked into only two modes of thought. There are not two and only two solutions to any and every problem. Absolutism in any measure weakens freedom and liberty, if one is forced to swear allegiance to an agenda. When we decide that people must be segregated by political doctrine, we supplant the natural strength of representative democracy, because we have inserted middlemen into the process. Why should a representative be beholden to a party, when it is not the party that elects them, but the people?

In a multivariate and pluralistic society such as has been created here, the problems we have are not black-and-white for the most part. To reduce every aspect of our sovereign rights and governance to two-sided bickering is to wonder why we don't just flip a coin, in the name of expedience. The tug-of-war between Republicans and Democrats does nothing to but throw dirt in the gears of what is supposed to be a smooth-running machine. The Founding Fathers never expected everyone to agree on everything, but they did see compromise and compassion as valid tools for governance, tools that are being left to rot by parties that are more interested in scoring points than saving a nation.

It's time we reevaluated our political process and stripped it of the frippery and dead weight that have turned us from a nation to be admired and emulated, into a nation to be reviled and denigrated. It's time we ceased being the patsies of party organizations, whose only interest is furthering the interests of the party, not of the people. While you might wish to make a case for the nobility of what either party has accomplished over its history, one need only look at the current state of affairs in our nation to see that the emperor has no clothes. Both parties have brought us down, and it's time they were sent to the sideline, so that we might pick up the pieces of the debacles they have saddled us with, and rebuild our nation properly, along the lines of that which our Founders hoped for: conceived in liberty, with freedom and justice for all.

Now How Much Will You Pay?

2011-08-10T14:58:00.000-04:00

Putting aside the fact that Wall Street does not represent the entirety of the U.S. economy, and that economy has been a wretched mess for several years now, and that troubles in Europe seem never-ending, can we really be shocked by the follies that have taken place of late in our country and the world? A botched attempt at maintaining our country's credit rating is a trifle compared to hunger in Somalia, political revolution in Syria and Libya, and lawlessness and poverty in Tottenham and elsewhere in Great Britain. Even so...

The hew-and-cry has always been that we need to focus on the problems we have at home. Assuming we could wall ourselves off from the rest of the world, the problems of the globe are not only our problems, too, they reflect the same problems that still plague our nation as deeply, if not as forcefully. So, yes, let us focus on the problems at home, large and small, and let's see where they originate. The answer may surprise you, though it shouldn't.

The problem is us.

Take a good look around. This nation so many profess to love is a pit of iniquity and inequality that even two centuries and a civil war have not managed to iron out. The freedom and liberty we enjoy, whose cost was so high to being about, is treated like so much old lawn furniture by a people not smart enough to bring it in out of the rain. The Constitution, font of our freedom and liberty, has been turned into just another wrapper to be discarded beside the road. Justice, a cardinal virtue upon which this nation would come to rely heavily in its formative years, is now just a commodity. Representative government, the key ingredient the Founding Fathers were sure would lead to a long-lasting and resplendent nation, is now a taxing and tempestuous treadmill of greed, corruption, and self-satisfaction.

If you think the words too harsh, I enjoin you to look around again. Look at the people living in the streets. Look at the people forced to visit the food banks. Look at the people queued up by the thousands for free school supplies. Look at the hundred thousand applicants for a handful of jobs. Look at decrepit bridges and highways. Look at run-down schools. Look at whole neighborhoods, whole sections of towns and cities, moldering as people are thrown from their homes. Look at dusty and dilapidated store fronts that have been empty for years. Look at the elderly being herded into homes and communities, stripped of their memories and their dignity. Look at the jails, crammed to the rafters with recidivists, warehouses for the damned and demoralized alike.

Look at it. What? You don't see it? That's because you don't want to.

You, me, every one of us, bear responsibility for the tableau. This nation is the product of the slow degradation of character, the continual decimation of our once proud educational heritage, the disillusion of so many at the constant barrage of bad news, and the grinding destruction of the beautiful national edifice that the Founding Fathers enshrined in the Constitution, by the vested interests that seek to wrest power away from its rightful owners, the citizens of this nation. The messes we find our nation in start right at our doorstep.

"How?", you ask. After all, isn't corporate greed the fault of big business? Isn't lackluster journalism the fault of the news organizations? Isn't political malfeasance and chicanery the fault of political parties? Isn't constant warfare the fault of war mongers in the military? Isn't constant crime the fault of a broken justice system?

How do you think those things got that way?

We have spent a great portion of the later history of our nation turning away from the responsibilities we were given by our ancestors. This nation was set up with virtually all the tools it would need to be self-sufficient, self-sustaining, and above all, free forever. The caveat was -- and still is -- that for the system to work, the citizenry would have to maintain it. Preservation of freedom and liberty, the integrity of the Constitution, the operation of a representative Federal government, the apportionment and control of free commerce... all of that was placed on our shoulders. It meant that, to be successful, the United States would have to have the most enlightened, literate, and engaged citizenry of any nation. Being that many of the Founding Fathers were men of The Enlightenment, stirred by the ideas of humanism and science, it is no wonder they thought the continued exposure of the fledgling nation to new ideas and new knowledge would allow its citizenry to keep the country on an even keel.

They gave us too much credit, it seems.

Perhaps it can be chalked up to the rapid expansion of the nation, or the clinging to parochial attitudes of the past, or the relative distrust of immigrant groups for each other, or maybe even the fact that the initial buzz of the "new frontier" finally wore off, but Americans have slowly disconnected from the initial vision of the Founders, sloughing off their responsibility as dutiful citizens, entrusting their future with and thrusting their liberty into, the hands of those who are least qualified to be so entrusted: political parties, corporate councils, and religious fundamentalists, to name a few. It appears to be far easier in the minds of many Americans to let someone else take on the heavy burden of seeing to the health and welfare of the nation. The trouble comes when we don't keep an eye on our proxies.

We have paid for our ignorance, our laissez faire, our disinterest in public affairs by suffering through crippling recessions, sudden economic downturns, fluctuations in the housing market, bank failures, foreclosures, budget deficits, decrepit infrastructure, natural disasters, and foreign interventions. We have handed the keys to the nation over to driver's with less than exemplary records and are shocked when they drive the nation into a ditch, sending our insurance rates skyrocketing. We give power to govern to those who squander the resources we give them, then see fit to blame other parties for their incompetence and lack of will. We give our money to companies for their cheap goods and left wondering why things fall apart so quickly. We allow banks to take our money and hand it to people who have no business being in business, and wonder why our savings accounts yield little interest. We allow corporations to strip away our livelihoods and send them overseas, leaving us holding the bag for the lost revenue.

We do this. We do it by not staying informed. We do it by accepting information at face value. We do it by refusing to question our leaders. We do it by refusing to examine our own behavior. We refuse to challenge our own morality and values. We refuse to take a fresh look at things in the light of current knowledge. We hang on to dogma, to parochialism, to bigotry. We do not call out hypocrisy when we see it, nor do we admit our own when called on it. We do not demand better of ourselves, or others. We do not plan ahead, and thus are always falling behind. We do not accept the responsibility that is ours, cherish it, and and attempt to do well by it and through it. We always want something for nothing, as if hardship were an allergy.

So, in light of the turmoil in our nation, in the face of looming debt, soft housing markets, and rampant unemployment, ask yourself how much you are willing to continue to pay for all this. To continue doing what we have been doing up till now means that the cost will just keep rising, to the point that the rescue of our nation will no longer be assured. How much are you willing to pay?

I, for one, am no longer willing to bear the cost of the incompetence of others. Taking back the nation means taking back control, shifting power away from the ephemeral groups that seek to run the nation to their liking, and reasserting our claim to control of governance. I cannot do ti alone. Together, as a nation, we must stand up, take stock, get our bearings, then begin the arduous task of wresting the reins back from those who have sent us careening toward the canyons. It's time to tell the political parties, the corporate cultures, and the religious fanatics that their days of poisoning a decent system is over, and we do that by voting them and their cronies out, at the ballot box, at the grocery store, at the gas station, at church, etc. We vote in every significant way possible, withholding money and power and obedience from those who want it most from us, and making them bend to our will, as it should be. This nation was not founded for the convenience of a few -- it was founded to provide freedom and liberty for the many. It is time for the many to remind the few of this salient point, and for us to ensure they do not forget it.

America, The Post-Racial

2011-08-08T15:35:00.000-04:00

Here is a story that tells you where America stands as far as tolerance and individual liberty goes: James Craig Anderson, a 49-year-old auto plant worker, was standing beside his car on a Sunday morning in Jackson, MS, when up drove two carloads of teenagers, who had spent the night drinking. The teens "allegedly" got out of their vehicles and proceeded to pummel this man, and then, when he tried to stagger back to his car, ran him over with a pickup truck and drove away.

The kids are white; Mr. Anderson was black. Was, because he is now a corpse, bereft of life and of any conceivable identity that could be assigned to him that would have any meaning other than deceased. He was a living, breathing man, American citizen, worker, brother and son. Assigned by the Constitution of the United States his inalienable rights to personal liberty, he had those rights stripped from him in a brutal and callous fashion, by unfeeling, uncaring, bigoted white teenagers. Allegedly. In the vernacular that we must adopt as outlined in that same Constitution, one is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, and so the crime is "alleged" to have occurred. Of course, the Founding Fathers never envisioned video tape or digital recordings.

The whole crime was caught on surveillance video. In sordid detail.

There is still the formality of trial, and perhaps... perhaps... there could be some exigent circumstances that would invalidate the evidence and rescue the young men charged, but at this point, short of a concerted conspiracy to destroy evidence (futile, given the dissemination of the footage to news outlets), their fate is sealed. Their desire to "mess with some n**grs" -- allegedly their words -- fueled by systemic ignorance, poor education, lack of moral guidance, and accelerated by alcohol, will lead them to a life shut away from the rest of society, with no hope of roaming the wide world ever again.

Details of this will come to light at trial, and the word of law means they must still be considered innocent until a prosecutor proves otherwise, but the event itself, in its gruesome particulars, is not as important as the context the even provides for the nation we currently live in. For some, the election of a black President was some magical signpost, that we had separated ourselves from our bigoted past and broken out into the clearer air of the 21st Century.

We were kidding ourselves.

If anything, we've seen -- by the peppering of the media with indiscreet utterances, inflamed rhetoric, and inappropriate drawings -- the dormant skein of racial dogma running through our society reappear in the tapestry of our everyday lives, dark and dirty threads tracing finger-like through the otherwise beautiful rendering of a nation conceived in liberty. The right to free speech does not mean one must speak, only that one can; spewing forth outmoded and objectionable slurs on a person's race, culture, religion, orientation, etc. is allowed by the First Amendment, but it says nothing about the relative merit of the speech. Those concepts and epithets are no less morally objectionable for having been uttered while cloaked in the Constitution.

The post-racial universe many wanted to live in at the end of 2008 is a construct of wishful thinking and fairy dust. At that moment, perhaps, it existed in the light of President Obama's triumph. That, however, was just a light coating of hope, that melted under the withering heat of reality, as the backlash against a black President began. One event of that magnitude, no matter how promising, could not shatter to indistinct shards a dense agglomeration of bigotry such as humanity has carried with it throughout eons. Chip away at the surface though we may, wear it down through the erosion of human progress, the mass of it remains, seemingly as impermeable as the granitic upthrusts of mountain ranges.

Post-racial America is not around the corner. It may not even lie at the end of this century, or the next. It can only truly take root and drive apart the crevice-strewn mass of negativity slowly, painstakingly. Moments such as this one will prove setbacks, but as surely as the snows of Winter melt away into the cool running waters of Spring, so too will the advance of a decent humanity grind down and break apart these last vestiges of our animal past, freeing us from the poison that is bigotry. I will not live to see it, nor may my children, nor theirs, and so on, but as the rock gives way under such scouring action, we see revealed glimpses of it, visions of a future where no person will look at another save in fellowship. Some day, it will be as commonplace as the wind, and the rain, and the stars. Just not today.

Love And Marriage

2011-08-04T10:27:00.000-04:00

It is a fallacy, a piece of ignorant fluff, that says there can be no love between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. Besides the knowledge that sons love fathers and daughters love mothers, the simple fact remains that our essence, our soul if you will, is not a function of the shell we inhabit. Our personality, our fears, our drives, our emotions, may be connected to our physical form through the mechanisms of biology and evolution, but they are not us. If it's true that an immortal soul can be brought into existence with our birth, then how can that self-same soul be made a slave to a physical form it had no knowledge of? No. We are not a product of our gender, any more than we are a product of our skin color, or the God we do -- or do not -- worship. These things are are mere affectations, fleetingly attached to our true selves for the few years we stumble across the stage before the world.

