Let's Just Take Away Their Vote

To read and listen to many of today's pundits try to handicap the Democrat primary campaign heading into West Virginia and Kentucky, you would think that we should probably just not let those people vote. The nicest euphemism that's come up for these voters is "uneducated." I guess calling the people of these states who have inconvenient viewpoints "uneducated" is kind of like calling blacks or hispanics "voters of color," excepting the fact that it is used in a derogatory fashion. So, the more appropriate comparison would be if pundits referred to blacks voting for Obama as "those people *wink* *wink*." Of course, that would never fly, and neither should this other form of bigotry.

What's the criticism, really? I have heard one local talk show host go on for days about how Senator Clinton is courting the "stupid whites and hillbillies," suggesting that it's a shame if that's your only constituency. Far be it from me to defend Hillary as her domestic policies are about as far removed from mine as can be (although as Glenn Reynolds suggests on numerous occasions she might field a much more aggressive foreign policy than a Republican President), but I feel like I have to chip one in here for her, and for the people of Kentucky and West Virginia, both the educated and uneducated alike.

From an intellectual standpoint, choosing the President of the United States is a ridiculously complex task. Voters have to take a measure of a candidate, everything that they have said and done, decide how much of that is truthful and how much is show, then decide how any of that is relevant to the job. Then, they have to sort through the bad stories that the other side has unearthed or manufactured. The sheer amount of information available on which to base the decision is staggering. However in my opinion, there is no evidence so far that people with a superior education choose a superior candidate.

What is the job of President and how do people, even the Highly Educated (including myself: Ivy League, etc.), make that call? I think that when it comes down to it, people recognize that the job of President is in fact an Executive position. Yes, there are policy initiatives and speeches and all of that happy crap. But when it comes down to it, the President is there to act when a tough call comes across his desk. At that point he (or she) won't be going over how the different alternatives reflect on the policy paper they had on their web site during the election. They'll do what they think is the best thing to do. Exactly which forms of legislation will cross the President's desk for signature into law? We can guess, but we can't sure. It'll boil down the President's judgment.

The fact that most people understand this at a basic level means that despite any intellectual protestations to the contrary, they choose their President based to a large degree on how well they identify with that candidate. If you identify with the candidate, it means you feel there is a strong correlation between what you would do in a situation and what the candidate would do. And isn't that what all of us want in our President? Someone who would do what we would do when presented with the same set of circumstances?

That is why the pundits should just lay off the people who haven't been brainwashed at a four year institution of high indoctrination. In fact, one could make an argument that when it comes to making the Presidential decision (voting for legislators is a different thing altogether), their opinion, "uninformed" as it is, is just as valid as anyone else's. Well, it's informed, but not with the kind of information the talking heads prefer to distribute.

Why do you love the government?

Lately, I've been confronted with a growing number of people in both my church and work experience who are expressing a point of view that seems bizarre to me. Their view, though I'm not sure how far they've followed their premises to their eventual conclusions, is that there is a man, Mr. Barack Obama, who will be "good" for our country. As in, morally good. Capital "G" Good.

I have heard them speak adoringly of him, such that the phrase used in conservative circles, the "Obamessiah," really does seem to hit the mark.

"Oh, I love Obama," they say. "He's great. He's what this country needs."

Verbatim quote, that.

I have seen some people on the right note that Obama seems to be functioning as a secular spiritual leader for many on the left who have abandoned or never felt a religious spirituality. That may be true, but it doesn't explain the fervor I see in the eyes of otherwise religious people who appear to think of him as really something special.

From directly questioning people who express a great hope in Barack Obama, I have gleaned that they believe that Mr. Obama:

• Is a moral man;
• Wants to help people;
• Will use the power of the Federal Government to give aid to the poor and needy;
• Will use the power of the Federal Government to allay the negative aspects of capitalism;
• Will stop a pointless, immoral war; and
• Will increase the morality of the Federal Government.

That is my best attempt at an honest appraisal of the situation, stated as neutrally as I can manage. I don't think you would find too many Obama supporters who would disagree with those statements. That being the case, I now present a treatise on a different point of view. It's not so much a classically conservative perspective as it is a different way of looking at many of the basics that people who label themselves "progressives" take for granted.

Progressives purport to be open minded. Free thinkers. Compassionate. Tolerant of other views. My own experience has shown that there is a great divide between what they preach and what they practice regarding their tolerance of other viewpoints, so I have to wonder how many of them will be able to make it through this without simply discarding it because it differs from their orthodoxy at such a basic level.

Organizations are not moral entities
The first mistake that progressives make is that organizations and groups of people simply are not moral entities. To most people, there is no doubt that each individual human being is a moral entity, responsible for their actions and words, with a sense of right and wrong and good and bad. And most people, liberals and conservatives alike, would probably say that organizations (churches, community groups, corporations and governments) are also moral entities. They would be wrong.

History is replete with examples of the difference in moral volume between individuals and groups. It is as simple as looking to the diffusion of individual morality in a group that leads to no one taking action in a bad situation when many individuals in the group might have acted differently if presented with that same situation alone. But what about churches and community groups? Certainly they are moral actors in the world.

What is morality, though? Where is it located? For those of us who profess a religious belief, we would say it is a generational product of the soul and the mind. For are atheistic friends, we can say that morality lives in reason, which is a product of the mind.

What mind does a church have? What business has a soul? And what are the consequences of treating things that lack the basic building blocks of morality as though they had them?

Certainly, you can say that a church, a business or a government has organizations and structures analogous to a mind. But is it close enough to a mind and a soul that it meets the qualifications for admission to the sphere of moral entities?

If you believe that businesses, governments and organizations are moral entities, you believe as a consequence that their decision-making bodies qualify as a mind, and that, if you are religious, the "spirit" of the organization qualifies as a soul. Of course, that's an argument neither side can prove. We can't see the mind or soul of an individual or of a group, and the discussion would quickly descend into "yea-hu/nyu-uh" territory.

