OK - I'm really amazed at how incredibly messed up things are right now. It appears to me that the republican's staged an elaborate set up this week. They are the most egregiously smarmy group. Did you see Boiner, Clyburn, Blunt, and the bunch last night and this morning. How can these people have the nerve to get up one day and say one thing and then the next day say the opposite? This was one of the most unbelievable moments in the history of US politics. Then McCain blamed Obama for the failure of the bill. Another unbelievable distortion of reality.
This entire process, the implosion of the American financial system, the set up by house republicans, the power grab by the white house, etc... has led me to believe that the United States is going down. We are still the center of the world financial system and power, But actually we are the Black Hole of the world - sucking everything in, destroying it, and nothing is coming out. We all better get ready for many years of decent into economic decline, perhaps perpetual decline. China, India, South East Asia, and the European Union are breathing down our necks.
I have to say that I am very disappointed with Obama during this entire financial crisis and legislative craziness. This crisis is a great opportunity for Obama to present a new ideology that will lead us out of this mess. He has not presented any real leadership during this mess. I guess it is probably smart not to involve himself in this (as we saw with McCain who really messed up by advocating the passage of the bill, then claiming victory and leadership in getting a compromise, and then having the bill fail). Obama should step out from behind his silence on this issue and make some useful proposals and show some leadership. If he could manage to do this he would blow by McCain and never look back. But he is being politically savvy and letting the crisis itself take the republicans down. Its the best tactic to add to his strategy of saying as little as possible so as not to be left open to specific criticism. Blah!
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Some Debate Thoughts
There were two things McCain said that I thought were unbelievable and really showed his true attitudes.
While talking about Obama’s statements regarding crossing the Pakistan border to get members of Al Qaeda, McCain condescendingly stated that this was proof of Obama’s naïve and dangerous lack of experience. However, what was most fascinating, and something that has not been picked up in any press reports that I have read, was McCains statement that (and this may not be an exact quote) “You just don’t say that kind of thing out loud. You do what you have to do…” McCain indicated there that he was willing to lie to the American people. Basically what he said was I’m going to do what ever I want but I’m not going to tell anyone about it (much less the leaders of the countries that are being violated.
The second, and again something that has not been discussed in the press, was McCain’s most amazing statement during the whole debate. That is when he stated that Obama was like Bush in his stubbornness and inflexibility. This was an unbelievable statement coming McCain of all people. It also revealed that McCain gravely misjudges the character of his opponents. He misjudged Bush (several times) and he is misjudging Obama. To claim that Obama is not flexible in his thinking and is alike to the Bush administration’s unprecedented exclusion of ideas and adherence to ideology (something by the way that all of the republicans believed was a virtue – showing that he had principles). This revealed that McCain is a lousy judge of character.
McCain’s performance as a candidate. His adoption of Rovian tactics – that is to attack the virtues of the opponent as if they are the problem, his willingness to lie (his adviser’s company getting 15,000/month from Fannie Mae among many others), and his inconsistent positions on several issues – veteran’s benefits, the Iraq war, not knowing the difference between Shiite and Sunni, blindness to the ethnic cleansing of Iraq, being against the Bush tax cuts and now being for them, and many other issues all indicated that he has a serious credibility problem.
In addition to these issues, I was astounded to find out that Obama supported a missle defense system, illegal attacks on individuals within sovereign nations, and further warlike talk regarding other nations.
I have been deeply disappointed that these candidates have not been asked direct questions these debates about constituational threats to civil liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanomo Bay, torture, illegal wiretapping, and the Patriot Act. To me these are the most important issues of our time. Important because they have been the ideals of the USA and what guarantee our freedoms and what has led to the 20th century positive regard of the world. I want to hear Obama and McCain talk about his, and especially to hear Obama say he is going to reverse all of these horrible policies and to hear McCain try to defend them. Its like the ideology of the Federation in Star Trek - you act as a model for others and don't impose your ideology on them. The model you present is what acts as the catalyst for change - much as Ghandi and Martin Luther have represented. This is the path that Bush/Cheney etc... have completely destroyed and substituted imperialism/crusadism.
Finally, I feel the need to add here something to update my thinking about the economic crisis. The idea of allowing the economy to fail, to what ever degree it has, is a golden opportunity for us to really make a difference. The bail out is a bandaid that may last for some time but we will eventually be back into the same problem. The reason is that the fundamentals of the economy are flawed and especially when you get free market capitalists and corporate control of the goverment (and media). Obama has a great opportunity to raise this issue and really run with it. He can talk about returning the US to properity that is rational and slow moving rather than the idea of a rapid growth. In addition, the whole ideology of the free market can now be so obviously seen as flawed and that the federal goverment is really the only power that balances corporate/business interests. Rahl Emmanuel said it fairly well in his post financial legislation agreement press conference today. However the point needs to be made strenuously and with a ferver that will turn the entire financial/corporate/business ideology around.