Marriage is another affectation, a convenience and creation of men. It exists to bind together in law and dogma two people, and throughout history it was mostly a man and a woman. It was a means to an end, a justification for and celebration of misogyny, a binding of a woman in subservience to a man, a completion of a deal for passing a woman from one man (her father) to another man (her husband). Called a sacrament and draped in sanctity, it might be celebrated as one of the defining moments of a person's life, and, indeed, there is much to be said for declaring that one person is enough for you for your eternity on Earth, but we can never forget from whence it came, and call into question just how spiritually liberating the practice known as marriage is... until now.

Now, with the pursuit of equality for all Americans, outlined in the continued advance of the right to same-sex marriage, this old, stilted, and somewhat bedraggled ceremony is gaining a new birth of sanctity. For when we declare, triumphantly, that it matters not what form two human beings take, that they love and commit to each other "forever," we breathe new life into vows to love, honor, and cherish, and we admit that our knowledge of the world extends much further than it did when our ancestors first brought the practice into being.

There are those who rail against this new birth, guardians of "sacred" dogma, clinging to a past long surpassed by the forward flow of humanity over the face of this planet and into the black sky above. Our capacity for reason and knowledge tells us that there is no shame in faith, save where that faith seeks to invalidate truth or impose itself on others. In this case, truth is not easily dismissed. To allow the decrepitude of a paternalistic, bigoted past to live within the human milieu is to willingly carry a cancer that will continue to threaten the health of us all. Let no person be denigrated for their belief, save that we hold forth some pity for them, that they cannot see the forest for the trees. In the inevitability of human evolution, there will be those left behind, and they will mark dying branches on our family tree.

They said that a man and a woman of different religions could not marry, that it would destroy us -- they were wrong. They said that a man and a woman of different races could not marry, that it would destroy us -- they were wrong. They say now that a man cannot marry a man, nor woman marry a woman, that it will destroy us -- they are most definitely, wrong.

You Get What You Vote For

2011-08-03T22:41:00.000-04:00

The hyperventilating, pontificating, and obfuscating is now over. As with any good compromise, the bill that finally allowed the debt ceiling to be raised in conjunction with budgetary cuts, was met with unhappiness in all directions. The Tea Party was certain it did not go far enough. Republicans grumbled over defense cuts and the loss of a balanced budget amendment. Democrats were unhappy generally, over the whole "crisis" even having arisen, the lack of solid revenue increases, and the President's willingness to sit on the sidelines while they tried to do the heavy lifting, only to "stab them in the back" by giving the GOP much of what it wanted, in terms if not in substance.

As the sound of gnashing teeth and exhaled breath finishes washing over the nation, it's best to take a moment and look closely at what the debt ceiling "crisis" outcome really was, and more importantly, what it all actually meant.

First, let's get one thing straight, which may seem obvious: this never had to happen. You will no doubt have heard the statistics about how many times the debt ceiling was successfully raised unilaterally for every President before now, including President Obama. Suffice to say, that alone is reason enough to believe that this whole kerfuffle was an artificial construct. We can go a step further and note that back before the 2010 Mid-term Elections, the Democrats could have raised the debt ceiling unilaterally, for as long as they saw fit. Or, this could have been one of the first pieces of business that the 112^th Congress took on once the gavel was transferred from Nancy Pelosi to John Boehner.

If you really want to get technical about it, there should never have even been the merest whiff of this, back when President Bill Clinton handed over the nation to George W. Bush with a balanced budget and a surplus and a burgeoning economy. All Congress and the President Bush had to do was stay the course on spending and revenues, and ensure that every new entitlement or deviation from the budget was somehow backed by appropriate revenue enhancements or spending cuts. That didn't happen. You can blame a long list of things for the sudden amnesia the government came down with from 2001 to 2008, but the bottom line is this: they muffed. Some of the self-same individuals who had participated in the balancing of the budget, tore it apart all too gladly when they had the chance.

When you boil it right down, however, the finger can be pointed in only one direction: the American electorate. Oh, not at every single member, for some of us were doing what we could to alter the political lay of the landscape, but at those of you who could not be bothered to even put in your opinion. The cynicism of the average American has reached an intolerable point, to where the bulk of the nation is forced to deal with the idiocy purveyed by Federal, State, and Local legislators who could not pour piss out of a boot with instructions written on the heel. So many Americans have tossed aside the mandate handed down to them by the Founding Fathers, refusing to accept their responsibility for their own governance, that those of us who fight tooth-and-nail for change are simply swallowed up in a miasma of indifference, bereft of the power to push ahead needed reform and to adjust the political landscape to restore the proper functioning of government.

The air in this nation reeks of lackadaisicalness and its stench was nowhere more prevalent than in Washington, D.C. in the past several weeks, as Congress hemmed, hawed, seesawed, twisted, spun, and seemed locked in a perpetual dog-chasing-its-tail mode, never quite being able to do something as straightforward as raising the debt ceiling without precondition in order to avoid a catastrophic default on our financial obligations. As it stands, even with the deal done, we are not out of the woods; the economy is suffering even further privation, our credit rating may fall nonetheless, and in the spree of partisanship, a major portion of the government, the FAA, was allowed to collapse into oblivion, depriving 4,000 FAA employees and 70,000 ancillary workers employment and denying the Federal government 200 million dollars in revenues so far.

It becomes clearer, as Congress remains mired in self-serving party politics, that we got what we voted for. Or didn't vote for -- those who do not vote have just as profound an effect on our nation as those who do, but do so badly. The combination of apathy and inertia has combined to lock both houses of Congress into a kind of political trench warfare, as each party scrambles up from its trenches, spitting out withering rhetoric and charging heedlessly into the teeth of the other party's defenses. When the cannonade is over, the clash of ideologies dies down, and the clouds of smoke part, neither side has budged the other an inch.

We voted these people into power. We created this condition, through generations of heedless electioneering, chest thumping, gerrymandering, and subservience to ideology. We took the independent spirit imbued in the nation by its founders, and let it decay, evaporating into thin air, leaving us this fetid and infertile ground in which governance, compromise, and compassion can no longer grow. We left the control of the nation to parties and their sycophantic adherents, the ranters and ravers whose spray of party invective saturated it, driving decent Americans mad with frustration, or causing them to retreat into the darkness. We surrendered the hard-won birthright of our nation, creating an artificial feudal aristocracy, with Presidents becoming weak de facto kings, governors becoming barons, and Congressmen, lords. We gave up.

we allowed it to become this way. Even those of us who have been politically involved have our hand in it, for perhaps we did not speak up enough, did not encourage enough, did not campaign enough, did not find the right people to represent us, or allowed ourselves to be blinded by promise. The premise behind the Constitution of the United States and the Federal government it outlines, is that the people will always know best who should represent their best interests, and the interests of the States, and nation as a whole. We now see that, despite their enduring faith in their fellow citizens, the Founding Fathers did not anticipate just how time would winnow away the desire for a hand in representation and the honor gained through the acceptance of such responsibility.

This moment, this event, this display of government inadequacy, should be the shriek of the siren calling out an urgent warning, the bells tolling to sound the bass note of derision, the staccato bleating of the alarm announcing failure. It should shake us, those who take in the daily machinations in our governments, and those who do not, alike. It must be the notice that says to us, "Wake up! Pay attention! You are losing control!" Maybe, though the deal itself might be worth ridicule, in the end it is not the particulars that will do us favor, but the happenstance that brought it about. This may be, finally, the call to action for many Americans, awakening them from their torpor, so that they might take up again the responsibility they lay down so long ago. In this darkest hour, this may be the light that opens our eyes to the beauty of what we were given those many centuries ago.

What The Debt Crisis Says About America

2011-07-29T15:36:00.000-04:00

If you survey the media commenting on the United States debt crisis, from news programs, to blogs, to Op Ed pages, to talk radio, you get an overwhelming sense that a) American citizens are not really sure what the debt ceiling is and what defaulting on our debt obligations means, b) the Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are in no hurry to explain it to their constituencies, except in terms that denigrate their opposition, c) the President, true-to-form, is trying to get Congress to do its job without having to do it for them, and d) no one can agree on what the actual impact of a Federal default would be, good, bad, or otherwise.

It is interesting to note, in light of the goings-on, that something that is a duty of the Congress -- protecting the economic health, safety, and prestige -- has now become a lightning rod for politicking, a generator of hyperbole, and a highly-visible failure of our national government. No other nation would think to risk its economic power and standing in the world by allowing what should be a trivial matter -- maintaining a balanced budget and protecting the debt it has incurred -- to become a political hot potato. Many a government (Greece, Spain, Mexico, Ireland, etc.) have found themselves in financial dire straits, but have also managed to go about doing what was necessary to bring those conditions under control, even where that meant ceding economic power to other nations in return for loan guarantees. It has not looked good for the presiding government, but austerity and outside help looked a lot better than allowing their nation to collapse.

So what is our problem? Why have we, still the largest economy in the world, let our economic house fall into such disarray. My friends, we have only ourselves to blame.

Those in Congress right now, with their fingers on the button of economic doom, the Boehners, the Cantors, the Reids, the McConnells, the Ryans, the Walshes... they have had it in their power in the last decade to avoid this fate. When President Bill Clinton left office, there was a balanced budget and budget surpluses, which came even though the White House was under assault and the Congress was diametrically opposed to the President. Even then, at what could be considered the height of the Democratic-Republican Cold War, both sides were able to compromise, get work done, and fix what ailed America. They did it through budget cuts, tax hikes, tax code changes, and belt tightening. That moment, should have marked a point where it was obvious to all, that bipartisanship and compromise were not only possible, but beneficial, for the long-term health and growth of the nation.

It would be easy to beat up George W. Bush at this point, for with his arrival, and the arrival of his policies, that moment disappeared into oblivion, but he is not the true bogeyman here. Many of those who had just worked with the Clinton White House to bring the budget and the debt to heel, suddenly lost their minds. For whatever reason, their pledges of fiscal restraint disappeared in a puff of smoke, well before planes slammed into the Twin Towers. Already, with President Clinton gone, the pledges of fiscal responsibility were so many damp and discarded cocktail napkins in Washington, D.C. bars. Now, Congress went to town, urged on by President Bush, who took September 11th as a cue to capitalize on the suddenly loosened Federal wallet. Tax cuts, not for those in the Middle Class who needed them, but for the wealthy who didn't, reared their heads. A Medicare Prescription mandate, long overdue and necessary, was implemented, but with no actual way to pay for it. Wars were launched, which in hindsight, were not necessarily in our best interests, done so with no sources of revenue to fund them. It was a time of free spending, "free market" tinkering, and blindness to what had only been apparent a few years earlier.

Then, in 2007 and 2008, came the hangover.

The housing market collapsed. Wall Street found itself awash in bad debt of its own creation. Markets floundered. Foreclosures rose. Jobs, which had been slowly leaving the nation for warmer, sunnier, cheaper climes, now packed up and disappeared in droves. As money slowly drained out of the economy, tax revenues dried up, even as expenditures climbed. America went from fiscally sound to treading water in the short span of a decade. And it did so with the help pf some of the same people who are now threatening to wreck what is left of our fiscal autonomy.

This is not about who can win the 2012 Presidential Election. This is not about who is right or wrong. This is about restoring order. This is about getting back to the nation of 2000, the one that was able to bring its fiscal house in order despite party differences. This is about showing that we can govern ourselves, as the Founding Fathers intended.

While it is highly unlikely that, in the end, anyone in Washington, D.C. will actually allow a default to occur, the damage is done. We have been made to look foolish by a bunch of bumbling, self-absorbed, hypocrites, the very same people, in many cases, who were there in 2000 when they were able to work out their differences. Now, in an all-out effort to discredit a Democratic President and "ensure" a Republican victory in 2012, they have engaged in an insipid campaign to ruin the Federal government, which only stands to destroy our standing in the world and hurt the vast majority of Americans who depend on the government's assistance to help them make it through the current economic crisis. And they have done it, with the tacit approval of many of those self-same Americans, who have sold their votes to people who have no intention of protecting them from the very vagaries they create.

It's simple, America -- we can no longer afford to allow our government to be twisted into a perverted political party machine. We can no longer allow those who seek power, wealth, and self-aggrandizement to run our nation. We can no longer trust those who say they know what is best for us, when they have no means to back up their assertions. It is time for We, The People, to reassert control of the nation; come next year, it is time to sweep out the detritus of politics, and replace it with the strength of governance. We can not afford to go through such a disastrous period ever again.

Dying Of The Day

2011-07-27T18:16:00.000-04:00

August 2nd, 2011 will dawn like any other day. Some places will have sunshine, some places clouds, some places will be warm, some will be hot. People will shamble and shuffle through the hours, taking care of children, going to work, shopping for groceries, reading blogs, watching the news, and all the other things that mark a day passed in the life of a human being in the United States of America. Nothing truly shocking will happen... on the surface.

