In the Charlton Heston’s 1959 film Ben-Hur there is a scene where a Roman citizen, Messala is encouraging his Jewish friend to be more accepting and less resistant to the Roman empire’s control of his homeland. He put it bluntly:
“It’s no accident that one small village on the Tiber was chosen to rule the world…It wasn’t just our legions…No, it was fate that chose us to civilize the world – and we have. Our roads and our ships connect every corner of the earth: Roman law, architecture, literature are the glory of the human race.”

This is a summary of how all too many Americans view their own count—as a nation destined for a divinely sanctioned, continuous reign of benevolent world dominance. This sort of nationalistic exceptionalism has appeared in nearly every culture, especially those that have come to dominate in the civilized world. The desire to think that the place one is from or the culture one grew up in is special is widespread. There is an innate desire to believe that one’s homeland is God’s gift to humanity.

Apparently, such a belief is seen as a badge of honor by much of the electorate in this country. The issue of the U.S. president’s belief (or lack thereof) in American exceptionalism received quite a bit of media attention when his opponent decided to question him it. Apparently, believing your country is anything less than God’s ordained means of advancing humanity is politically suspect.

For many, the term American exceptionalism entails the belief that our political system and economic system is an effective one. It is conducive to human development. They believe that the country’s founders were in a unique position to put such a system into place providing a good example for the rest of the world. There is no problem with this position but the term carries other baggage.

Specifically, American exceptionalism is often leads to the following beliefs:
·         The U.S. and its people are simply better than the rest of the world.
·         This country can do no wrong and that none of our overseas adventures were in error or should ever be apologized for.
·         That our country and its government are the tools of a supernatural being.
·         That the US is some sort of “City on a Hill” that the rest of the world should hold in high regard and emulate in every way.
·         That Americans are special, wonderful, and destined to be number one!
·         That our government has every right to invade or intervene in any country for the purpose of promoting democracy, opening markets, or whatever.

A more mature view of the United States would include the recognition that our country is not infallible and that it has made mistakes and may make mistakes in the future. We should strive to make sure the U.S. is on the right side of history. The American Revolution and the development of the U.S. Constitution were undoubtedly monumental events in humanity’s endless battle against tyranny. The U.S. has been a model for the rest of the world. However, we must not gloss over the dark side of US history: slavery, the witch trials, the murder of the Native Americans, and the theft of their land, the internment of Japanese-American citizens, the support of murderous foreign dictatorships and death squads during the cold war, and a continued inability to balance the budget.

Furthermore, panglossian claims of “we’re number one!” are a little ridiculous considering how far behind the rest of the developed world we’ve slipped in so many areas. We have one of the world’s largest prison populations; we waste the most money on overpriced health care; we work longer hours, for less money, have lower job security; and we take fewer vacations than much of the developed world. We have fallen behind in social mobility, literacy, math and science skills, and educational attainment in general.

While I love this country, I recognize that there are areas in which it can improve. Acknowledging this is a good thing. Superstitious beliefs about one’s country having some magical property of specialness are an insult to our intelligence and extremely arrogant. Humans of all nationalities need to move beyond such thinking and see the places they live in realistic terms.

 “The living that is owed to me I’m never going to get, they’ve
buggered this old world up, up to their necks in debt. They’d give
you a lobotomy for something you ain’t done, they’ll make you an
epitome of everything that’s wrong…

…Do they owe us a living? Of course they do of course they do…”

 -Crass, Do They Owe Us a Living?

The very suggestion that the wealthy somehow owe the rest of the population anything is pretty toxic to some of my more conservative and libertarian friends. For some of them there is an underlying assumption that we live something close to a free market and that most of the wealth in it is legitimately earned by our heroic self made benefactors to society and if you question this you are just jealous. Some defend the wealth and privileges of America’s super elite with an almost reactionary fervor. With sheer amount of wealth, the richest Americans control, the questioning the extent to which their wealth and power is legitimately earned is highly important if not a patriotic duty. Among free market types, there is a bit of a double standard at play. When discussing anything positive it is assumed that our economy is close to a free market. Any negative developments are blamed on the fact that we’re NOT operating as a free market economy.

If we accept the typical libertarian assumptions about the desirability of the free market and its effectiveness at efficiently distributing resources, a very good case can be made that many of this country’s wealthiest households have greatly ripped off the American tax payer and owe them—big time. For the sake of argument, assume that any distortion in the market ultimately interferes with people making voluntary transactions that would enrich themselves. Such action robs the general population. Also, assume that such policies redirect resources from what would otherwise be more efficient uses This would support protectionist measures such as tariffs and trade quotas as well as subsidies and product specific taxes.

With those assumptions in place, the wealthy households whose wealth came from industries subsidized by the state, industries protected from competition by the state, contracted by the state (especially those who have made fortunes from the military and war), had research and development paid for by the state, or business protected by the state through corporate law do in fact owe the society something, probably more than what is paid in taxes. We live in a system of crony capitalism in which the government plays a big role enriching certain parts of the elite, for example, the war profiteers of the military-industrial complex.

How much wealth do crony capitalists owe the tax payer? I’m guessing we would find that by granting rather conservative free market assumptions, we would find that a great deal of money is owed to the tax payer. After all it seems unlikely to me that very many people within the super wealthy got that way by resisting government policies or deals that would help their business. Certainly the leadership of these companies listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_defense_contractors would agree.

Market distortions that have benefited the elite:

• subsidies,
• bailouts,
• state funded R&D,
• protectionist  tariffs & import quotas,
• intellectual property rights,
• corporate limited liability status,
• government contracting,
• state granted monopolies (which privatization seems to often be),
• unfair regulations, and
• licensing.

One last thing to keep in mind even if are able to calculate the money that is lost to the American tax payer through market distortions like the ones I listed above and identify those who benefited from said distortions the feasibility and desirability of extracting this wealth and returning it to the taxpayers would be highly debatable and could certainly have unintended consequences.