While talking about Obama’s statements regarding crossing the Pakistan border to get members of Al Qaeda, McCain condescendingly stated that this was proof of Obama’s naïve and dangerous lack of experience. However, what was most fascinating, and something that has not been picked up in any press reports that I have read, was McCains statement that (and this may not be an exact quote) “You just don’t say that kind of thing out loud. You do what you have to do…” McCain indicated there that he was willing to lie to the American people. Basically what he said was I’m going to do what ever I want but I’m not going to tell anyone about it (much less the leaders of the countries that are being violated.
The second, and again something that has not been discussed in the press, was McCain’s most amazing statement during the whole debate. That is when he stated that Obama was like Bush in his stubbornness and inflexibility. This was an unbelievable statement coming McCain of all people. It also revealed that McCain gravely misjudges the character of his opponents. He misjudged Bush (several times) and he is misjudging Obama. To claim that Obama is not flexible in his thinking and is alike to the Bush administration’s unprecedented exclusion of ideas and adherence to ideology (something by the way that all of the republicans believed was a virtue – showing that he had principles). This revealed that McCain is a lousy judge of character.
McCain’s performance as a candidate. His adoption of Rovian tactics – that is to attack the virtues of the opponent as if they are the problem, his willingness to lie (his adviser’s company getting 15,000/month from Fannie Mae among many others), and his inconsistent positions on several issues – veteran’s benefits, the Iraq war, not knowing the difference between Shiite and Sunni, blindness to the ethnic cleansing of Iraq, being against the Bush tax cuts and now being for them, and many other issues all indicated that he has a serious credibility problem.
In addition to these issues, I was astounded to find out that Obama supported a missle defense system, illegal attacks on individuals within sovereign nations, and further warlike talk regarding other nations.
I have been deeply disappointed that these candidates have not been asked direct questions these debates about constituational threats to civil liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanomo Bay, torture, illegal wiretapping, and the Patriot Act. To me these are the most important issues of our time. Important because they have been the ideals of the USA and what guarantee our freedoms and what has led to the 20th century positive regard of the world. I want to hear Obama and McCain talk about his, and especially to hear Obama say he is going to reverse all of these horrible policies and to hear McCain try to defend them. Its like the ideology of the Federation in Star Trek - you act as a model for others and don't impose your ideology on them. The model you present is what acts as the catalyst for change - much as Ghandi and Martin Luther have represented. This is the path that Bush/Cheney etc... have completely destroyed and substituted imperialism/crusadism.
Finally, I feel the need to add here something to update my thinking about the economic crisis. The idea of allowing the economy to fail, to what ever degree it has, is a golden opportunity for us to really make a difference. The bail out is a bandaid that may last for some time but we will eventually be back into the same problem. The reason is that the fundamentals of the economy are flawed and especially when you get free market capitalists and corporate control of the goverment (and media). Obama has a great opportunity to raise this issue and really run with it. He can talk about returning the US to properity that is rational and slow moving rather than the idea of a rapid growth. In addition, the whole ideology of the free market can now be so obviously seen as flawed and that the federal goverment is really the only power that balances corporate/business interests. Rahl Emmanuel said it fairly well in his post financial legislation agreement press conference today. However the point needs to be made strenuously and with a ferver that will turn the entire financial/corporate/business ideology around.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Sacrifice - Are you willing?
I am wondering what would happen if there was no intervention in the current economic “crisis.” What would be the actual result? Giant financial companies failing, those people out of work, people not being able to get a loan for houses, cars, etc... This would result in more people out of work. The US auto companies going bankrupt. More people losing their mortgages. No construction, therefore construction workers out of work… more unemployment.
What industries would continue to operate: oil/energy companies? Advertising?
Ok, so we would all have a lower standard of living for a while. How long? 1 year, 2 years, 5 years? Has anyone actually (actuarially?) looked at these possibilities? I have not heard about them. How can we make a decision if we don’t know all of the facts. Perhaps we should know the answers to these questions and make a choice based on actual information (instead of the “we would enter into a deep recession” – I already thought we were in one.)
My feeling is that they really just don’t want us to know. But why? They think the majority can not understand it well enough to make sense of it – the likely reason. Or, if we actually had the options laid out, maybe we would allow the rich folks to lose their money and have their businesses fail.
I find it so unbelievable that this government is going socialist. The part that bothers me even more is that they don’t want anyone reviewing their decisions – I don’t have the actual paragraph for you to read at this moment but I’ll link it in when I can. The whole thing sounds completely consistent with the Bush administration’s totalitarian leanings anyway – let us take care of everything – attitude. They took over the constitution, suspended important civil liberties (habeas corpus, illegal wiretapping, etc…), they started a preemptive war for no reason, they allowed the CIA and Army to torture prisoners, they moved people illegally to other countries (extraordinary rendition), and who knows how many other travesties of our freedoms. Now they want to own the entire financial system. When they talk about an ownership society – its like Animal Farm – Ownership for them means ownership for them not the rest of us.