Yet, like an iceberg, most of what happens to our nation happens out of sight, a mass of motions, bargains, and deals that we do not see, nor do we have an inkling about. They happen on floors crowded with cubicles, in rooms with long tables and leather chairs, and corner offices, and back rooms, through teleconferences, emails, furtive phone calls, and quiet handshakes. And on that August day, a decision, really many decisions that rolled up into a singular one, will potentially cause the erosion of our nation's power and prestige, not to mention imperil an economy which, while on the mend, is nowhere near ready to move out of intensive care.

August 2nd, 2011, is the day the money runs out.

No one will notice it, there will be signs: the bleating of pundits on television screens, the waggling and wiggling of Wall Street, the impatient scroll of the teleprompter, and the constantly updating web sites. Though you will not notice it at the gas station or the grocery store or the public library, an event will have taken place that simply has not occurred in our modern era: the United States will have run out of money to pay all our bills. Like a family that has lived day-to-day on paychecks, at the end of the day, the coffers will be empty, and international creditors, and government employees, and senior citizens, and bond traders, and Americans from all walks of life will be left standing there, hand out, while Uncle Sam turns out his pockets and shrugs.

Plenty of people would have you believe this would not be the "end of the world," and they are right. It is hyperbole to believe that the whole of the nation, and the rest of the world with it, will simply come to a screeching, clattering halt. In fact, in the days after the money runs out, things might seem to be going along as usual. Below the surface, though, there will be the mad scramble to move money around, bounce it from place to place in a vain attempt to stave off collapse, shut down whole sections of government and cross fingers that this buys time. For a while anyway, the frantic fluctuations below the surface will not be seen or felt by the average citizen. If it goes on long enough, however...

It will start to show up in a rise in interest rates on your home and car loans and your credit cards. The effects will be subtle, because the rise will seem minuscule. Then you will notice retail prices begin to rise. Suddenly, you will note that you are spending more but getting less for the dollar. Then the dreaded word "inflation" will begin to rear its ugly head.

While a failure to raise the debt ceiling will not lead to the collapse of Western Civilization or the start of World War III, it will put a squeeze on the people who can afford it least: the average citizen. The senior citizens with fixed incomes, and those on disability will be hurt first and hurt worst. The poor will see their safety net dry up. Charities will see donations disappear as people tighten their belts even more than they already have. Money will drain away in savings accounts and under beds, and an economy teetering and tottering along, will be brought down in a thud that will reverberate around the globe.

Some would have you believe that the effects of a shut down will be negligible. Some would have you believe that the effects of a shut down will be catastrophic. The effects will be felt, no question. It may take time, it may not show up right away, but there will be effects and they will reach into every corner of American society -- save perhaps for the top 2%, who will be insulated by the sheer bulk of their wealth.

We would not be here, of course, if Congress had, at any time in the last decade, chosen to rein in spending. If wars had not been launched that were not necessary. If mandates were not created that were unfunded by revenues. If unsupported tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans had never existed. If those who supposedly represent us and our interests had actually done the job we sent them to Washington, D.C. to do, there would be no need for last minute scrambling to try and prop up the debt ceiling a little higher. This "crisis" was manufactured by the inability of both parties in Congress to govern, and is being exacerbated for political gain by the Republican Party, hoping to use it as leverage to unseat President Obama in 2012.

The "crisis" may still be averted; there is time for both sides to pull their heads out of the sand, toss aside the partisanship, and do what needs to be done. To do so, however, would require both Democrats and Republicans to recognize a simple truth: they put themselves and the nation in this predicament, and no one is going to bail them out. Now is not the time to worry about long-range debt problems; one does not worry about the life of the tires on their car when the battery has died. The first thing to be done is to raise the debt ceiling and avoid potential default. Right after that, then next thing to do is hunker down and come up with solutions to increase revenue and decrease debt, and to place everything on the table. Pledges and promises are not tools of governance -- they are stumbling blocks to progress. Congress needs to get its eyes off of 2012 and concentrate on 2011, if we are to avoid creating worse problems for ourselves down the road.

In the end, the same people who got us into this predicament must get us out. We can only hope they have learned something by the negative reactions of the American electorate. We can hope so, anyway.

Making The Case For Liberalism

2011-07-26T17:17:00.000-04:00

"Liberalism" is being turned into an epithet by some, and is being misrepresented as "Socialism" or "Communism" by others. Its proud tradition is being sullied in many quarters: by the media, by pundits, by talking-heads, by the ignorant and unsophisticated. It is being dragged through the mud by those who are afraid of it like children are afraid of the bogeyman.

All of this comes about because fear is being peddled instead of reason, bigotry instead of humanism, dogma instead of fact. Liberalism has been tarred-and-feathered by those who are afraid of its tenets, even as they misstate those tenets to their own advantage. Let us talk not at Liberalism, but about it, and let us set the record straight as to what it means.

Some of the things Liberalism stands for:

Constitutionalism - The idea that a nation should operate under a set of codifications that explain how power is transferred from the people to their elected representatives, and that the people should have the right to question the delegation of such power. It also encompasses the actual laws that govern how a common government shall operate, and what duties that government shall be charged with.
Democracy - The election of representatives by the people should be free and fair, and should not be abridged by outside forces, the current government and its elected representatives, nor by artificially-created entities. Elections should be competitive, not relegated to a minimum of parties, but open to all who seek to represent their fellow citizens through obtaining higher office.
Human Rights - The true liberal does not divide people along lines of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, family background, or by any completely artificial measure. To the liberal, each and every human being is equal, and each human being should be free to pursue their lives as they see fit, except where such pursuit would infringe on those same rights that their fellow citizens also have.
Religious Freedom - Each and every human being, being equal, has the right to worship as they see fit, again, as long as such worship does not infringe on the rights of their fellow citizens. This includes the choice of belief system, the choice to change belief systems, or the choice to leave belief systems entirely. Whatever form your belief may take, it is your right to have it, but you cannot impose it on others.
Free Trade and Free Markets - Those who create goods and services deserve to sell these to whomever they choose, wherever they choose, at whatever rate the market will bear. Tariffs and protectionism only supplant the natural power of supply and demand to create wealth. Free trade is essential to maintain a truly free market, one that punishes the malfeasance of those who try to swindle customers rather than providing quality goods or honest service.

I defy anyone to tell me that Liberalism marks some form of detrimental reasoning, a path to wrack and ruin. It is a system that promotes the value of the individual, and the rights of the individual, and the ability of the individual to provide for themselves and their family, but does not leave the people to their own devices. It also asks that we all accept responsibility for our actions, and that we accept our role as part of a larger community, humanity, that deserves our compassion and support, just as much as we do as individuals. Liberalism says that each of us has worth, and that we deserve to be treated fairly, by ourselves and by our government.

When you hear those shrill and inchoate voices bleat their ignorant rage against the "liberal agenda," remember that they asking you to look at your fellow citizens as objects, not people, and are claiming that self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment are greater virtues than compassion, consideration, and charity. They are trying to convince you that having other, shadowy forces pull the strings of government is acceptable. They are trying to convince you that greed is good, and that you, too, will be rich some day, even as they do everything they can to lock you out of the club formed by The Monied Powers. They are trying to tell you that your faith is not as good as their faith, and that their faith must be enshrined in law, to protect you from yourself. They are telling you that they know best, even as they are busy dismantling the nation so many gave their lives to build.

Liberalism is a strong tree, given deep roots by the bulk of a humanity that knows in its heart that these tenets are true: that all are created equal in the sight of our world, and endowed with inalienable rights to personal freedom and the pursuit of a decent life. This tree cannot be tipped over so readily, simply through the machinations of those who would put themselves ahead of humanity and individual rights. The needs of the many intrinsically outweigh the needs of the few, for it is only together, as a nation, as a human race, that we succeed and grow. Those who seek to sever themselves from the main trunk, who determine that they are somehow superior to others, will eventually find themselves tottering on the edge of a rickety branch, to be blown away by the careless wind. Liberalism will stand, long after others have fallen.

God Go With You

2011-07-24T13:10:00.000-04:00

I saw a T-shirt the other night, which lead me to deeper thought:

Dear God,

How can you allow all the violence currently in our schools?

Signed,

A Concerned Citizen

---

Dear Concerned Citizen,

I am not allowed into you schools.

Signed,

God

I admit to paraphrasing, but my reproduction is fairly accurate. The gist of the shirt was simple: violence inherent in today's schools is a direct result of not allowing prayer within them. A most fallacious premise if there ever was one.

There cannot be organized prayer in school. It can not be instituted at the Local, State, or Federal level of government, as that is a clear contravention of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." While the amendment only mentions Congress, due to the implication of other powers outlined in the Constitution, that provision extends throughout the governmental chain in this country. Any government that seeks to do this, is violating the Constitution, which is the over-arching law of the land.

Beyond that, allowing open prayer in school would make no difference, in any event. It is not a lack of prayer that is causing violence in schools, and in society as a whole. It is a lack of parental control, a lack of teaching morals in the home, the celebration of violence in movies and television, and the constant parade of unpunished guilt seen on the news. We cannot abdicate another layer of responsibility and heap it upon the school systems, critically overloaded with functions as they are. We cannot act as if there is one be-all and end-all cure for what plagues our human society.

The prayer in school argument is another distraction from the reality that stands before us. It is the wailing and moaning of those who cannot keep their own houses in order. It is a diversion from those questions we need to ask of ourselves, and not others. Why do we allow our children the level of latitude that we do? Why do we constantly feel we must put the desires of children ahead of their needs? Why must parents give in to every request of their children, supply them with every frivolous device available, and turn a blind eye to what they do and how they do it? At what point was it acceptable for parents to stop parenting, and turn control of their children's education over to Hollywood?

If you are worried about your child's morality and behavior, do not look to the school system to provide them with what they need. Look to yourself, to your behavior, to your comportment, to the things you say and do, the examples you set. Set the tone in your home, teach your children the difference between right and wrong, give them the moral guidance to know how to provide compassion toward others, talk with them about the things they see and hear and what they mean, and open their eyes and their minds to the wide profusion of ideas that permeate this world. Set aside judgmentalism, set aside dogma, set aside the artificial differences sown by thousands of years of blindness and bigotry. Build your child's character at home. The world we want starts with us, what we do, and the messages we pass on to the next generation, so it is time to stop with destructive rancor and start working together to eradicate the influences that create the problems in our schools and in our society.

If you want the God you believe in -- or don't believe in -- to go to school, then teach that belief in the home, and stop trying to indoctrinate all the other children in your belief system. Let each and every one of us strive to create the best children we can, and let them learn to work together and appreciate each other for their differences as well as their similarities when they come together in school. That is the way of creating a more united and harmonious world for all.

To Whom We Are Indebted

2011-07-18T08:17:00.000-04:00

Those who stand up in Congress as representatives of the individual states in the United States of America take an oath, to support and defend the Constitution. That vow is taken to impress upon the legislator, in the most solemn terms possible, the import of the task ahead of them. That oath binds them to the desire of the Founding Fathers, that the people should pick representatives that not only could convey their feelings on matters pertaining to the whole country as they related to the states, but could do what was best for the nation above the mandate of the people.

While politicking has always been an unfortunate by-product of government, any government, it was hoped that The People would monitor their legislators, and take the necessary steps to ensure the smooth functioning of Federal government, by removing those who were more interested in self-promotion than promotion of the general welfare. Unfortunately, the electorate has abdicated its responsibility, to the point that legislators now lead their constituents around by the nose, and embroil them in the same charades and shenanigans that impede the course of governance. The independent voice of the citizen has been replaced by the toadying of many to the obfuscatory exhortations of a malevolent few, and by a wholesale complaisance with the course of government, writing it off as a waste of a vote.

Given this backdrop, it is no wonder that the nation's prestige and honor is being threatened by partisanship of the highest order, as Republicans and Democrats lock horns over the Federal budget deficit, all the while holding the raising of the nation debt ceiling hostage to the negotiations. Each side is well-armed, rhetoric sharpened, talking points in order, prepared to push the nation to the brink of catastrophe unseen since the thirteen days of The Cuban Missile Crisis, though now, no nuclear war is imminent, only the further destitution and dismemberment of our economy, as our debts become so much paper and our creditors fend off assurances that they "will be paid."

The premise is simple: in order for the Federal government to be able to borrow more money, the nation's credit limit must be raised. Only by doing this, can we pad our current debt to load to keep from defaulting on the outstanding debt we currently have. In the past, this has been no trouble, Congress seemingly willing to raise it at a whim previously. Now, however, Republican elements in Congress seek concessions from the White House of Federal spending, wanting deep cuts in social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, education funds, family planning, and the like, while refusing to even consider the possibility of raising taxes on the wealthiest two percent of Americans, parroting the ludicrous idea that this would "kill jobs."

The Republicans are steadfast in their denial of any method to raise revenue for the Federal government, even though that has proven to be a wise solution to past recessions. Budget cuts alone will not pare down future debt sufficiently to eradicate the budget deficit, especially where such cuts are not proportional to the line item. The Department of Defense will see little of the budget ax compared to its overall size, while social programs will be dealt crippling blows that, rather than causing deficit reduction, will lead to its eventual increase when the damage done by the initial cuts spreads through a citizenry already rocked by economic downturn and massive unemployment.

