Dr. Forbush Thinks

Another Guide

Now that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has made a temporary jump from geek culture to mainstream culture with the release of the movie I'll discuss the religious aspect of the movie. The book, TV and radio have all had a chance to influence our society with this obscure science fiction. But, what made Douglas Adam's work separate from other science fiction is that he didn't take himself serious but he raised serious questions.

In fact, it's a bit surprising that the Fundamentalist Christians aren't jumping up and down protesting this movie. After all it challenges the fundamental idea that God created us for a purpose. This whole series of stories is based on the idea that earth is a tiny bit of the entire universe. In fact the Earth itself is a bio-computer, which was programmed to solve a problem. The solution to the problem is heralded in geek circles as the meaning of life, and its answer is 42. Of course the problem the bio-computer Earth was asked to solve was finally discovered to be 6 X 9. Most people should recognize that the solution actually doesn't match the problem, unless you are calculating it in base 13.

The whole point of this little story is to point out that our life on Earth could really be pointless.

But the thing that Fundamentalist Christians would surely be upset about if they thought about this is that the premise of the story is that there is a book that guides us through all the problems in the Galaxy. It is an enormous book containing more than a million pages, but it is contained in a little PDA. This is obviously a thinly veiled jab at the book that Christians tend to wave in everyone's face proclaiming truth. The point Douglas Adams is trying to make here is that if there really were a book that had all the answers in it what would it be like. The answer is nothing at all like the Bible.

Douglas Adams continues to slam culture and religion throughout this story in so many situations and ways that it is hard to imagine how a 2 hour movie could be made out of all this material. But, on the other hand, weeding everything except the essential premise out of the movie make it accessible to the short attention span general population who may not think much about its attack on religion.

Douglas Adams asks all the important questions surrounding human existence on this planet in this galaxy. His irreverent answers offer those who are willing to listen an alternative explanation to many of these questions. But, everyone can always say that those answers are truly wrong, because we know that they have never been proven correct. However, instead of simply being a silly story of impossibility it becomes a story of hope.

Hope is a feeling that is the opposite of despair. To look around the world and see people fighting and killing each other over religion and ideology most people feel despair. The reaction of many people is to ignore the world and find another place away from the world to put effort and energy. But, this reaction is like putting ones head in the sand. Douglas Adams manages to proclaim all religion pointless and offer hope that there really is a plan beyond this Earth. It may be just as silly as the religions of the world, but at least it will be the truth.

Since George W Bush won the 2004 election he became determined to tackle his domestic agenda. Top of the list seems to be Social Security. I am still not clear on the logic surrounding this issue, so I’ll try to understand it by writing down what I’ve been told.

So, first of all the Social Security plan of FDR is currently running just fine, but the future is beginning to look dire because of the number of baby boomers that will begin to retire in the coming years. This is because there isn’t enough money going into the system to cover the payments. We still have about twenty years before the amount of money going into the system equals the amount of money going out of the system. However, there is money in the system that the government owes to social security recipients, because the government spent this money on other programs and wrote IOUs to Social Security. After another twenty years of redeeming these IOUs Social Security will be broke.

So, how does George W Bush plan to fix the problem?

Last night he proposed two ideas that would help fix this problem. The first was to decrease the amount of money the wealthy receive after they retire. This is known as means testing. Obviously this is a fuzzy concept, because it is difficult to know how to determine if you qualify as being wealthy. After you retire your income is much lower than while you are working. If you put your money in foreign accounts, stocks and bonds can it be hidden from the US government in a way that allows one to collect the full payment?

The second solution is to create private accounts. This plan is confusing to say the least. Why is this even being considered? Don’t we already have 401K and IRA accounts? Aren’t these private retirement accounts? So, cutting the amount of mandatory contributions to social security and making those mandatory contributions go into a private 401K or IRA account would essentially be the same exact plan as creating these accounts. So, how does this solve the social security crisis? Wouldn’t that be the same as cutting the amount of money going into social security by the amount of money that is now going into the 401K or IRA plan?

