Saturday, November 10, 2012

Natural Consquences

When raising kids there are a couple of things parents depend upon. One is "natural consequences."

Natural consequences are the perfectly natural and spontaneous outcome of decisions our children make. For example, if you grab something that is hot you get burned. This is a natural consequence and teaches us to be careful about grabbing things.

Tuesday's general election will have natural consequences. There is no doubt about the agenda of the Obama administration and the liberals who run the Democratic party. They have bought yet another election by promising more to people which will drive the country deeper into debt. I don't want to see people barely making it from paycheck to paycheck either, but bankrupting the country isn't a solution. This incessant borrowing of money that we can't afford to borrow is the kind of thing that will destroy everything.

Unfortunately there are a substantial number of people (generally reported to be over 40%) who pay no taxes whatsoever and therefore see nothing wrong with the government handing out more money. Why? Because it doesn't come out of their pockets.

I was figuring the other day that between Federal Income Tax, State Income Tax, Sales Tax, Property Tax, Vehicle Taxes, Medicare, and Social Security about half of everything I earn is taken away by one tax or another. That might even be OK if someone was actually benefitting from this, but it doesn't seem to be happening. Why? Because most of the taxes that are collected from me don't actually pay for any services. What? That's right.

Most of the taxes I pay are actually paying interest on loans the government has received to pay for all that stuff the taxes wouldn't cover. The government has essentially been writing checks with no money in the bank. If we did that we be facing serious jail time, but when the government does it they consider it a "stimulus."

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Conservatism and Religous Fundamentalism

People confuse and interchange these two "isims" regularly. It's not just Liberals who do it either. Conservative and Religious Fundamentalists are also guilty. I've thought about this a lot, and its not completely clear just exactly how Religious Fundamentalism became so bound to Conservatism.

The basic principle underpinning Conservatism is minimal government that stays out of the way of the people to the maximum extent possible. A conservative government would only do those things that abolutely need to be done as opposed to doing things one group or another "want" the government to do.

In this regard, the government's primary role is to preserve, protect and defend the United States Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. That includes providing for the common defense. This is because the United States Constitution is the basis for everything else in the United States. It is simply not the role of the government to be our baby sitter, our Santa Claus, our mommy, our daddy, our minister or our big sister.

The basics of conservatism is that we take personal responsibility for our actions. We are responsible for putting food on our table, raising our own kids, making sure that we take care of our property and deal with others on an honest basis.

Religious Fundamentalism has at its core the idea that there is some basic religious truth which is known only to a particular group or sect and must somehow be imposed on everyone else for their own good or salvation. Religious Fundamentalism would dictate that the government needs to do certain things to further the good that comes from this ultimate truth and leads to a government that does more than actually needs to be done.

The problem happens when people who are religious fundamentalists claim to be conservatives. To bolster this claim they identify with certain conservative principles but ignore the fact that they are at odds with the basis for conservatism. That is, they want the government to do things that a government does not need nor should it be doing.

Let's take a simple example. Marriage. Now let's really be objective about it. Short of establishing some minimum age at which people can marry without parental consent to protect against child abuse, what business is it of the government regarding who can marry? Conservative principles would indicate that the United States Constituion is not placed at risk with regard to who gets married. Marriage is an issue of religion. However, since there are many Religious Fundamentalists who claim to be conservatives and also claim that it is the governments business regarding who gets married, people think this is a conservative principle. It's not. It is a misrepresentation of the conservative principle by people who have hitched their wagon to the name without really embracing the concept.

Someone who claims to be conservative but wants government to do something that government does not need to be doing is no different from a Liberal who is trying to turn the government into a glorified baby sitter for us all.

A conservative would not care who gets married as long as the United States Consitution is not being attacked, and as long as the government is not infringing upon religious freedoms.

Conservatism and Relgious Fundamentalism are two different things and its about time someone pointed it out.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

I Couldn't Listen to the State of the Union Speech

I said couldn't as opposed to didn't. Why couldn't I listen to the State of the Union speech? Because I could not tolerate hearing even one more lie.

I could not bear to hear about any new jobs being created while knowing that no such thing was happening. I could not tolerate hearing how the economy was getting better while knowing it is just as bad as ever and getting worse. I could not tolerate hearing about unemployment numbers getting better while knowing the numbers are better because some people have simply fallen off of the unemployment benefit rolls without finding a job. I could not tolerate hearing unemployment is 8-point-whatever while knowing the reality is 18, 19, or 20%. I could not tolerate hearing about any cuts in government spending while knowing government spending is higher than it has ever been and going up. I could not tolerate hearing how we are going to reduce the debt or the deficit while we have done nothing but increase it every year.

Most of all I could not tolerate listening to all the lies while knowing that there would be people all over the country that were believing this garbage.

Have you ever seen the movie Idiocracy? If not, go find it and watch it. It's us.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

What do you really want?

This is something that has been on my mind for a long time, but I'm still not sure I can explain it. Let me start with a quote from a famous speech by Rev. Martin Luther King. He said something I hear almost every morning, "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Many people claim to want this although they may be thinking about things other than "the color of their skin." Instead the issue for them may be their religion, their life style, their social position, their financial position, or any of a number of things.

Yet while they claim to just want to be judged "by the content of their character" they too often demonstrate by their actions that they want the exact opposite.

Any time we think that some group with which we feel we are associated should be treated in a particular way we are guilty of the very problem that Dr. King dreamed would one day be gone. You see, to be judged by the content of your character is to give up being treated as a group. It is marked by the desire to be treated as an individual who stands on his or her own.

Discrimination is discrimination. It is a process of treating people as groups rather than as individual people of character. It is every bit as much discrimination to do something for people because of their group status as it is to reject them because of their group status. There is no such thing as reverse discrimination. The opposite of discrimination is only the lack of discrimination in any form whether it be for or against.

I've never really counted myself as part of any group. Maybe someone else counted me that way (which would be discrimination), but I didn't.

The day I graduated from high School, over 41 years ago, a Hispanic group gave a scholarship to one of the Hispanic kids in our school. A Black group gave a scholarship to one of the Black kids in our school. A Portuguese group gave a scholarship to one of the Portuguese kids in our school. And on and on. I wasn't any of those. Looking back on it I feel sorry for those people who found it necessary to not just judge people by "the content of their character."

The world might be a whole lot better off if we all just reated each other as individuals, but I think that was the dream.