President Obama, for his part, has agreed that there must be some cuts in social programs, but only if they are accompanied by tax increases to pump up revenue, to avoid having to do wholesale damage to those programs that the vast majority of Americans are forced to depend on. He has made it clear, though, that he will not sign on to budget cuts without tax increases, and the Republicans have made it clear that they will not endorse tax increase to go along with budget cuts. This has created an impasse that must be broken by August 2nd, a date picked by the Treasury Department as the last day they will be able to cover the national debts through bookkeeping and shifting assets.

It is safe to say that we would not be in this position if Congress had done a far better job shepherding the nation after the Clinton Administration, when President Clinton fought for concessions from a Republican Congress that led to cuts in Federal spending along with the lowering of some taxes which contributed to increased revenue and more importantly, budget surpluses. One could excuse excess by the events of September 11th, wherein the United States found itself "at war" with a terrorist organization, but even the unfunded wars that brought about were not enough, alone, to bankrupt a nation. Deep tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, a prescription drug benefit unsupported by revenue offsets, and the constant exportation of high-paying jobs overseas, led to a slow and inevitable drain on the surpluses, followed by the running-up of a tremendous tab, which was then enhanced by the necessity of preventing a total national economic collapse due to the short-sightedness of a Federal government that thought it could let the "free" market regulate itself.

None of that matters now. What matters is the Republican partisanship that threatens the stolidity of the nation. On the one hand, they seem to deny any knowledge of having a hand in creating the economic crises in this country, and on the other hand, refuse to give the President the necessary tools to put the situation right. Their rhetoric now, as it was in 2008, is predicated on taking every advantage they have to try and deny President Obama a second term. They are not interested in governing. They are lacking in empathy. Their dislike of the President is palpable. They show no consideration for Americans, especially those who do not float in circles of power. They denigrate the very positions they hold.

Once this crisis is averted, it will be time for we, The People, to take a better measure of just who we want leading us. Do we want legislators who are responsive, earnest, deft, able to compromise, and willing to do what must be done for the good of all? Or do we want this current crop of Republican deadbeats, who are looking more to their own careers, are more interested in defeating a sitting President than governing a struggling nation, and in the hip pocket of The Monied Powers who seek to run the nation as a de facto government? We can no longer afford to avert our gaze from the goings-on in Washington, D.C., or accept as gospel the words that fall from the lips of people in Congress. We must reassert control, and we can start by eliminating the Republican roadblock that bars our progress.

Ask Not, What Your Country Can Do For You

2011-07-04T11:18:00.000-04:00

But ask what you, can do for your country:

Remember always, that no matter how disagreeable it might be, others have the right to say what they will, worship as they will, and live their lives as they will. This nation is founded on the liberty of the individual.
The idea behind our nation, is that many come together to form one. Many people form one State; many States form one nation. Despite our differences, and the differences between our States, we are one Nation, indivisible.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Everything we do must ensure the health, prosperity, and safety of all Americans.
In times of crisis, it is important that we band together, and help each other. Even the smallest gift or gesture can mean the world to someone who needs our help.
We are all equal. Any person who lives under the mantel of "Citizen of the United States of America," deserves the same rights, privileges, and liberty as any other, no matter what we may think. To think less is to denigrate what those who fought in The Revolutionary War were trying to accomplish.
Know our history. Know that we have not always acted honorably, nor decently, but have striven always to advance, to do better, to make up for our missteps. Our nation and its system are not perfect, but each day gives us a new opportunity to right wrongs and work on improving ourselves and our country.
Remember that you have responsibilities. The Founding Fathers took a giant leap of faith in handing the governance of the entire nation over to its citizens and their elected representatives, but they thought, deep down, that as serious people, we could handle the challenges. It is important to participate in our democracy. It is important to be engaged in the civil responsibilities that come with citizenship. The system does not operate properly if we remain aloof and unconcerned.
Patriotism is not an uncritical adherence to the word and letter of law, or to what has come before. It is doing those things which advance the nation and improve its stature amongst the nations of the world. There is nothing wrong with patriotism, if it is tempered by compassion, concern, and cooperation.

To all you who are Citizens of the United States, and to those who live here who hope to someday know that honor, I bid you a glorious, peaceful, and safe Independence Day.

Fighting For Independence

2011-07-03T13:26:00.000-04:00

My Fellow Citizens, I appeal to you in the name of all that is True and Right with the World, to follow me in Acts of Revolution, to cast off the Tyranny that grips us right now. I speak of none other than The Monied Powers, those Charlatans of Capitalism, who place the Value of the Almighty Dollar ahead of the Value of the Human Life, who speak of the Yolk of Taxation restraining their ability to Create Jobs, even as they pay Not One Thin Dime to the Public Treasury, seeing fit to ship American Jobs to Foreign Lands where they can pay far less for Labor and are Free of Their Obligations to the country that has Supported Them.

What is Even Worse than the machinations of The Monied Powers, is the Malfeasance and Misanthropy of those Elected Officials placed in positions of power with the United States Government, who use their power to Secure and Enhance the position of The Monied Powers at the expense of Every Citizen. These Lackeys of Commerce do the Bidding of Their Masters to ensure that their Coffers Remain Full with the money taken from the accounts Hard-Working Middle-Class and the mouths of the Poor & Penniless.

I say "Enough!" to this constant Harassment & Degradation of the Ninety-Eight Percent of Americans who make this country What It Is! What do these Titans of Capitalism think they have done for us, when they make Cheap & Inferior Goods and tell us that We Must Buy Them to have the Latest and Greatest?!?! They have spent decades Greasing the Wheels of Commerce on the backs of the Average American, pushing them into High Debt, while they luxuriated in their Mansions. Through the Manipulation of Government, they have ensured an electorate seemingly Incapable of Telling Lies from Truth, insuring the continued presence of their Corporate Toadies in the Halls of Government.

We were a proud nation once, a nation that Lead the Industrial Age, pioneered the Technical Age, and landed Men on the Moon to open the Space Age. Yet here we are, amidst the Information Age, frittering away our Technological Power and chopping away at the Tree Trunk that is Our Liberty, all in the name of the Almighty Dollar, which does not end up Benefiting All Americans, only The Monied Powers. We stand bereft of Jobs, bereft of Homes, bereft of a Future, all because some will not fulfill their Human Duty to their Fellow Citizens, content to wrap themselves in their Ill-Gotten Gains.

Greed has overtaken a country founded on Freedom for All and Liberty for the Individual. Corporations and their Money-Grubbing Minions have sold America out, turned it into their Personal Cash Register, all to inflate their own Over-Inflated Egos. We, the Majority, the people who Make Things, and Do Things, and Feed and Clothe The Masses, are not the Servants of The Monied Powers, nor should we accept such a role. They may supply us with Goods & Services but without Our Dollars, those Goods & Services would rot on the vine.

So I say unto you, Americans One and All, that we must Commence Another Revolution, not of Shot & Steel, but of Ballot & Bank Account. We must decline the invitation to Sell Our Souls for their Goods & Services. We must Vote Out the Cronies and Charlatans who serve The Monied Powers. We must take back control of The United States from those who would Reduce Us to Serfs in their Money-Backed Fiefdom. We must Re-Establish the full Faith & Credit of the nation built by The Founding Fathers, honor the debts of the Few to the Many, and Once More establish the Individual -- and not the Corporation -- as the Arbiter of Things American. Long Reign Individual Freedom and Liberty!!!

What Justice Comes From Silence

2011-06-27T16:22:00.000-04:00

Last week, we were forced by circumstance to engage the help of a lawyer in righting a wrong -- my son being unable to join his peers in their 8th Grade graduation ceremony, even though he had finally passed. It had been a rough year, and it looked like he might be held back, but through the good graces of some of his teachers, he was able to make up the necessary work to obtain the grades necessary to go to high school. Even so, the administration believed it would not be in his his best interests to allow him in the ceremony, saying it would "set a bad example." We thought just the opposite -- he had shown that their faith in him was not misplaced, and that when he put his nose to the grindstone, he could do the work.

After the school administration and the school district superintendent not only minimized out outrage over the snub, but were condescending about it, we hired legal counsel. Our lawyer, acting swiftly, as there was only hours until the ceremony at this point, was quickly able to determine that the district had violated its own rules regarding the situation, and was in breach. Fear of a potential lawsuit forced their hand, and we won. We got to see him graduate and mark a milestone in his life we both wanted to see.

The legal code of our nation, and the system of justice provided for therein, was a carefully crafted work, intended to provide the average citizen with legal protections from unreasonable government mandates and actions, to ensure that no person was made guilty before they could receive a fair hearing, and to allow even the most heinous criminal the privilege of a day in court. The system of jurisprudence that we have, flawed though it may be in some areas, still affords the vast majority of Americans the protection of their inalienable rights and the right to be heard where they stand accused.

Whereas the Founding Fathers may have thought they were establishing justice for all in their time, the result of their deliberation and debate on universal law and justice could not anticipate the many and variate challenges it would face even one hundred years down the road, not to mention how the system is influenced in an age where news travels the globe in minutes, and trials are sensationalized for their entertainment value. Add to that layers of corruption at all levels, and one wonders if there can be said to be true justice anymore.

Nowhere is the social breakdown more prevalent and pronounced than at the level of the highest court in the land: the Supreme Court of the United States. Here, the final stop on the road of law, the last arbiter of what is and is not applicable under the Constitution, we see the creeping and festering infection of politics and greed and corporate malfeasance. A law unto itself, the Supreme Court holds that it is not directly bound by the same covenant with the people as any other court under it. It operates in the rarefied air of a triumvirate government, isolating itself from the legislative and executive branches, all the while absorbing the worst practices of those bodies. The court is not spoken of in laudable terms for its Solomonic wisdom, but cast in terms of its political alignment and personality. Perhaps in no other time have Justices been better known, but it is also true that their existence is obscured by a tincture of partisanship and perfidy by some members of the circle.

It is not enough to blame a process created in the Eighteenth Century for the ills of the Twenty-First Century, for in that time, the American citizen has been charged with the regulation of its government, and has concentrated on the comings and goings of the President and Congress, to the exclusion of any thought of the Supreme Court unless a position becomes available on that vaunted bench. And then, quite unwittingly, we are subject to a clattering spectacle of divisiveness and discord the likes of which is not seen even daily in the halls of the Senate, as the confirmation of a new Justice is turned into a referendum on the failings of the Constitution and some attempt to divine if the nominee will sway too heavily in one direction or another. It is a time of veiled shots from one party at the other; the nominee is merely there as spectator and talking head. The potential Justice is forced to be bland, to never vary from a worn-and-rutted road down the center of propriety.

All this has come about in the age of television and with the birth of the Information Age. Now, a soon-to-be-or-not Justice can have their life, their record, and their every word dissected, analyzed, and passed to judgment by the masses. To run such a gauntlet will, of needs, take either the strongest of our corps of judicial appointees, or such milquetoasts as can be properly prepared for the onslaught in advance. It will most certainly lead to the bench being handed to those of questionable judicial acumen and moral value.

Perhaps that is nowhere better illustrated than by the man who sits in the middle of a vortex currently whirling about him: Justice Clarence Thomas. He could well be dubbed "Silent Clarence," in oblique homage to President Calvin Coolidge, for the man makes not a sound from the bench during arguments. Not a word is spoken, not a question asked. He has been described as looking at times bored and uncomfortable while cases are being heard. He is noteworthy for his reticence, but even more so for his history, for it was his confirmation that set the bar for every confirmation thereafter.

It was clear, even from the beginning, that Clarence Thomas' confirmation would not go smoothly, and that was magnified when accusations about sexual harassment and misconduct were lodged by several women, the most prominent of whom, Anita Hill, was more than willing to testify that on several occasions, the nominee made remarks, or took actions, that were highly offensive and sexually charged. One would think that such accusations, lodged in formal hearing and under oath, would sink a potential nomination. Somehow, through the miracle of political gamesmanship, it was not to be, and Clarence Thomas became a Justice of the Supreme Court.

And now, all these years later, the swirling of the moral vortex has caught up with him again, as it appears that he and his wife have been involved in tax evasion, but more importantly, in the possible sale of his position on the bench through the auspices of his wife's lobbying efforts. While perhaps no "for sale" sign was planted on their lawn, it becomes clearer as days pass, that certain decisions rendered by the justice seem to be in line with those groups that engage his wife's lobbying firm, not the least of which was the significant Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case.

Perhaps he feels he is owed. Perhaps he does not see the illegality of his actions, a criminal offense for a judge of any type. Perhaps he believes that he is beyond the reach of the very laws he presides over, given that in all the years of its existence, only one Supreme Court Justice -- Samuel Chase -- was ever impeached, and he ended up being found not guilty of the charges. He is the only one who can say, and he continues to say nothing. Silence is often the only defense of the guilty, for to open their mouths leads to them being hung by their own tongue.