The problem is that Social Security is running out of money. How does this second idea solve the problem?

But, why would the administration be so determined to impose these private accounts without explaining how they solve the problem?

Perhaps the social security plan of George W Bush is just one small step in the direction of getting rid of the program. In order to get rid of a popular plan one must move slowly and deliberately. It wouldn't be popular to eliminate Social Security in one step. But, what is the point of these individual accounts? This plan increases risk with the possibility of making more money. However, the administration doesn't advertise the possibility of loosing more money. Hence the politicians are not being honest with the public. Why don't they want to be honest about this simple truth? This is because they want the plan to pass. Why do they want the plan to pass if it is going to be more risky than the current plan? Social Security can be fixed easily by correcting for the effects of inflation and raising the cap on contributions to 1950 levels for example. Why doesn't the administration want to do this? This is because they want to impose individual accounts. Why do they want to impose individual accounts? They want to do this because after these accounts are in place they can make the simple argument: “Why do you want to give the government your money to invest for you? Can't an average person just take a portion of his take home pay and invest it himself?” Once they make this argument a majority may follow the piper to this tune. I am sure that they will entice people with stories of someone who invested in AT&T at the turn of the century and their kids all live in the Hamptons with their servants.

This could be you! Don't you know?

Senator Frist has challenged people of Faith, read that Christian Faith, to object to Democrats view that extremist judges have been nominated to the various federal courts. He has claimed that Democrats are opposed to these nominees because of their Christian Faith. Based on the following list of reasons for opposition I find it hard to see that this is the case. Only Pricilla Owens comes close to this because of her extreme activist views against women’s rights issues, which usually means abortion.

Last night George W Bush contradicted what Bill Frist told us about the Democrat’s filibuster as an attack on Faith. He answered a reporter’s question about faith saying that his judicial nominees were not being held up because of their faith. And, he said that faith is a private matter and it shouldn’t be considered.

So, the question becomes, why is the administration so hell bent on ramming these extremist nominees through the process? Is it simply paving the way for appointing an extremist to the Supreme Court when the opportunity presents itself?

Here is the evidence supporting my views on eight of the ten nominees. I haven’t found the other two yet.

From saveourcourts.org

William G. Myers III is being opposed because of his disregard and disrespect for the concerns of the Native American community and his troubling legal philosophy that would elevate property rights to a level of constitutional scrutiny reserved for fundamental rights, such as the right to free speech and equal protection. Among other things, but not because of his opposition to abortion or his Christian faith.

Terrence Boyle is being opposed because “Judge Boyle's record reflects a deep and abiding hostility to civil rights cases based on race, gender, disability, and age.” He is not being opposed for his abortion rights views or his Christian Faith.

Pricilla Owens is being opposed because of “of her activist and extreme views on important civil rights, worker's rights, consumer's rights, and women's rights issues.” So, maybe abortion is an issue with her. But, this has nothing to do with religion.

Brett Kavanaugh is being opposed because of his extreme partisan views and “Such a partisan advocate should not be confirmed for a lifetime position on the critically important D.C. Circuit.” This has nothing to do with religion.

William Pryor is being opposed because “Pryor has demonstrated a commitment to rolling back the clock on federal protections against discrimination based on race, gender, age, and disability. He has pushed his extremist agenda not only through litigation in which Alabama was a party, but also by electing to file amicus briefs in cases in which Alabama was not involved, and through numerous public speeches that make clear that the ideological positions he has taken in these cases are his own.” He is an extreme activist judge that the right claims it doesn’t want. However, his opposition has nothing to do with religion or abortion.

Thomas Griffith is being opposed because “His views on educational equity for women and girls, and the implication of those views for the continued vigorous enforcement of federal civil rights laws, compel us to conclude that Mr. Griffith is a poor choice for the federal appellate bench.” This has nothing to do with Christian Faith or abortion.

