I'm Offended!

Y'know what? I'm offended. I'm offended by people who think that there's some magical right not to be offended. In fact, I'm going to offend these wusses a bit more .... so come along for the ride ....

First of all, it was silly enough when the NCAA decided that any school using an Indian-themed mascot deemed "hostile or abusive" would not be allowed to use that mascot. I mean, look at the schools they're going after. What in the world is so "hostile" or "abusive" about names like Braves, Chippewas, Seminoles, Utes, Indians or Fighting Illini?? If you named your team the "Drunken Nates", the "Casino Runners" or the "Welfare Warriors" ..... THEN I could see the point. Fortunately, Florida State has won a small victory over political correctness, and hopefully the trend will continue.

But what really got me going was when I looked at the AP headlines tonight and found this little gem of a story. This is what over 40 years of bleeding-heart, responsibility-eschewing political pandering has accomplished. We're now so damned sensitive that a doctor can't even tell a fat patient that they're fat. Wow ... I think that's so totally mind-blowing that we really need to reflect upon it. You're a doctor. Some big old thunder-thighed porcine behemoth comes waddling into your office for a physical. Somehow you manage to perform your professional duties without swearing on a stack of bibles to remain celibate for the rest of your life. Then, in a supreme act of kindness, you inform her that she needs to lose weight or face a significantly shorter life. But because her precious, lard-coated feelings are hurt, you wind up being told by the state board that you should attend a medical education course and acknowledge that you made a mistake.

The next time you hear someone talking about "diversity" or "sensitivity", think about this case -- because this is where that kind of muddled thinking takes you. By ceasing to view people as individuals and rather sort and classify them by their race, orientation, gender or size, we've managed to elevate victimhood to a virtue and reduce competence and responsibility to just another evil legacy of "white/male dominated" American society. My favorite euphemism for holding people responsible for their actions is "blaming the victim". Well, I'm here to blame the so-called victim.

Unless someone ties you to a chair and force-feeds you a high-calorie diet three times a day while making sure you get no exercise, you are responsible for your weight. Sure, genetics can play a role, and some people are just luckier than others in this regard. Maybe there are even a few medical conditions that legitmately make it difficult to lose weight and keep trim. But that doesn't let the vast majority of America's fatasses off the hook. Fat doesn't "victimize" you -- you make yourself fat by a long series of bad decisions. My own gravitational constant confirms that with years of hard work, you can have a beer gut of your very own!

And as far as being offended is concerned, where in the Constitution do you find anything about a "right" not to be offended??? I can show you where it says that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" (take that you whiny politically correct wimps!), but I find nothing that protects your tender little feelings.

Politically correct types offend me. They're weak ... weak-minded and weak-spirited. If you're too weak to withstand being offended or having your feelings hurt, you've managed to remain a child well beyond the chronological period where that sort of weakness is acceptable. I've learned a few rules about life over the years, and they don't bode well for the weak:

1. Life isn't fair.
2. You're not special.
3. No one can live your life for you.
4. Failure is always a possiblity.
5. What other people think about you less important than what you think about yourself.

For instance, if some calls me a beer-bellied, tobacco-spittin', insensitive, antisocial, elitist Kraut intellectual redneck, I give'm the old middle finger and get on with my day. They're entitled to their opinion, and I don't really give an airborne copulation what others think anyway (with the exception of a few close friends). Hell, all I have to do is look at what the masses go for in entertainment, television and politics and it's abundantly clear to me that if they don't like me, I must be doing something right. Have a little self-confidence for christ's sake!

Seriously though, political correctness is a negative by-product of affluence. Only when a nation reaches a level of wealth where people can afford to sit around getting in touch with their feelings instead of busting their asses to survive can this kind of nonsense be taken seriously. And if we aren't willing to actively oppose it whenever and wherever it raises its head, things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better, because while we all waste our lives getting in touch with our feelings, a modern version of the Goths is going to come and sack our modern version of Rome ... regardless of how we feel about it.

Butting In

After watching all the time, space and windage expended on Cindy Sheehan's flappin'-in-the-breeze crusade down in Crawford, I'm once again reminded of how coherent ideology is ultimately better policy than reactive, short-sighted pandering to the crisis of the moment. I find myself watching all of this and trying to pull the intertwined issues apart. As far as I can tell, it involves attitudes toward the military, attitudes toward the use of US military power, and most importantly whether or not political globalism is such a hot idea.