A few days ago, the Supreme Court upheld most of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, a landmark change in the nation’s health policy and one of the keystone achievements of president Obama’s first term in office.

I am in favor of health insurance reform, whether it takes the form of the Affordable Care Act or a single-payer system, because I am in favor of evidence-based compassion.

Most people, conservatives in congress included, are in favor of compassion.  In our society, we celebrate those who dedicate their lives to the care and protection of others. Nearly every young child will say, at one point or another, they want to be a firefighter or policeman. The news is inundated with stories of everyday people who help their fellow man when disaster strikes – people who dive into the water to save a drowning child, who rescue people and animals from burning buildings or floods.  In some cases, the heroes lend financial or moral support – a church that raises money for the poor for example. But in all of the most celebrated cases of heroism, the heroic act is directed toward a problem or a person in truly dire straits. They’re on the verge of death or extreme suffering, and the hero of the story lifts them out of harm’s way.

This kind of compassion is commendable and necessary, yet too often we forget the less noticeable opportunities for compassion, which, while requiring less philanthropy, less altruism, and less valor in the face of danger, offer no less a chance to save lives and alleviate suffering. For example, for every person rescued from a burning building, there are probably several dozen whose lives were saved in a much less dramatic way. These other lucky folks avoided a fiery fate, and they can thank evidence-based fire mitigation measures – smoke detectors, safe electrical wiring, and better construction practices, for example. They’ll never know that their lives were saved. Yet any statistician will tell you that an ounce of evidence-based prevention is worth a pound of heroes (or something like that).

It seems strange, then, that we see such an odd juxtaposition of compassion for patients in the emergency room and callousness toward patients in the neighborhood clinic. For example, suppose a woman rushes to the emergency room with a child who is in the midst of a violent seizure. The child will not, under any circumstances, be denied care – to deny treatment to such a patient would be cruel and potentially life threatening. If the family doesn’t have insurance, and if they don’t have enough money to cover the cost of treatment – which, in modern times, is often very high – the hospital will pay for the treatment and pass the cost off to other customers.

Now consider we learn that this child had, prior to his seizure, often complained of headaches accompanied by blurred vision., along with other worrisome symptoms. He had trouble with his schoolwork and his mother suspected there might be something wrong with his health. These issues went unchecked, of course, because the family had no insurance – they had no way to pay for preventive care. And had they shown up at the clinic and explained their situation, they would have been denied care – no one would have absorbed or redistributed the costs, because it wouldn’t qualify as an emergency. We could have prevented the traumatic (and likely expensive) emergency room visit if our society recognized the value of compassion in non-emergency situations. In other words, we could save money and prevent suffering if we dealt with illness in the same way we deal with fire – invest in prevention.

Some politicians believe there is a fundamental, almost dogmatic, distinction between emergency care and other types of treatment. To them, affordable ER care is compassion, while affordable preventive care is coddling. Somehow, it’s ok for us to distribute costs and risks so long as charity can only be found in the direst of emergencies. This separation of emergency care from treatment and prevention is an ideological doctrine that ignores evidence-based science and severely hinders our medical system. It just isn’t practical or efficient – it isn’t a good use of our society’s money and effort.

At this point, I have to admit that I have a personal stake in the matter. I am one of the 30 million Americans who would not have affordable health insurance if it weren’t for “Obamacare.” If I bought a private insurance plan, I would pay more in premiums than I pay in rent just for bare-bones coverage with hefty co-pays. I have no doubt that an emergency-room doctor would gladly treat me, insurance or no insurance, but the key advantage I currently enjoy is easy access to basic treatment and prevention.

I can tell you that inexpensive insurance coverage and reasonable medical fees go a long way toward swaying one’s opinion in an election season. As more and more people like me find themselves comfortably insured, I expect a cooling down of “Obamacare” rhetoric. We’ve already heard stories from people suffering from chronic illness, on the verge of losing coverage or running into their lifetime limit. For these individuals, the Supreme Court decision was literally a matter of life or death. You can bet the ailing will think twice before voting for Mitt Romney this fall.

One of my absolute favorite entomologists is the late Thomas Eisner. I want to talk for a few minutes about some of the research he did and how it has been misunderstood and misrepresented by creationists. I’m talking about the Bombardier beetle and its incredible defense mechanism – the ability to spray out a boiling mixture of oxygen and chemicals known as quinones. Many species of bombardier beetle emit the substance as a thin jet which they can aim with uncanny accuracy. The beetle is able to do this through an ingenious evolutionary adaptation. It stores two precursor chemicals – hydrogen peroxide and another type of chemical called hydroquinones – in separate reservoirs in the abdomen. When the beetle feels threatened, it contracts special muscles, forcing the two chemicals into a special mixing chamber. This is when things get really cool. Inside the mixing chamber are special enzymes – catalyses and peroxidase. Oxygen is freed from the hydrogen peroxide, and the hydroquinones are then oxidized into p-quinones. There is a lot of thermal energy released during this reaction, and as the substances heat up, the internal pressure builds and the boiling mixture is expelled out the rear end of the beetle at the would-be predator or over-eager bug collector. It gets even better. Not only is the mixture boiling hot, the substances that are expelled are very irritating to almost all arthropods and most vertebrates – including people, even when they are not hot. More incredible still – this cycle of muscle contraction, chemical reaction and expulsion occurs at a rate of up to about 500 times per second.