How can we, the people of the United States, feel good about our nation and our government is it turns out that all three branches of it are steeped in corruption? This is not the nation our founders had envisioned when they went to war to free themselves from tyranny, because we have swapped the tyranny of a foreign power for the tyranny of a ruling social class. If the words of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are to continue to have any meaning, they must apply to all of us, equally, and justice must infiltrate every nook and cranny of our land, even the highest houses within it, the halls of government. No person who claims the mantel of citizen of the United States can be above the laws that bind us together and protect our individual freedom and liberty from the duplicity of others. If a Justice of the Supreme Court can be corrupted, then there is no justice.

Of course, the injunction is that a person is innocent until proven guilty, and therefore, Justice Thomas should have his day in court, to explain himself and his actions and those of his wife in regards to conflicts of interest. While it may be satisfying to try him and convict him in the court of public opinion, his guilt or innocence can only be established through the rule of law, as it should be. If he is found guilty or not, through civil action or court of impeachment, such would strike a blow for justice and restore faith in a legal system which seems bent in favor of The Monied Powers. For a justice system that places some above others, and treats it own with deference it does not accord to the average citizen, has no business being part of a nation dedicated to individual freedom and liberty. So let him do the right thing, and hold himself up before public scrutiny, and prove that he is a man of justice.

Sowing The Seeds Of Love

2011-06-25T12:20:00.000-04:00

The forward march of humanity toward the future is retarded by the drag of thousands of years of ignorance and associated dogma. It is unfortunate that so much of human existence is predicated on developing and refining definitions of what is "right" and what is "wrong" in terms of what humans are and what they are supposed to be. Quietly, as each decade, each century, each millennium passes, those definitions are eroded, much as rock is battered to dust by wind and rain. The forces of nature and the intrinsic natural order of the universe are more powerful than the artificial structures erected by mankind to keep out the truth.

So it is that a momentous event, completed in the late hours of June 24th, 2011, has broken one more link in the chains that keep humanity from reaching its full potential. The state of New York, after much wrangling, voted to allow same-sex marriage to become legal. It struck a blow for civil rights, by proclaiming that members of the homosexual community are as much entitled to marry as anyone else. It was another moment affirming what we must know deep inside, but many are afraid to accept -- that human beings and their souls are not defined by their body structure, anymore than by their skin color, or the deity or deities they worship, or any other artificial measure we wish to create.

Advances in human society comes slowly, incrementally, and usually at great cost beforehand. Each group struggles against a tide of humanity that looks down on them, denigrates them, labels them as inferior or unworthy. Invective, rancor, epithets, and violence cascade down on them, and yet, even as it seems bleak and progress untenable, a strong, low, bass note begins to form amidst the tumult, growing in intensity, sweeping through the cacophony, subsuming the hatred, swallowing the fear. Like the seed buried deep beneath the soil, hoarding the precious drops of water that reach it, eventually the first tendril reaches out and breaks the surface, and a new birth of freedom and justice takes place.

New York, following in the footsteps of so many of its New England brethren, is that tendril, rising up into the warm air and gathering in the rays of the Sun, to further energize the growth of that seed of humanity. Another group may rise above the turmoil to assert its rights and privileges, and the plague of ignorance and the pestilence of hatred shall not find safe haven in their leaves anymore, but be cast upon the dust to blow away in the wind. Let the day be marked in triumph, for though much growth remains, this moment shows that where we sow compassion and tolerance and good will, we will reap the rewards of true humanity and fellowship, and our society will grow stronger for it.

Why Feminism Matters On Father's Day

2011-06-19T15:11:00.000-04:00

My daughter is six-years-old. She is growing up quickly, into a world where women are under assault, physically, mentally, and socially. Rapists, anti-choice rabble, magazine editors, Hollywood directors, and Congressmen are trying to tell her she's not good enough as she is, that she shouldn't get her hopes up, that she has no autonomy over herself, that her only worth is as a mother and wife. The Women's Suffrage movement of the early Twentieth Century is now under assault by men who have watched their power erode every decade since, as women and minorities assert themselves and take the rights and privileges that are owed them by their mere existence as citizens of America.

As a father, since the birth of my daughter, my leanings toward the equality of women has naturally risen above it's previous levels. My daughter is growing up in this world, and as her father, I am charged with ensuring not only that she is raised to be tough, strong, and intelligent, but with making sure that the world she grows into is not corrupted for women. I am forced to confront the societal ills more forcefully, as I cannot countenance women being returned to their status as second-class citizens in a male-dominated society. She deserves all the blessing of her humanity, and she is a person like anyone else, not an object to be coveted, taken, shamed, or shackled.

It is not just the purview of the father to look out for a daughter. Every woman, of every stripe, in every place, deserves to have the respect of every man. It is a woman we have to thank for our existence, and that should be enough, but beyond our mother, women are our sisters, aunts, grandmothers, teachers, doctors, nurses, soldiers, scientists, and fill every level of human society with their knowledge, their strength, their caring their compassion. Man and woman are equal measure of humanity, and while some men would argue the point, it is only because they have latched onto dogma and steeped themselves in their own need to be superior.

On this Father's Day, let us not forget how all fathers got their opportunity to be such, and let us not forget that our fatherhood does not stop at the door, especially where it comes to our daughters. We, having helped to create a human being, must nurture them, and provide them an environment in which to thrive. This means we must be vigilant, must be engaged, must strive to build a better world for them than the one we inherited. Father's Day is not a day for rest, but reflection, and action, if those Father's Days to come are to be worth celebrating.

What Anthony Weiner Says About Us

2011-06-16T18:57:00.000-04:00

Representative Anthony Weiner has resigned as of this afternoon.

God help us all.

There have been many voices, many things said, many opinions on this mess. No one can countenance a man who has violated his vows to his new wife by finding illicit pleasure on the Internet. It calls into question his personal integrity. It calls into account his honor. It makes us wonder if there is true fidelity in our world anymore.

There is more to it than that, though, for if this were a simple case of a man being unfaithful, that is not truly a shock in our society anymore. The fact is, the idea behind marriage, the sacred bond and vow of unity, has outlived its original intent, as a means to bind a woman to a man. It is no longer that; human society turned it into a be-all-and-end-all of existence, pressed it upon people as an absolute, and forged it into a necessity. What might have been a beautiful and love-affirming ceremony, is now a machine, bent on grinding up our existence, saddling us with debt and unreasonable expectations, in the name of "normalcy." It has gone from quaint joining ceremony to the "life blood" of society, especially here in America. It is used as a ball-and-chain to keep our nation weighted down to the dead hand of our distant past.

So, we may have cause to judge Anthony Weiner on the absolute notion that he has taken his wedding vows and shredded them through his Internet-fueled trysts, but we have to ask ourselves if we are such saints to be handing down such judgment. Marriage as an idea and marriage as an institution and marriage as a reality are no longer the same thing. There is a tremendous disconnect between the idea of the virginal bride being handed over to the land-owning groom along with her dowry that drives the fantasy of marriage, and the gritty man-falls-in-love-with-woman, marries her, then cannot keep his pants zipped reality that is marriage. The "moral" framework of marriage that the "Christian" churches of the world proclaim is under attack by such things as polygamy/polyandry, polyamory, and same-sex union, is not as fashionable as it once was, given the churches used marriage as a way to seal their power more than promote love. Could it be said we are a better humanity for having forced women into marriages of political or social convenience? Can it be said marriage is "saved" by denying women the right to divorce themselves from husbands they do not love, who abuse them, or force them into being brood mares?

Anthony Weiner's marriage is truly of a secondary importance to the story, because it is a subject that only he and his wife can actually work out between them. Society has no place intervening. It will survive, or it will fail, but it is up to them either way.

Where does that leave us? It leaves us in the unenviable position of being torn apart as a nation by yet another government peccadillo, another rush to judgment, another wave of recrimination. That is how they want it, they being The Monied Powers. This moment that has transfixed us so in the past few weeks, did so because one man saw fit to expose it to the light of day, then sought his moment in the Sun, as if this somehow proved his intentions were true and just. Andrew Breitbart, long known as a champion of GOP deviltry, turned his nefarious powers to the task of bringing Anthony Weiner down, and only succeeded because of Representative Weiner's lack of discretion. While there is plenty of scorn to be heaped on the Congressman, we should note that his recent inquiries into the affairs of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with regards to his wife's income through lobbying as it related to his ruling in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, put him squarely in the Republican spotlight. Rather than have one of their judicial avatars come under scrutiny for ethical violations, Breitbart was sent to bring a Democratic Congressman down, and he delivered the goods. We have turned from the real problems plaguing our nation and world, to seize upon tabloid sleaze, as if it were news.

If there is any failure here, beyond the singular failings of a man, it is the collective failure of the American people to rein in the excesses and power-brokering of Washington, D.C. We have let the foxes run the hen house for too long, and we are now seeing the result, in an economic shambles exacerbated the dissolution of jobs and the hacking away of the support systems that keep Americans afloat. Those who have brought our nation to its knees with their profligate spending and fiscal irresponsibility, now intend to balance the books on our backs. Where anyone stands up, tries to buck the system, they are singled out and cut down, while other petty criminals continue to "represent" their constituents. Say what you will about his personality or his opinions, Anthony Weiner spoke his mind, and what many considered grandstanding, some of us considered lashing out at the inequities and insidious skulduggery that has substituted for governance for decades.

Let us hope that, rather than casting us back into the darkness, this moment opens up the horror show to the full view of all Americans, and that they react with true disgust at what they see. The time for rhetoric and rhapsodizing is over; the time for liberty and justice for all is now. Stand up, make your voice heard, vote, and clean Congress of the infestation that has so beleaguered us for too long. Let America once more be for Americans. Let government once more be of, by, and for the people. Let the fall of this man ring out, sounding the call to action, that we not allow what good he did to lie disregarded in the dust. His was the first shot in the battle to regain control of Federal government -- let it not be the last.

Anthony Weiner's Bad Day

2011-06-10T09:51:00.000-04:00

A lot has been written and said and repeated and trumpeted and blathered about in regards to the shenanigans of Representative Anthony Weiner. I was trying hard to resist writing about the incidents involving him, believing that there was little more I could add to the general cacophony. Yet, as days have passed, as new information has come out, and as the import of the events that have transpired has sunk in, I am left wondering: what does it all mean?

I come to the unalterable conclusion that this is the ultimate teachable moment for our society in regards to many things: morality, the Internet, government, humanity, duty, honor. Within the tangled skein of these events, lie the truths we seldom wish to confront or take action toward. It is a tableau of the virtues and vices that both ennoble us and plague us simultaneously.

I won't pass judgment on Rep. Weiner. As the Biblical admonition from Jesus goes, "may he who is without sin cast the first stone." I may not be a public persona, but I have done many things of an indiscreet nature that I am not proud of. Many of us have, and whether we admit it or not, we know it in our heart and our soul.

I have no reason to believe that we can populate our government with angels and saints; we will have to accept that fallible humanity will be led by fallible leaders, and that hopefully personal failings of honor are not symptomatic of deeper failings of morality and duty toward humanity. We must take each of us as we are, and hope that those we elect to represent us can truly represent our best interests, as well as those of our state, our nation, and humanity as a whole. we cannot ask of them to become paragons of virtue, though we would wish them to, perhaps to salve our own conscience.

So let this moment be a warning to us: the world is more complicated by leaps and bounds than it ever has been, and our personal failings are magnified by the environment we now inhabit. We must turn away from our sanctimoniousness and turn toward each other, if we are to survive. Let that start now, and let Anthony Weiner have been the one to lead us in the right direction.

Belief Versus Biology

2011-06-06T15:53:00.000-04:00

Strange to say, it has been my pleasure of late to engage some anti-choice adherents in spirited discussion of the nature of human biology, pregnancy, birth, and the definition of a human being. I use the term "discussion" rather than "debate," for to be a debate, there has to be some agreement upon the basic grounds, and that is where the discussion of abortion breaks down, because both sides have very different definitions of what constitutes a human being, or a baby, or development. This is what hampers any attempt to find common ground. In the end, the discussion is more about biology and belief.

Those who are devout believers in the Creation and God, are sure that the moment sperm meets egg, a full-fledged person exists. This is a wonderful belief to hold when you do not have access to modern biological techniques, say, two or three thousand years ago, when the internal workings of the human body were still mainly a mystery. Then, such a pronouncement was actually not feasible, as no one truly understood the mechanism by which a man impregnated a woman, except in the most general terms.

Today, we can track the development of a human being from its start as gametes, to the formation of a zygote, to its transformation into an embryo, to the gestating fetus which, after a full development cycle (hopefully), becomes a living, breathing human being. We can watch an embryo divide, cells begin to differentiate, organs and limbs form, a nervous system develop, and trace the evolution of humanity through the changes that take place within the fetus as it moves from one developmental stage to the next. The view is breathtaking, and surely, as with the pictures of the distant universe, some of the most beautiful representations of how the universe works.