Janice Rogers Brown is being opposed because, “Brown's record as a California Supreme Court justice demonstrates a strong, persistent, and disturbing hostility toward affirmative action, civil rights, the rights of individuals with disabilities, workers' rights, and the fairness of the criminal justice system.” This has nothing to do with Christian Faith or abortion.

William Haynes II is being opposed because, “We believe that Haynes' record as the chief architect and defender of the administration's policies regarding the treatment of "enemy combatants" in the United States is so extremist that it raises serious doubts about his commitment to even the most rudimentary principles of due process and human rights.” So he likes the administration’s view on torture which has nothing to do with religion or abortion.



politics

In a discussion that is buried in the basement of the blogs I suggested that politicians lie to get elected. I used the example of Richard Nixon lying about his secret plan to end the Vietnam War. People throughout the US were sick and tired of this war and many of them thought that perhaps this “secret plan” would bring our solders home. As history tells us Richard Nixon won this election and the Vietnam War did not end until April 30, 1975 when the US pulled its troops out of Saigon.

The Nutty part of this is that one Right Wing supporter of Richard Nixon’s secret plan tells us that the plan worked, because Nixon was president at the end of the Vietnam War. But, history tells us that Nixon actually resigned August 28, 1974, before the end of the war. This means that Gerald Ford was actually president at the end of the war.

Most people would think that the discussion would be over here, but some people just won’t give up. Somehow they must find a way to be right even when they are clearly wrong.

So, the next nutty thing this guy did was to suggest that the war actually ended when the Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 23, 1973. If this is actually what this guys believes, then all of the solders that died after the Peace Accords were signed didn’t die in the Vietnam War. I don’t know what conflict they died in, but they should have their names removed from the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. I am fairly certain that veterans would not be happy with this idea. So, it comes down to admitting that you are wrong, or living up to the statement that you are making. To what ends are the right wing nuts willing to go to to prove that they are right?

Well, since its thirty years later and we have quite a bit of information that we didn’t have during the 1968 election we certainly know now what Nixon’s secret plan was.

This was Nixon’s secret plan:
“Nixon's secret plan, it turned out, was borrowing from a strategic move from Lyndon Johnson's last year in office. The new president continued a process called "Vietnamization", an awful term that implied that Vietnamese were not fighting and dying in the jungles of Southeast Asia. This strategy brought American troops home while increasing the air war over the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) and relying more on the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) for ground attacks.”

So, Nixon’s secret plan was to continue using Lyndon Johnson’s strategy of increasing the air war over North Vietnam. I suppose that you should judge for yourself whether this was a lie or not. But, the way that Nixon presented this secret plan made voters think that there was something more than just continuation of the current policy in Vietnam. And, the secret plan did not work. The secret plan was not the Paris Peace accords, those were an after thought. Not only that, but Nixon even lied to Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN or South Vietnam) by telling them that they would not abandon them if they signed the Peace accord. This guy couldn’t stop himself from telling lies.

Obviously I am not going to be able to write a civics book in my blog. Well, actually I could, but no one would read it. But, I thought that I would try to explain something that continues to bother me about how Americans are programmed.

Yes, Americans are programmed from birth to defend “Our Country” and “Our Government.” Americans are taught from an early age that there is no place on Earth like the Good Ol’ US of A. Obviously this is good for the survival of the Union. But, supporting something without understanding it leads to actions that don’t make any sense.