Now, many creationists look to the bombardier beetle as proof of intelligent design. Their “evidence” seems to be based primarily on the work of Duane Gish, a biochemist who is a former vice-president of the Institute for Creation Research. Like all good creation scientists, he gets all the facts wrong. He starts off by claiming that hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinones are spontaneously explosive when combined – they are not. He claims this was a mistake he made due to a poor translation of the original research by Dr. Hermann Schildknecht, mistaking “explosive” for “unstable”. However, if Gish were truly a scientist, and not merely a creationist masquerading as one, he would have performed the simple experiment himself before repeating it so vociferously, something which should have been exceptionally easy (if not unnecessary!) for him to do as a biochemist. He also continues making a thoroughly disproved claim that an explosive “inhibitor” is required to prevent the beetle from blowing itself up. He makes the argument that the entire reaction mechanism is “irreducibly complex” and that anything less than the present form would result only in a beetle capable of blowing itself up. It’s easy to show the errors in Gish’s reasoning; we don’t even have to look into the fossil record or hypothesize intermediate stages to show that the argument of irreducible complexity simply falls flat with the bombardier beetle. He apparently overlooks the fact that the quinones, by themselves, are present in the cuticles of many different arthropods. Also overlooked is the fact that hydrogen peroxide is a by-product of cellular metabolism. A small amount of excess quinone that is left on the external cuticle would make an insect unpalatable to predators (in fact, many beetles and millipedes make use of simple quinones as defensive chemicals to avoid being eaten). There are bombardier beetles that have been found, which, instead of producing a fine jet of hot quinones, emit more of a diffuse gas, and others which produce something more akin to bubbling foam. These could be examples of beetles with lower amounts of the catalyses or peroxidase, or perhaps weaker muscles, smaller storage or mixing chambers. However you want to slice it – they are intermediate forms, all of them capable of defending themselves well enough to continue reproducing, none of them simply blowing themselves up, and so the argument of irreducibly complexity is itself reduced to nothing.

Perhaps most important in all of this is the fact that the man responsible for much of the research on bombardiers, Thomas Eisner, was himself a non-believer. He died earlier this year, of complications due to Parkinson’s disease and was an outstanding scientist, incredibly gifted science writer, pioneer of the field of chemical ecology, and one of my all time favorite authors. If you want to know more about the bombardier beetle or Thomas Eisner, I wholeheartedly recommend you find his book “For Love of Insects”.

* Charles Darwin, an avid beetle collector, recorded an experience in which he once popped a beetle into his mouth when he spotted a third beetle and already had both hands full, only to get a mouthful of a hot, irritating chemicals from the beetle

When Jobs Become Obsolete

“Ideally, we’d like to help people find ways to earn money with less work, but of course that’s always a challenge. Fifty years ago, everyone thought that robots would be doing all the work for us and people would be living lives of leisure. That this has not come to pass is surely mankind’s biggest tragedy,”

-Oliver Benjamin Dudely, Lama of The Church of the Latter-Day Dude

“ We the American working population
Hate the fact that eight hours a day
Is wasted on chasing the dream of someone that isn’t us
And we may not hate our jobs,
But we hate jobs in general
That don’t have to do with fighting our own causes.
We the American working population
Hate the nine-to-five day-in/day-out
When we’d rather be supporting ourselves
By being paid to perfect the pasttimes
That we have harbored based solely on the fact
That it makes us smile if it sounds dope…”

-Aesop Rock 9 to 5ers Anthem

It’s a strange question but those of us alive during the last several years have gotten used to living in an America in which there are roughly 4 job lookers for each available job. Furthermore, I have recently been told that a drop in the unemployment rate these days is just as likely to be caused by people giving up on finding a job as it is by people actually becoming employed. I’m sure that we will eventually get past our current sluggish economy and we will see a new wave of job creation possibly contributed to by the emergence of some exciting new technology. Then perhaps at some-point the economy will fall into another slump only to boom again in the future.

My question is despite these relatively short term ups and downs, is the possibility of a fully employed work force a realistic prospect for the long term future? There was once a time when the United States was a population of self employed farmers and artisans. Due to technological advances, significantly more agricultural output and consumer products could be produced by fewer people. As of 2008, only 2-3 percent of the population were directly employed in agriculture. That is 2% to 3% of the population now grows the food that feeds the other 97-98%. At the same time manufacturing sectors have seen similar increases in the ability of less people with less specialized skills to produce more products at a cheaper cost.

Obviously, this has been great for the consumer though it is probably less so for the parts of the workforce who have seen their crafts dumbed down and brought to obsolescence.

The children grandchildren and great grandchildren of yesterday’s farmers and manufacturers have largely become employed in the service sector economy. More intelligent and more educated ones have been able to become engineers, doctors, and lawyers but for many of us, we have become a generation of telemarketers, advertisers, middle managers, sales people, bank tellers, and private and public sector bureaucrats. These are the nuts and bolts jobs of an economy where food production is taken care of and where there is little manufacturing of anything of actual value. It is amazing how many people make their money doing nothing more than moving about paper and signatures. Much of this work is tedious hyper-conformist and mind-numbing but it is still more comfortable than the lives our great grandparents had on their farms.

These service economy jobs are now in the process of becoming obsolete. Interactions with corporate bureaucracy can now be taken care of by purely automated means. Insurance, electric, Internet, and phone bills are paid on line or over the phone using purely automated systems. Cashiers at the grocery store are being replaced by purely automated systems. Furthermore, tasks like buying insurance, taking money in and out of the bank account, and making travel arrangements are now becoming more automated. There are definitely times when I want to talk with an actual human about my phone or Internet plans but these times are becoming rare and the need for another human to be involved in most transactions is decreasing. Bookstores, record stores, and video stores are now becoming obsolete too and I miss them. The advent of computers and the Internet has made these things possible. Upcoming advances in robotics and biological engineering will eventually eliminate the need for actual human workers in manufacturing as well as agriculture and medicine too.

The economy of the future has yet to be determined. Are we moving in a direction where access to resources is further removed from having to work for them? Will machines and computers do all the work allowing humans to focus on their pastimes of choice? Have the conflicting interests of the laborers and corporate owners affected the progress to this possible future?

Technology has the ability to eliminate the need for most of us to spend most of our time encumbered by repetitive and unsatisfying drudgery. We could live in a world where all our concerns are taken care of by robots and computers and we are free to pursue the things that truly interest us—until the robots rebel and become our overlords . Let’s prepare for the inevitable time in which jobs become obsolete.

