Building Utopia

A recent exchange with a well-educated young liberal discussed how to end “systemic racism.”  Her ideas all involved having the government do more for the African-American, and in turn (I assume) for everyone.  Below is her list of recommendations.

“The things that have been done to make society "equal" are drops in the bucket. There is a logical fallacy in the idea that just because we don't know exactly what to do, then we shouldn't do anything. What laws should be changed?

We should be transitioning funding into community programs instead of law enforcement. Social workers, free healthcare, better schools, after school programs and training programs, drug abuse programs, mental health resources, affordable housing.

We also need more training and accountability for police. Require licensing, 2-4 years of training, and clear and severe punishments for infractions, including jail time for breaking the law. If police are so scared, they are murdering people, they shouldn't be police. We should absolutely pay police more to compensate for the additional requirements but we need to hold police at a higher standard.

We should have more incentives for businesses to hire underrepresented groups and for colleges/universities to do the same.

We encourage more representation in voting. First, all citizens over the age of 18 should be automatically registered to vote. We should have mail in voting for all elections, and election day should be a national holiday.

We should abolish the electoral college and have rank choice voting (look up Ireland's voting system for an example).

We should get rid of citizens united and limit campaign contributions. All campaign contributions should be public.

We should prohibit anyone in public office from becoming a lobbyist and strictly limit lobbying to politicians.

And to anticipate your next question of how we are going to pay for this? Raise taxes, yes, please, I will be happy to pay more taxes.

We should also eliminate for profit prisons and for-profit hospitals. We should change our sentencing laws to focus to rehabilitation instead of punishment and put more training, mental health, and overall resources into our prison system.

We should give felons the right to vote after they have served their time and make it illegal to ask about felony charges in a job interview except for those directly related to the job position.

Get rid of the death penalty. Improve funding for social workers and public defenders. Many people are in prison because they were pressured to take plea deals because the current criminal system is overburdened. We need a complete over hall.

make marijuana legal on the federal level and provide incentives for small marijuana businesses and marijuana businesses of color.

Limit drug pricing inflation and create a nationalized health care system.”

For our purposes let’s put money aside.  That “how we’re going to pay of it” seems to be a sticking point on both sides, but as we see with the current pandemic, printing money is no object if there is the political will to do so.

What I find in this list is all the progressive talking points from the last few years.  All have some value in creating the utopia the left envisions, but many don’t seem to be grounded in the reality of how our nation is governed and assumes one single/central point for all decisions.  That strikes me as a clear desire to eliminate the federal system we now use and move all decision making to a single capital.  I’m not sure how you get a 2/3rds or greater majority to do that since it would clearly take abandoning or radically changing the current constitution.  The second concern I have is how getting some far-off power to impose its will on the people will actually change the nature of mankind to eliminate racism.

As we look back on our history, that of the United States, we see the great minds have struggled with the question of how do we create a society where all are equal?  The problem with this society of equals is the assumption we are all equally endowed with the same attributes.  I think we can look around today and determine how incredibly false that assumption is.

Looking at sports, since we actually admitted the racist nature of organized sports and began to accept African-Americans into the professional ranks the Black Americans have taken over a dominate role in Basketball, Football, and Baseball (although Hispanics are now replacing many, it is probably from the shift of culture preference more than pure ability).  Is that move based on a demand for racist equality, or a competitive desire to have the best athlete available?  Is the desire to win, a racist notion?

How about Education?  Does everyone perform equally in school and university?  I believe we see the answer is clearly no.  Why is that?  Is it because of systemic racism or is it from some other cause?  Does performance in education require a leveling of opportunity where more people of one race are afforded advantages not afforded to other races based on some arbitrary metric like global origin?  What other social variables might account for why one person performs better than another?  If the latter is true, how does a central government mandate the elimination of those variables? 

Assuming everyone should have the same educational opportunities, regardless of individual ability, at what level does that demand end?  Must everyone complete high school?  College?  Post-college? MS/MA, Ph.D.?  How do we account for those who have less desire but ability, or those with less ability but desire?  If we are to build a Utopian World then who gets to make the decision on what is fair?  Is it the individual, the educational institution, or the Government?

My final thought on this utopian world is captured in my young friend’s statement, “The things that have been done to make society "equal" are drops in the bucket.”  There seems to be one truth in moving towards a utopia.  We can always do something better.  That is a human quality found in all our existence.  We discover fire, but that is not enough we build ovens.  We invent the wheel but let’s hook it up to horses, then steam engines, then automobiles.  We invent a rocket to bomb another country, let’s take it to space, then the moon, and perhaps beyond.  If we were to do all the things, she suggests would we end racism, or would those ideas be simply a “drop in the bucket?”   

How about the rest of the world?  If we made the United States the country, she envisions, without making her plans part of a single world wouldn’t all the evils still exist?  The problem with Utopia is one person’s utopia necessarily becomes another’s Hell until we are all identical in wants, needs, and desires.