A different way to look at the problem, though, is through outcomes. We know the outcome of treating individuals as moral entities. It entails holding people responsible for their actions and words, rewarding those who we have deemed "Good" with our approval, and punishing those we have deemed "Bad" with our disapproval. The outcome is a fairly stable society of individuals, where good behavior is in general socially encouraged, and behavior that is detrimental to society is generally discouraged. A large part of that punishment and reward system is based on moral pressure.

But what do we get when we treat organizations as moral entities? As organizations cannot have morals, you lose the leverage of moral pressure, while at the same time expecting the organizations to behave as individuals. I'd suggest that what you get is the 120 million souls extinguished in the 20th century at the hands of people attempting to implement socialism, far more than religious wars have killed in the entire history of humanity, and far more than have died of want in a capitalistic society. The drive for socialism is the drive to hold government to the moral imperatives of the individual.

Why do people persist in a belief in socialism?
I suggest to you that capitalism -- the private ownership of property and the ability to dispose of that property as the owner sees fit without interference from outside powers -- is the natural state of humanity. "It's mine" is one of the basic of human impulses. Socialism, even of the ideal variety, flies directly in the face of that. Socialism, in which nothing at all belongs to the individual, is the exact opposite of one of the most basic human understandings. Is it any surprise that any time it has been tried, force has been needed to make it stick? In what other realm would we be so foolish to force a way of being on people which simply is not?

This isn't to say that all human impulses are good, or that we do nothing as a society and as individuals to try to mitigate the darker impulses we have. In fact, coupled to "It's mine" is also the natural empathy we feel (and yes, it's embedded in us at a bio-mechanical level) when we see another human being unjustly (or maybe even justly) suffering. "It's mine" is balanced by "Let me help you." That is a good thing, and it is so because we are moral creatures.

The great experiment of socialism was nothing more than an attempt to ignore "it's mine" -- to take the moral imperative of "let me help you" away from the individual and assign it to an organization. The results of that experiment are well known, and are to me the greatest indicator that attempting to do such a thing, to supersede the morality of individuals with the morality of an organization, end in disaster. The failure of socialism and socialistic policies is due to the fact that they require moral actions and accountability from an entity, the government, that is definitionaly amoral. Requiring a dog to be a good cat will not produce a good cat. It only makes a confused dog.

How can we decide which form of government and economic system to use, then? Certainly, socialism is seen as more moral than capitalism because its stated intentions are better. Socialism hopes that everyone should have everything, in plenty, and there should be no failure or competition. Capitalism doesn't care one bit. All it cares about is that individuals (and groups of individuals) can dispose of their property as they choose. But see how quickly looking at economic systems in those terms devolves into silliness? Capitalism doesn't actually "care." Socialism doesn't really "hope." They are philosophies, and describing them in this way, as I've heard almost every progressive I've ever talked with about this do, ascribes to them qualities they simply do not have. Thinking about philosophies in such a flawed fashion leads directly to bad policy decisions.

If we can't judge economic philosophies based on their supposed moral imperatives, what they "care" about, then what metric can we use? As I said before, I would look at outcomes. One of the things that progressives tend to go on about is the plight of the poor, and how socialism in the form of government action and programs will help them. Looking at history, though, which economic system has helped the poor the most? It turns out that national economies that lean to socialism create poverty. That's right. They actually create it, foster it and grow it. National economies that lean to capitalism, though they are less "moral" in the eyes of progressives, actually raise the standards of living for everyone, the poor included.

It can be argued that the citizens of the United States of America, through technological innovation driven by capitalism, are responsible for a greater increase in the standards of living for more human beings than any other group of people combined in the history of the world. Period. Socialism has produced almost nothing useful to the alleviation of human suffering. Capitalism is responsible for the simple fact that you and I live a life beyond the wildest imaginings of even the rulers of the world as recently as a hundred years ago.

So, when looking at outcomes, the choice is clear. If you can ignore that voice in your head that tells you the system you choose must be moral, even though systems are definitionaly amoral, you might just change your mind. Ask yourself, as a progressive, why you think that systems and groups are moral entities. If you cannot answer that question adequately other than saying "well... they HAVE to be!" you may need to rethink the way you look at economics and government policy.

What are governments good at?
If governments cannot be moral actors, then what are they good for? What purpose do they serve? The brief answer is that governments exist to project force. For and against whom they project that force helps to differentiate the types of governments. The Federal government of the United States has very few positive mandates (as originally constructed), but they all involve the application of force. Besides the normal powers presented in the Constitution (raise an army, declare and fund war) that are obvious uses of force, the rest, too, involve force involve force in more or less obvious ways. The levying of taxes and the ability to settle disputes between the states (and other financial powers and issues) are all backed by the use of imprisonment and lethal force. Never forget that taxes are collected at the barrel of a gun.

The Bill of Rights can be read quite directly as explicit limitations on the ways that the Federal government can apply force to the citizens of the United States. This is really basic civics class, but I find myself amazed at how few people remember those early lessons. The first governments formed to instill the authority of force within an individual or individuals to carry out the sense of justice of a local community. It was, essentially, field deputization. And although the scale of things has changed, that original purpose has not. Government, large and small, is there to use force or the threat of force to accomplish a goal. In the case of a legitimate government, that force will be used in accordance with law, as it is in most of the modern Western world. In an illegitimate government, that force will be used almost exclusively against the very people who live within the governmental system for the sole purpose of the retention of government power, as it is in places like Zimbabwe and China. This is not a binary situation, and all governments ride a line between these two extremes.

Even the most noble end of government, which according to progressives is helping the poor and oppressed, has at its basis the use of force. No government program with a grounding in socialist philosophy (the redistribution of wealth) would be possible without the taking of private property in the form of taxes. As was mentioned before, taxes are collected under the threat of force, whatever anyone may say about your duty to pay them. And so, we find ourselves in a situation where in order to have our government act like a moral individual and provide aid to the poor, we must use force against our neighbor to do so.

Of course, some amount of taxation is necessary. It is not good, but necessary. In America and other capitalist societies, we agree to give up a small portion of our private property (under threat of force) in order to ensure that the government can project enough force on our behalf against foreign and domestic powers that we can maintain our right to the rest of our property. The rest, from the standpoint of government, is all cost, and no benefit.

