True Conservative?

As evidenced by this blog, I both enjoy and am vexed by politics.  I have always thought of myself as a conservative, not necessarily a far right winger but probably a conservative moderate.  I have become particularly confused by the rhetoric espoused by the Republican presidential candidates, so I began to investigate what are the issues that separate the two ideals. A search of "am I left or right", or "am I a republican or democrat" reveals many multiple choice quizzes in which to provide an answer.  I find many of these tests to have a unfair bias in the questions and which some questions are outright egregious.  To my slight confusion and surprise, these tests reveal I'm a hard liberal?!

One of my chief concerns in the past has been of gun control or better stated, ones free ability to have arms.  I am guilty of sometimes being a single issue voter for I reason that if a politician doesn't trust the populace to have arms, I cannot trust him to put MY freedom in his charge.  Without knowing who to quote on this statement but I see truth in it, "The second amendment protects all the others."  A quick study of history reveals that every populace who has had sweeping gun control policies, a brutal government quickly follows who often uses violence to further its own aims.  In reading the second amendment, it seems very plain, that the founding fathers intended for private firearm ownership to be a normal part of life but many liberals and democrats have viewed the "militia clause" to mean that only the military or national guard should have access to weapons.  Another short motto as follows, "an unarmed man is a subject, an armed man is a citizen."

With that said I begin to wonder what classification my values fall under and what it would take to slide to the right.  First off I value separation of church and state, as outlined in the constitution, I value the secular state.  I also value environmental standards.  I value individual rights, an almost tripe utterance with no meaning of its own.  I also value free expression, protesting the government and corporations, helping the poor, and smaller government.  Both parties pay lip service to these values but I have to state that the republican party as been the most ardent violator of these principals.

The republican party swaggers up to the podium and invokes god at nearly every turn at the same time they are opposed to the welfare state.  If they believe in the tenants of Jesus Christ, they must also give as much support to the poor as possible and yet giving to the poor seems to be a democratic idea.  Or better stated, the government giving to the poor as opposed to the church giving to the poor and yet the government gives welfare out in orders of magnitude more than the church does.  Very confusing.  When I say welfare state I do not merely mean cheese and milk, I mean all welfare programs, living assistance, unemployment insurance, and yes even health care.  Jesus said, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter heaven."

The environment: Since when did protecting the environment become only a democratic ideal?  I suppose since it 'infringes' on the 'rights' of business to pollute indiscriminately that this becomes a leftist anti-business issue.  I would agree that many environmental policies go haywire as in the case of connecting wind farms to the power grid by not letting power lines be built though the forest. And yet in many, many instances, we let business pollute on a horrendous scale.  When an animal farm dumps it's waste into public rivers and waterways and disrupts all life in that ecosystem, why does bipartisan outrage evaporate?  The same republicans who love the outdoors, who love to go boating, hunting and fishing also pay for this environmental cost for the benefit of a tiny minority.  Very confusing.

Rich Santorum has seen broad support in the party.  I participated in the republican caucus in Spokane, WA and in our precinct Ron Paul narrowly won with Santorum only one vote behind while he took second in the overall county vote.  (http://elections.msnbc.msn.com/ns/politics/2012/washington/republican/caucus/#.T1W1_ocgdTI) Even though Paul took a narrow second in Washington total counts, Santorum has done very well in other parts of the country.  These polling results show that Santorum's views are indeed indicative of the party as a large percentage.  Santorum does not support the separation of church and state but would insert HIS version of the bible into the law of the land.  Would your religious views align with his?  I would be certain that statistics would prove me correct in saying that Santorum's views DO NOT represent the nation as a whole and yet his supporters care not for this fact.  Santorum would fit in very well with middle eastern Imams and Ayatollahs in regards to the structure of government they both pursue. Very confusing.

Expansion of government has been the norm under both parties but it is the republican party that advocates the loudest for smaller government.  And yet it was Bush II and his party that created the Patriot Act, no child left behind, and expansion of the TSA to name only a few. By the way the Patriot Act is anything but and in fact it should be called the 'Repeal the fourth amendment act'. If they want smaller government why have they increased it exponentially. Very confusing. I won't bother much with the TSA here (which gives a good idea for a future post) other than to say; how can normal men and women do this as a job everyday.  It is disgusting what we have become and how did we survive before this aggressive abuse?  Oh, we did just fine.