This exchange with my young friend only served to reinforce the difference between the progressive approach and the views of our founders.  On the one side, our founders saw too much power in the hands of a single entity ultimately led to the corruption in the purpose of government, while the progressive movement seeks to eliminate personal responsibility from the equation and put the responsibility of moral decisions in the hands of a government (as long as that government does what they want).

Jeffery Epstein and Today's Politics

This weekend (7/6/19) it was reported the billionaire Jeffery Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport, New Jersey.  Apparently records sealed by a court had been opened and the FBI and DOJ were now motivated to arrest him for trafficking minors for sex and perhaps extortion.  I think both political sides are salivating over the idea Epstein will squeal like a “stuck pig” to save as much of his skin as he can. 

It offers to be an interesting show as the media and both political parties scramble to determine who knew what and when.  The talking points should be amusing, but before we get caught up in the drama, let’s not forget the left is moving towards the morality that pedophilia isn’t as bad as they used to think, so I assume their condemnations will principally focus on Republicans, while the Democratic politicians were mostly victims of a corrupt system.

What I think the Epstein’s arrest will do is take several old white politicians down for the count.  I’m not sure Trump will be one of them, but what little influence Bill Clinton might still have will disappear almost overnight.  Just my speculation but I’m guessing Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) might already be talking to their lawyers, that is if they are smart.  Since they are Senators that is always an open question.  Menendez has already been through one round of this and survived but there must be some point where the weight becomes overwhelming and he just can’t tread water anymore.

If I had to guess about news coverage, ABCNNBCBS will cover minimally, and FOX will be all over the story, at least until it starts to reflect poorly on top-level Republicans.  The Twitterverse will, of course, explode with each and every new revelation as facts and pseudo-facts are leaked by the political opportunists. 
added:  I don't see Trump's Labor Secretary surviving beyond a fortnight.
added:  Postscript:  Acosta resigned on 12 July.  6 days in the news cycle is a long time.

A Simple Question

When do the rights of an infant equal the rights of a woman?
This was a question our founding fathers never had to consider, but now thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court we must answer if we are ever to craft laws that are just and morally defensible.
Feminist argue men should have no voice in this decision, and if they weren't so adamant. we men craft the laws as they want them then perhaps I wouldn't care what a woman chooses to do.  But as it stands today, feminists believe they can exclude men from the moral and ethical debate that affects an entire species within society.
Where else is this argument valid?  Are only women allowed to decide what is best for whales?  How about physics or math?  Maybe in city planning?

Golly That Sounds Reasonable and Moral Too

I am so old I can remember the fear the right had when the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” was just passed on strict party-line votes.  The big issue I remember was the GOP talking about “death panels” that would make determinations whether a patient’s health care was actually a wise investment or should he or she be allowed to just die, either through assistance or just wasting away.

Of course, the left countered those were just flagrant exaggerations and no such thing would ever be done in this country.  A country and a party that claimed to value life as long as they were already born.

Now we see states with Democratic majorities moving to ensure an infant can be killed almost anytime the mother chooses to do so.  Right now, it is until the moment of birth in NY.  The Governor went so far as to have the new World Trade Center specifically lite to celebrate this great victory for women who don’t want to have a child.  I’ve heard them celebrate this as a woman’s right, but since roughly half the abortions are future women I don’t see how that can really be the case.

In Virginia, they are debating a similar statute, where the infant would be delivered and kept around while the Doctors and Mother talk about whether or not it should really live.

My question is why stop there?  If the rights of the child no longer start at birth, why not allow these decisions to be made until the child is of legal age to make their own choice.  Think of how much this would reduce the backlog in child abuse cases.  It would clearly be the mother’s (and why not the father or boyfriend’s) right to treat the child as an unwanted burden that should have been taken care of at birth, but they weren’t sure if they wanted it or not.

When these decisions are based on politics and we no longer believe there is a moral basis for life, can society last?

The Art of Moral Outrage

 Over the past 20 or so years there has developed an interesting social dynamic where the progressive movement has laid claim to the “moral high ground” at the same time they’ve rejected the institutions, which have historically served to guide our societies moral standards.  The conservative movement has generally not put up too much of a resistance to the propaganda outlets used to foster these narratives and allowed the collapse of a shared (common) moral code.

Today we routinely see morality brought into every social debate, usually by the people who reject a common moral code as archaic, choosing to claim any and everything they don’t like as immoral.  A few cases in point.

The building of a wall to funnel immigrants towards approved points of entry is immoral – Nancy Pelosi[1]

It’s better to be morally right, then factually correct – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez[2]

In the two examples cited above both individuals are advocates for a larger federal government intended to provide all things to the residents (citizens and non-citizens alike) of the country.  It seems to me as if they are advocating that a belief in government should be the only theology allowed.