Are Disney princess movies bad for our culture??

“Could you ask for a manlier topic?”-Jim Wilson

Maybe next week, I’ll write about hunting with Dick Armey in the mean time we’re talking about Disney because most American kids grow up with Disney movies, at least to some degree. The now legendary children’s film giant has become synonymous with American culture and children’s entertainment in general. I certainly grew up with Disney and, as a result of having younger siblings, have seen most of the films that the Disney Company released prior to my graduation of high school.

From a young age, I watched my younger brother and sister watching various Disney films over and over again. They often memorized them word for word and occasionally brought up quotes from them in regular conversation, often in places where they made no sense. They played with toys inspired by Disney films and characters, and tried in vain to get our father to take us to the enormous theme park that was the center of the Disney Empire. The company has had an enormous influence on generations of Americans, since the release of its first animated feature film in Technicolor: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Disney has had an enormous impact on our childhoods. For example, how many of our female readers went through some sort of Disney inspired princess phase, or have a sister, daughter, or niece that did? Disney has been the single largest perpetuator of the fairy tale princess meme in American culture since the 1930s. As a result, it is a very popular ideal. The Disney cannon’s princesses started as standalone characters, but in 1999 the company saw the opportunity to combine them together into a franchise which appealed to young girls. This included dolls and other toys as well as a series of direct to video releases. Despite a lack of advertising or focus group research, Disney princess products proved to be hugely popular, with sales rocketing to $3 billion in 2006. Our society may be strapped for cash for health care, education or the national debt, but never for Disney princess products.

Something about the Disney princesses and the practice of instilling the princess fantasy in young girls always seems a bit crass and unhealthy. While most of the princess characters had likable traits, quite a few of them were rather passive. Aurora, for example, the titular sleeping beauty, literally slept through much of her film. Later, Disney princesses became more rebellious and feisty but still seemed to embody a sort of idealized fairy-tale life. Mulan, the cross-dressing warrior, was the exception.

Traditional princesses by definition are not good role models for our daughters. Part of being a princess is having an extravagant life with wealth and luxuries simply handed to them. For a society that so highly values hard work, it seems strange that we would adopt these as our female role models. Additionally, a high percentage of these princesses managed to procure a “happy life ever after” purely by marrying well off and often to royalty. This too, is not a positive message for our daughters who should learn how to be more self reliant and less dependent on male suitors, royal parents, and companions endowed with magical powers.

On the whole, the princess story is a less than subtle glorification of monarchy. We live in a country founded by a revolution against such a monarchy and we generally have no desire to return to that form of governance. In practice, kings and queens were tyrannical authoritarian dictators. It may be preferable to instill more anti-authoritarian values in our children. In countries that have constitutional monarchies there are always people who view the royalty as drains on society. The Disney princess often has her “happily ever after” bestowed upon her as a result of birthright, good fortune, or unusual shoe size. In the end her well being is tied to marrying well and never as a result of cleverness, hard work, or determination to achieve. I want to see children’s entertainment that glorifies the American values with stories that show that a “happily ever after” should be earned.

The Disney princess stories are excessively extravagant and materialistic. The princesses have fancy clothing and jewelry, as well as other forms of material wealth. This is somehow tied to their value as role models and women. It is little wonder that we spend millions of dollars on extravagant weddings and proms. Young girls spend much of their childhoods fantasizing about these events. There is too much shallow materialism in our society and it would be nice to see someone who scorns pomp and extravagance and “keeps it real.”

These films depict unrealistic human relationships. Most of the aspirant princesses who watch Disney movies, will want to fall in love at first sight or live happily ever after with a well-sculpted guy who lives in a palace. More likely, they will have a handful of crumby boyfriends and eventually marry one who is about the same level of attractiveness as they are. Eventually, they may get divorced, and fall in love with someone else, maybe someone of the same sex. In a related note, any bets on when we will see the first lesbian Disney princess? The first black one was introduced in 2009.

However, these films are fantasies and serve as escapes from reality. They fill an important need but they are a deep seated part of our culture and should be examined closely. They are also a part of a rather crass commercial effort. Everyone wants to treat their daughter as their own little princess. It’s all good as long as it isn’t taken too far. I certainly will treat any woman in my life like royalty to the best of my abilities. Still, our daughters need role models that are scientists, artists, engineers, film-makers, doctors and martial arts instructors. I would have added musicians, but I have seen the Disney channel’s awful attempts at exploring this premise.

In the end, I have mixed feelings about Disney movies. I love the beautiful, well crafted, painstaking, hand-drawn animation in the early movies but I think it would be nice to see children’s entertainment that is more honest, more thought provoking, and more in keeping with some of the positive aspects of American values.

Let’s assume that Jesus did exist, was he a capitalist?

Recently, there has been a great push among conservatives to paint Jesus as an advocate of their brand free market capitalism. For example, Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan states that his proposed budget was inspired by his Catholic beliefs. There are those on the other side who claim that Jesus as an advocate of welfare state measures. I reject the notion that Jesus, if he existed, was either a free-market capitalist or a prototypical social Democrat, and more importantly I reject the notion that we should base our economic policy on second hand accounts of a man who purportedly died roughly 1,982 years ago. The notion of Jesus as a hard-line capitalist is so prevalent, so ridiculous, and often so self-serving, that it deserves direct refutation. So here goes…

The Jesus story had him dying long before: John Locke, the American Revolution, the industrial revolution, the rise of modern corporations, the rise of wide-spread wage labor, the modern labor movement, the new deal, representative democracy, the abolition of slavery, the modern welfare state, globalization, and most of the central features of a modern economy. It’s no wonder he was unsurprisingly silent on these issues just as the Bible is silent on all things that were not known to first and second century middle easterners. It unsurprisingly, has nothing to say about nuclear energy, nuclear war, the germ theory of disease, electricity, internal combustion engines, global warming, Van Halen, or kangaroos. Christians try to stretch Jesus’ teachings to apply them to developments that took place long after his time, or to suit their political interests.