I really don't understand why conservatism has been reversed to mean abuse of power.  I don't know why 'conserving' our resources by keeping our water and air clean now equates to a 'radical liberal agenda'?.  I would have to suppose by what conservatives call conservation is; keeping the money changers and abusive business in power.  One question which seemed to separate left from right was: Do corporations have a social responsibility or do they simply need to create money for the shareholders?  Certainly the main goal of business or a corporation is to make money but to suggest that a business has no social responsibility is a backwards idea.  They may not need to feed the starving but at the very minimum a corporation should do no harm.  Instead our corporations, as evidenced by the wall street debacle, have become predatory and acutely greedy.

And I haven't covered 'gay rights' which is another anomaly of the republican parties lip service to individual rights.  Very confusing.

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.- Einstein

Micro Quotes

There is no shortage in this world of racking misery, hate, war, intolerance, greed, suffering, and injustice. In fact there are vast reservoirs of these regular wonders of humanity, ready to be tapped at a moments notice.  In America we are largely saved from the worst, most vile displays but unfortunately we need only to look in the news to find proof of these things.  More disturbing yet, we can look within ourselves to find the same.

Jesus of Nazareth said "Thou shalt love thy neighbor" and "do to others what you would have them do to you".  The Buddha said "everything depends on everything else. The one contains the many and the many contains the one" and "The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you".  The Dalai Lama said "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." and "We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves." Secular Humanism says "We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations" and "We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair,  tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness"

In every society resides a philosophy.  In fact we can find examples of love and tolerance within these philosophies, often times in large troves, and yet we find people who need no excuse to commit heinous atrocities on one another, either in the name of or in purposeful ignorance of said philosophy. This is why I am glad to be a part of the push back against intolerance and ignorance.  I am willing to take a stand against theocracy. For the secular state I am willing to fight.  For the secular state we live in gives permission to question all things, even the state itself.  Having the freedom of mind to question leads to the betterment of all humanity.  Freedom of mind is the antonym of pessimism, despair, and fear.

In defense of Atheism 2

Another post of point counterpoint in the argument over Atheism, we'll explore 3 more questions in approval of faith and blow them out of the water!

Religion is a force for good. Or people do good things BECAUSE of religion.

This is a half truth.  Of course people do good things because of their faith.  People do good things for all sorts of reasons, some of those reason aren't good at all.  The question we should ask is; Are religious reasons the best reasons for doing good things. No. Religion works from a reward standpoint.  If you do good or live by certain tenants you will go to heaven or be in god's good graces.  This leads, if you did not do these things you would not go to heaven or be in god's good graces.  How is this the highest moral objective?  Isn't doing good for its own sake better?  A humanitarian will go to Africa and feed the poor not to proselytize, like all missionary services do, but because feeding people is noble unto itself.  I find the real moral ideal is to do good because it is good. Not for divine reward.

Somewhat conversely we find just as many occurrences of evil and wrong done in the name of religion as good in the same.  I may have just made you think of an instance on your own.  One only need to pick up the news paper and read the international headlines for the latest suicide bombing or the latest mass grave uncovered.  Steven Weinberg said, "Good people do good things, bad people do bad things, it takes religion for good people to do bad things."  There is no other way to describe the suicide bombing cults or the female genital mutilation community (which is 100% religious) not to mention the Inquisition, heresy trials, and modern day jihad.  So what we have hidden in this religious force for good is also a force for evil.

The bible is true because it says so. The bible is true because it was inspired by god.


I hear this all the time and I can't understand how people don't see the logical blunder in the first statement.  Something is true because it says so?!  I can say ANYTHING, especially if its ridiculous then say its true and you would believe me?  I'm telling you now there is a teapot orbiting mars in an elliptical orbit and it was put there by the first people and this is a true statement.  Would you believe me?  What does the evidence say?  There is NO evidence what so ever to accredit this statement.  WE need to base our ideas on evidence and not word play and logic tricks.  I can then stand in front of you and say, "prove me wrong about my teapot."  Certainly we can't for technology has not gotten us to that point that we can detect any possible thing in orbit of mars but this is no argument for the veracity of my statement.  In fact we can use probabilities to guess within a high degree of certainty that it is untrue. Saying it's true only because it says so is a circular argument and by definition is invalid. The onus is not on the unbeliever, it is on the statement maker.