I for one am willing to pair down my lifestyle, live much more simply, sell my house and live smaller, halt the consumerism rampant in my life, and sacrifice a lot to see the system fail and have to be rebuilt on a better foundation.
So, Are You?I am wondering what would happen if there was no intervention in the current economic “crisis.” What would be the actual result? Giant financial companies failing, those people out of work, people not being able to get a loan for houses, cars, etc... This would result in more people out of work. The US auto companies going bankrupt. More people losing their mortgages. No construction, therefore construction workers out of work… more unemployment.
What industries would continue to operate: oil/energy companies? Advertising?
Ok, so we would all have a lower standard of living for a while. How long? 1 year, 2 years, 5 years? Has anyone actually (actuarially?) looked at these possibilities? I have not heard about them. How can we make a decision if we don’t know all of the facts. Perhaps we should know the answers to these questions and make a choice based on actual information (instead of the “we would enter into a deep recession” – I already thought we were in one.)
My feeling is that they really just don’t want us to know. But why? They think the majority can not understand it well enough to make sense of it – the likely reason. Or, if we actually had the options laid out, maybe we would allow the rich folks to lose their money and have their businesses fail.
I find it so unbelievable that this government is going socialist. The part that bothers me even more is that they don’t want anyone reviewing their decisions – I don’t have the actual paragraph for you to read at this moment but I’ll link it in when I can. The whole thing sounds completely consistent with the Bush administration’s totalitarian leanings anyway – let us take care of everything – attitude. They took over the constitution, suspended important civil liberties (habeas corpus, illegal wiretapping, etc…), they started a preemptive war for no reason, they allowed the CIA and Army to torture prisoners, they moved people illegally to other countries (extraordinary rendition), and who knows how many other travesties of our freedoms. Now they want to own the entire financial system. When they talk about an ownership society – its like Animal Farm – Ownership for them means ownership for them not the rest of us.
I for one am willing to pair down my lifestyle, live much more simply, sell my house and live smaller, halt the consumerism rampant in my life, and sacrifice a lot to see the system fail and have to be rebuilt on a better foundation.
So, Are You?
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
On the Economy
The Economy:
Here is the way I see it. I am not an economist. I have never taken a business class. There are undoubtedly many things that I am not clear about. However, here goes.
The problems with Milton Friedman’s economics are the same as the problems with Marx’s economics – Both are fantasies of extreme proportions. It is impossible to conduct business in a massive society without governmental regulation and guidance of business just as it is impossible to conduct business in a massive society completely determined by governmental determinism. The current failures of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Bear’s Sterns, AIG, and whoever is next are ideal examples of these problems. Radical free market economists with contend that we have not had a truly free market so the failures should not be bailed out and the government’s intervention is inappropriate. What is interesting to me is that the current administration with the help of a compliant congress, has moved closer to the free market ideal than any in the past (at least since the early 20th century). It is when these ideals are reached for and deregulation of business/markets occurs, that businesses fail and threaten the economy. It seems to me that the same thing happened just before the great depression and the markets/business crashed.
When are we going to learn? The whole thing began with Reagan. I guess Carter began it at the end of his administration. But Reagan really pushed it and the Right is much more prone to these types of problems. The push was for deregulation. The results of obvious. Business needs regulation in order to function properly and in the best interest of the greater society.
The same process was in play at the interior department as recent revelations indicated.
No oversight leads to abuse.
This is a simple psychological process. Human beings do not do well without structure, boundaries, and restraints. Some of us develop enough internal regulation to exist independently, but the vast majority of people do not. Therein lies a serious problem with humanity. Human nature is not self-regulating, we are led by instinct, impulses, urges that cannot be totally overcome. This is why so many of us fall into hypocrisy – claiming to be anti-homosexual and seeking homosexual relationships in airport stalls, abusing power by having sexual relations with an intern in the oval office, etc… etc…Or claiming Miltonian free market economics and then bailing out your buds on Wall Street (Paulson and the Bush administration), claiming to want governmental reform but doing virtually nothing to enact legislation to make it happen (Pelosi/Reid). The list can go on and on. Your neighbors are just the same.
Children are in need of structure and restraints and boundaries to help them feel secure in the world and grow up internalizing their own self-imposed restraints and boundaries. If a child’s parent does not provide the child with sufficient boundaries and structure the child experiences fear, anxiety, anger. It becomes much more likely under those conditions that the child will act out, lack inhibition of urges/impulses, become aggressive, and unregulated. On the other hand, parents who are overly restrictive also create children who are more likely to act out, be frustrated, and lack initiative.