For example, in a recent discussion about Federal Judicial Appointments we were reminded that some people would accuse activist judges of not being accountable or elected. We were reminded that some people accuse those who disagree with the Constitution as attacking the Constitution. While thinking about this I came up with a few thoughts:

1) Is criticism of the Constitution “good” or “bad?” As an American we should realize that the Constitution is a living document that should be modified when needed. It can not be modified if you don’t question it from time to time. Questioning it will eventually make it stronger.
2) However, Criticism of the Constitution is held to be as evil as criticism of the government or the Bible by the conservatives. So, does that mean that conservatives are not “good” Americans because they don’t want to improve the living document of the Constitution? Of course not, but they feel justified in name calling by saying that progressives are attacking the Constitution. This has the emotional effect of angering those who love “Our Country” and “Our Constitution.” Logic says that they shouldn’t be angered, because the document needs to be continually re-examined. It is not the Bible, it is meant to change.
3) Finally, judges should be un-elected and unaccountable. That is the entire point. If judges serve for a lifetime they will not feel obligated to make rulings that favor someone because of campaign contributions or other perks. Judges should only feel the need to judge actions based on the law. They should not feel the need to be accountable to anyone in order to make fair judgements. However, this phrase has been used in a derogatory way to imply that justice must be controlled. This idea should frighten every American. Without this justices could feel obligated to support efforts like the McCarthy Committee on Un-American Activities. And, then free speech would certainly be a thing of the past.

Democracy is a responsibility that every American has. People don’t usually like to have responsibilities, but in this case our freedom is at stake. If we don’t examine the Constitution as our needs change we are doomed to suffer from the short sightedness of our forefathers. If we don’t continue to keep justices free from politics we will be doomed to have our freedom taken away from us. And if we fail to criticize our leaders they will run away with our liberty and freedom.

Yesterday I swapped cars with my wife. Since the AM radio on my car no longer works I found that I could surf the AM dial for the 40-some minutes that it takes to get to work. I listened to Rush for a while, but his obtuse view of the world makes no sense, and it isn’t even worth arguing about any more. So, I flipped over to the local talk radio where the talk show host isn’t quite so radical. On the way home from work I also listened to the AM dial for the ride home.

I was inspired by one talk show host who pointed out that the radical right is being quite dishonest about its description of activist judges. This talk show host, a self proclaimed Libertarian, had no axe to grind with either side of the aisle. He pointed out that the radical right doesn’t really want to get rid of activist judges. The radical right actually wants to appoint activist judges that want to push the radical right’s agenda. This is normal for the party in power, but they are being dishonest about what they want and how they are doing it.

Take Bill Frist’s speech on Sunday. He is basically claiming that the Democrat’s objection to some judges is an attack on the Christian Faith. However, the ten judges that the Democrats oppose actually are activist judges. The ten judges as a group are being objected to because these judges have a history of interpreting the law to support the conservative agenda instead of following the law. This is exactly the point that the radical right makes against judges that imposed busing back in the 1960s and 1970s.

But, the case that the radical right used to crystallize support to “clean up” the judiciary was the Terri Shaivo case. There have been cries from the radical right saying that activist judges put Terri to death. Even in the one day of talk radio I listened to, I heard callers echoing the cry of Activist Judges putting Terri to death.

However, this is far from the truth. Most laws of the country and certainly the laws of Florida say that the husband actually is responsible for his wife. This means that the non-activist position on this issue is to support the husband. This is the law and to support the wife’s parents is certainly the activist position. If conservatives feel that there is a problem here, then there is a problem with the law and not with the judges. If conservatives think that the law should be changed, then they should change to law to what they think it should be. Perhaps they want parents to retain control over their children even after marriage.

I would suggest that this position is contrary to the Religious Conservative’s reading of the Bible. For example: Gen 2:24 “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” After the joining of these two people they become responsible for each other.

So, at every level of the court system the Shindlers asked for the judges to be activists. And, the radical right is using a case of consistent non-activism to claim that the courts are full of activist judges. To make matters worse they are trying to change the Senate debate rules in order to place radical activist judges on the bench. Then Tom DeLay has said that he will cut funding to the activist judges in Florida that allowed Michael Shaivo to let his wife die. And to top off the deceptive practices of the radical right they are publicizing this radical effort by calling it an effort to remove activist judges.