If we are to assume, that what is in the Bible is a consistent, complete and accurate depiction of what Jesus actually taught, we are forced to conclude that Jesus’ teachings were largely of a spiritual nature and that he was fairly politically and economically apathetic. He states, in the Synoptic Gospels, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s,” when asked about paying taxes to the Roman Government, and in John chapter 18 he tells Pontius Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.” Both passages seem to dispel the notion that he was interested in challenging the Roman system of government or advocating an alternative political system.

Additionally, if we assume that the New Testament writings attributed to Paul accurately represent the teachings of Jesus, we find further advocacy of acceptance of one’s current political circumstances (from Romans 13:1-7):

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God’s servant to do you good. but if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

The authority in question here was the Roman Empire, which was an aggressive, expansionist dictatorship. Additionally Paul’s acceptance of absolutist authority goes not only for citizens but for the slaves as well. In multiple places Paul says in Colossians 3:22:

Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eye service, as men pleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God.

Nowhere, is there a suggestion that Christians take over or try to change the governing forces they lived under. Despite what the Catholic church did or what the Christian right says there is little to no justification in the bible for taking over the government, or outlawing: same-sex marriage, abortion, or prostitution (not to mention slavery).

Additionally, much of what Jesus and Paul say in the New Testament is incompatible with capitalist enterprise or aspirations. For example in the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus blesses the poor and gives woe to the rich. He states in Luke 6:25, “Woe unto you that are full! For ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.” Apparently placing a high value on poverty and rejecting the desire for material wealth. He goes further stating in Matthew 6:25 and Matthew 6:34:

25 Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment. 34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” In other words, don’t save for the future, don’t invest in capitalist enterprise and do not try to enrich yourself, as the lord will take care of you.

Not only is this decidedly at odds with the capitalist spirit, it is also horrible advice.

Jesus also hammers this notion home further when, in Matthew 19:21, he instructs a wealthy man: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” He goes on to explain to his disciples in Matthew 19:23-24:

Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

Here Jesus expresses the very disdain for success that today’s conservatives accuse liberals of. His instructions here do, however seem to echo, the instructions he purportedly lived by, as well as those he gave to his disciples. Specifically, to give up the quest for material wealth and focus entirely on spreading the Christian message.

This short sighted lack of concern for the near future may have been inspired by the belief among early Christians that the world as they knew it was ending soon. In Marks Gospel Jesus states in Mark 9:1:

There be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.

This sentiment is also echoed by Paul, who says in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17:

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Similar statement in the New Testament may be a sign that early Christians expected a return of Jesus, during their lifetimes.

On a final note, in Acts of the Apostles, the Apostle Paul takes up the lifestyle of an itinerant Christian teacher and travels around the Mediterranean founding churches. Acts 4:32-35 states:

And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common… Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.

In other words, the author of acts is proposing the early church lived under a system of voluntary socialism much in keeping with Marx’s, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” The extent to which, this is an accurate depiction of early Christianity is hardly debatable, but is certainly not an endorsement of a business friendly world-view.

So there you have it, according to the Bible, Jesus advocated a acquiescence to earthly governments (regardless of their non-free-market nature) and his followers practiced a form of voluntary socialism (possibly under the mistaken belief their world would soon end). None of this answers the question as to what kind of economic or political system is best for us. For that we need to use our own brains, examine the evidence, and not base our decisions on the teachings of people who died centuries before the advent of the modern economy.

Here’s the latest from Jim Wilson:

“Ronald Reagan is doing to the country what he can no longer do to his wife. —

Christopher Hitchens, The Nation, 1982

Fearing the cult of Ronald Reagan

When watching the Republican debates for the last several presidential election cycles, I was struck by the religious-like reverence the candidates have for Ronald Reagan. This is scary! Reagan’s legacy is disgusting, and I shudder at the thought that any of these Reagan admirers would try to imitate him when in office. Keep in mind this is not just liberal scree of Reagan bashing (you’ll note I was mostly quite positive in my recent piece on Barry Goldwater). I find there are plenty of reasons why Conservatives, Libertarians and small government types, not to mention liberals, and progressives should want to demolish the cult of Reagan and should be highly distrusting of Reagan’s disciples. His legacy is one of massive government intervention, hypocrisy, the promotion of superstition, scandal, and mass murder.

Remember, Reagan ran on the promise of “getting government off our backs” and on the notion that government is the problem rather than the solution. However, he actually expanded the role of the government domestically and abroad. He started the deregulation of oil and gas industry, the airline industry, and the trucking industry. While he was credited with the abolishment of the Civil Aeronautics Board, that actually took place under Carter. As, far as free trade goes, Reagan’s administration, at the time was the most protectionist in history. His administration resided over increases in tariff’s and import quotas and encouraged the Japanese to impose export quotas on microchips and cars. In addition, he increased price supports (at a great cost to the American tax payer) and production quotas for agricultural products. It is apparent that his actions were inconsistent with reducing government whether you agree with any these policies or not. His actions were more consistent with turning the country into a welfare state for the already rich. Such policies strike me as highly hypocritical.

Let’s not forget his highly interventionist and extremely expensive war on drugs or his politicizing of the religious right. Reagan’s administration was happy to made sure that the big government would consistently remain on the backs of people wishing to smoke a joint, have an abortion, or marry a member of the same sex (these things should be basic human freedoms, immune to government intervention.)

Reagan called for reduced government spending and balanced budgets, and of course accomplished neither. His administration, in fact, became the least fiscally conservative US, presidential administration, that was ever seen at the time. His administration transformed the United States, from the world’s largest creditor nation to the world’s largest debtor nation. He tripled the national debt and turned a roughly 900 billion dollar deficit to a $2.85 trillion deficit. This irresponsible spending may have been done intentionally, as a means of fighting the expansion of the welfare and regulatory aspects of the government, as well as a means of tying any future Democratic president or congress’ hands. In 1980 Reagan stated, “John Anderson tells us that first we’ve got to reduce spending before we can reduce taxes. Well, if you’ve got a kid that’s extravagant, you can lecture him all you want to about his extravagance. Or you can cut his allowance and achieve the same end much quicker.” Indicating he believed that, defunding the liberal state by wasting money on redundant weapons, prisons spending, support for third world dictators, wars on drugs, and agricultural subsidies, was a good idea.