But... to say that, starting with one cell, the product of the union of sperm and egg, a human being exists, is irrational. Is it a human embryo? Certainly. Will it become a human being? If it makes it through the full gestation, and does not contain some hidden genetic defect, yes. Therein lies the problem with the anti-choice point of view of fetus-as-human. The fetus, until it reaches the penultimate point of gestation, is unable to operate as an independent entity. It cannot breath on its own. It cannot take in nutrition on its own. Until the advent of modern prenatal care and intensive care technology, a premature infant had a very low possibility of surviving. Only through the creation of an artificial environment, with nutrients supplied intravenously and breathing regulated mechanically, is a sealed environment, could a premature infant survive.

In essence, it is hard to imagine a fetus as being a person, when it is clearly not independent of its mother until birth. Without its umbilical connection, the fetus would starve and die in its own excretions. Without the warmth and moisture of the womb, the fetus would shrivel and die. These are the facts of biology, not the ravings of an inhuman monster.

To turn a fetus into a person is ludicrous. For the longest time, they have no functioning neural connections, and their muscles are feeble. Their body has to be built step by arduous step, with only the resources supplied by the mother to complete the construction. Cells, dividing furiously, race to complete skin, bones, hair, eyes, stomach, liver, intestines, heart, before the point where the woman's body will begin to expel it. This is human development, a machine crafted through millions of years of human evolution -- it is not something miraculous. Many other of our brother species of mammals follow very similar patterns, and non-mammals share portions of the same developmental system with us. This does not mean women are going to give birth to monkeys or fish or rabbits; it does mean that this mechanism is a successful adaptation that has been spread widely through the animal kingdom. This adaptation increases the chance of the survival of a species, by allow for a greater mixture of genetic material that can enhance the capabilities of a species to cope with its environment.

The anti-choice legions, who march under the banner of being "pro-life," refuse to see the actuality of the biological mechanism that is sexual reproduction. Because it is happening to humans, and because their faith tells them so, they corrupt science with a healthy does of mysticism to prove that their view is the correct one. They are perfectly willing to dodge logic to deify the unborn fetus. One wonders if such energy, turned toward providing for children and their parents currently living, would eradicate poverty and hunger and disease, making a better world into which a child could be brought, even one a mother did not want? But no -- the fight is simply to bring a fetus into the world as a child, no matter the consequences, no matter the conditions, no matter the circumstances of its creation. Past that, there is little regard for the fate of such a child, and so many children are born into the horrors of the world, that we are left questioning if they think the mere presence of babies can somehow quell our societal ills.

I understand the idea: life is precious, a gift, something to be honored. Yet, if you look around, you see that life is cheap. War is rampant. Diseases run loose. Poverty and hunger affect almost twenty-five percent of the planet. Even in the so-called "First World," people are poisoned by toxins in the water and air, left hungry and homeless as jobs are shipped away or merely axed, and murdered in cold blood by the deranged, the desperate, and the calculating alike. So much effort is going into fighting a war over the control of women's ability to reproduce, that whole segments of humanity are suffering for the lack of compassion and attention.

It is not enough to dress a fetus in human clothes, if the mother who carries it is a victim of rape or incest, or of failed birth control, or simply was not ready. While no one wishes for the potential human life that is a fetus to be so easily and readily extinguished, perhaps that is not the real issue. More to the point, maybe we need to ensure that our society protects women from the hazards that come with the desire for sex. Better access to cheaper and more effective birth control, better family planning, and an emphasis on teaching young men and boys to respect women rather than see them as trophies or conquests, would do much to reduce the incidence of abortion, and better yet, reduce the number of children born into poverty and hunger.

The fight over women's reproductive health and welfare is a convenient way of diverting effort and attention away from more serious problems. It is a way for some to salve their conscience, proclaiming to their Lord that they are doing his work, even as around the corner, some live in deprivation and destitution, disregarded by the chanting, sign-waving, epithet-hurling masses. What god can look upon his followers who show no compassion for others, and not be saddened? The world must be lifted up, not cast down. Those who seek to choose for themselves must be allowed to do so, and must obtain the better sides of our nature, if we are to truly do God's work.

Oh Sons And Daughters Of Israel!

2011-06-02T20:26:00.000-04:00

I am indebted to one of my on-line friends, Emily L. Hauser, for a great deal of good information and insight into the current social conflict in Israel. I will not rehash her take on events there, but suggest you read her excellent blog to receive the unadulterated version. It has brought me, though, to try and formulate my own opinion on the subject; normally I do not delve into the conflict.

Israel the State, and Israel the Kingdom of God's Chosen, are two very different places. It would seem that depending on the strength of your orthodoxy, you fall into the spectrum between the two. There are those, conservative and ultra-orthodox, who claim the land of the God of Abraham as sacred and inviolate, and who feel little sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians who occupied it before 1948. There are those, cosmopolitan and liberal, who shriek for peace between the two factions, detesting and despising the other side for their magnanimity. In between, lies the bulk of Israel, the people of a vibrant culture, trying to forge daily lives, living with the minute but nagging fear of reprisal, and simply wishing a successful conclusion to hostilities, so they need not fear riding the bus or going to the market.

Mirroring Israel in its duality are the Palestinian territories, Gaza and The West Bank, each controlled by a very different faction of the cause of Palestine. Hamas, overlords of Gaza, deny Israel a right even to exist, and as such, have brought down on their Gazan citizenry privation and despair, with their homes, until recently, sealed off from the world. Over in The West Bank, Fatah, heir to the legacy Yassir Arafat, tries to continue to work with Israel toward peace, even as it squabbles with Hamas. There are signs the two organizations are coming together, but there is still a long road ahead toward reconciliation. In Gaza meantime, Hamas' involvement in the government there continues to provide a sore point for the Israeli government.

So, we have two groups of people, split into multiple factions, living in an uneasy state of flux, which occasionally flares into incandescence as flurries of rockets or a suicide bomb or an invasion. Trust is at a premium; peace is only a dream. The complicated relationships between governments and religions, all taking place in a territory that has swapped hands scores of times in the thousands of years of its habitation, claimed as a holy place by three major religions, cannot reach a state of tranquility without all sides being willing to place dogma and rhetoric in a box, and talk human being to human being. The differences between all seem intractable, until you realize that the differences are mainly situational and historic. Stripped of their context, each and every group with a steak in Israel and Jerusalem wants the same thing: to practice their way of life in peace, harmoniously with the others.

That vision, however, will not come about until all sides can see it. Right now, the blinders of justification, of right of ownership, of sanctity, of tradition, of history -- all these stand as walls separating the parties from the peace they seek. What they fail to realize, is that they are all on the same side of the wall. The wall was built hand-in-hand, to keep everyone away from what they all wanted most. In that vein, together, they could tear the wall down quicker and easier than they erected it. Even so, they continue their petty squabbles and posturing, none willing to admit the reality of the situation and break from thousands of years of strife.

The Muslim and The Jew can live in peace. The Israeli and The Palestinian can have their own autonomy and common ground. Christian, Jew, and Muslim can worship freely in Jerusalem. All that is required is slipping the bonds that hold them all to the yolk of history. Putting aside the divisiveness, removing the blinders, all can tear down the wall. But who will blink first? Who is most willing to make the greatest gamble for peace? The current Israeli government is fiercely standing its ground, waving an olive branch from behind a strong line of pride. Hamas and Fatah have made overtures to burying their differences to work toward unity, but they are not on an equal footing yet.

The person or group that steps forward and puts aside completely their enmity for the other, the side that lays down its guns and raises its hands, will go down in history as the peacemakers. This should be impetus enough, but if further convincing is required, one only needs to think of peace, of the idea that Israeli and Palestinian could walk the streets without fear, that commerce would flow freely between both groups and create further prosperity, and that the cessation of hostilities would bring peace not just to one nation, but allow it to spread throughout the Middle East.

This moment favors the bold -- who will show the courage to seize it?

The People We Elect, Redux

2011-05-31T07:14:00.000-04:00

It is not enough for an elected member of Congress to represent their particular district, no matter how convoluted its lines are drawn. Those who stand on Capitol Hill, do so to represent not just their state, but the nation as a whole. Each takes an oath, similar to that which the President takes, and it is such that a Congressman is bound to their duty to "bear true faith and allegiance" to the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution is the guidebook to how the business of the nation shall be conducted, and the Preamble makes it quite clear what the duties of the Federal government are.

So, it is quite disheartening, when a major legislative figure in Congress makes a statement which so completely contravenes the spirit and the word of the Constitution, to wit, the protection of the "general welfare." That nondescript, two-word phrase, encompasses the highest order of the land, for it enjoins Congress to see to the needs of the nation and its citizens at all times and in all places, and that no American need suffer where the Federal government can render aid and comfort.

So, stepping into the breach and showing how the modern politician has little regard for the oath that binds him to his duty, I give you Eric Cantor, Representative of Maryland, and the House Majority Leader, a title which does not appear anywhere in the Constitution and is solely an artifact of the entrenchment of the two main political parties. Given the recent devastation of Joplin, Missouri by tornadoes, Mr. Cantor (I refuse to call him by his title, because I consider him no longer fit to represent anyone) had this to say on the subject of spending Federal money on relief for the citizens of Joplin:

"When a family is struck with tragedy — like the family of Joplin … let’s say if they had $10,000 set aside to do something else with, to buy a new car … and then they were struck with a sick member of the family or something, and needed to take that money to apply it to that, that’s what they would do, because families don’t have unlimited money. And, really, neither does the federal government."

In essence, the only way that those suffering the devastation of their homes and livelihoods there, is if Congress finds a way to slash more money from the Federal budget, instead of doing what it is supposed to, and ensuring sufficient funds are available to handle such emergencies. No doubt, Mr. Cantor would gladly cut more entitlement programs aimed at helping the poor and disenfranchised, to make up the shortfall from having to pry open the public vault and spend the money the way it is supposed to be spent. He presumes that a family in Joplin would have $10,000 in the bank to use, when the median income there is not even $40,000 a year.

It is this abject disregard for the lives of his fellow countrymen that fills the heart with rancor and the mind with thoughts of evil. To be so callous, so lacking in compassion or decency, and to have no trouble with voicing such an opinion in public, is beyond the pale for a sworn representative of our nation. Is it any wonder that a vast body of Americans consider Washington, D.C. a den of iniquity more than a place of the serious business of a nation?

Eric Cantor does not represent the best of America. He, like many acolytes of the Monied Powers, is not interested in the welfare of the common citizen, but in the state of his own ego and bank account. Power is the only coin of the realm he will spend freely, though he will gladly pour the contents of the Treasury into whatever rat hole his shadowy masters bid him to, in the name of "fiscal responsibility." The heresy and hypocrisy of he and his ilk in Congress makes a decent American shudder and a Founding Father weep.

One can only urge the citizens of Maryland to erase this stain from their honor, and cut short Mr. Cantor's tenure with recall, or, failing that, not extend his reign into the next Congress. He does the state of Maryland and the nation a grave disservice in his hidebound politicization and moral temporizing. Surely we can do better.

The People Who Serve

2011-05-30T10:26:00.000-04:00

It bears repeating, if only to remind us to do our duty as citizens, that many have given their lives, physically and emotionally, to create and preserve the freedom and liberty we in the United States enjoy. The freedom of worship, the freedom of expression, the right to vote... all that is encompassed in the Constitution of the United States and the charters of the States therein, exists, not solely because some with lofty ideals put words to paper, but because some lay dying on the soil of our nation, or in some foreign field, having given the fullest measure of themselves to preserve and protect it.

Let the day not be about picnics, fireworks, the beach, the mall, but let it be about solemn remembrance and gracious thankfulness for the sacrifices these men and women made in our defense. Let us honor them, not just today, but every day, by being the best citizens we can be.

The People We Elect

2011-05-27T12:05:00.000-04:00

If you ever wonder why the United States continually finds itself in dire straits, seemingly rudderless, filled with nothing but invective and inaction, we only need look to the quality of those people elected to govern. Or in many cases, people elected who fail to govern.

To give you some fairly pertinent examples:

"Why was he [Pres. Obama] elected? Again, it comes back to who he was. He was black, he was historic. And there’s nothing racist about this. It is what it is. If he had been a dynamic, white, state senator elected to Congress he wouldn’t have gotten in the game this fast… a black man who was articulate, liberal, the whole white guilt, all of that."

Representative Joe Walsh, R-Illinois

During the House's debate, Rep. Pete DeGraaf, a Mulvane Republican who supports the bill, told her: "We do need to plan ahead, don't we, in life?"

Bollier asked him, "And so women need to plan ahead for issues that they have no control over with a pregnancy?"