If you use a gun to feed a person and don't realize you're using a gun, it's not going to work out how you planned.
It stands to reason that to engage a entity like the Federal government to attempt a moral action, of which morality it cannot know, will produce a paradoxical result. You intend to help the poor. But all you do is take from others by force, without even accomplishing your primary goal.

If helping the poor were as simple as giving them money, this might actually create some net good. Unfortunately, that is obviously not the case. How many hundreds of millions of dollars in goods and services have been taken from people then redistributed (once the government eats away a percentage in its massive inefficiency) to no avail? What has it bought us? It seems that when you spend large amounts of money on poverty, you get what you pay for. More poverty. In your attempt to impose a moralistic structure on something that is by its nature amoral, you not only use force against your neighbor to take from them, but you don't even accomplish your original goal.

Yes, we should be helping our brothers and sisters in need. But as individuals, and groups of like-minded individuals who want to pool their own resources to do so. As soon as you step over the bounds of what is yours, though, and start requiring by force of government that others help, the battle is lost. You are no longer helping, because you have abrogated your own moral duty to an entity that is amoral. When a person asks another for help, it is the beginning of a psychological process in them and a personal engagement on the part of the helper that benefits both and has a great chance of success. When a person applies to a government agency for cash benefits, no such process begins. It is faceless. Soulless. There is no help -- only property that has been taken from someone else.

Here is the point where my understanding fails. In the face of the massive failure of socialism and government programs to allay poverty, how can anyone continue to put faith in the efficacy of such things? I think it is their overwhelming need for the government to appear moral to them. The actual outcomes don't matter or can be wished away. It is a horrible temptation to abandon our moral responsibilities and hope that somehow the government that never succeeded in doing so in the past will somehow work it out for the good, for the moral way, this time.

Direct Admonition From The Bible
Now is the point where progressives, especially religious ones, begin to look for justification for their faith in government power, because the facts are clearly not on their side. They say that Jesus advocated the changing of governmental systems. He was a rebel. He shook up The Man. Indeed he did, but that was by the way he lived his life as an individual and in the way he helped other individuals. The textual message of Jesus in the Gospels is very very personal. Of course, you can extrapolate things from his life. Almost any message you like, including the message that Jesus admonishes us to work for governmental change. Of course, most of the people I've met who argue that point of view want governmental change that advances "progressive" ideals. But the truth is one that I learned in college: don't ignore the plain meaning in favor of the one you've dug up.

I saw it innumerable times in literature classes, and it seems to be the same thing today. The professors would find some scant textual evidence for a contrarian point of view that was in vogue while they worked on their theses. No matter that the point of view was in direct contradiction to the clean meaning of the text. Somehow, that top level meaning was downplayed, as they strove to make points about the anagogical context with their fellow intellectuals.

I clearly recall hearing a professor who I know for a fact to be a very good person and self-sacrificing humanitarian go on and on about his theory that in Paradise Lost Adam and Even had not had pre-lapsarian sex. He found all kinds of things he considered hints, and deep hidden meanings that implied it. It was his pet theory, and he went on and on about it. In class one day, I had really had enough, so I asked why, if his interpretation were true, Milton had said straight up that Adam and Eve had "laid" together "in connubial bliss?" To this professor's credit, he took a moment, thought about it and said "You're right." He promised to reconsider his theory in light of the fact that the literal text shot it down.

I think that people who live deep within a text on a daily basis sometimes lose sight of the very plain meaning it presents. Jesus asks us to change ourselves, and to show that change to the world so others can have a chance to experience it. He demonstrates and explicitly advocates dealing directly with people and personally helping them. The only mention he makes of the government or larger systems is to say that they are what they are, and if we choose to deal with them, we will get what they have to offer.

It is no surprise to someone like myself who knows what government is good at (projecting force) why Jesus did not attempt to save people by signing up with the ruling powers, setting up salvation committees and sending centurions to every corner of the globe to preach his word. He chose to walk among individuals, to touch them, eat with them and help them as individuals. The text is plain about that. The message of salvation, the conviction of human sin and our duty to love our neighbors as ourselves is not one that will survive if we attempt to spread and enact it by force. To extrapolate the text into a message of "social justice" which by its very nature requires the iron fist of government runs directly counter the plain message. Now, if someone talks about "social justice" simply as the removal of legal barriers to equality that is one thing. I have rarely heard it used in such a limited fashion, though. Are they really ready to spread their interpretation of the Good News by force? I am almost sure that they have not considered that this is what they are doing, this is the true conclusion of their premises, whether they realize it or not.

The real problem, and what should not be done about it
I've already mentioned my take on taxation several times, so I won't repeat it. But with that in mind, it suggests both the real problem and a solution. We are told by both Republicans and Democrats that the problems we see in the world -- poverty, racism, violence, inequality -- can be solved through the judicious use of government. Problems in government like corruption and disenfranchisement can be solved through a more judicious use of... government. An interesting notion.

Could it be that these things are not problems in search of government solutions, but instead symptoms of the problem of governments that are too large and powerful themselves? I've written before about the deleterious effect of the tax code on business. When changing the tax code or regulatory structures becomes a route to a greater return on investment than conducting actual business, businesses will attempt to change the tax code and regulatory structure. Business, like other organizations and systems, is naturally amoral. Like the wind, it is a generated effect. "Business" is the overall picture we perceive when we look at the billions of data points that are individual financial decisions. You can control it as well as you can control the wind.

Capital is like electricity in a circuit or packets on the Internet. It will flow through the path of least resistance and greatest return. That is a law of nature, just like "It's mine." And just like the fact that organizations are not moral entities. Cut off the money, and you cut off the power. If you reduce the income of government and its ability to raise further income, you destroy its ham-handed attempts to be moral that are always doomed to fail. If you can manage to reduce its power, though, to shrink the caliber of the Big Gun, you return moral responsibility to the individuals of our nation, while at the same time destroying the government as a valid revenue stream for business, consequently removing the corruption.

Organizations are not moral actors. Why then would you put your faith in someone who promises to bring "better" morals to entities like business and government that cannot even have them, especially when we have seen what happens when you try to do so?

The government is a gun. Why then would you put your faith in someone who promises to use that gun to do things other than project force?