The most damaging part of the Reagan legacy was his contribution to the country’s huge national debt. It has greatly compromised the standing of this country around the world, probably our quality of life here as well. Furthermore it is highly immoral to intentionally waste money that actually could be used for positive purposes and this seems to be one of the biggest aspects of Reaganism that the current batch of Republican candidates will most-likely imitate. I expect that any of the current Republican candidates for president (except for Ron Paul) will greatly increase the deficit. The last Republican president, George W. Bush, engaged in this tactic and referred to his increased spending with combined with cutting taxes for the rich as “a fiscal strait-jacket for Congress”. Whether, you want a smaller or larger government or not, I do not approve of reckless wasteful spending as a means to getting it, as this is bad for the country and international stability as well.

President Regan removed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq from the official list of terrorist states so he could supply weapons and money. This likely includes the weapons used in the Genocidal Al Anfal Campaign in which 50,000 to 182,000 Kurdish people were murdered. He also, continued the Carter administration’s support of Mujahideen fighters in the Afghan civil, which included Osama Bin Laden. These fighters were deeply Islamist and authoritarian and U.S support for their activities set the stage for the Taliban takeover of that country in the 1990s.

President Reagan supported the highly racist and authoritarian apartheid regime in South Africa as well as military dictatorships throughout the third world including Guatemala, Columbia, the Philippines, and Argentina as well as death squads in Angola, Nicaragua and El Salvador. These dictatorships and death squads killed huge numbers of people and committed gross human rights abuses. The Reagan’s administration continued support the death squads even after they raped and murdered four American nuns and a laywoman. In 1999 a U.N. Sponsored report found that, “the American training of the officer corps in counter-insurgency techniques”, under President Reagan were a key factor in genocide in which, “entire Mayan villages were attacked and burned and their inhabitants slaughtered in an effort to deny the guerrillas protection.” These death squads burned over roughly 400 villages and murdered around 200,000 people.

Reaganist support of death squads in Nicaragua led to the Iran-Contra Scandal, where it came to light that the Reagan administration was secretly selling weapons to Iran—an enemy state—and funding the Contras who were known to favor “targeting health care clinics and health care workers for assassination; kidnapping civilians; torturing and executing civilians, including children, raping women; indiscriminately attacking civilians and civilian homes; seizing civilian property; and burning civilian houses in captured towns” according to human rights watch.

President Ronald Reagan led one of the most scandal ridden presidential administrations known with some 138 officials being investigated, indictment, and/or convicted. Perhaps he was not responsible for all that happened. He was, after all, simply a retired actor. He may have been the personable face and being led by business and military elites. He may have used his charisma and quick wit to distract us from his henchmen while they set up a very large and expansive government that worked in their favor. This sort of big government crony-corporatism and deficit militarism is the opposite of the direction this country should go, and it disgust and frightens me that the Republican establishment is so enamored with this man. Here’s another Libertarian’s video on the subject: www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4M8e34CJfE

Like Jim, I attended government (“public”) schools and I wouldn’t write off Jim’s ideas solely on the basis of where he went to school. To write off ideas because of where the person expressing them did or did not go to school is a ridiculously shallow caricature of independent thought – be the ideas of the left, right, or libertarian variety. Ideas should be judged on their merits, not their source.

Jim cites the endless disagreements over government schools: They’re too rigid/they’re too soft; They’re anti-sex/they’re too sexualized; They’re bigoted/they promote acceptance of deviancy; There’s too much testing/not enough testing; They don’t teach enough of the basics/they don’t teach enough beyond the basics. It’s true that the American people can’t seem to make up their collective mind about what they want in education. But this is merely a symptom of education’s character and tradition in modern America, not a set of problems owing to some unique feature of education itself. Most debates about education fail to address the important systemic question: the consequences of paying for and providing goods and services primarily as a community through government taxation, rather than as private individuals making private, piecemeal choices.

To understand what I’m saying, imagine if we decided as a society that food is really important, and everybody needs good food to eat. After all, it’s difficult to be a good citizen and participate in democracy if you’re starving, and you’re a drain on health care resources if you eat too much of the wrong kinds of food. So what we do in the name of democracy and fairness and efficiency is: tax all citizens, and fund the local county/city government building a public cafeteria system with a cafeteria in every neighborhood serving up good, wholesome food that everyone in the neighborhood is entitled to eat for free. In order to preserve local control, we’d have food districts with cafeteria boards elected by the people in the district to decide what food is best for their own community. We could rationalize such a move with all kinds of perceived benefits: It would relieve people of the need to build and stock elaborate kitchens at home, it would specialize (and probably unionize) the profession of cooking, create jobs, address the problem of people who don’t know how to prepare healthy meals, or can’t find the right ingredients, or can’t clean their kitchens properly, or can’t store their food safely, or just can’t afford to pay the prices at the grocery store. It would help reduce the disparities in the quality of food eaten by the rich and the poor, and government cafeterias could be used as a tool to increase overall public health and reduce problems like diabetes and obesity. Government run “public” cafeterias would reduce the duplication of having many small restaurants and could be much more efficient because of economies of scale in production and distribution. Government run cafeterias would bring people in each neighborhood together, enhancing the social fabric of the community as ample anthropological evidence demonstrates that shared meals tend to bring people together. Public cafeterias would also address the problem of some neighborhoods having tons and tons of restaurants while other neighborhoods suffer with few or no restaurants close by.