I find myself in a strange position regarding the military. Having grown up in a family of WWI and WWII survivors, I was raised in an environment where putting on uniforms and taking up arms was about the most noble thing a person could do. Much to the chagrin of my family, however, I was literate at an early age, and hence developed an interest in national/world affairs. Since Vietnam was not only going on back in those days, but was on the evening news every night, it didn't long before I had trouble seeing war with the same rose-colored glasses as my family. As I got older, the thing that especially bothered me about the military was the draft. With the possible exception of jury duty, I can think of no greater violation of individual liberty than the draft. That really turned me into a career civilian -- and when the draft was abolished and we switched over to an all volunteer military I became smugly convinced that only a microcephalic fool would ever volunteer to join up, put on a soldier suit, and possibly get wasted in the name of flag and country.

To be honest, I still don't quite get what drives one to join the military, but on the other hand as I've gotten older I have to respect the fact that these people are indeed volunteers. Moreover, as I've learned after about two decades at various universities, not everyone is university material, so I suppose if you're willing to put up with the BS, the military can be a way up the ladder. Most importantly, since these people are legal adults and actually choose to be soldiers/sailors/marines -- they're not "children" ... no matter what their grieving parents may claim.

Of course, how the government chooses to use these volunteers is another issue. Curiously, every government -- be it demopublican or republicratic -- always seems to come up with a justification to send these volunteers into harm's way. After the initial rallying around the flag, tweedledumb inevitably finds fault with the way tweedledumber is running the show, and the same old arguments break out. The hawks fight the appeasers, the pacifists go on hunger strikes, the hard left demands the immediate withdrawal of our forces, and the hard right starts talking about chucking atomic bombs around and taking out anyone perceived to be "unfriendly to US interests". If we're really lucky, Jimmy Carter makes a clandestine visit to his favorite dictator of the moment, and ABCNBCCBSCNN gushes enthusiastically about his legacy as a "peacemaker". FOX then brings on a retired 5-star general to explain why we should clandestinely wire Carter with explosives and detonate him during the state dinner.

I would argue, however, that this same old scenario misses a very important point: is political globalism in our best interest? For the past hundred years or so the US has abandoned its former non-interventionist approach to foreign policy in favor of meddling anywhere and everywhere in the name of "promoting freedom", "making peace", "making the world safe for democracy", or as President Shrub recently termed it: "bringing freedom to the world". But all of this nationalistic hyperbole aside, what has it really gotten us? We tipped the balance of power in WWI, which went a long way toward insuring that we'd have to do it all over again in WWII. That in turn wound up getting us involved in the Cold War, which got us involved in Korea and Vietnam. I shudder to think how much we spent on all of these endeavors in both money and manpower, and with each "success" we only wound up committed to spending more to continue what we started. Greneda, Panama, Gulf War One and Gulf War Two have only tipped the balance further in the direction of high cost / low return.

And what has it gotten us? Are we safer and more secure? Are our liberties safer from government intrusion? Are we perchance ready to acknowledge that political correctness is rotting our brains, or that spending our way to prosperity is wrecking our economy, or that leaving our border with Mexico open is destabilizing any number of states? Has anyone even bothered to think about how many stolen taxpayer dollars it takes to prop up Israel (which is not the 51st state, contrary to popular rumor), blow up a few Islamikazis in Iraq/Afghanistan, or hand out condoms in some remote corner of Africa? People will get worked up over paying an extra dollar to pull money out of an ATM, yet the money we spend to be hated around the world never seems to be a burning issue.

It should be. Protesting the war in Iraq is focusing on a mere symptom of a much larger disease. The disease is the US government's interventionist mentality. To trade with all nations and allow our citizens to freely deal with all nations is fine -- but the US government should return to an official policy of strict non-intervention. As long as we accept the premise that it's the right/duty of the US government to butt in around the world, some group of us can always rationalize the reasons behind the intervention. Curiously, back in the days when the preservation of our liberty and national sovereignty were hot issues, this was abundantly clear. For instance, none other than George Washington noted in his Farewell Address that: "The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible."

To put it even more basically, it is difficult (if not downright impossible) to effectively intervene in your best friend's marriage - no matter how well you know both parties and how close you really are. If it doesn't work at home, what in the name of your favorite deity makes you think you can intervene in a foreign country with a foreign culture 10,000 miles around the world? It just doesn't make sense to me, and I would argue that there's abundant evidence that it doesn't work very well either.

Hell, while Cindy Sheehan was out making the world safe from George Bush, her husband filed for divorce citing "irreconcilable differences". Yet another example of how the specific, localized aspects of life are difficult enough to deal with. The more generalized, broader issues are the real bear.

What's In A Name?

In an effort to move beyond just being abusive and to facilitate a bit of discussion, I'd like to pose a question.