Rather, I would choose to elect as my public servants (not to follow as a leader as I hear so many progressives tout) people who understand that business is an amoral effect, the net result of individuals exchanging and disposing of their property as they see fit. People who understand that the government is indeed a gun, and attempt at every step to minimize its scope and power, and therefore, its ability to be used against us. Certainly, there is no one like that on the left. I see people filled with rapture at the thought of Senator Obama becoming President of the United States, and I have to wonder what they are thinking. Why do they put such faith in both a man and a government to solve problems whose solutions have already been presented to us two thousand years ago? Of course, there is no one like that running on the right at the moment either, but at least their words coincide with bits and pieces of this from time to time.

I urge anyone who thinks that Senator Obama will help to "heal" our country or help certain groups of people, to reconsider why they think that government is even capable of such things, and to look at the cost in history of trying to force it into being so.

From the standpoint of someone like myself who advocates for drastically smaller government, this standpoint is, ironically, just more of the same. There is no change here. Just a desire to make the government something that it simply is not, and the inevitable side effect that the Big Gun grows stronger. We need personal responsibility, within ourselves and to our fellow humans, but without the weapon of government prodding our backs. No one at all is preaching that this year, but I know whose message is the furthest from it.

Your Next School Board Meeting Will Be In Harrisburg

One of the major issues in Pennsylvania over the last couple of election cycles has been property tax "reform" or "relief." Personally, I think we should be grateful that Governor Rendell hasn't been able to deliver on one of the largest planks of his election platforms. The sort of reform he has pushed for is nothing short of an anti-market power grab for the strings of Pennsylvania's schools.

First, what's wrong with the Pennsylvania's local property taxes? The main criticisms of the current system, in which each school district levies taxes based on some sort of valuation of real estate, are that:

A: They aren't Constitutional. The Pennsylvania Constitution (Article VIII, S1) states that: "All taxes shall be uniform, upon the same class of subjects, within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax, and shall be levied and collected under general laws."

At least that's what a Court of Common Pleas Judge recently used to try to invalidate the property tax structure of Allegheny County. This seems to be quite a stretch to me, as it's pretty clear that this single sentence in the Constitution is there to prevent taxing authorities from capriciously slapping an onerous tax on an individual or class of individuals, eg. a minority group they are trying to run out of town. It simply means that within the area of a taxing authority, the tax laws have to apply across the board.

So really, the argument against Constitutionality is little more than a tactic in the battle against local property taxes with very little grounds in reality. This ruling is being fought, and, even if it doesn't fall, local tax structures will almost certainly blissfully ignore it without a magnification from some higher judicial or legislative authority.

B: They hurt those on a fixed income. While it's true that people on a fixed income (which is political code for the elderly on Social Security or people on some other kind of government support) can be forced from their homes by rising local property taxes, the Constitution actually gives the Pennsylvania General Assembly the power to exempt or relieve from real estate taxes people who, "because of age, disability, infirmity or poverty" (Article VIII, S2, b, ii) as long as the state reimburses the local taxing authority for the lost revenue.

So, the first argument against local property taxes seems to be more of a legal tactic than any kind of real objection. The second has a built-in remedy that the GA could enact if that were what they really cared about. With both of those complaints out of the way, what is the real gripe with local property taxes? I think that it is an attempt to centralize control of eduction at the State level.

One of the benefits of the current tax system that no one seems to mention is that it provides families with a very clear network of choices that allow them to balance their cost of living against government services and, in particular, the quality and timbre of public education. Local property taxes are an excellent way of letting the free market work on government and education. Yes, you can choose to live in a very safe, exurban area with instant access to all amenities and a superb school district. That's a very popular combination these days. So, what's the best system we know of when to balance supply and demand?

Duh. The market system, and locally set property taxes function in exactly that way.

The more desirable configurations of location and services will end up costing more in property tax. And if you think this is just theoretical, it isn't. People, loads of people in Pennsylvania, regularly move into different taxing districts to fine tune their particular needs. Think taxes are too high? Move two miles west into the next district where they are considerably lower. Not too keen on the level of service and education offered there? Well, then, I guess that your current taxes weren't too high after all.

Don't have kids, and want to live in solitude with no one to bother you, including the government? You can choose to live in a rural community with very little in the way of local government services and rock-bottom real estate taxes.

The choice, currently, is yours.

What advantage would there be to changing the current system? Under the current proposals: none.

All of the remedies under consideration at the State level involve reducing local property taxes across the board, or eliminating them altogether, and replacing them with statewide taxes: either sales, income, or a combination of both.

If you think that getting your local school board to listen to you when you have a complaint is tough, just wait until you have to go to Harrisburg to do it. As soon as our local school boards, horrible though they are, are relieved of their ability to adjust local tax rates, they also lose their ability to set local policy. As if our schools, even the good districts, weren't already weighed down by the grimy stink of bureaucrats more interested in their own retirement funds than in helping to educate America's next generation of innovators, leaders and workers.

Get ready for "if you want that State education funding, you have to do what we say." Of course, that already goes on to a certain degree, and it's a great argument to me for school districts staying as far away from Federal and State funding as possible, but when your entire school district's revenue is dependent on State-level funding, then we'll get the same kind of educational wizardry we see from the geniuses who have turned PennDOT into the laughingstock of the nation.

Pennsylvania's system of local property taxes could stand a few tweaks to be sure, but to let the State of Pennsylvania effectively remove taxing authority from school districts and bring it all under its bloated, corrupt umbrella would be a colossal mistake, and most likely the final straw on the back of Pennsylvania's already tax-broken economy.

Do You Even Know What That Means?

A recent poll states that 45% of the American public wants President Bush to face impeachment.

In all fairness to the President, I think that any survey that asks such a question should follow up with these ones and likewise report the results:

1. Do you know what impeachment is? Please explain the process.
2. For which crimes, specifically, should the President be impeached?