Some left wingers are undoubtedly salivating at this idea - which is part of my point. If you think that government solutions work better than private ones, then government solutions sound like pretty good ideas whether the product is food, or education, or health care, or transportation, or retirement. The arguments for such systems are, at base, pretty similar.

I’m not advocating the system of government cafeterias I’ve just described; it’s just a thought experiment for the kinds of problems we’d have if we adopted such a system: Some people would want higher taxes to pay for better quality food. Other people would want lower taxes and be willing to live with lower quality food as a result. The high tax/low tax people would fight constantly about the cafeterias, how much and what kind of people eat in them, etc. A few, the really rich 1%ers, could afford to pay their food taxes and still buy their own very high quality private food in elite restaurants – which would then be viewed as just another of the unfair privileges of the 1% and a reason behind their selfish lobby to reduce food taxes. Some people would want higher food taxes on the rich to pay for higher quality food for the poor – they’d want to use the public cafeteria system as a means of wealth redistribution. Some people would say the food in public cafeterias has way too much sugar and salt and fat for good health and so these ingredients should be reduced. Others would say the food tastes bland and icky – because it lacks enough sugar and salt and fat. Fad diets would go from a curiosity to a matter of public policy. Some people would object that the food of their ethnic heritage – Mexican, Chinese, Italian – isn’t fairly represented on the menu or authentically prepared, and accuse people who advocate for steak and potatoes in the cafeterias of being racists. Some would advocate that everyone must eat their vegetables before they’re allowed to have dessert; others would claim that people have an inalienable right to eat their meals in any order they choose. Still others would say desserts are unnecessary and unhealthy and should be eliminated altogether.

And here’s something for this blog to consider: The religious right would of course want a community prayer to be recited before every meal, or at least a moment for people to pray, claiming that eating without praying out loud infringes on their religious beliefs. Meanwhile those of us who aren’t religious would be accused of infringing on religious freedom when we insist, rightly, that the first amendment prohibits any kind of official prayer in a government cafeteria. Voila – something that was not a contentious social issue (whether people pray before meals) now becomes another tool for divisive politicians to exploit.

We’d have hotly contested elections for the local cafeteria board to decide some of these issues, and others would be matters that would be fought all the way to the US Supreme Court. People would lament that the cafeterias in poor neighborhoods always end up serving lower quality food than the cafeterias in rich neighborhoods, and demand that the state equalize funding across food districts. Others would say, let’s bus some of the poor people to cafeterias in rich areas to better integrate the population through shared meals. And then whenever there’s a local budget crisis, Washington would be called on to intervene to keep hard working chefs from losing their jobs and Americans from starving. And on and on – food would become a political football just like education is today.

If my little thought experiment came to be, after a hundred years or so anyone who remembered today’s system dominated by private food would be dead. Anyone who said the government should get out of the food business would be accused of being “radical” and “unrealistic” and “utopian”. They might be called selfish, for not caring about all the poor people who would surely starve to death without government cafeterias every few blocks. In such a scenario some people might insist on ”home cooking” – maybe because they want to pray before every meal and the supreme court rightly ruled it unconstitutional in government cafeterias. But maybe, just because they want food that isn’t served in the local public cafeteria. Whatever the reason, these home cookers would be looked upon as weird and anti-social because they don’t share meals with their neighbors – by then well established as an absolutely essential part of proper socialization. People would also question whether most of these home cookers are really competent to cook food for themselves and their families – they didn’t get degrees in cooking; most haven’t had any formal training in cooking at all! Microwaves, ovens, refrigerators, and blenders would all be very expensive devices, and only available in industrial sizes leading people to regard the very idea of cooking for one or two people at a time as hopelessly inefficient.

To be fair, there are indeed problems with today’s mostly private food system – obesity and over consumption mostly, real hunger and malnutrition in a small minority. These are just not the kind of problems most people raised with a government dominated food system would think of. A primarily private system is better than a government system, but I’m not pretending it’s utopia.

Point being: the “problems of public schools” mostly aren’t problems about education, they’re problems of centralized funding and communal decision making. It matters little whether centralization occurs on a local, state, or national level, and it matters little what good or service we’re talking about paying for via government. People have different preferences; it’s part of being human. No government system can ever fully accommodate individual preferences and so you end up with inevitable political fights to control various aspects of the system. There’s hardly a problem of education dominated by government’s “public” schools as ours is today, that wouldn’t have an analogous problem in a food system dominated by government’s “public” cafeterias, or a housing system dominated by government’s “public” housing, or a transportation system dominated by government’s “public” transportation, or health care dominated by government’s “single payer” health care. We don’t need to have this argument over and over about every good and service people need or want. It’s the same argument, and the same answer, for all of them.

When you look at education through this lens, some issues are perhaps a little clearer. In our hypothetical America of widespread government cafeterias, a few “private cafeterias” would constitute little improvement if they were basically like public cafeterias except that they tended to be sponsored by a church, have mandatory prayers before every meal, or adhere to Kosher preparation standards. Just as, today, non-elite church sponsored “private schools” aren’t really an improvement over public schools.  We don’t need local church schools to replace local government schools. A multi-source, individualized approach to education will work better than either.

And vouchers - vouchers are an absolutely terrible idea. Don’t the right wingers know that vouchers are the education equivalent of food stamps? With education vouchers, the government is doling out money for people to go buy their “private” education with, just like food stamps are government money for people to buy food with. Yet in Arizona, the hypocrits on the right use dirty legislative trickery to enact education vouchers while decrying Obama as the food stamp president. The sad truth is, food stamps work *better* than education vouchers would. Sticking with our cafeteria example, how well would food stamps work in a system dominated by public cafeterias, private church-run cafeterias, and a few high-end restaurants that serve only the very wealthy - with no private grocery stores, few cookbooks and kitchen tools designed for home use, and no moderately priced restaurants run for profit rather than for the promotion of religious dogma? They wouldn’t work well at all. They’d just be a means of funneling public money into private churches without substantially improving food quality.