Don’t these scenarios sound familiar? The government’s main function is to act as the “parent” for the greater society. This is why there is a constant struggle between the two extremes of “parenting”: being overly permissive and being overly regulating. The reality is that because of the conflict we fall somewhere in between most of the time. It is unfair to say that one party is totally one way and the other is totally the other. Republicans tend to be overly permissive toward business interests and overly controlling in the social sphere (regulating abortion, religion, anti-constitutional/civil rights issues just to name a few. Democrats are have an opposite problem, mostly wanting to exert regulations on business but allow more freedom socially.
The battle between these two sides of the conflict is thoroughly natural and reflect the childhood conflict inherent in all of us. How we resolve these conflicts inside ourselves determines how we think politically.
This gets me into an entirely other issue which I hope to write about in the future – The idea that Republicans tend to be psychologically more in the paranoid range of personality and Democrats tend to be more of the depressive personality type. The implications for public policy in each of these types is quite clear.
Digression aside, the need for balance is obvious and our constitutional democracy helps us achieve some form of balance. The problem arises when those in power, especially executive power, try to undermine this balance. Now what administrations have done this? Republican – that is Nixon, Reagan, Bush (especially Bush). Dick Cheney is a paramount example of this (see the new book by Barton Gellman “Angler.”). Not surprisingly, Cheney was part of the Nixon Administration as was Rumsfeld.
Deregulation of any agency, business, etc.. will lead to the “child” becoming unwieldy and out of control. It is human nature. It is a fact that is seen repeatedly throughout the course of human history both societally and individually.
More about this another time.
Here is the way I see it. I am not an economist. I have never taken a business class. There are undoubtedly many things that I am not clear about. However, here goes.
The problems with Milton Friedman’s economics are the same as the problems with Marx’s economics – Both are fantasies of extreme proportions. It is impossible to conduct business in a massive society without governmental regulation and guidance of business just as it is impossible to conduct business in a massive society completely determined by governmental determinism. The current failures of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Bear’s Sterns, AIG, and whoever is next are ideal examples of these problems. Radical free market economists with contend that we have not had a truly free market so the failures should not be bailed out and the government’s intervention is inappropriate. What is interesting to me is that the current administration with the help of a compliant congress, has moved closer to the free market ideal than any in the past (at least since the early 20th century). It is when these ideals are reached for and deregulation of business/markets occurs, that businesses fail and threaten the economy. It seems to me that the same thing happened just before the great depression and the markets/business crashed.
When are we going to learn? The whole thing began with Reagan. I guess Carter began it at the end of his administration. But Reagan really pushed it and the Right is much more prone to these types of problems. The push was for deregulation. The results of obvious. Business needs regulation in order to function properly and in the best interest of the greater society.
The same process was in play at the interior department as recent revelations indicated.
No oversight leads to abuse.
This is a simple psychological process. Human beings do not do well without structure, boundaries, and restraints. Some of us develop enough internal regulation to exist independently, but the vast majority of people do not. Therein lies a serious problem with humanity. Human nature is not self-regulating, we are led by instinct, impulses, urges that cannot be totally overcome. This is why so many of us fall into hypocrisy – claiming to be anti-homosexual and seeking homosexual relationships in airport stalls, abusing power by having sexual relations with an intern in the oval office, etc… etc…Or claiming Miltonian free market economics and then bailing out your buds on Wall Street (Paulson and the Bush administration), claiming to want governmental reform but doing virtually nothing to enact legislation to make it happen (Pelosi/Reid). The list can go on and on. Your neighbors are just the same.
Children are in need of structure and restraints and boundaries to help them feel secure in the world and grow up internalizing their own self-imposed restraints and boundaries. If a child’s parent does not provide the child with sufficient boundaries and structure the child experiences fear, anxiety, anger. It becomes much more likely under those conditions that the child will act out, lack inhibition of urges/impulses, become aggressive, and unregulated. On the other hand, parents who are overly restrictive also create children who are more likely to act out, be frustrated, and lack initiative.
Don’t these scenarios sound familiar? The government’s main function is to act as the “parent” for the greater society. This is why there is a constant struggle between the two extremes of “parenting”: being overly permissive and being overly regulating. The reality is that because of the conflict we fall somewhere in between most of the time. It is unfair to say that one party is totally one way and the other is totally the other. Republicans tend to be overly permissive toward business interests and overly controlling in the social sphere (regulating abortion, religion, anti-constitutional/civil rights issues just to name a few. Democrats are have an opposite problem, mostly wanting to exert regulations on business but allow more freedom socially.
The battle between these two sides of the conflict is thoroughly natural and reflect the childhood conflict inherent in all of us. How we resolve these conflicts inside ourselves determines how we think politically.
This gets me into an entirely other issue which I hope to write about in the future – The idea that Republicans tend to be psychologically more in the paranoid range of personality and Democrats tend to be more of the depressive personality type. The implications for public policy in each of these types is quite clear.
Digression aside, the need for balance is obvious and our constitutional democracy helps us achieve some form of balance. The problem arises when those in power, especially executive power, try to undermine this balance. Now what administrations have done this? Republican – that is Nixon, Reagan, Bush (especially Bush). Dick Cheney is a paramount example of this (see the new book by Barton Gellman “Angler.”). Not surprisingly, Cheney was part of the Nixon Administration as was Rumsfeld.