Call me a crazy, conclusion-jumping kangaroo in man's clothing, but I'd be willing to bet that about 15% of the public (and not necessarily a full overlap with the 45%) could describe impeachment and removal with any kind of material accuracy. Actual crimes... that would be another tough one. Torture at Gitmo! Er... He's a Nazi! Or. Something. The pollster could then give the respondents a remedial civics lesson about what impeachment is, how it works, and how you actually have to have, you know, a law that's been violated. And just not liking the guy, or shouting "Abu Ghraib!" doesn't cut it.

Personally, I think the impeachment of Bill Clinton and subsequent trial was a pathetic, politically motivated smear tactic and a horrible precedent to set. And for the current President? You voted for him, you've got him for four years. Suck it up, people.

Ron Paul Would Be Proud

One of the current Republican Presidential candidates who has absolutely no chance of winning the nomination is Ron Paul. Not heard of Mr. Paul? That's no surprise.

His views are radically in conflict with almost any other candidate or political group you care to name. He's a libertarian. Actually, calling him a libertarian is kind of like saying that Jesse Owens could "sort of run." The guy is hard core to the point of utter impracticality. "Mainstream" libertarians, and we're not the most practical lot in the world though we think we are, shake their heads when he walks into the room.

Why do I even mention this?

Well, this morning I was behind a Subaru driver with a silly bumper sticker. His sticker read "I'd vote for Ron Paul" and sported a picture of Thomas Jefferson. Invoking the opinions of the dead is silly, in my opinion, and as long as you're going down the road of making up supporting blurbs from people who really aren't available to give them, you might as well go the whole way and just start making up quotes from God.

Back to Mr. Paul and the Subaru driver. One of the precepts of libertarianism, and one to which I ascribe, is a fairly strict reading of "my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins." The current sense of the society in which we live seems to be more of "my right to think something ends when you're offended by what you construe might have been a dirty look." Many people are quick to sue or seek legal recourse against others for imagined or intangible slights, and that goes against my beliefs. I would extrapolate from Ron Paul's political philosophy that both him and his followers would take an especially narrow viewpoint of the aforementioned axiom.

So, imagine my surprise when the Subaru driver ahead of me spent a few seconds dumping his cigarette out the window of his car, then rubbing his fingers together to makes sure that no bits of tobacco remained. Littering like this is such a clear violation of libertarian principles that I was at first surprised, then pleased by the irony.

In economic terms, littering is saying "I have a cost, which is to properly dispose of my own waste products, that I will completely ignore and abrogate to humanity in general, and to my local government specifically." Libertarianism says that each person pays their own way. And the more strict your viewpoint on libertarianism, the more you should strive to take care of your own costs.

So, person in the Subaru, I'm sure Ron Paul and Thomas Jefferson would have been proud of you this morning. I can see them both walking around Montecello, shooting the breeze about personal responsibility and tossing their Snickers bar wrappers on the ground.

"Thomas!" says Ron. "How dare you cause others cost for your own unrighteous convenience?"

"Oh Ron,"Jefferson laughs, "I would never dream of such an affront! I've placed my billing address upon the wrapper, so that whoever picks it up may properly invoice my estate for the labor. In fact, I've created an economic opportunity for some poor sod!"

And Ron Paul would smile.

[Please note: comments regarding why Ron Paul is the only potential Savior of America will be removed, unless they are amusing to a general audience.]

Casual Misandry in Home Depot's Ad Department

Radio commercial from the way into work this morning:

[Sung] "It's all inside..." [Sears]

[Narrator] "Here's a thirty-second shopping tip from us to you..."

[cell phone rings -- all voices are through cell-sounding connection]

[Woman] "Hi honey!"

[Man] "Hey. What're you looking at?"

[Woman, in stupified, amazed voice] "Shoes. You should see these shoes."

[Man] "Ummm... didn't we agree we were here to get a washing machine?"

[Woman, still mesmerized] "Yeah, but these pumps... I already have your credit card in my hand..."

[Man] "Can those shoes do our laundry?"

[Woman, reluctantly] "I'll be right over."

[Sung] "It's all inside..."

"Sears"

Really bizarre, no?

Well, as you probably figured out about halfway through, that's not a real radio spot. How did you figure that out? There's no way that would ever make it on the air.

In reality, the spot was one for Home Depot in the exact same format in which a man slavers and drools over a new grill, while his wife sticks to the practical plan of finding the washing machine they agreed to. The bit about the credit card wasn't in there, but I thought it worked on the same level of stereotyping: men are stupid, easily-distracted beasts who only like shiny grills and meat vs. women are vapid, easily-distracted shopoholics who live to spend their husbands' future earnings on new shoes.

So, beyond the fact that this scenario simply doesn't happen (I mean, come on... when was the last time a guy wanted to, you know, detour shop when there was a clear plan for getting in and out of a store, while the gal was on an efficient one-product-only retail mission?), what's wrong with this ad?

The answer's obvious, of course. Why is it okay to make fun of guys in advertising and not the ladies? I know this has been talked about for a while now, but I was hoping that maybe it was a phase that these uncreative "creative" types were going through and that it would have pooped itself out by now. Apparently I was wrong.

I'm not saying that I think the above fake ad is okay. It's not. It's uncreative, dumb and not funny. I'm just saying that the real ad shouldn't have seen the light of day for the same reasons.

I think I'll start a website entirely devoted to putting up counter-ads to the large proportion of ads that use the "guy as dope" cliche to sell their service. I'll have to put scans of Berenstain Bears books on there too, with the text rewritten to reflect a broader reality of family life than just "Mom's are always smart and oh-so-wise, the kids are not far behind, but Dad's little better than an ex-convict with ADHD and an active meth habit."

So thanks, Home Depot, for taking casual shots at the very group of people who provide more revenue to your company than all other groups combined. Geniuses running that place, I tell you.

Honest - I'd Write An Unbiased Article, But The Government Won't Give Me Enough Free Money

Here's an article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "Rallies fault Bush for public housing cuts"

This article is so biased toward socialism that I couldn't not say something about it. Let's look:

About 500 people marched in the Hill District yesterday to protest another year of federal cuts in affordable housing that likely will mean layoffs in Pittsburgh. The Philadelphia Housing Authority announced 350 layoffs Tuesday.