My wife and I “home school” our children. That really means they learn from us, or extended family members, or friends, or others in our home school group, or private classes in specific subjects, or from activities with private organizations like Freethought Arizona. As a matter of fact, we are also “home cookers”, meaning that we feed our children meals either at home or in other private homes or private restaurants and not government food outlets. The only difference between these two parental decisions, about education and food, are some pretty arbitrary social traditions – neither is more radical than the other when considered objectively. In both cases we have the self-confidence to think and act on the conviction that we can do better as individuals than as part of a collection of communally-minded bureaucrats.

Despite the lack of government involvement in either my kids’ schooling or their eating, neither practice results in them, or us, being developmentally disadvantaged or socially isolated. Humans evolved as social animals and a government program is not required to learn how to make friends. Yes, cooking is somewhat easier than schooling. However, that’s at least partially because there are vast and well established resources available to make providing private food easier; there’s an entrenched tradition of private food in America, whereas the traditions of private education are far more limited in scope. But the difficulty involved in home education is changing: the internet makes home schooling orders of magnitude easier than it used to be, which is one reason why it is the fastest growing model of education.

I say get the government out of mainstream education, and not because I want only the elite to get a good education any more than I want only the elite to get a good meal. I advocate for the separation of school and state because it would make education better than it is today for the majority of American children. I’d like to see most Americans get educated the same general way most Americans get fed: a piecemeal and variable combination of home cooking, meals with friends, and private for-profit restaurants of nearly infinite variety. While allowing that there will be exceptions (like church pot-lucks and Chick-fil-a are in the case of food), I’d like to see education dominated by families and friends and secular enterprises, not by either the state -or- churches. This is not a utopian system, but it’s better than any system dominated by government payment and provision of service can be. Note I’m speaking here about the dominant model. Whether it is right to have government intervene at the fringes of a mostly private system, such as providing for the very poor and instituting basic quality regulations like we have with food and housing today, is another topic.

And with that, I’m handing over management of the blog to Don Lacey. It’s been fun, and I appreciate everyone’s comments and discussion over the last few months whether I agreed with you or not. It’s just time to let someone else have a crack at this for a while.

Vote for Obama, and here’s the reason you should …

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

This debt discussion is a symptom of what I like to call an ideological proxy war. Krugman himself has done an about face on the debt issue as described here:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/01/krugman-v-krugman.html

My point isn’t to say that Krugman was wrong in 2003 or that he’s wrong today. My point is that both sides discuss things like the national debt primarily in service to larger agendas that are uncomfortable for them to talk about directly.

In 2003, Krugman wanted the government to do less of what it was doing at the time – invading the middle east and lowering tax rates - so he criticized the debt. Obama criticized the debt too, and voted against raising the debt ceiling as a Senator. Today, Krugman wants the government to do more of what it is doing – spending on social programs and infrastructure projects - so now he defends the debt, and Obama and the Democrats are the ones creating it.

Prominent Republicans did the exact same thing only in reverse: According to the Republican establishment during the Bush years the debt was no problem, a temporary necessity caused by the war on terror, and Democrats who warned about the deficit were portrayed as chicken littles. But now that there’s a Democrat in the white house you’d think all the Republicans went to college and got a PhD in sustainable financial practices. What a crock of bull. You’ll see how quickly all this fiscal discipline goes right out the window if the Republicans get back control of both the legislative and executive branches.

This is not a Republican or Democrat issue. This is a failure to face reality issue. The national debt is just a symptom of political choices made about how much to tax and how much to spend. Those are the things people should be thinking about.

The size of our national debt reflects that as a society we are habitually addicted to having government do more than we are willing to tax ourselves to pay for. This isn’t a temporary situation caused by a war or a recession. It doesn’t reflect “special needs” or compassionate priorities or sound management of the economy. Instead, this is a chronic condition that has applied every year for decades upon decades, regardless of which party nominally controlled Washington. The only exception was a couple of years in the late ’90s when new technology caused the economy to grow so much faster than anticipated that it took the politicians a little while to figure out how to screw up the budget again.

This is exacerbated by the fact that people are deliberately led to think they won’t have to pay a dollar (either now -or- later) for every dollar of services the government provides. Taxes are usually sold to the public as falling pimarily on someone else: Tax the rich! Tax the 1%! Tax the corporations! These are appealing to most people simply because most people are not rich, not in the top 1% of income, and are not large shareholders in corporations. Whereas government services are pitched as being primarily for our own benefit or the benefit of “the needy”: Fix our health care! Fix our schools! Fix our roads! Fix our retirements! Fix the environment!

Such broad-based appeals run smack into the political reality few talk about: politicians on both sides of the aisle get the vast majority of their campaign contributions and lobbyist input from the people they purport to tax, and very little from the people that they purport to benefit. Expecting your mark on a ballot to send someone to Washington who actually represents your interests rather than his or her own interests is the same kind of wishful thinking that we criticize religious fanatics for.  He who pays the piper calls the tune, which is how it’s always been. And no, marking a ballot does not constitute paying the piper. So who gets the best return on their money from government? Those who contribute the most to the political campaigns and lobbyists for those who run the show – the “1%ers”. Everyone else is just a pawn in the giant political chess game, and is lucky to get ten cents on the dollar.

Lest you think this is just promoting another ideology, it’s not. Whether you or I think that real wealth should be redistributed from the rich to the needy in our society is irrelevant to the fact that in the current political system the government is pretty much incapable of doing so. Whether financing of spending is done by debt or by taxation, the primary beneficiaries are always at the top: the rich, powerful, and well connected. The only thing a major party shift in Washington changes about that is which elites benefit and which lose out.

Need a final example of willful ignorance surrounding this? Krugman says of the debt, “U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves.” That’s true only if by ”ourselves” he refers mostly to the same rich 1% who primarily benefit from everything else the government does. Who collects the lion’s share of the interest on the debt? Not the poor and needy. Think about it.