Yet, when in charge of government – a consistent morality seems to be a squishy thing, for the politicians.  The most recent decisions by New York State being a wonderful example.  They view the death penalty, as a punishment, to be morally wrong, but the killing of a fetus capable of life outside the mother as being a woman’s right.  So really, life isn’t sacred only the lives of those they favor are.  Once again, the democratic party seems to favor those who kill over the innocent.  Unless the innocent are non-human: perhaps a dog left out in the cold, or a Rhino killed for its horn, or a horse that is used for racing and then cast aside when it can no longer run.

The real trick here is to claim the moral high ground based on little more than personal opinion and demand the other side bow to your moral outrage.

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[1] https://www.dailywire.com/news/39177/pelosi-border-wall-immoral-we-need-secure-our-frank-camp

[2] Responding to Anderson Cooper on the show 60 minutes, reported in multiple sources e.g. http://republicbuzz.com/ocasio-cortez-people-more-concerned-about-me-being-factually-correct-than-morally-right

A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste

There was a commercial a few years ago encouraging financial support for historically black colleges with donations to the United Negro College Fund.  Its bottom line was “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”  As this holiday season progresses I seem to be brought back to that truth.  A mind is truly a terrible thing to waste, the only question is whose responsibility is it to make sure it’s not wasted?

It seems unlikely we will ever move past the issue of race, at least not in my lifetime, but the message of the UNCF was exactly correct.  A mind, any mind, is a terrible thing to waste.  Yet, every day we see the destruction of minds as a normal cost of life and business.  Everyone in a position of authority seems to think almost everything is more important, or that minds can only be saved through the completion of some lofty educational construct, or incarceration.  Both agendas seem to care little about the complexity of individual minds, or how they have been shaped to form a human being capable of advanced thought and independence.

Our species has been around for some 6-7,000 years and we have reached out to the heavens, sending probes that have left our solar system, yet we still cast aside almost 99% of the available minds as just so much flotsam and jetsam.  To take it a step further, thanks to instant communication we are now polarizing into massive tribes of US and THEM.  But, then again humans have always been tribal in our nature. 

There are clearly two schools of thought on this.  On the left, there is a belief it is the government's job, and those minds are part of the national capital the government must control.  I see this as the natural process of socialism, where “it takes a village.”  Looking at the educational systems of socialist states like pre-WW2 Germany, the USSR, China, Cuba, and others the rulers of the state make a concerted effort to take over the training of a child so their minds are conditioned to the needs of the state.

On the right, the responsibility of developing a child’s mind rests with the parents and the child.  They are aided in this by the state through the educational systems available, as well as any organized religion they may prescribe to, but the responsibility rests with the individual, not the state or the church.

It seems to me that at the end of the day, this difference is what separates "US" from "THEM."

An Opinion on 29 October 2018

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The Government is Neither Moral or Immoral

“Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.”  Mahatma Gandhi

We gather today in outrage over the massacre of eleven people, killed because of their religion.  On a global scale this senseless violence is small and perhaps insignificant, but within our culture it marks yet another step in the polarization of the politics of incivility.

Today’s society demands we assign blame for these immoral acts to specific people whose life, political views, or access to power we disdain, rather than the individual who commits the offense.  The need to score political points, display political outrage and demand the government improve its moral approach outweighs any sense of grief, real or imagined.

In a very real sense, it is this society, not the government, which has created the conditions which foster the public violence we see.  The government is an entity, it has no morality, it has no sense of justice, it is an infrastructure and a vehicle through which our society functions.  I think this article from the Foundation for Economic Freedom written in 2011 captures my sentiments as they have evolved over the past decade or so.  As George Washington is credited with saying, “Government is not reason.  It is not eloquence, Government is force; like a fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

The young have willingly bought into the identity politics and rhetoric of those who are unhappy with the current reality of government and are seeking, through whatever means possible to overturn the choices made in the last general election.  Many have been led to believe President Trump through his social media and personal approach to celebrity has created the “toxic” environment we see today.  At the same time, they discount the personal attacks, vilification, outright falsehoods, and slander used by his political opponents as having any contributory impact at all.

It should be noted the idea of personality politics is nothing new for this nation.  We can trace the role of personality all the way back to our first president.  The difference, at least it seems to me, is we’ve found it more reasonable to attack the person who challenges the status quo than accept policies that fail.    As an example, let’s look at the success or failure of major metropolitan cities where unemployment, crime, and social disparity are the worst.  Most, if not all, have had an unbroken chain of Democratic Party Mayors and City Councils, all making promises they failed to keep while driving their cities into deepening debt.  Where their choices moral or immoral?  No, they acted in what they perceived to be their self-interest.  Unfortunately for many within the cities, their self-interest was really THEIR personal self-interest as in personal and family enrichment.

Perhaps sometime in the near future, we will ask our individual selves, "what can I do to alter the course of society and advance a course that reflects the desired moral standards we had believed to be the foundation of this country?"  Will our political outrage actually have a positive effect if we continue to apply it unevenly to the political parties and allow the social media to control the debate through limiting speech?