Deregulation of any agency, business, etc.. will lead to the “child” becoming unwieldy and out of control. It is human nature. It is a fact that is seen repeatedly throughout the course of human history both societally and individually.
More about this another time.
The Democratic/Liberal National Campaign Dilemma
Democratic pundits and political analysts keep talking about how Obama needs to fight back, point out the inconsistencies in McCain’s lies, etc…. However, the liberal elites (of which I am a proud member) consistently miss the point. Us liberals focus over and over again on rational and logical arguments to undermine McCain. The problem, and this has always been the problem back to Reagan, it is the Republicans who can only understand the way American’s really think. American’s are uneducated and therefore are not taught to think rationally and logically in the academic sense. Republicans know this and their policies reflect their understanding of this. In addition, religiosity, especially the 40% of the country who consider themselves “fundamentalist or born again” also think differently. Since their beliefs do not follow rational or logical rules, they are susceptible to arguments that also do not follow logical and are not rational. An example of this is the rallying support for Palin despite all of the contradictions in her professed faith and her actions (teen daughter’s pregnancy, earmarks, bridge to no where, banning books vs. constitution, abuse of power – trying to get her brother in law fired and then firing the guy who wouldn’t fire him, etc…). Religious people can accept these contradictions and twist them in their minds into good things about the person (as they have about their own hypocrisies and their own evangelical preachers – Jim Baker, Ted Haggard, Jerry Falwell and the rest of the bunch). It is a closed system of thought that incorporates any inconsistency into a system that twists the inconsistency into something that makes sense. This is actually the same thinking that enables an evangelical to believe in a literal interpretation of the bible and to profess to know “God’s Will” (as Sara Palin seems to be able to do – see links to her talking during a church service about the Iraq war. She also did this in the interview with Charlie Gibson when she twisted her sermon in church and implied that it was the same as Abraham Lincoln’s speech. This was a classic “small minded”/fundamentalist minded twist of logic.
So democratic political consultants will never get this problem right because they can not understand it. Americans have turned a very significant corner away from enlightenment ideology and toward theocracy. Even if you are not particularly religious but just not educated you are susceptible to the same thought process (a thought process that is quite psychologically primitive). And yes this sounds quite elitist, but fact are facts.
How one fights this is by presenting the same kinds of illogical and irrational arguments and using them to twist reality into what you want it to be. This is not something educated people are good at because it feels unreal, illogical, and irrational and therefore wrong. Unfortunately for us, republicans are very good at this and it fits into their worldview.
So democratic political consultants will never get this problem right because they can not understand it. Americans have turned a very significant corner away from enlightenment ideology and toward theocracy. Even if you are not particularly religious but just not educated you are susceptible to the same thought process (a thought process that is quite psychologically primitive). And yes this sounds quite elitist, but fact are facts.
How one fights this is by presenting the same kinds of illogical and irrational arguments and using them to twist reality into what you want it to be. This is not something educated people are good at because it feels unreal, illogical, and irrational and therefore wrong. Unfortunately for us, republicans are very good at this and it fits into their worldview.
Rant 2
I wrote this also in 2004.
I will preface this writing by saying that I am not against religious pursuits. I have spent years studying religion and have a long experience with religious people, though I am not one.
I have been very disturbed by the recent rise in religiosity in the public discourse. The founders of our country did not intend for a rise of religious beliefs to determine the course of politics in this country. There are those who would try to convince us that the founders were religious in the way that the most extreme of us are today. This is propaganda. The founders were, for the most part, men of faith, though their faith was not the determining factor in how they constructed the rules under which we live. These rules emerged out of a belief in a secular based philosophy. What is particularly disturbing now is that faith is in competition with “reason” and fact. When your faith leads you to negate scientific reality (fact) because the science is contrary to the direction of your faith you are no longer functioning in a rational manner.
As a person of faith you no longer have an open mind to question your beliefs – if Jesus said it its got to be true. I recently heard a friend – who has an immutable deeper faith – a fundamentalist actually, say that his belief is “rational” because what he believes is fact – its in the bible, its written there, it’s the word of god because god said it is!
I remember a Star Trek episode where the enterprise encounters a planet that was visited by another Earth ship in the past. The previous ship accidentally left a book about the Chicago era mob on the planet. When the enterprise returns to the planet, the entire planet has adopted that book as a sort of bible and based their entire culture on it. If asked the inhabitants of that planet would say the same thing as my friend – that their belief is rational because it was given to them by “God” (the earthlings of that past). You might say that this is just a story, but so is everything – including the bible.
Are the believers so uneducated and ignorant that they don’t know that the New Testament was written and compiled in the 3rd century, with many exclusions determined by political needs of the time. So this is the “truth” handed down by God?