An interesting thing to note is that when governments grab for power they tend to go after the judicial branch. Of course this is because friendly judges will not prosecute crimes of the leaders who appointed them. If the radical right floods the courts with activist radical right judges, then the law will no longer apply to the leaders of the radical right. This issue is actually more important than most people realize, because it goes to the heart of our Democracy. People like Tom DeLay will be able to break the laws with no consequences, while people like Bill Clinton will face hypocritical abuse of power like impeachment for infidelity.

Yesterday I was driving through the California farmland, cutting across fields and orchards on a well-traveled road. Suddenly the cars ahead of me came to a screeching halt. My daughter said that it must be the traffic light up the road. If it goes to blinking red the traffic backs up. But I thought to myself that the traffic light was quite a ways up the road. Cars kept coming in our direction, so there wasn’t any reason to believe that the road was closed. The cars ahead of me continued to move slowly forward.

After about 10 minutes I noticed that a number of the cars coming in the other direction had passed us earlier on the road. In fact, I saw a few cars actually turn around just a few cars ahead of me. But, as I began to realize that the road was indeed blocked I noticed something quite unusual. There was a fountain of water shooting out of the ground producing a fountain higher than the near by telephone poles. I figured that the road could be opened soon if that was the only problem, because it was clearly off to the side of the road.

Then as we actually got close enough to have a clear view of the fountain I saw that the water was coming out of an irrigation pipe. Just as we were observing this sight a television news truck went racing by us on the shoulder of the road. Then almost in slow motion animation the water spewing out of the pipe began to grow smaller and smaller. I watched as the cameraman jumped out of the truck and ran to a spot to get a glimpse of the now tiny fountain. And, as he placed the camera on his shoulder the water shut off completely.

I watched for a few minutes thinking that the cameraman might ask them to turn the water back on just for a minute so they could get a good shot of the spectacle. But, instead a fireman pointed to the cameraman to take a shot of something else.

By this time I knew that we wouldn’t be going through for a while, because a couple of firemen started telling people to turn around and go the other way.

I knew which TV news I was going to watch last night, because curiosity had me in its grasp. And, it turned out that the news story was the first story last night.

Now, as Paul Harvey says, for the rest of the story. Apparently a police officer was in hot pursuit of a speeder who refused to stop. Being a four-wheel drive SUV they decided to take off through the farm fields. The police car took off after it and rolled his car into a telephone pole and broke the irrigation pipe. The shot the cameraman used was a picture of the police car lying on its roof. The three men riding in the SUV got stuck in the mud and they jumped out and ran across the field where they jumped a fence. Two of the men were caught while the third was still on the run. Quite exciting I would say, but I had no idea what was happening while I was sitting on the road waiting for traffic to move even though I was right there at the scene of the crime.

This leads me to think about events that we never know about. This leads me to think about the events that we do know about and why we know about them. I don’t know what the answer is because I’m not even sure what the questions are. I don’t think there was really a problem with the news coverage of this event, but I thought it was interesting to watch some of it from behind the scenes.

All religions believe that God has given them the answers to every moral question that there is. They also believe that God is infallible. The interesting thing is that not all of these religions agree on these laws given by God. Why is that? It is because people are fallible. It would seem that no matter what path that you would take to religion and theology you would come up with the way God wants you to live. How could you arrive at any other answer? It is because people choose not to listen to all of the signs that God gives us. People are selfish by nature and the want policy to favor them and when they have control they choose to construct rules that favor them.

Take for example the original reason that priests are not allowed to marry and have a family. The reason stems from inheritance. If the priest is not married, then his property is free to go to the church and would not be contested by wives or children. This simple church rule allowed the Catholic Church to build its wealth and property to unimaginable levels.

The pope is just another person and a large number of Catholics believe that the Church has misunderstood what God wants. Maybe God does want the sexes to be treated differently, but this assumption doesn’t seem to be born out except in some of the misogynistic writing’s of St. Paul. Jesus on the other hand trusted women in his preaching. But even St. Paul wasn’t totally misogynistic. He thanks a large number of Women in Chapter 16 of his letter to the Romans. How can a church proclaim equality among sexes and also say that women can not be priests? This looks like hypocrisy at almost any level I can think of.