So, the government should never ever ever cut spending, because it will mean that people who work for the government will lose jobs. That's just phenomenal logic: we shouldn't cut the size of government, because it would reduce the size of government. I'm thinking that we should have the government employing the absolute least number of people possible. I also like how the article calls it "affordable" housing. Instead of using that loaded term, shouldn't the socialist writer have used something more accurate like "taxpayer subsidized" housing? Notice that not once in the entire article is there any mention that the money for all this comes from taxpayers.

In rallies and daylong shutdowns that involved almost 100 agencies across the nation, public housing advocates skewered the Bush administration for budget shortfalls.

Skewered? Have at you sir! The author must think that the rallies really stuck it to Bush. Why else use the word "skewered"? A less biased way to say it would have simply been "criticized". Then, they go on to call them budget "shortfalls", which are bad -- we all know a budget shortfall is bad right? -- instead of cuts. Could it be because most people think government budget cutting is good, and there's no way in the world this writer would portray it that way? Of course, all of this ignores the fact that it is the Congress that draws up and passes spending legislation, not the President, but since Congress are the good guys now, we can't say anything against them.

"We need to convey the severity of the single largest reduction in funding this agency has ever faced and what it means to the 20,000 residents we serve," said A. Fulton Meachem, executive director of the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh.

Of course this guy's pissed... he's losing his funding! Seriously, has any head of a government department ever said "We're having our budget cut and reducing the size of our agency. Isn't that grand!"?

Chanting "What do we want? Fair housing! When do we want it? Now!" residents of public housing, advocates of affordable housing and plumbers, carpenters, painters and security officers for housing authorities traipsed en masse from the Hill House to Freedom Corner along Centre Avenue.

Can someone explain to me what "fair housing" is? "Fair", in the normal sense of the word, means that everyone plays by the same rules. When you map that onto commercial transactions like rent, it simply means that you get what you pay for. No more, no less. That's fair. What they mean is that they want better housing than they can pay for. Which, on a limited basis I'm not entirely against. We shouldn't have people living on the streets. But the whole public housing system is entirely screwed, and there is little that public housing residents give back to society in exchange for us providing them with housing that they otherwise couldn't afford.
How's this for "fair" housing? If you're going to house yourself and your family on MY labor, you need to give something back to the community. What would that be? I'm not sure, but I'd say it starts with getting your kids and neighborhoods under control and not letting your housing development turn into a crime-ridden slum. What's that, you say? The police should be doing that? Wrong! Although it's not their stated intent, in real life, law enforcement's job is to look for the guy that shot you, not prevent it in the first place. Oh, sometimes they're in the right place at the right time, and get to prevent a crime. But the real responsibility for safe neighborhoods begins with the people who live there. Period.

Before the march, to a packed Kaufmann Auditorium, Frank Aggazio, executive director of the Allegheny County Housing Authority, said, "I've never seen a crisis like this."

Look! Another guy in charge of a Housing Authority is losing his funding. And he's not happy about it. I'm just as shocked as I was the first time.

Henry Wild, a resident of public housing in Ross, told the assembly, "Pick up a piece of paper and write those politicians and let them know how disgusted you are."

I want to see those letters! "Dear politician, I am so disgusted that you gave me less free money that other people earned this year. Please give me more free money next year, because I would like to get all the different HBO channels instead of just the one I have now."

This year's federal allocation is 76 percent of the amount the federal government's own formula says a housing authority needs to operate. Last year's allocation was about 85 percent. The year before it was almost 89 percent.
"Subsidies continue to get cut, and prices go up," said Michelle Jackson-Washington, deputy director of the Pittsburgh Housing Authority. "We're avoiding them [layoffs] for as long as possible.
"If we don't have the money to pay police officers at night, what happens to security?" she asked. "What happens to the maintenance of leaking faucets? Snow removal?"

So we have statistics cited without any kind of references. What formulas, exactly? Sounds to me like the writer just regurgitated some Housing Authority PR numbers without even taking ten seconds to understand them. I'm sure there's absolutely no statistical shenanigans going on there. It's the age of the Internet -- throw us a reference so we can confirm that you're not just blowing smoke. It's easy, really.

Demographers and housing experts have been warning of a coming crisis caused by diminishing housing options for the poor. Incentives to help low-income people buy homes, like tax credits, do not reach far enough to help the very poor, of whom many in public housing are elderly.
She added that more than 40 percent of the residents in public housing in the city work, "but they're not making enough to go to the private market."

Any mention in the article of alternatives to taxpayer funded public housing? I don't see any. All I see is a list of big government solutions to a problem that is largely its own creation. Apparently, the only solutions the writer can see reside with the government.

The federal cutbacks will cause an ever expanding economic ripple, said Ms. Jackson-Washington. "We employ 480 people who pay taxes, and we have a very large vendor list" of people the authority pays for services.
The Allegheny County Housing Authority already has reduced its staff drastically over the past three years, from 280 to 165.

Sounds like a good start. So now, according to Ms. Jackson-Washington, we should be employing people at taxpayer expense because... wait for it... they pay taxes on their income. The stupidity of that statement is stunning.

"What I'm hoping is that the climate in Washington has changed a little bit and that lawmakers can find it in their hearts" to reverse the misfortune, said Mr. Aggazio, whose housing authority oversees 3,200 public housing units at 36 sites, 10 of which are designated for the elderly. In nine others, most residents are elderly.

Wait a minute. I thought this was the President's fault. At least, that's what the headline says. But here, Mr. Aggazio says that it's up to Congress to 'find it "in their hearts" to reverse the misfortune.' I was under the silly impression that it was Congress that allocated funding, and Congress that could cut it or increase it. So there, Mr. Aggazio and I agree. But it make me wonder why the headline would then accuse the President of doing this, when even within the article itself lies the admission that it's Congress? Also, I like how it's once again not characterized as spending less of the taxpayer's money -- it's "misfortune". Just plain old bad luck.

And now we also see the tragedy of this whole situation: by the Federal government more or less monopolizing and subsidizing a culture of poverty, we are presented with the horrible choice of allowing an out-of-control government behemoth to continue to grow or... throw old people out on the streets. That sucks.