This morning, I read an article by a faithful individual bemoaning the fact that the "intellectuals" of the coasts view middle America as being "stupid" for being devoutly religious. This isn't a new charge by any means (it probably goes back to the Scopes trial), and one hears it a lot from the creationist/"intelligent design" crowd and certain dark corners of the republicratic party. I suppose to some extend I can even appreciate the sentiment -- at least insofar as no one likes to be called "stupid". [This is probably why, no matter how stupid someone actually is, they always begin defending themselves by saying "I'm not stupid".] Nonetheless, I'm at something of a loss as to how to correctly classify these people from a rationalistic/naturalistic perspective. In fact, that's my question:

How does one delicately categorize an individual who freely chooses to reject reason and science in favor of a mythologically-based belief system?

{Note: I know that the first objection I'll get is that religion is not mythology -- and as soon as someone produces objective evidence that their "god" is real I'll be happy to grant them that distinction. Until then, the assertion that religion and mythology are synonymous will stand: My Blog, My Rules ....}

But getting back to the point: how would we rate the competence / sanity / intelligence of individuals who made everyday decisions like this?:

List One:
* I was raised to believe that bleeding someone is the way to cure the flu ... so it is!
* Our traditions dictate that we slash our children's cheeks with knives to scar them.
* I had a vision that told me the President had a plan for me.
* The Great Pumpkin exists because Linus told me so.
* It says in this advertisement that I can loose 100 pounds in 3 days without exercise or diet - and it's completely safe!

No doubt we'd at least shake our heads at these kinds of pronouncements. Yet, if we make them religious instead of secular, suddenly we're supposed to pretend that it's a perfectly logical point of view:

List Two:
* I was raised to believe that the bible is the inspired word of "god" ... so it is!
* Our traditions dictate that marriage can only be a union of a man and a woman.
* I had a vision that told me the lord had a plan for me.
* "God" exists because my parents told me so (and/or it says so in the bible).
* It says in the bible that the earth was created in 7 days and is only 10,000 years old - so it is!

Hopefully my point isn't too hard to follow here. The kind of reasoning in List One is, by definition, illogical. If it's applied to your daily life it will have very negative consequences, and if you admit to it, a friend or family member will probably say something like: "Wow! That was really stupid!"

But I digress ... what are we supposed to call people who take the contents of List Two seriously? We all know at least one person who thinks this way, and it requires some serious rationalization to claim that these are intellectually defensible positions -- especially in light of the overwhelming scientific evidence for naturalism.

Do people have a right to believe what they will? Absolutely. In fact, as long as they leave the rest of us in peace, I'm happy to return the favor. I even understand and sympathize with their irritation when the government wants to tell them how to live or how to raise their children. But my sympathy ends when they want me to act like their beliefs are reasonable, because by any objective standard they simply aren't.

Furthermore, there is a key difference between science and religion. Science is a method. I know this is hard for many people to process, but science is not about believing in a certain set of positions, it's about using the best naturalistic method we've been able to come up with so far to attempt to ascertain in rational terms what's going on in the world around us. Conclusions are reached based upon a preponderance of evidence. Sometimes it takes years or decades to get something right, and often the errors are useful to the learning process. A theory may be well-supported even though particular aspects of it are still in dispute. Science can live with uncertainty. This is fundamentally different from a belief system, where individuals simply accept the entire contents of "holy" book at face value and spend the rest of their lives trying to hammer a square peg (reality) into a round hole (religion).

Moreover, in every other aspect of our lives we know that faith isn't necessarily a good thing. Why do you think we have lists of things you should never believe like:

* The check's in the mail.
* I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
* Don't worry, I won't #### in your mouth.

We have these lists because we realize that anyone with enough faith to believe such things is at best incredibly naive. So maybe that's the solution. We won't call the faithful "stupid", because that's a.) overly negative and b.) descriptive of an inability to comprehend. We'll just call them "naive", because maybe with some education and experience with the world of rationality they'll be able to comprehend that religion is in fact just mythology.

And if they can't, then we'll call them stupid .......

Wow .... I've Become Middle-Of-The-Road??!!

My good buddy Dave, who hosts a far more diverse blog than this one, posted a comment to last night's rant that really got me thinking (thanks Dave!). He noted that "...these Republicans are not your father's Republicans..." -- and damned if he isn't right (just for the record my father is 85, so we'll have to go back a bit to find "his" politicians). In fact, one can't help but notice that if our political system is evolving (or devolving, as the case may be), it is most definitely toward the extremes and away from the middle. As a long-suffering Libertarian, this really confuses me, because in many ways I think that my political philosophy - long dismissed by the mainstream as being either "too ideological" or "too radical" - is actually fast becoming middle-of-the-road by default.