These are the reasons why I have made up my mind that there should be no religion in public life. The Maplewood school board and others around the country are correct in taking out religious songs from holiday celebrations. Public life should be determined by secular pursuits. Religious pursuits should be a private matter. The beliefs of one group should not determine how the entire group should live their lives. This was exactly what the colonists of this country were attempting to get away from – as were the founders. They did not want to fundamentalists of England to tell them how to live their lives or pursue their beliefs.
Religious believers want to change education to conform to religious faith. The central example is making creation equivalent with evolution in biology classes. This is absurd. Keep religious faith private. One might say that it is like comparing apples and oranges, but that would make the comparison too close – apples and oranges are both fruit. Religious based creation belief and evolution are not both fruit, they are not in the same class and should not be given equivalence in public discourse. Education can be faith based, but if you want your kids to be exposed to religion in school you can make that choice and sent them to private school. Public education needs to be secular because of the very diverse backgrounds we come from. Teaching about different religious beliefs in school can be done as long as it is from an academic perspective “we are learning this to learn about the variety of beliefs with which we come into contact because of our diverse culture.”
It seems to me that religious people would be happy to have a theocracy in this country, one in which their religious beliefs become public policy. Pray to Jesus in school before games, before tests, before class as public policy. Then of course there is the determination of other policies – against homosexuals, contraception, abortion, death penalty, preservation/destruction of natural resources (I once heard another religious extremist say that God would not have put the resources there if he did not want us to use them and that there would be enough always no matter how much we used because God would take care of it. There is enough evidence to prove over and over again that God does not take care of us very well – holocaust, mass murder, starvation, pestilence, natural disasters, toxic contaminations, etc, etc. But oops, I forgot that I have come to this conclusion through experience not belief!
There is nothing more antithetical to the fundamental beliefs by which we have lived in this country for two hundred years. There has always been a tension between the religion and the secular. We do not like it when strict ideological beliefs determine the lives of people in North Korea, China, Soviet Union, Iran, Iraq, Taliban Afghanistan, etc…. However, it is more likely that religious belief will lead in that direction than a secularist or liberal ideology.
I also had a conversation recently with a man I deeply respect and with whom I share a great many beliefs (he is a radical and liberal). However, one area of disagreement is around religion. He is not a fundamentalist, but is a deist. He believes that there is no way to preserve morality without religion. “why would the world not descend into egotistic chaos in which we all pursue purely hedonistic needs.” My response to this is that I am an example of why not. There has not been a day in my life that I have had any belief in a God or other creationist creature. Yet, I am a deeply moral and ethical person committed to respect for all people. By your deeds shall you be judged, not by God, but by your fellow people. Furthermore, I believe that religion was created to standardize, so to say, the morality that already existed, not the other way around. It was not God/religion from which morality came, but God/religion came out of morality. Therefore, the world would not descend into chaos, but would be exactly as it is with religious beliefs.
I will preface this writing by saying that I am not against religious pursuits. I have spent years studying religion and have a long experience with religious people, though I am not one.
I have been very disturbed by the recent rise in religiosity in the public discourse. The founders of our country did not intend for a rise of religious beliefs to determine the course of politics in this country. There are those who would try to convince us that the founders were religious in the way that the most extreme of us are today. This is propaganda. The founders were, for the most part, men of faith, though their faith was not the determining factor in how they constructed the rules under which we live. These rules emerged out of a belief in a secular based philosophy. What is particularly disturbing now is that faith is in competition with “reason” and fact. When your faith leads you to negate scientific reality (fact) because the science is contrary to the direction of your faith you are no longer functioning in a rational manner.
As a person of faith you no longer have an open mind to question your beliefs – if Jesus said it its got to be true. I recently heard a friend – who has an immutable deeper faith – a fundamentalist actually, say that his belief is “rational” because what he believes is fact – its in the bible, its written there, it’s the word of god because god said it is!
I remember a Star Trek episode where the enterprise encounters a planet that was visited by another Earth ship in the past. The previous ship accidentally left a book about the Chicago era mob on the planet. When the enterprise returns to the planet, the entire planet has adopted that book as a sort of bible and based their entire culture on it. If asked the inhabitants of that planet would say the same thing as my friend – that their belief is rational because it was given to them by “God” (the earthlings of that past). You might say that this is just a story, but so is everything – including the bible.
Are the believers so uneducated and ignorant that they don’t know that the New Testament was written and compiled in the 3rd century, with many exclusions determined by political needs of the time. So this is the “truth” handed down by God?
These are the reasons why I have made up my mind that there should be no religion in public life. The Maplewood school board and others around the country are correct in taking out religious songs from holiday celebrations. Public life should be determined by secular pursuits. Religious pursuits should be a private matter. The beliefs of one group should not determine how the entire group should live their lives. This was exactly what the colonists of this country were attempting to get away from – as were the founders. They did not want to fundamentalists of England to tell them how to live their lives or pursue their beliefs.