We are a nation of some 328 million and if we want society to improve it will take all 328 million to develop an intolerance to those who advocate for a one solution fits all society.

Unalienable Rights

Today we are bombarded with all kinds of outrage and anger over all kinds of issues ranging from important to petty.  The internet of things and its social media portals are full of rants and counter-rants about things like free speech, gun ownership, equality of minorities (in both race and sexual orientation), the effects of mankind on the environment, whether the news is fake or real, the Donald, and what are the rights of people who like plastic straws in Santa Monica, California. 

I had a conversation a while ago about the morality of something and drew my position from the words in our Declaration of Independence. 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The dictionary defines unalienable as “not to be separated, given away, or taken away.”  It does not define why something is unalienable, or who decides it is so.  Our founding fathers made it quite clear.  They believed the rights came from the Creator (God as one would define for themselves) and man did not have it in his power to alter those rights.  The conversation ended -- but it left me with a pretty big question.

As society begins to reject the idea of a Creator, as more and more people believe the idea of a God is irrational, as our society moves away from religion and a shared belief in a supreme being what makes any right unalienable? 

To carry it a step further, what makes any human interaction moral or immoral?  How do we decide what is and isn’t morally acceptable?

We pride ourselves on being a nation that believes in the equality of the law.  We have a court system that is supposed to act as a check to the legislative and executive branch’s abuse of power by holding them to the standards defined in our constitution, but one of the big controversies between the left and the right today is – should that actually be the case, or are the “right-minded” justices picked by the Democrats somehow endowed with a special wisdom to discern what is morally best for the nation.  Will these nine men, women (and perhaps someday non-gender identified) people become the equivalent of the gods of Olympus where they cast down their judgments of how society is to be?  Will they become the supreme power to decide what is unalienable and what isn’t, or are they already that?  But wait, they have no direct authority on the vast majority of the world, so who does?

I see this playing out before my eyes as one side condemns and the other supports behavior that was just a year ago morally abhorrent.  We, in almost the same breath, condemn the sexual abuse of children and defend the rights of a pedophile.  How can that be?  Perhaps the answer lies in the nature of the internet of things… it is like the public space in an asylum where outrageous debates used to occur, but it is louder and larger then we can really grasp and it is next to impossible to separate the legitimate voices of the sane from the insane.

For me, I will continue to keep my own council and rest easy with the acceptance of a Supreme moral authority who has provided me with certain unalienable rights.  But I do worry about those who choose not to accept my right to life, liberty, and happiness as anything more than what is given by the state, and who want the state to restrict those fundamental concepts.

Senatorial Grandstanding vs. Intelligence (i.e. The morality of relative morality)

We are a nation of laws, hopefully based on a shared sense of what is right and just.  Laws come from politicians, elected to represent us, not from the bureaucrats hired to run the government or enforce the laws they are given.  More and more frequently we see a loss of that shared sense of what is right and just as our morality is changed by those forces active within society who rebel against the status quo.  As our morality changes so do the choices we make with regard to the law.

I’ve never been a prisoner of war, nor have I had to attempt to gain intelligence from those who have been captured as a part of a military or intelligence operation, but I have been through military survival school, and its resistance training.  I am fully aware of what the North Vietnamese did to US prisoners in the Vietnam war, as well as what the Japanese did to their prisoners in the Second World War.  During this long war I’ve had a number of conversations on the subject of “enhanced interrogation techniques” with my colleagues, what follows summarizes my thoughts, as well as an opinion of Senator Kamala Harris during her question period of Gina Haspel.

With the horrific attack on America by Islamic terrorists on 9/11/2001 this nation’s politicians reacted with the outrage we would expect of a group who found out we were not as immune to the terror as we had been led to believe we were during the 1990s, when the attacks on the US were all against interests outside the homeland or were from isolated domestic terrorists.

They reacted with the only tools they had.  They passed legislation allowing us to attack the country that harbored the terrorists, approved and funded the ability of the government to use its technology to monitor the activities of its own citizens and authorized the use of all means and methods necessary to find and bring Osama bin Laden to justice.  Some of this was done by the Congress in the form of legislation, and some of it by Executive Order.  There were few dissenting voices during those early days, just as there were few dissenting voices when the government approved the detention and relocation of Japanese-Americans at the start of the Second World War. 

The CIA, of course, was central to the process.  It failed to stop the attack and, I assume, was under a lot of pressure from the President, his Vice President, and a whole bunch of concerned Congressional members to fix the problem of finding Waldo, err Osama.  Everyone who had oversight and control pulled out all the stops to get them the tools and funding they wanted.  Among those efforts were the establishment of a number of undisclosed detention and interrogation centers, imprisonment in foreign countries where CIA accountability was masked, almost unlimited cash for “rewards,” development of a new generation of UAV and technology to track and target individuals, and of course the “enhanced” interrogation techniques like waterboarding.  Tracing the CIA back to its earliest days in the cold war there is a long history of it exploring ways to extract information from those it captured, just as other countries have.  It seems to be a foundational quality that if a little fear is good, a lot is better.  Wasn’t it the CIA who developed LSD as a tool to enhance the interrogation and quality of information a subject may provide, only to discard it when it was proven ineffective?