"It is not a stretch to believe that if the current trend continues, many housing authorities will simply go out of business," said Carl Greene, executive director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, who initiated yesterday's national protest.
If housing authorities start going out of business, said Ms. Jackson-Washington, "homelessness will be the alternative."

Another disgruntled Housing Authority director ready to lose his funding. Yawn. And Housing Authorities are a business now? I thought businesses did something like offer a product or service so they could make a profit. Don't get me wrong -- the mission statement for the Allegheny County Housing authority is a noble one. It really is. But when did people stop realizing that depending on large amounts of Federal tax money was a bad idea, one that was likely to bite you in the ass sooner or later? If a hammer devises a noble statement about driving screws into wood to the very best of its ability... well, it might be a nice sentiment, but it doesn't change the fact that it's the wrong tool for the job, or that the screws actually need to be set into concrete block.

"We're having an erosion in dollars for the lowest-income people," said Elizabeth G. Hersh, executive director of the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania. She said her agency will use a recent survey of Pennsylvanians to lobby for political will that's been lacking.
The survey of 802 registered voters, conducted last summer on behalf of housing advocates in the state, ranked affordable housing second only to affordable health care as the top concerns.
The report indicated that a majority of those surveyed failed to recognize that a shortage of affordable houses is a problem, but of those who did, 88 percent put it in second place.

I'd love to see the wording of those questions. At this point in the article, can you really trust the author that those questions weren't radically biased? They may not have been, but in light of the rest of the article there is no reason to trust them on it.

While public housing distributions have been cut for three straight years, a new federal formula has been devised to redistribute operating money from the Northeastern states to the Sun Belt. Donna White, HUD's national spokeswoman, said that is because a Harvard study showed that Southern states have been underfunded while Northeastern states have been overfunded.

So... why not interview all the poor people in the South who've had to suffer because the downtrodden in the Northeast have had more than their "fair" share of free money? Well, obviously because this a Pittsburgh newspaper. No problem with that. But this is just a demonstration of the socialist government mindset: to win in one place, someone has to lose somewhere else. And that's because the government doesn't actually produce or create anything of value. They just take from the people who actually do produce things and add value to society, remove their ever-growing cut, then hand it back out in a degraded state.
And let's finish with a completely political quote so loaded with Iraq war buzzwords that I'm not even going to bother to deconstruct it:

"I urge President Bush to reverse course and come up with a new strategy for affordable housing," said Mr. Greene. "Stop the cut-and-run policy and restore the value held by most Americans of helping the vulnerable among us."

This is certainly quality "news" reporting. If the Post-Gazette keeps writing stuff this good, they may be able to start syndicating their stuff to Socialist and Communist news weeklies around the world!

It Takes One To Know One

We're mostly good people here, and, as I tell my kids, good people don't usually think that others are up to bad things. It's the liar in us who looks for the liar in others, and the mugger in us who looks over his shoulder on the street at night. And it's not like that's a bad thing. It gives us a better read on threats than an amorphous fear of the unknown ever will.

It also means that we give the benefit of the doubt, sometimes even too far.

Before the second plane hit the South tower, we were all busy ignoring the warriors within us. Some of us desperately so. It's hard, almost impossible, for good people to seriously consider deliberately murdering thousands, if not tens of thousands, of completely innocent human beings on behalf of an ideology. That's why everyone sat there after the first plane hit and told themselves "what a horrible accident."

When the second plane hit, that thought became instantly invalid. It was no longer up to us to look for malice or good, to guess at motives. Others had made the presentation in an irrefutable manner, tied up in a package of concrete, steel and souls. When the second plane hit, many of us thought immediately of how many other planes were in the sky at any given moment, each one a potential missile, and ouradrenaline spiked. Then, the Pentagon. Then, Shanksville. How many more would follow before they could be stopped?

It was right after the second plane hit that I went to war with them. To some people, the attack spoke to their inner pacifist: when someone wants to kill you, have them over for dinner, because they probably just don't understand where you're coming from. It spoke to their inner self-doubt, cutting loose their anchor on reality already worn floss-thin by an entire lifetime spent in the temple of relativism.

Now, I am a Christian, a follower of the teachings of Jesus Christ. I strive to emulate them in the way I deal with others, both those who are kind to me and those who are not. At the same time, I am a student of Mark Twain, and remember the first time I really got one of the major themes of Huck Finn. Huck resolves that to turn (escaped slave) Jim in is the wrong thing to do, and even though every source of information available to him tells him he will go to Hell if he doesn't, Huck decides to do that thing he knows is right, consequences and Hell be damned. Likewise, I've heard various riffs on the passage from Jesus' sermon about "not resisting an evil man", and turning the other cheek when slapped, all trying to explain away the pretty clear direction present in His message. They all seem to be rationalizations put up to let us fight evil. Personally, I'm with Huck, and just don't bother. If resisting a mortal danger to your family and way of life is wrong, then I will be wrong.

How that squares with Jesus' words, I am not sure. It probably doesn't. I'll ask Him when I meet Him. But until then, people like myself will resist.

In their shortsightedness, the people who presented us with this war saw only one side of the equation. They saw the future, with America in tatters, her countryside freckled with mosques and echoing the sounds of the call to prayer. They looked at us, and they saw no warriors, because they were not warriors themselves. What did they call us? Weak. Ineffective. A culture steeped in decay. It was the only way they could see us from afar, such was the lens of their own person. But they were wrong.

And fifty years from now, it will not be the United States that is dotted with mosques and madrassas, but their own lands that will be covered in McDonalds and Wal Marts. Their own children educated in secular classrooms. Their own mothers and fathers seeing their children win the soccer game next weekend rather than practicing for a suicide mission, rolling their eyes instead of reaching for a knife when their daughters come down the stairs dressed for school in a belly shirt.

The men and women of the active West, those whose heritage is one of action, decision, courage and ingenuity, will not be beaten. We will not. And if someday we have to do horrible things in order to ensure that our grandchildren will not have to revisit these same shores, then those things will surely be done.

I feel that we stand at the edge of a great precipice, watching those on the other side with the part of our good selves that still wants to hope for the best. But the other part of us is ready, too, watching for the flinch of motion that signals war. Fortunately, we are clever, and have machines, structures and philosophies that allow us to stand at that edge and rain Hell on our enemies without fear that we will lose our footing. Our enemy, however, has only a crumbling cliff's edge on which to stand, while a long, dark fall stares up at them, waiting.