But, I shouldn’t only consider the Catholic Church, there are many misunderstandings and disagreements between Protestant Christian Faiths. Was Mary a virgin at the time of Jesus’ birth? Was she a virgin until she died? Is the body of Jesus actually in the Eucharist, or is it a metaphor or symbolic? Is God the actual father of Jesus, or is God the father of Jesus just as He is the father of us all?

But, why should I limit this discussion to Christianity? How can a man be a “good” person? What does a man need to do to find Nirvana or Heaven? What is the afterlife? Is there an afterlife? What is the role of nature in man’s life? Are there minor deities? What is the role of sacrifice in our lives? Is wealth a “good” thing? What are the problems with wealth and how should we treat the poor? Can sins be forgiven? If so, how are they forgiven? Are there sins? What sins are the most heinous? What is the nature of the supernatural? How is the sacred related to the profane? Why should we try to be “good?” Is there a special day that should be set aside to worship God? What day is that?

How can America welcome people from all religious faiths to this country not be open enough to except a wide variety of religious faith? It is strange that during prohibition the Catholic Church was allowed to import wine to use for celebration of the Eucharist, but native Americans who use psychoactive drugs in there rituals have not been able to use those drugs legally. An objective reader should be bothered by this case of hypocrisy, and worried about the direct the Radical Right is taking our country.



religion
politics

Sudden Snail Death

I have always loved keeping a fish tank. I had at least one tank until I graduated from college. However, when I moved to Texas I never considered bringing my tank with me. I never really had time of money to set up a fish tank until we moved to California nearly ten years later.

About two years ago I received a 50-gallon fish tank for my birthday. I never had a tank this large, but from all the literature I believed that a 50-gallon tank would be just as easy to keep and maybe even easier than the smaller tanks I had been accustomed to keeping. In fact, I was lead to believe that because of the large amount of water in the tank the less sensitive the tank would be to fluctuations in the chemistry of the tank.

A few weeks ago I noticed that some of the live plants I have living in the tank had died and fallen to the bottom of the tank. These plants normally float on the top of the tank and offer places for the fish to hide and some vegetation to supplement their diet. Importation of these plants to the tank also brought a small number of snails with them. Snails are actually very good for the health of the tank, because they eat scraps that fall to the bottom of the tank.

In order to clean the scraps of dead plants off the bottom of the tank I used a siphon that I have used many times before. This siphon has a large mouth at one end that picks up loose material on the bottom of the tank. For the most part the filter takes care of cleaning the water, so it isn’t necessary to siphon dirt off the bottom of the tank very often.

Well, I siphoned dirt from the bottom of the tank and some of the dirt that was actually trapped in the gravel. The tank looked much nicer and I didn’t worry about anything.

About a week later I noticed that the snails had laid a large number of eggs all over everything. Then over the next few days the snails began to die off. In a very short period of time the snails were all dead. Then I noticed that the guppies began to die a few at a time. I had no idea what happened. In fact I had no clue as to why cleaning the tank would have anything to do with the snails dying off. I thought that maybe there was a virus that had been harbored in the siphon I had used. But, how could I have had a virus that would attack the snails so strongly and also effect the guppies. The guppies were dying at about one or two per day, but it is a large tank with a large number of guppies and only about eight tetras and two catfish. The tetras and catfish didn’t seem to be effected at all.

My daughter came home from school and we were talking about the problem with the tank. She said that they had made a pH indicator at school from red cabbage juice and we could check the pH of the tank with it if we bought a red cabbage. “Maybe it is the pH,” I thought, but I still couldn’t understand how the pH could have changed by cleaning the tank.