DeGraaf drew groans of protest from some House members when he responded, "I have spare tire on my car."

"I also have life insurance," he added. "I have a lot of things that I plan ahead for."

State Rep. Pete DeGraaf, Kansas

This whole idea that we have this moral obligation... What about the moral obligation to allow people to keep what they earn, assume responsibility for themselves. So this is precisely a program, and it is very similar to so many others, that has gotten us into this mess.

Representative Ron Paul, R-Texas, when asked by Eliot Spitzer about the legitimacy of FEMA, an organization that helps others during emergencies.

These are the people that Americans elect to represent them: insensitive, ignorant, self-satisfied individuals who see the rest of humanity as some sort of plague, incomprehensible and untrustworthy, and not worth their attention or their aid.

America was founded by men and women who had to be self-sufficient in order to survive, but also knew that they could not operate in isolation if they were to succeed. When immigrants first came to the New World, they came as communities, filled with every manner of person whose skills would add to the potential success of their settlement. Though not all succeeded, the vast majority that flourished did so because the individuals that composed them were mutually supporting. No one could operate in the hostile environment they found on the North American continent by themselves and hope to endure.

Flash forward to the American Revolution, and again, self-sufficient colonies knew that they could not fight the British singly, but would find strength in numbers, and went on to form the United States of America, a nation where the rights and freedoms of the individual would be respected, but the safety, security, and welfare of all its citizens would be protected by mutual cooperation. It was an attempt to codify and implement the philosophies brought about by The Enlightenment, which recognized each person as unique, but part of a larger whole which also had to be respected.

What these mountebanks represent is that part of humanity that feels it has no obligation to the species as a whole, only to themselves and those they recognize as being part of their clique. As far as they are concerned, the needs and concerns of the individual American do not represent anything they have to give thought or credence to -- each and every American is an island, and only they are responsible for what happens to them, even though in many cases, this is a totally illogical stance. If a company decides to lay off workers or send jobs overseas because they can pay workers there less, that has little to do with the workers here and more to do with the greed of business owners.

These people wish to deny that there are larger concerns, greater forces, and a higher responsibility that they must answer to as representatives of the American citizenry. They cater only to those who can pay for the privilege in support or money. They live by their egos and by their self-centered world view, which places them above others through the artifice of some ephemeral measure. They cannot conceive of being on equal measure with the rest of America, even though the Constitution of the United States spells out plainly that they are. And the worst part: people vote for them, put them in positions of power, apparently unaware that they have no intention of doing what is best for everyone, even their own supporters.

Do you want a better America, where taxes are fair, budgets are balanced, poverty is eradicated, education is supported, and no American is left without help and compassion? You have it in your power. The Founding Fathers left it up to us to elect those people we thought best represented our interests and those of our fellow Americans. We can put our nation right, by taking that power and using it, and removing these disinterested and ineffectual representatives, and replacing them with intelligent, forthright, and above all, compassionate individuals, who understand the true spirit of America. It is up to us -- let us start the work now.

Sacrifice

2011-05-25T16:10:00.000-04:00

In the game of baseball, a player is often asked to do something that on its face is counterproductive: make an out to move a base-runner forward. It is known as the sacrifice bunt, because the player is being asked to give up the chance to get an actual hit and add to their own statistics, to increase the likelihood of the team being able to score a run. The sacrifice does not help the player, but may help the team; there is no guarantee. They are being asked to take it on faith that doing so will help the team win.

As in baseball, so it is in life. We are individuals, each striving to make our way in the world, to successfully navigate our daily routines in order to ensure another days' existence, and in many cases, move our family forward with us. We think nothing of this, performing the same actions day-in and day-out for decades. And yet... we often forget that there is a larger community to which we belong, that may also require us to make sacrifices: humanity. Our lives and those of our families are important, but ultimately are for nothing without the remainder of humanity. We are an interconnected whole, like the billions of connections in a computer chip or the billions of stars that form The Milky Way. We are separate, but united in one common thread of life.

The problem is simple: many of us do not see it this way. To those insular among us, others are seen as pickpockets, vandals, sinners, rabble rousers, sheep, or worse. They do not connect with humanity, only with their individual desires and goals. They cannot be persuaded to take their place in the human milieu; they seek only their own gratification and enrichment. They strive to ensure that their point of view is the only point of view that matters, and take whatever steps are necessary to nullify the voices of anyone they do not agree with, In a world seeking peace, they foment strife, keeping humanity off-balance, and reaping their profit from the chaos, whether it be in coin or in smug self-congratulation.

There is more nobility in sacrifice, and those who would ordinarily be looked upon derisively for their self-centered need for control and wealth and power, could gain a world of riches beyond measure were they to give up the simple vices that substitute for human compassion and empathy. Even now, in many places, those sacrifices would not be in vain:

- Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of Israel, could set aside his militant need to defend his nation from all comers, sacrifice land and control, and gain peace for a nation that has been under constant threat since its inception in 1948. A nation might finally live in fellowship with those around it, if autonomy could be granted to the Palestinians.

- Hamas, self-appointed guardian of the Palestinian people, could let go of its hatred for the existence of Israel, and gain peace and autonomy for the people they claim to care for. Would the sacrifice of an ideology mean so much, compared to food and shelter and commerce and health for the citizens of Palestine?

- The wealthiest 2% Americans could accept the responsibility that comes with their wealth, to provide for those who generate their wealth through their labor. Would the sacrifice of a few billion dollars be too much to ask, to ensure that they continue to be enriched in the future?

- The Republican Party could admit its hypocrisy by discontinuing its unremitting war on women and their ability to control their own destinies. Would America really be all that worse off if American women were given their just due as equal partners?

- White male politicians could loosen their grip on the halls of power. The sacrifice of control of Congress and state legislatures would do so much to improve the quality of life in America, by allowing other voices to be heard.

- Dictatorial leaders of nations around the world could heed the call of their nations and resign from office, allowing the people to reestablish freedom and democracy, or to taste it for the first time. To sacrifice oneself for the honor and good of a nation brings no shame.

Peace shall not reign, nor prosperity, nor humanity, where we cannot learn to put aside fundamental but ultimately ephemeral differences, and work together. We are not deserving of freedom and liberty where we do not cherish their essence, that each and every person has them in equal measure. We are not worthy of respect, when we condemn others again and again without realizing that doing so condemns us as well. The ultimate sacrifice we must make is our ego. We can no longer hold to the selfish illusion that we exist on some sort of plane beyond the reach of others. We must acknowledge and remember that we are but units of a greater humanity, and that humanity can only grow where we plant the seeds of compassion, charity, and empathy.

Beauty And The Labcoat

2011-05-18T13:22:00.000-04:00

The obsession modern human society has with beauty is an outgrowth of the need for the species to procreate, which is an evolutionary imperative enforced through natural selection to drive the continued diversification of the species, to allow for its success in adapting to changes in environment. A rudimentary system to ensure the survival of our species, dragged along into the modern era through the auspices of our DNA, we have taken it, expanded it, "codified" it, and then attempted to enforce it, through media and opinion. Beauty has gone from a primitive device to the bane of human society.

Nowhere is that more evident than in a remarkably troubling event that took place this week, when Psychology Today -- a magazine loosely dedicated to the dissemination of useful knowledge in the field of psychology -- printed a tract by Satoshi Kanazawa that was entitled “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” It was another in a series of diatribes dressed as science by the author, seeking to apply a veneer of scientific legitimacy to sexist and racist ideas in the disreputable field of "evolutionary psychology." It was attempting to paint a picture of black women as "undesirable" compared to "social norms"; instead, it painted a picture of a bigoted author trying to justify that bigotry, an all too common practice over the centuries. Science has now usurped scripture as the medium by which nonsensical, biased, and backward ideas are perpetuated and reinforced.

Science is based on the idea that things that are quantifiable, that is, measurable, can be subject to interpretation through standardized testing and statistical analysis to provide insight into the inner workings of the universe and the things within it. The most important part of such study is the ability to measure -- as accurately as possible -- the thing you are studying. The more subjective a measure becomes, the less accurate it can be said the results are. Subjectivity is the bane of valid results, because if independent observers cannot agree on the measure or how it is expressed, then they cannot be said to be able to agree what the results mean. This is expressed most succinctly in Einstein's theories of relativity, where the differences between observers could be linked to relative motion by equations which could convert apparently divergent data into sets measurable by a common system.

It is one thing to measure the energy of a photon knocking an electron out of its orbit around an atom, or the rate of flow of blood through veins or the electrical variance of a neuron; when it comes to such things as beauty, subjectivity makes it impossible to build a truly common frame of reference in the Einsteinian sense. It is also impossible to say that since our pursuit of beauty is part of an evolutionary mechanism, that that mechanism expresses itself exactly the same way in each organism in a species. To wit, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Given this subjectivity, the idea that beauty can be quantified is specious. What you and I and any other million people on Earth think is beautiful is bound to be different, whether we are talking a flower, a tree, a scene, or another person. It is influenced by upbringing, culture, location, history, and a thousand other factors that cannot be controlled for, and it is the ability to set a baseline control against which to measure results that is at the heart of scientific inquiry. Without it, science is just so much coffee talk.

Having debunked the "science" aspect of Satoshi Kanazawa's work, we can now attack -- and that is certainly a valid word -- the bigotry lying beneath the facade. For, as history has shown repeatedly, where people try to use science to invent differences between the races or sexes or creeds that can be used to claim that one group is "better" than another, it is usually in the service of bigotry and phobia. What did black women do, to become the center of such revolting attention? Nothing, except that perhaps, with a strong black woman as First Lady, this is nothing more than another thinly-veiled attempt to peddle racism as something else to avoid the obviousness that the author and others would surely prefer, but know would be detrimental to them.

Human society can no longer be a slave of its basest impulses. We may rail against racism and sexism and homophobia and all the other ills we see, but there has to be more than righteous indignation. We have to actively counter-program against the pogroms and diatribes and vitriol that continue to infest our global family. There is no room for such bile, such hatred; the very planet we live on may be on a collision course with climactic changes that could render our species nothing more than a distant memory. We should be, must be, beyond these petty considerations. We are all one, all human -- the differences between us are not a point of contention, but a path to survival.

The worst of them will never be swayed by true logic and unassailable reason; once dedicated to their own world view, many will cling to it even as the waves swallow them and the winds knock down their towers of denial. We should not abandon all hope and write them off, where there may be even the slimmest chance of their conversion, but we also cannot stand idly by and treat these affectations as harmless curiosities. We must push aside the dark and sordid beliefs that threaten us, and school future generations in acceptance, compassion, and trust. Our survival depends on how we deal with such impediments to our growth -- it is time for the garden to be weeded and restored.

Fear, Itself

2011-05-17T11:34:00.000-04:00

Today, May 17th, is the International Day Against Homophobia. It is a time for us to acknowledge that even as many groups in this world have thrown off the shackles of oppression, or fought to gain the rights and freedoms they so richly deserve, there is a group of individuals that still faces rampant discrimination, abuse, and bigotry: homosexuals, and along with them, their trans-gendered and bisexual compatriots. Lumped together, the LGBT community suffers under the crushing weight of an abject and unsupportable hatred that threatens to break humanity; today, let us acknowledge this and do something about it.

All over the world, homosexuality is the new leprosy, or perhaps it is better thought of as a state of being that has been continuously reviled since times ancient and vast. Something intrinsic to our makeup as a species has created a powerful revulsion to the idea of two people of the same gender type (or variously, a transformed gender type) having feelings of love for one another, as deep and as passionate as those of two people of opposite gender type. This infuriates some, who take to the airwaves, to the pulpit, to the blog, and rain down fiery invective on the very idea that two people can love each other, even where they are of the same gender. They attempt to take love, and turn it into some sort of law of the universe, that it can be only one way and not another, when that is far from the truth.

Our bodies are merely the shells we inhabit. Our consciousness, our being, our soul, if you will, can be considered part of the human frame, but only as far as the body is the vessel which supplies us with life, feeds us, nourishes our inner self. That the neuro-chemical stew that becomes a human being should bring about the ability of two people, no matter their body morphology, to have deeper feelings for one another, to find solace, comfort, and above all happiness, with each other, should come as no surprise. Evolution's engine, natural selection, attempts to broaden the field as far as it can for any species, to allow that species a better chance at survival. Same-sex love -- if we can be permitted to call it that for brevity, knowing it does not fully describe all possible permutations -- may or may not be an adaptive advantage, but we can never say for sure what is, and for humanity, which has advanced to the point of breaking free of the narrow tracks of natural selection, perhaps it serves as a safety valve for conditions we have yet to encounter.