Life On A Suburban Cul-De-Sac

Your stated goal:
To kill both myself and my family, and push my house down the hillside into the river.

My goal:
To beat the piss out of you, and get the neighborhood to finally put you under house arrest, because up until now they've been letting you run around the cul-de-sac and inviting you over for tea.

What happens:
After weeks and months of you leaving flaming poop bombs on my porch and lobbing little bits of rubbish over the fence into my yard, you finally decide to sneak onto my property while I'm at the store. You grab my cat.

One of the neighbors left a message on my answering machine letting me know it was you, like there was any doubt to begin with, so I decide to not only get my cat back, but to make sure that you know there will be real and lasting consequences if you ever do anything remotely like this again. Also, despite your constant idiotic threats and braggadocio, our has always been a neighborhood that the police are loathe to disturb. In fact, I've gotten the distinct impression that the guys down at the station don't like my family and wouldn't mind seeing us just move the hell out. So anyway, part of my plan now is to force the police to take some notice and actually, like, do their freaking jobs.

Over to your house. You're on the front porch. Being a good citizen, I have a couple of guns at home, but decided that this would be better settled without them.

"What 'cha doin', jackass?" you say.

I waste no time. Crack. Right in the nose.

"Hey come on!"

Crunch.

"We was jus' defendin' our own!" you whine.

I continue to smack you around the porch. You've lost some teeth and your nose is broken.

"Give back our cat", I say.

You smirk. "We're goin' ta kill you. Bite me."

I opt, instead, to kick you in the balls. I notice that your kids are shouting and swearing from inside the house, and tossing any trash they can find out your windows and onto my property.

You get in a punch or two, but generally, I spend the next ten minutes beating you around your porch and south lawn. Five minutes ago, you were still going on about how you'd get me, my family and my little dog too. But now, I can tell you must think you're in trouble, because instead of the threats, you're yelling to your wife to call the cops.

The police eventually show up. They know that I already filed a report on the missing cat along with the eyewitness evidence, and have on record dozens of your death threats against my family, so there's really not a whole lot they can or will do to me. They're like the worlds lamest, most least effective peace officers, if you can believe it.

They ask me if I'll stop kicking the shit out of you. They ask pretty nicely for guys with guns. My arms are actually getting kind of tired at this point, so I agree, as long as they promise to station an officer between our houses to give me and my family some well deserved protection.

The outcome:
The cop is setting up shop right now. You've been seriously bloodied, and you're certainly going to think twice before pulling any shenanigans again. My family and I? We're still here. Our house is still here. You've made good on none of your threats. I've gotten exactly what I wanted.

Then I hear your family chanting over and over:

"We! Won! We! Won! We! Won!"

And I realize that you won't think twice before doing something like this again, because you and your family are quite possibly the stupidest, most self-deluded psychos on the face of this Earth.

I'll have to start carrying my .45.

Explaining Political Deadlock

Several people, both in blogs and to me in person, have remarked about the oddity of the current situation both in our own country and now surfacing in Mexico. It seems that the left and the right are almost exactly equal in proportion, at least when it comes to elections.

I wondered about this after the 2000 Presidential election, and came to the following conclusion: political thought follows a normal distribution. That's a weird notion, because you read it and think to yourself "I'm not a statistic. My political thoughts are my own." But really, you know that they're the sum of everything you've heard about, then accepted, modified or rejected. And you can, unfortunately, assign different but specific knowledge bases to the different socioeconomic groups, both here and abroad.

Given knowledge base A, the final outcomes distribute normally over THIS range. Given B, they distribute over a different one, but still follow the normal pattern.

But wait! I'm an independent thinker! I'm one of a kind! So consider yourself a part of the third standard deviation on one side or the other and grin smugly in your brilliant loneliness.

Well, presupposing that political viewpoints follow the normal distribution, then why are we seeing it come into effect now, as opposed to fifty years ago (or any other time period you choose to... um... choose)? In the last few years, due to the proliferation of the Internet and 24-hour cable news channels, the different classes of socioeconomic groups are more and more frequently sharing essentially the same information base. Yes, some groups pay more attention to events and politics than others, obviously, but I'm not convinced that politics and world relations are deep enough games that concentrating on them obsessively will give you any greater insight than paying light attention to a good set of summaries (I know that's heresy to the political junkies like me and, probably, you, but come on... we do this for fun.).

One could also say that the advent of the Internet, with it's freeform discussion, long screeds, ad hominem attacks, and even, occasionally, some genuinely good writing has taken us back to the early days of the printing press, though amplified, when debate was real and meaningful. People are hearing what others have to say, and refining and sometimes altering their own positions to suit. You can look at it as a process during which political viewpoints are being hashed out ad naseum, helping people resolve to which camps they really belong, thereby hardening the distribution.

You could argue that the information bases have been biased toward the left in recent history, and I would agree with you. The last several years though, again, have seen a significant balancing of that base, leading to a movement of the entire distribution to the right. And now, we see the center of the distribution right at the electoral sweet spot where national elections produce nearly 50/50 results.

There are also notions like the fact that although long term strategy for each party is to shift the entire distribution in their direction, tactical considerations at election time (and that's pronounced: always) dictate that they will attempt to win each contested race with the smallest amount of resources possible. And you do that by only capturing 51% of the vote. With other races to spend on, it's not worth it to try to win with more than that. And you can't do that unless the distribution hangs around 50/50. Do I think the regulars of either party are really smart enough to keep long term strategy in mind while they plan tactics for the next skirmish? Well, if you've read this blog before, you already know my answer to that.

Am I saying I believe this? Not really. I'm no statistician, although a good friend of mine, a Prof. at Cornell who knows more about stats than I ever will, had a long discussion with me about this five years ago, and he didn't completely discount it. Maybe he was just being nice. Twenty years from now, this all may be obvious as nothing more than a statistical blip. Make of it what you will.

If you're going to comment, please try to be more creative in your insults than just calling me an idiot.