Well, I didn’t buy a red cabbage, but I did look on the web for what might cause snails to die. There was a list of things that might cause the problem, but I could rule out almost every one accept the low pH. The acid dissolves the snail shell and eventually they die.

Finally, yesterday I went to the pet store to pick up food for the cavies and mice. But I wandered over to the aquarium supplies to see if acidic water was a problem that could be treated. I found a pH indicator that was sensitive in the range from 6.2 to 7.6. And I found a bottle of pH up, which is just a bottom of some base solution that shouldn’t harm the fish. I also read a bit about aquarium pH and I found that egg laying fish actually like the water to be slightly more acidic. And, live bearing fish like the water to be slightly more basic. That would explain why the guppies (live bearers) were effected and the tetras (egg layers) were not.

I took the pH indicator home and I found the pH to be very acidic. I can only raise the pH of the aquarium 0.2 per day, so it will take several days to get the tank back up to 7.0 (neutral). I also need to look into using some filter material to help keep the tank neutral.

Wish my fish luck.

I was hoping to have a little more response to my entry on Progressive Politics. I thought that readers on the right would tell me what was wrong with this view of politics. I was quite surprised that I had so few comments.

I did have a series of comments from one reader who said the following:

“Progressive politics relies on the belief that human beings themselves can be improved. Conservativism (sic) denies this.”

Of course one example of a man improving himself comes to mind. So, I told him how George W Bush claims to have improved himself. I asked him if he was denying this improvement.

He came back with the following:

“I never said persons cannot change. But a New Style People will never be created.”

Of course I have no idea what a New Style Person is. I asked for a definition and an explanation. He also started writing about horizontal and vertical controls, which I was more apt to understand in terms of a video control. This term must be some right wing jibber-jabber of some sort, because I have never heard of them before and my commenter never bothered to explain what they mean. But he did come back to define New Style Person. He wrote:

“Individuals can change. But the people (the mean of society, the "average man," whatever) does not.”

This means that the average of society remains constant. So, for every person who improves himself there is another poor bloke who falls from the grace of God. If this is truly the conservative philosophy it is very nihilistic. What is the point of trying to make things better? If this is the basic philosophy of conservatives, then no wonder they feel so selfish. “Get what I can for myself before I become the poor slob who looses everything” must be the conservative motto.

I wonder if this could actually be proven by some measurable quantity. So, we could look at some measurable quantities to test this theory. Lets look at education. Students are tested every year. If the conservative theory were correct there would not be any point of making this measurement, because it would always be the same. But, the point could be to point out which schools are on the extreme ends of the spectrum. But, based on this conservative philosophy nothing could be done to change anything on average. If you improve the education at the poor schools, then the better schools must slip into mediocrity. If you are still reading this I hope that you realize the absurdity of this statement.

If we look at the economic situation we would come to the conclusion that the mean income must remain the same. Well, maybe it should be corrected for inflation. This means that the economic boom after the Second World War never happened. It also means that the great depression was also in the imagination of the people who lived through it. What absurdity!

But, maybe he is referring to ethics or morality. After all he is a self-proclaimed Christian and morality may be his only true concern. If this is so, then what is the point of Christian Evangelization. With all the effort in the world the average number of people who are going to be saved must remain the same. Why make the effort if you don’t believe that the effort is going to make a difference. Why not become a monk or recluse and make sure that you are going to be saved. After all the mean number of people who are going to be saved remains constant no matter what effort you make.

The idea of creating a new style person dates back to Karl Marx. He believed that once people were forced to work for the common good of the community they would realize that working for the common good of the community was better than working for yourself. This was obviously proven false with the collapse of the experiments of communist and socialist countries. But, like I pointed out in my entry on progressive politics, progressives want to try new ways to make things better. If they learn that something doesn’t work they try new ways to make a better society. No one is suggesting forced communism or socialism in the United States. The idea that liberals or progressives are suggesting that is a scare tactic being used on the right to get people to fear the idea of improving society.


politics