We cannot so casually dismiss nor perfectly condemn homosexuality, though our ancestry would "make" us do so. We are the arbiters of what we will and will not believe, of what faith we will or will not support. It cannot be so cut-and-dried, for our history is filled with examples of where the obvious is not so, and the hidden more true. The mechanisms of the universe do not heed our desires and fears -- they simply march on, following the rules inexorably. That humanity has the capacity for reason and logic, seems one of the most powerful adaptations, for look at what it has brought us, in populating a world and hurling ourselves to the stars. Where we fail to observe reason and logic, it is because we have surrendered to our base instincts, which served us well long ago but now prove an impediment to our growth.

You may wish to hate the homosexual. The idea of homosexuality may make your skin crawl. Deep within, you may feel the flowing rivers of ire well up at the idea of homosexuality. It does not matter. Homosexuality is a fact. It exists. It will not go away, simply because you wish it to, or you deny it. The universe does not answer to us and our fear, nor does any god worth worshiping. In the end, should we be judged, we will be judged on what we do, what we say, and how we act. Look into the eyes of a gay person, and try to deny the spark of life yo see there. Look at them, and try to tell yourself they are not people, that no blood such as your courses through their veins. If you can do that, you are not fit to be a member of humanity, for any human being can recognize and love another human being, no matter who and no matter the form. That is the way.

Lead By Example

2011-05-09T12:06:00.000-04:00

It was customary in ancient times, to put the heads of vanquished foes on pikes or posts, or to leave whole bodies strung up or crucified, so others would get the idea that any attempt to overthrow the current order was futile. Strangely, no matter how often this was done, it did not stop the stout of heart from attempting to do it anyway, fighting back against systems they knew were stifling, corrupt, and tyrannical. Some were not put off by the spilling of blood; others looked upon the vanquished as merely unfit to do what they set out to do.

So, now, we have the conundrum as to whether or not it is right and proper to release pictures of a dead Osama bin Laden. The most strident voices for their release hearken back to those bygone days, assuming that the site of the now defeated bin Laden will deter any other fanatical terrorists from attempting to attack us.

It doesn't work that way.

What those who advocate the release do not seem to understand, is that the fanatic or the committed warrior is not deterred in their mission. They do not see death the same way we do. Where others fail, they will succeed. Where others are caught, they will escape. Where others break, they will remain unbowed. Those who use their desire or belief as fuel for their attacks on others, cannot be turned aside merely by seeing the dead countenance of the last person to come that way with similar intent. It has never worked on any great scale. Rome was not spared death at the hands of others because it left the crucified remains of its enemies beside its roads.

If anything, this would simply add fuel to the sycophantic fire of bin Laden adherents, pushing that much closer to carrying out attacks they already had steeled themselves for. Pouring gasoline upon a bonfire is never a good idea.

All these factors aside, there is one overriding reason for refraining from making a spectacle of our dead enemy: we are better than that. While many would see this as a reason for triumphalism and in many other places on the globe the killing of enemies is seen as a cause for raucous celebration, this is not the behavior a nation that prides itself in world leadership should evince. To gloat, or drag the carcass through the street, or hang it from a bridge, would only devolve us to the primitivism that we have spent centuries trying to raise ourselves up from. To succumb to the temptation to wave this in the faces of others, is not how it is done.

If we truly want to be world leaders, we should retain our solemnity. We should not rejoice in Osama bin Laden's death, but make it clear that he has received the same treatment as so many of America's enemies -- through dogged determination and the full weight of our nation, we defeat them in detail, no matter how long it takes. Those who seek to poke the sleeping giant with a stick, must then reckon with the force of that giant unleashed on them, no matter where they might try and hide. If one is not prepared for all-out war with us, then one stands little chance of opposing us.

Let us make the death of this international terrorist as matter-of-fact as possible, to ensure that others realize that we consider it no great feat to hunt down and destroy our enemies, just a matter of course for the strongest nation on Earth. Let us prove that we are better than those who would glory in death, that we take our power seriously, and understand the great responsibility we bear to use it wisely. We cannot afford to trivialize or cheapen our victory with histrionics and mock heroics -- we must simply close ranks as a nation and with one voice, proclaim that none shall be allowed to stand against us, where they seek to destroy our way of life. That is the America that we should be.

No Woman Left Behind

2011-05-06T12:03:00.000-04:00

Some men are afraid of women, specifically strong women, women who are independent, capable, willing to work and scrape and fight for what they want. For some reason, the idea of women being as capable as they are, frightens them. It goes against their personal sensibilities, their sense of entitlement, their lust for total control and power. As long as they could look upon women as the "lesser" gender, as long as women "knew their place," they were happy. Now, they are scared.

These men often occupy positions of power, and they wield that power in any way they can to hold women down, to beat them back, to wrest control from them. Take, for example, the execrable legislation just passed in the House of Representatives: H.R. 3, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. The bill itself is pointless, in that it simply reinforces already extant legislation (the Hyde Amendment), forbidding the spending of Federal funds on abortions or abortion-related services. Even so, it is significant, because it marks a blatant slap in the face of every woman. A bunch of mainly older white men, decided, more-or-less unilaterally, that women were incapable of making decisions about whether to have an abortion or not, and they would make it for them, by choking off a funding source, making it that much harder to get one.

So much for getting government off our backs.

At every turn, where women seek a level playing field, or to retain the rights they have worked so hard for, or even to just be treated as normal human beings, this cabal of older white men has been there, attempting to thwart them. Legislators, clergy, business leaders, law enforcement authorities, military authorities... everywhere white men sit in positions of power, they make it a point to shove a collective finger into the chest of women and say "You don't belong here!" They demonize women. They minimize women. The sexualize women. They disenfranchise women.

Several thousand years of the status quo is crumbling around them, thanks to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Age, and the Information Age. Slowly, women came out from behind men, stopped allowing themselves to be denigrated as a matter of course, and took matters into their own hands, breaking free of the tradition roles they were tied to, and striking out in new directions. We applaud their efforts at every turn, because fighting back against thousands of years of repression at the hands of men is not an easy task. Yet, forward they march, and many men, such as myself, march in lockstep with them.

And still, at the pinnacles of power, is the resistance of thousands of generations of dominance. Men, accustomed to being at the top, refuse to let go of the seats of power so easily. To that end, a clash of titans has erupted, as the force of the movement of women moving up in the world smashes into the sedentary mass of entrenched manhood. Not nearly and irresistible force, nor immovable object, for eventually women will batter down the fortress of iniquity and misogyny that is the bastion of male power in this world.

For right now though, it seems bleak to anyone who looks at the whole picture. On so many fronts, in so many places, the rights of women are being compromised and eroded by men who claim "Christian" values, but do not have a compassionate bone in their body. They would force women to be cattle, fit only for breeding, by denying them birth control, denying them the morning-after pill, denying them abortions, and then denying them the resources they need to raise the baby they did not want. They will shame women at every turn, disregard their complaints, blame them for their foibles and lack of self-control, make them feel bad about themselves, drive them to alcoholism, anorexia, and death, all to retain their grip on power.

It is pitiful, that these mewling, self-absorbed, power-mad men and their cronies, all born of the womb of mothers who wanted nothing but good for them and for humanity, would then turn on the female gender, attempting to make it once more subservient to their whim, placing blame anywhere but upon their own head. They will not own up to their own assignations or malfeasance, as if they are simply "the price of doing business." They will rail about values, even as they prove they have none to speak of. These Sons of Janus, will whisper sweet nothings from one mouth, while talking amongst themselves with the other, spelling out their plan to doom womanhood to despair and damnation.

Bleak though it may seem, there is hope, but it will take the combined might of outraged and strident womanhood, and with their like-minded male compatriots, to stab at the heart of these monsters, uprooting them from their positions of power, and placing them upon the compost heap of history. It is not enough to get others to see reality, to convince them to join the fight, but to rally each and every one of us who, as decent people, are sickened by this bald-faced attempt to strike down decades of female suffrage in order to continue their dominance of the halls of power. Let them tremble at the thought, that in their rush to enforce their own antiquated and sordid beliefs about the rightness of male dominance, they have cut the supports out from underneath their position, and the swell of honorable humanity will rise up to tip them over and dump them from their thrones. Let it be written now, and for all time, that this point in history marked the end of misogyny, and the beginning of united humanity.

Darkness Held The Monster

2011-05-04T07:54:00.000-04:00

With great power, comes great responsibility. You may scoff at a line from a comic book, but the origin of the words bears nothing upon their meaning. It is true -- great power, used responsibly, can cure the ills of humanity. Used inappropriately, or with caprice, such power can sow darkness, despair, and destruction. There is no greater power than our own minds, the engine that drives us. Within the electrochemical workings of our synapses lie the ability to turn our knowledge into power, and that power into action. If we do not think, do not apply our knowledge to a task, or wield our knowledge loosely, we stand to make bad situations worse, and horrible situation catastrophic.

Victor Frankenstein found this out, when he took his knowledge of life and matter, and sought to imbue dead flesh with life once more, strapping together a new human being from parts of old human beings. The import of this was lost on him, so mad was he with the desire to see his knowledge writ large across history as the man who defied death's grip. He did not see the bigger picture, did nothing to enfold the greater sum of humanity into the the equation. He simply brought his creation to life, and thus his grisly jigsaw puzzle of humanity was born of madness and electricity, and would eventually turn out to be his death in the Arctic wastes. His irresponsibility caught up with him.

Mary Shelley's cautionary tale, and Stan Lee's words of wisdom, stand testimony to that which humanity cannot ever seem to come to grips with, truly: what we do, and how we do it, returns to us in the end. If we do not think ahead, we will find ourselves in pursuit of our own monster, loosed upon the world through our oversight.

In the death of Osama bin Laden, we have, thankfully, excised one of our terrible creations from the world. As much as we may be pleased he is gone, and thank the heavens that our President was able to finally bring him to justice -- though not the kind most of us would have liked -- we find it easy amidst the celebration and cheering to forget a salient fact: we made him. No, we did not fashion the man from clay, nor did we plant the seeds of a radicalized form of Islam within him, but we did exacerbate his fundamentalism with our actions, cumulative actions that have never painted us in a very good light in that region we call the Middle East. It was not as simple as the United States placing military forces in Saudi Arabia to combat the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait; the radical Islam of bin Laden and his adherents is a potent brew of over a thousand years of Christian persecution, empire building, and second-class citizenship on the world stage. Were it not for petroleum, life blood of the world, the Middle East might be a disregarded remnant of a longer vanished time.

The imperial powers of the world always sought to corner the market on the precious resources of the world -- oil was no different. The Dutch, the British, America... all sought to secure the precious fluid wherever it might be located. That led to a great deal of involvement in Africa, from outright Imperial ambition, to business dealings, to power-brokering with foreign governments. In the end, a complicated web of interactions, associations, and above all, misinterpretations, allowed countries such as America and states such as the Soviet Union, to fall prey to the idea they could "control" the Middle East, through trade and technology, and enfolding African nations in the Cold War. This led to the creation of puppet governments, the suppression of liberty in these nations, and a simmering hatred of the "infidels" who supported the corrupt governments.

Eventually, with the OPEC oil embargo of 1973, the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Iran-Iraq war, and the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, the playing field was irrevocably altered. No longer were foreign nation free actors in affairs of oil, and now the rest of the world was easily held hostage to events in the Middle East. It went beyond the desire to deny Israel a right to exist; the hidden anger was finally rising to the surface, and more radical forms of Islam were seeing the corruption and turmoil as by-products of Western influence.

It all might have remained a rather tumultuous and fractious sphere, but eventually the aspirations of some could not be contained. Saddam Hussein upped the ante, and turned his eyes -- and his armies -- on his rich neighbor Kuwait. This monster, forged by the U.S. to be a counter to a hostile Iran, shook off the yoke of his Western backers and determined he would be his own actor, taking what he needed to fulfill his own grandiose desires and fill his empty coffers from his unsuccessful conflict with Iran. The chain of dominoes, begun a century ago, now picked up its pace. America had to respond to the outrage it helped create, forced to check its own creation, and secure precious oil resources by defending Saudi Arabia and freeing Kuwait.

"Infidels" on Saudi Arabian soil, would lead a product of another conflict, the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, to choke down his own bile and froth at the mouth. Osama bin Laden, once a pawn against the Soviets, now became a knight against what he saw as an American "invasion" of Saudi Arabia. A seed planted a decade earlier, now bloomed and blossomed into a bitter harvest.

So, if we are to take any joy from the death of the man responsible for the planning and backing of the attacks of September 11th, let that joy be steeped in the knowledge that his death now may provide closure, but his life was a product of our machinations overseas. This was a monster we

In this writing of the tale, the monster dies, and if we think that is the end of the tale, then we have not learned our lesson. Our actions spawn other actions, myriad chains of happenstance that will, without our knowledge, coalesce in ways we cannot yet imagine. Our place in the world as its lone superpower does not entitle us to become arbiters or judges of how the world will operate. The lesson we must take from this is that our actions have far-reaching consequences, and we would be well to study things carefully before assuming any course of action is the right course. What we do can alter the course of humanity's growth. We have the power -- let us start using it responsibly.