From the beginnings of this long war, I’ve found the use of these “enhanced” techniques unappealing and inappropriate for a society and a government that made such vocal condemnations of the brutality of others against our combatants in various conflicts.  For those who know me, I find the hypocrisy of saying one thing and then doing another a most unforgivable shortcoming.  That being said, I often found myself a distinct minority in the discussions.  Most of my peers, both younger and older felt that any tool available should be used if it meant we would gain a tactical advantage in the global war on terror.  My concern focused simply on the quid pro quo potential of our hypocrisy, but my friends pointed out the other side wasn’t playing by the rules so why should we?  For me, that argument was always the crux of a moral choice, going all the way back to that earliest childhood admonishment from your mother.  “If your friends jumped off the bridge, would you?”  Just because someone else does something does that mean it is moral?  It seems in these days where the morality of all sorts of things are called into question we have opened the door to the individual making his or her own choice.

Let’s take a moment to talk about these interrogation techniques and decide if they are torture or not.  Are these enhanced techniques torture?  Good question.  What is torture anyway?  The Oxford Dictionary (online) defines it as “The action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or in order to force them to do or say something.”  The beauty of that definition is you can choose to limit or expand your definition by qualifying the words like severe pain and then debating whether or not it deals with just physical or does it mean mental as well? Is the use of phenobarbital against a subject’s will torture?  You can certainly make the case it is since it will cause mental anguish.  Does waterboarding cause severe physical pain, or is the fear of death from drowning a cause for severe mental trauma?  At the end of the day it really boils down to an individual choice, doesn’t it?  From a technical standpoint, the real question is “is it effective and does it fit within the legal parameters of international law?”  The documentation I see is that “torture” is viewed as an absolute ban in international law, yet it is rarely enforced or condemned by the international tribunals for what I assume is a variety of political reasons.  So, the bottom line on waterboarding is it could be torture if you want to call it that, but it might not be if you think you can get away with it and it meets your immediate need.

There is an interesting dynamic in the post-Reagan society where the condemnation of the past takes on a smug moral superiority and those who participate in this reflection of hindsight feel empowered to condemn the decisions of the past as if they were all morally reprehensible and the people who made the decisions, or executed those policies were and are evil.  We see that approach pretty routinely in today’s social discourse.  I believe it is simply a strategy to gain a superior position and shut down legitimate debate, especially when it would call into question the broader moral questions of one’s own positions.

Other than what I’ve seen in the news, I know very little of Gina Haspel.  Apparently, she is a career CIA analyst/operative who has risen through the bureaucracy to become Deputy Director and is now nominated as its Director.  Since she is a Trump nomination, her qualifications are pretty much irrelevant as she becomes just another political football.  She is either the greatest thing since sliced bread, or she is evil incarnate based solely on your political point of view.

 What I did see in the questioning by Senator Kamala Harris was an adult, being questioned by a snobbish, uninformed, and self-serving child who asked a complex moral question dealing with past events, and then demanded a yes or no answer.  Her position on the appointment was decided the instant the nomination was made, and there was nothing in any of the answers of Ms. Haspel that would ever remotely persuade her to change her mind.  Her 5-minutes before the camera was there to showcase her opposition and set the stage for what she undoubtedly believes will be a run at a higher national office.  Unfortunately, she failed to show any qualities that commend her to a broader electorate than she already has.

A Few Thoughts on Easy Versus Hard (conclusion)

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So, let’s wrap this up.

Obviously, I’ve not even scratched the surface on all the potential issues on why we see the apparent increase in violent mass murder of school children in this country.  For example, other than the potential impact of violent first person shooting games, I’ve not talked about how mental illness is diagnosed or treated, nor have I addressed, beyond a superficial level, the role of parents and teachers in guiding young minds towards a level of self-esteem, which is so vital for our maturation.  On the other hand, I have attempted to lay out the simple and I believe inescapable truth this is a much larger problem than the buying, owning and using of guns, and by insisting that is all it is we are unlikely to ever seek out, address, and fix the true root causes.  For debating  those issues require's society to reexamine individual standards and behaviors.

What I do believe is we don’t have a clue with regard to the second order effects of the political choices we have made over the past 75 years or so, and those secondary issues are now rising to the surface in ways we find unpleasant.  
 The young, who are being organized to push a fixed political agenda, have neither the experience nor understanding of the human condition to provide anything more than the emotional appeal they are being exploited for.  The people who are truly behind their involvement are using them for that purpose alone.  The rest of society has been conditioned by the media to accept their sincerity as proof of the “rightness” of their cause.