One day I might like to travel to the Vatican and see the Sistine Chapel.  After my visit I may be 'inspired' to write a book or make a painting, directly because of my visit.  My creative works do not have to about the chapel or even represent it in any way.  The works can be about something else entirely.  My small point here is that inspiration is not enough to prove the works have a direct connection to the origins of the inspiration.

But in defense of the bible, it is said that they were inspired by god, which is to say that this is gods word.  Even if we discount all the contradictions, which there are many, and all the inconsistencies, we are told that this, like the koran, is the perfect word of god.  I would tell you now stop and now go read the bible and tell me, is this book perfect or could we improve upon it?  I say we could easily improve on many facets of the bible from the glaring immoralities, single dimensional characters, ideas that can be interpreted in many different ways, and from what we now know, that the early christians edited the bible.  Israeli researchers and archaeologists confirm this.  If the bible, which is actually many books depending on your exact faith, is the perfect word of god, how can it also be edited by terrestrial beings? Besides all this, there is nothing in the bible or koran in which information is any more advanced than that of a 1st or 7th century man.

Entropy: The universe without god violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

This argument usually entails arguing against the big bang model of cosmology.  They make the argument that the universe's energy should be decreasing, a running down towards chaos.  They say "Entropy increases as available energy decreases.  In other words, the purely natural tendency of things is to move toward chaos, not order, and available energy necessary for work is lost (mostly as heat) in this process".  This is true OF A CLOSED SYSTEM.  They purposefully leave that out of the discussion.  The universe is not a closed system.  They are misleading you by giving cherry picked information combined with half truths.

Our solar system from our perspective does seem fairly closed.  So lets run with this for I am attempting at an analogy.  Our Earth is also a mostly closed system.  Only energy waves and some very small bits of metal seem to every leave its surface.  Energy waves are all that is contained in the electromagnetic spectrum. Heat, light, and radar waves all shoot out into space.  But most 'stuff' remains.  IF there was no sun we could imagine how the Earth would eventually cool into a lifeless rock where entropy would increase and concentrations of material in the oceans would dilute and it would become a boring place.  But as the sun sends us energy some chaos occurs and this leads to life rising up, the Earths core being churned up, and weather allowing life to exist on all parts of the planet.  

I hope I have made the distinction clear.  That entropy is talking about closed systems and not the cosmos.  Entropy also says that chaos is more probable than order.  If you fling a pile of rocks out the window, they will land 'willy nilly' and not into a nice rock wall.  However correct this may be in relation to gasses and dilutions of salts in water and the like, this is not an argument against life in its ordered form.  Life is made possible by replicators which by definition cannot evolve towards chaos but life observes an order for it to create repeatable processes.  Just like viewing a nice rock wall is not an argument against entropy, entropy is not an argument against life.

Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum. Here, this video should say it all:




Remember Rick Santorum said that he wanted to 'vomit' about the principals this country was founded on. Thomas Jefferson said "build up that wall" in talking about separation of church and state.  Jefferson knew, along with the other founders, how dangerous theocracies are and that is exactly want Santorum wants to install.  It is beyond belief how he can talk in front of an audience and they clap for this. I guess this is the result when we spend a whopping 5% of GPD on education.

I really want you to watch this next video on Santorum to find out just what a mastermind this guy is and why YOU don't want him in charge.



I had always thought the argument was over. JFK used this speech the help the civil rights movement in the 60's overcome rampant segregation.  But according to Santorum these works make him throw up!  I get so mad having to hear about this guy over and over and over again on the news as if he is actually some sort of expert on these issues. What is very interesting is how he doesn't want college for you and your kids but he went to college himself! I really don't know what to say because if these videos aren't self evident, I don't know what argument would persuade you.  If your a republican vote for Ron Paul or at the least Mitt Romney. MY GOD!

I will be writing on why we need to fight for a secular state and Santorum gives me a perfect segue on this topic. If you had told me a person said what Santorum says, I would have doubted you, but see it coming from his mouth is just as unbelievable. Santorum is a person who loves having ignorant people give him praise and pandering to uninformed.  How did we get to the point in this country where ignorance is the preferred mode and stupidity trumps knowledge?!  Santorum is the perfect blend of self actualizing lies and ignorance pandering, maybe that makes him the perfect politician?

Just a little more on Jefferson's wall: http://allusionsofgrandeur.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/build-up-that-wall-mr-jefferson/