Religious believers want to change education to conform to religious faith. The central example is making creation equivalent with evolution in biology classes. This is absurd. Keep religious faith private. One might say that it is like comparing apples and oranges, but that would make the comparison too close – apples and oranges are both fruit. Religious based creation belief and evolution are not both fruit, they are not in the same class and should not be given equivalence in public discourse. Education can be faith based, but if you want your kids to be exposed to religion in school you can make that choice and sent them to private school. Public education needs to be secular because of the very diverse backgrounds we come from. Teaching about different religious beliefs in school can be done as long as it is from an academic perspective “we are learning this to learn about the variety of beliefs with which we come into contact because of our diverse culture.”
It seems to me that religious people would be happy to have a theocracy in this country, one in which their religious beliefs become public policy. Pray to Jesus in school before games, before tests, before class as public policy. Then of course there is the determination of other policies – against homosexuals, contraception, abortion, death penalty, preservation/destruction of natural resources (I once heard another religious extremist say that God would not have put the resources there if he did not want us to use them and that there would be enough always no matter how much we used because God would take care of it. There is enough evidence to prove over and over again that God does not take care of us very well – holocaust, mass murder, starvation, pestilence, natural disasters, toxic contaminations, etc, etc. But oops, I forgot that I have come to this conclusion through experience not belief!
There is nothing more antithetical to the fundamental beliefs by which we have lived in this country for two hundred years. There has always been a tension between the religion and the secular. We do not like it when strict ideological beliefs determine the lives of people in North Korea, China, Soviet Union, Iran, Iraq, Taliban Afghanistan, etc…. However, it is more likely that religious belief will lead in that direction than a secularist or liberal ideology.
I also had a conversation recently with a man I deeply respect and with whom I share a great many beliefs (he is a radical and liberal). However, one area of disagreement is around religion. He is not a fundamentalist, but is a deist. He believes that there is no way to preserve morality without religion. “why would the world not descend into egotistic chaos in which we all pursue purely hedonistic needs.” My response to this is that I am an example of why not. There has not been a day in my life that I have had any belief in a God or other creationist creature. Yet, I am a deeply moral and ethical person committed to respect for all people. By your deeds shall you be judged, not by God, but by your fellow people. Furthermore, I believe that religion was created to standardize, so to say, the morality that already existed, not the other way around. It was not God/religion from which morality came, but God/religion came out of morality. Therefore, the world would not descend into chaos, but would be exactly as it is with religious beliefs.
The Rant #1
I wrote this back in 2004. Holds even more today.
Why is it that so many people are turning to faith and extremism?
Why do 42% of Americans consider themselves fundamentalists or born again?
Why 44% do not believe in evolution.
Why there are so many cultures that are moving toward more extremist beliefs
a. Middle East – including Israel and Jew in general
b. Russia
c. Afganistan, Pakistan, Iran and soon to be Iraq?
Is it the fall of rationalism, empiricism, the enlightment/modernism?
If these things dissolve what else do people have to turn to besides more base/instinctual belief systems – e.g. looking to the “devine” or a megaman (Nietzsche)– a power larger than yourself – to guide you and then only believe that that is the true path to relief from all the bad things in the world.
These beliefs (empiricism) have failed to solve basic problems, they seemed to hold promise starting 400 years or so ago, they allowed leaps of understanding and development far beyond anything that had come before (or so it seems) – but they repeatedly fall short of expectations. Some of the negatives include the alienation from nature, alienation of self, the detachment from community, narcissism as a reaction formation to these alienations.
Another way they fall short is that the empirical model/enlightenment/rational/modernist belief system fails to bring a large enough majority of “believers.” This model engenders, in fact, a lack of faith – even to itself – in its own system which makes it unavailable to large numbers of people. It also requires a certain level of education and understanding to gain adherents (though there are of course those with that education and understanding that continue to adhere to fundamentalist religious beliefs [a fact that I can not really understand]).
It is also failing to substitute for faith in the sense that faith brings, or can bring, full release from pain, a full letting go of “seeking” for answers which is incredibly comforting. There is no release of that kind in empirical model/enlightenment/rational/modernist belief system and really the two are largely incompatible. So we get the conflict the friction and fights over basic truths and human endeavors. It is ironic that the Judeo/Christian model was the progenitor of the emiricist/enlightment model and then it tried to suppress it.
Empirical model/enlightenment/rational/modernist belief system has also failed to really bring enough people to make it a workable system for very long. This “democracy” is foundering (some might say failing) because of that friction. Those of faith are programmed to believe without doubting that things are as they believe they are – that whatever falls within their context is true – even when there is a mass of evidence to the contrary – the evidence is dismissed because it does not fit with their “faith.”
The same thing happens, by the way, in the empirical model/ enlightenment/ rational/modernist belief system – people stick with their derived theories for a long time, even when there is clear evidence against the theory. However, eventually, there is a shift that occurs (e.g. flat world/round world, or creation vs. evolution).