Today is March 14^th 2018, the day the behind the scenes leadership of the anti-gun movement has chosen as walk out day for high schoolers across the country to show their support that guns should be banned.  It seems the opportune time to point out that a fresh young face, with little experience is always the ideal leader for a movement controlled by some unseen force.  This movement has that, but I wonder how far beyond the symbolic rants it will really go?  They don’t seem to have the focus of say the anti-war movement of the 1960s where there was a real self-interest on the part of the radical leadership to stop a war they may be forced to fight in.

Well enough about this… now on to something else, like maybe cat videos.

Where Does Our Morality Come From (continued 2)

I know I am entering into an area of deep political and emotional and divisive rhetoric with very little real concern with a common morality, but a significant percentage of us have accepted that it is morally justified for one individual to kill another, to end a human being capable of self-sustaining life independent of the mother.  Within the most recent Presidential campaign the whole issue of “woman’s rights” was a significant point of contention between one half of the country and the other half.  The political parties were both willing to make this a core of their political positions, and we have for at least the last 40-years been engaged in an escalating battle of what the government should allow, and now what the government must pay for.  Increasingly it has been the position of the liberal feminist movement, and their political allies, that the right to determine the intentional death of a fetus rests solely with the woman carrying the infant.  Of course they use more sympathetic terms and explain how problematic those lives would be if allowed to continue, but in the end there is one harsh reality.  We, for better or worse, have sanctioned the determination of life as a right of the mother, but only for the period of pregnancy.  If she ends that life one day after birth I think society and the state still consider it murder.  It seems just a bit convoluted to me as we wrestle with the law and moral choices.

The argument for determination of life or death is now moving on.  It is expanding to include the position that an individual with a diagnosed illness who wishes to end their life has that right and the state should approve of individuals who wish to assist in that choice. 

Couple these changes in our society with the development and popularity of violent game playing in computer simulations and alternate reality games and it does not seem to me to be a great leap to ask if we are creating a nation of young men and women driven by alienation, who see ending life as acceptable moral choice, and deciding that their 15 minutes of fame should be in the taking of another’s life.  It seems only a matter of time (and not too much time) before that argument will be made in their defense.

I believe we already see influencers in the media and entertainment industry beginning the virtue signaling that this is acceptable, as long as the targets are those they approve of.  For example, in the past year, we have seen liberal entertainers calling for the assassination of the President, going so far as to hold up a clearly recognizable severed head.  (As an aside, I find the whining of the entertainer who did this to be a fascinating study on denial of personal responsibility and outrage over the consequences of her actions.  Either she is a complete idiot, or she lives in such a sheltered world the reality most of us live in never gets in.)

Along the way should we consider the impact of the social media that has come to dominate the internet?  From our beginnings, the predominant position of this nation was that we must be a nation of law.  Where justice, based on the moral standards of the nation, is applied fairly across the society.  Today does that still remain true, or are we moving ever closer to the concept of mob rule, where those who control the dialogue now control the judgments of the many who become inflamed over the mere accusations of unknown voices?

-- to be continued --

Where Does Our Concept of Morality Come From? (continued)

Who or what fills in for the parents once a teenager begins to understand the concept of morality and how he or she must act?  Is it peers, teachers, ministers, entertainment celebrities, video games or self-assessment?  How about all of them?

Let’s start with peers since studies[1] have shown that peer pressure is probably the single biggest influencer on choice for most humans.  We hear anecdotal stories all the time where an individual is characterized as a “good boy/girl” by family as they are being taken off to jail for some felony.  The need to “fit-in” is one of the great human survival tools, and is probably a key element of why we have been so successful as a species, but it is also one of the great dangers for mankind.  Peer pressure and the need to fit-in goes a long way to understanding how populations tend to accept leadership that ultimately proves itself to be destructive and self-serving.  How else do we explain things like the rise of Communist dictators who kill tens of millions of their own people, or a National-Socialist regime that sets out to eliminate the Jewish population, as it moved to dominate Europe?

Today, we see in America two social phenomena that on the surface seem contradictory, but I believe are both symptoms of the same issue.  In the first case, we see the tremendous growth of gangs, beginning in the inner cities, flourishing in the prison system, and now moving to the suburban and rural parts of the nation. The gang recruitment is on-going and unfortunately reaching for younger and younger recruits to indoctrinate into their society.  There are black gangs, Hispanic gangs, oriental gangs and white gangs.  They all seek and offer the same thing, peer acceptance.  They, just like their underdeveloped country counter-parts, grow to dominate a particular region, and become self-sustaining through illegal activities, just like the infamous Costa-Nostra “families” J. Edger spend so much time investigating in the late 1940’s through the 1960’s.