Who were my father's republicrats?? Well, there was Calvin Cooledge (still my choice for best president of the 20th century -- 2 terms, did virtually nothing). More recently, they were defined by guys like Barry Goldwater (and to a lesser extent Ronald Reagan). Sadly, compared to today's christo-fascist warmongering variety, these republicrats seemed pretty moderate and level-headed. For the most part they liked free markets and distrusted government, they believed individuals should be held responsible for their actions, and they occasionally had some reverence for the Constitution. True, they used the cold war as an excuse to posture and saber-rattle and spend lots of stolen taxpayer loot driving the old USSR into bankruptcy, but at some level they seemed to understand that using overt military force halfway around the world had its limitations.

But - to be fair - who were my father's demopublicans? The names that spring to my mind are people like FDR, Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. While these guys were indeed intent on growing the welfare state in a manner that I would argue blatantly ignored the founders' vision for our republic, they were also very different from the demopublicans of today. For one thing, they believed that the US was (and should remain) a sovereign nation. These guys were proud to be Americans. They didn't automatically blame the US for every wrong in the world, nor did they place the UN over the US and international law over constitutional law. They were also more friendly to free markets than their political descendants. They may have wanted to give a lot away, but they understood that you can only bleed a patient so far before they die (note that Kennedy also instituted a series of tax cuts, and - surprise, surprise - they worked). I suspect that they'd be appalled if they could actually see how their attempts to give people a hand and create equality in society has morphed into our current politically correct, reverse discriminating, dependency creating, excuse generating nanny state.

Nowadays, all I see are extremes, with the christo-fascists of the right locked in perpetual war with the socialist one-worlders on the left. It's just getting weird. Republicrats are growing the welfare state in new and inventive ways, while demopublicans have suddenly gotten concerned about state's rights and the Constitution. It's Rick Santorum versus Howard Dean; the Christian Coalition versus Moveon.org.

In the current political climate, I think a political philosophy advocating individual responsibility, constitutional government and a non-interventionist foreign policy IS a "mainstream" philosophy. I just can't believe that there isn't a consensus to be found out there among people who can see that domestically we've become far too hypersensitive and socialist, and that internationally we're pouring huge amounts of money (not to mention far too many lives) down a bottomless pit without ever seriously answering the question "What's in it for us?" Even if we disagree on the particulars, there's got to be enough common ground to do something.

The economist Thomas Sowell once noted that "Too many people today act as if no one can honestly disagree with them. If you have a difference of opinion with them, you are considered to be not merely in error but in sin." That's the problem in a nutshell. Civil discourse has been replaced by the ghost of late Weimar Germany, where the Nazis and Communists beat each other's brains out and the middle sat around with a thumb in a personal place.

Since this right/left, good/evil situation has become the status quo (and most people, regrettably, seem only be able to comprehend politics in such terms), I guess I've become middle-of-the-road. Want to reduce how much the government steals from us? Let's talk. Want to reduce government intrusion into your personal life? We can find a compromise. Want to practice your religion to its illogical extreme? Fine .... just do it on your own time and property, and don't try to force-feed it to your neighbors. Instead of pretending we love each other, let's take a reasoned step backward and just accept that different values can't occupy the same space -- ergo we should start respecting each others' spaces instead of charging into each others' business. I know I'm not going to get everything I want, but could we at least talk about ideas and solutions rather than just sticking our tongues out and calling it a political system?

Sounds pretty mainstream to me.

A Thought About Mandates...

So Shrub has gone and used a recess appointment to install John Bolton as US ambassador to the UN. I can't say I'm too sad .... I may not want to work for the guy, but anyone who's inherently hostile to the UN can't be all bad in my book. But after listening to the lefties whining about this today -- and for that matter listening to the arguments raised every time the republicrats act like the majority party -- I just can't help but put forward the following intolerant thought:

If you win the White House, the Senate and the House, you have a mandate to govern until you lose any and all of the above in the next election.

Hey demopublicans! News flash! Y'all lost! Granted, the republicrats often seem to forget this, and I suppose that's why this whiney behavior continues. But for the few of us who pay attention to such things, arguing that the majority party shouldn't act the part is really insulting to one's intelligence. Disagreeing with them is perfectly OK -- but stop blubbering like 5-year-olds that it's somehow "unfair" that you're not driving the bus.

Starting back with FDR -- when there was a demopublican majority -- bills were passed, judges were appointed, constitutional principles were gutted, money was stolen and redistributed, states' rights were annihilated, and liberty was generally trodden upon without ever "consulting" the republicrats. Moreover, they had every right to do this (however much anyone may have disagreed with the particulars).

Now the shoe's on the other foot, and the republicrats are indeed trying to do all of the above - albeit with a bit less self-confidence. Grow up and deal with it. Even better -- win some elections and then you can drive the bus again. After all, no party is destined to perpetually reign, no matter how superior they think they are.