The rational system becomes troublesome because of the inherent nature of questioning and the expectation that the belief you have today might be wrong, and can be proven wrong, with evidence presented in “the right way.”
This makes defending your position much more difficult (if you might be wrong then your belief can be more easily undercut). If you have faith – you are never wrong. This makes for a much seemingly “stronger” position (especially if you share faith and reject “empirical thought.”
The failure of the rationalist approach, evidence collecting, hypothesis testing to come up with the answers to the basic questions of human life: self-meaning, aggression, hatred, poverty, racism, disease, inequality (domination of one over the other), nutritional needs, health, as well as search for meaning… means that you are drawn to seek answers to these problems elsewhere. Once obvious direction to look is faith – it is a going back to the pre-rational mode, a more basic fundamental (primitive perhaps is I dare to use the word) way of thinking about these questions.
Another way is to succumb to anarchy – total disorganization and meaninglessness (the kind of direction laid down by simplistic readings of postmodernism and deconstructionist metaphors).
Can we move beyond empiricism and faith to another mode (paradigm) that will push us to being able to find better answers to these problems? I put forth that no model has worked well enough to secure a survivable future for humanity. It is always easier to see the problem than to find the solution.
Why is it that so many people are turning to faith and extremism?
Why do 42% of Americans consider themselves fundamentalists or born again?
Why 44% do not believe in evolution.
Why there are so many cultures that are moving toward more extremist beliefs
a. Middle East – including Israel and Jew in general
b. Russia
c. Afganistan, Pakistan, Iran and soon to be Iraq?
Is it the fall of rationalism, empiricism, the enlightment/modernism?
If these things dissolve what else do people have to turn to besides more base/instinctual belief systems – e.g. looking to the “devine” or a megaman (Nietzsche)– a power larger than yourself – to guide you and then only believe that that is the true path to relief from all the bad things in the world.
These beliefs (empiricism) have failed to solve basic problems, they seemed to hold promise starting 400 years or so ago, they allowed leaps of understanding and development far beyond anything that had come before (or so it seems) – but they repeatedly fall short of expectations. Some of the negatives include the alienation from nature, alienation of self, the detachment from community, narcissism as a reaction formation to these alienations.
Another way they fall short is that the empirical model/enlightenment/rational/modernist belief system fails to bring a large enough majority of “believers.” This model engenders, in fact, a lack of faith – even to itself – in its own system which makes it unavailable to large numbers of people. It also requires a certain level of education and understanding to gain adherents (though there are of course those with that education and understanding that continue to adhere to fundamentalist religious beliefs [a fact that I can not really understand]).
It is also failing to substitute for faith in the sense that faith brings, or can bring, full release from pain, a full letting go of “seeking” for answers which is incredibly comforting. There is no release of that kind in empirical model/enlightenment/rational/modernist belief system and really the two are largely incompatible. So we get the conflict the friction and fights over basic truths and human endeavors. It is ironic that the Judeo/Christian model was the progenitor of the emiricist/enlightment model and then it tried to suppress it.
Empirical model/enlightenment/rational/modernist belief system has also failed to really bring enough people to make it a workable system for very long. This “democracy” is foundering (some might say failing) because of that friction. Those of faith are programmed to believe without doubting that things are as they believe they are – that whatever falls within their context is true – even when there is a mass of evidence to the contrary – the evidence is dismissed because it does not fit with their “faith.”
The same thing happens, by the way, in the empirical model/ enlightenment/ rational/modernist belief system – people stick with their derived theories for a long time, even when there is clear evidence against the theory. However, eventually, there is a shift that occurs (e.g. flat world/round world, or creation vs. evolution).
The rational system becomes troublesome because of the inherent nature of questioning and the expectation that the belief you have today might be wrong, and can be proven wrong, with evidence presented in “the right way.”
This makes defending your position much more difficult (if you might be wrong then your belief can be more easily undercut). If you have faith – you are never wrong. This makes for a much seemingly “stronger” position (especially if you share faith and reject “empirical thought.”
The failure of the rationalist approach, evidence collecting, hypothesis testing to come up with the answers to the basic questions of human life: self-meaning, aggression, hatred, poverty, racism, disease, inequality (domination of one over the other), nutritional needs, health, as well as search for meaning… means that you are drawn to seek answers to these problems elsewhere. Once obvious direction to look is faith – it is a going back to the pre-rational mode, a more basic fundamental (primitive perhaps is I dare to use the word) way of thinking about these questions.
Another way is to succumb to anarchy – total disorganization and meaninglessness (the kind of direction laid down by simplistic readings of postmodernism and deconstructionist metaphors).
Can we move beyond empiricism and faith to another mode (paradigm) that will push us to being able to find better answers to these problems? I put forth that no model has worked well enough to secure a survivable future for humanity. It is always easier to see the problem than to find the solution.
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