The second case is “the loner” or social outcast who so often erupts, seemingly from nowhere, to wreak violence and havoc on some unsuspecting individual or group.  We see this in the increasingly frequent mass murders that make our evening news.  What leads these individuals to isolation, is it rejection from family, friends, or peers, or is there some other force at work?  Again, I suspect, although I’ve done little in-depth research that isolation grows from negative experiences with the social structure including peers.  Or from possible addictions to any of a number of devices or drugs. 

It is easy to say this is a manifestation of mental illness, but if we think about the increasing frequency of these events the question must be asked, is it mental illness that is growing uncontrollably, or a shifting standard of personal morality? Have we as a society made murder an acceptable personal choice?

-- To be continued --

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[1] For example,  Peer Pressure? It's hardwired into your brain, study finds

Where Does Our Concept of Morality Come From?

I seem to be on singular path right now.  A conversation with an avowed atheist got me thinking about what is moral and what is immoral, in these days of rationalization.  As I said in my previous post, according to most modern theories, where God is removed from the equation, “Morality is the product of the evolutionary development of man, and society.  Morality is always relative and never absolute.”

If we assume this is true, where and how do we learn what the moral standards for our society are?  What is the basis for our own moral judgements, and how does society change its views?  I don’t know how many people spend much time thinking about this, but I have.  From those times; I’ve formed a number of opinions.  Some are researched, others just based on the empirical observations of life around me.

Back in the olden days of my youth I think the family was the principle basis for passing along the moral education of society.  Today we call that familiar process “White Privilege” because our society has done a wonderful job of destroying the Black Family.  Even then, not all families were deeply religious, those that were may have done a better job of instilling faith into the children, but my experience is a good church (I don’t assume all churches are good), built upon the work of the parents, it could not substitute for it, only supplement the foundational basis for moral judgement.

But what happens when the parents have a sense of morality that differs from society’s?  What I’ve observed is, for the large percentage those differences are accepted by the children and incorporated into their own moral standards.  The groups become sub-cultures within the larger context of the nation.  For example, the gypsies are infamous in Europe for a society that crosses national boundaries.  It has its own moral code, that is often at odds with the various civil cultures and laws.

Consider the growth of the Moron Church from its founding until the push for the statehood of Utah.  Polygamy was a morally acceptable aspect of life.  It wasn’t until the statehood issue that the church had to acquiesce to the more normally accepted concept of marriage.  Funny how now that we are changing that concept of what marriage is, the Mormons are again being criticized for not accepting the right value.

So, I believe the parents and extended family are the most basic teachers of morality for children, but who else plays a role, and what about those crazy teenage years as a young person begins to really explore and define his or her own personality, and personal belief set?  As they move away from their parents who fills in the missing spaces?

-- To be continued --

What is Moral in a World of Amorality?

As we abandon our faith, and replace a belief in a higher power with a rationalization that man is supreme, then there can be no choice but to understand morality is relative.  “Morality is the product of the evolutionary development of man and society. Morality is always relative and never absolute. Within the framework of our society, we chose our own, personal code of moral conduct.”[1]

As I’ve noted in previous posts, segments of our society are today outraged over the conduct of men in their treatment of women.  Unfortunately, they are not outraged at all abusive men for all misconduct, but are selectively outraged by those whose politics differ from their own, or whose political usefulness is waning.  For example, Kate Harding, writing in the Washington post shouts.  “I’m a feminist. I study rape culture. I don’t want Al Franken to resign.”[2]  Or, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) who has accepted support, funding and advice from the Clintons for years has just come out with “Bill Clinton should have resigned over the Lewinsky affair.”[3]  Over the past eight years there has not been one new fact exposed about Bill Clinton’s sexual abuse of power, yet now she is coming out to condemn him?  Hmmm, seems just a bit disingenuous or opportunistic if you ask me.

Then we have Michelle Goldberg, writing in the NYT that she believes Juanita[4] (Brodrick), but this use of sexual transgression was really just a Republican plot that swept up an unsuspecting Hillary who had no idea of his transgressions.  It was used in the 2016 campaign solely to deflect criticism of Trump and cast a bad light on a faithful wife.  She points to an argument made by Brian Beutler that right wing propaganda will exploit the left’s recently discovered injunction to “believe women.”   Seriously I doubt that the left will maintain that commitment for long, as we already see when people like Lena Dunham write on one day women never lie about rape (which is pretty damn ironic coming from someone who had falsely accused a Republican of raping her), and then the next -- except when they accuse my friend.  

There is a story I learned long ago that seems in keeping with the news and perhaps offers some insight into the political decisions we see.  Joseph Stalin[5], was the dictator of the Soviet Union from 1929 until his death in 1953.  A cruel and paranoid master, it is said he was singularly responsible for the deaths of over 60 million citizens of the USSR.  In the power struggle that occurred after his death the politburo appointed three men, but ultimately Nikita Khrushchev was able to consolidate power and assume the supreme role.  When that happened, he was ushered into Stalin’s private office and sat at the huge desk that had marked the seat of power for Joseph Stalin.  Still a bit awe-struck he dismissed his aids and sat pondering his good fortune and what he would do to rule the Soviet Union.  After a few minutes of reflection – he started to open the various drawers of the desk until he came to on small drawer partially hidden by the scars of times past when Joseph Stalin would fly into a rage and beat the desk.

Khrushchev opened the drawer and found three yellowing envelops that must have been in the desk for some time.  The writing was clearly Joseph Stalin’s and there was a simple note paper underneath the envelops.  Khrushchev carefully removed the envelopes and set them aside as he read the note, scratched out in Stalin’s own writing.

Comrade,

If you have found this note, I am dead and the ruling of the Soviet people has become your great prize.  I have few words of advice for you, but there are three things you should know.  The people are there for your service, but the land has been harsh to them, despite my most humane efforts many have died from war and famine so unrest is always possible.  Finally, the west is at our throats like the wolves of Siberia.  I expect you will govern well, but there will come a time when all seems lost. When that happens open the first envelop.  I warn you, do not open it until you have no other choice, for its advice is sensitive.

Nikita quietly slid the envelops back into the drawer and began to govern the Union as best he knew how.  The political in-fighting kept him occupied, as well as the various conflicts for world power.

But as Stalin had forecast, there came a great famine and all seemed lost.  Quietly, Nikita opened the drawer, pulled out the first envelop, and looking around to make sure he was alone, he broke the seal and read the advice.

Comrade,

If you are reading this there is a great calamity that has fallen upon our great Soviet Socialist State.  Here is what you should do.  Call for new elections and create a five-year plan to address whatever has befallen our great land.

Have confidence,

Joseph Stalin

Khrushchev saw immediately the wisdom of this advice and immediately disbanded the politburo, calling for new elections.  While that was going on he announced to the world the creation of a new five-year plan promising all the people of the Soviet Union would be fed and starvation would be a thing of the past.

A few years passed, and it seemed the plan had worked and the people were, for the most part quiet.  But there was a lingering problem with the Warsaw Pact, NATO was becoming a problem and the divided city of Berlin was a growing concern.  Then there was the problem with the US spy planes, but he had handled that when they shot down the U-2 and tried Francis Gary Powers for spying.  People were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with survival when the saw the prosperity of the West, unrest continued to grow until there were riots in Hungry and Poland.  He went back to the drawer and pulled out the second envelop hoping Papa Stalin would once again have the answer.

Comrade,

If you are reading this, the second letter, your five-year plan has failed or there is some other crisis that has befallen you.  Take heart.  There is an answer.  Blame me, your predecessor, for the ills that have befallen you and our great land.  I was in power for a long time… there are many lives I had to take to preserve the Union.  This will bring sunlight to you and give you time to ensure your power is absolute.

Stay Strong,

Joseph Stalin

Taking the advice Khrushchev implemented a state purge, condemned the evils of Stalin and allowed some minor freedoms to quell the riots.  Unfortunately, this only quieted the discontent for a short while.  Once again Khrushchev opened the drawer, pulled the last letter from it and slit it open to see Stalin’s final advice.  It was brief.

Comrade, Write three letters. JS.

But, I digress.

The question I started with can also be stated as “What is immoral in an amoral world?”

Today we are to be outraged over sexual abuse including rape and pedophilia, but it was only 40 years or so ago we were condemning homosexuality with the same fervor.  Hollywood stars who were homosexual had to hide that fact from their adoring fans, while keeping an “open secret” among their friends.  In the 1980’s how many famous names fell victim to the AIDS epidemic, while the most religious (conservatives) vilified them and called AIDS the “wrath of God.”

Then the LGBT community became true activists.  The entertainment industry began to push increasingly sympathetic depictions, there were parades in the major cities, they had a flag, and they aligned themselves with the Democratic Party where they steadily increased their presence until the party was forced to recognize their rights and advocate for their support. 

Today, I think the majority of Americans have come to accept the LGBT  community's right for equal treatment under the law, but the community will continue to advocate that their rights should be superior to others, and that their lifestyle should be encouraged at the cost of other beliefs.  Whether we like it, agree with it, or not, this is the way power politics works in these days of a bi-polar and schizophrenic government.

Other societies, both historic and modern, have embraced various sexual rights and allowances.  So, as those who study the subject suggest, if morality is never absolute and we can choose our own personal moral code, why should we assume pedophilia and the use of sexual violence won’t be perfectly acceptable one day in the future?  It seems only a question of time until the liberal/progressive movement can come to advocate for these rights.

That is until it is time to write the three letters.

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[1] http://www.rationality.net/morality.htm

[2] https://epeak.in/2017/11/17/im-a-feminist-i-study-rape-culture-and-i-dont-want-al-franken-to-resign/

[3] http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/17/politics/kirsten-gillibrand-bill-clinton/index.html

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/opinion/juanita-broaddrick-bill-clinton.html?smid=pl-share

[5] http://www.history.com/topics/joseph-stalin